back
05 / 06
bird bird

Philosophical Issues in the Atonement | North Carolina State University - February 2018

In February 2018 Dr. Craig traveled to North Carolina State University for a series of speaking events hosted by Cru. On 2/24/18 Dr. Craig gave a lecture, followed by a Q&A time, on "Philosophical Issues in the Atonement."

 


DR. CRAIG: Thank you for coming out this morning. I hope to make this time for you rewarding. Although the debate last night was undoubtedly the highlight of this trip for me, nevertheless I must confess I've really been looking forward to sharing with you this paper this morning because of the exciting results that it involves from my current research on the doctrine of the atonement. I'll be presenting this paper as though it were a formal paper at a conference.

Philosophical Issues in the Atonement

Introduction

The message of the New Testament is that God, out of his great love, has provided the means of atonement through Christ. The word “atonement” comes from the early English expression “at onement” designating a state of unity or reconciliation. The message of the New Testament is that Christ, by his death on the cross, has made possible the reconciliation of alienated and condemned sinners to God. But how did Christ's death on the cross overcome the estrangement and condemnation of sinners before a holy God so as to reconcile us to him?

A great variety of theories of the atonement have been offered over the centuries to make sense of the fact that Christ by his death has provided the means of reconciliation with God, for example ransom theories, satisfaction theories, moral influence theories, penal substitution theories, and so on. Competing theories need to be assessed by (1) their accord with the biblical data, and (2) their philosophical coherence.

No atonement theory which omits penal substitution – the idea that Christ bore the punishment for our sins – can hope to account adequately for the biblical data, particularly Isaiah 53 and its New Testament employment. Isaiah says, “He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquity. Upon him was the punishment that made us whole. By his stripes we are healed.”

The doctrine of penal substitution, ever since the time of Faustus Socinus in the late 1500s, has however faced formidable, and some would say insuperable, philosophical challenges. A discussion of such challenges takes us into lively debates over questions in the philosophy of law, particularly questions about the theory of punishment.

One's theory of punishment should offer both a definition of punishment and a justification of punishment. A definition of punishment will enable us to determine whether some act counts as punishment, while a justification of punishment will help us to determine whether a punitive act is permitted or even required. Both of these aspects of the theory of punishment are relevant to the doctrine of penal substitution.

Let’s consider first a challenge arising from the definition of punishment.

Definition of Punishment

What then is punishment? Punishment involves first harsh treatment as is obvious from typical cases of punishment. Harsh treatment is not sufficient for punishment, however. As Socinus recognized, God may justifiably inflict suffering on some person without its being punishment. So what transforms harsh treatment into punishment? This is where the debate begins.

The Alleged Incoherence of Penal Substitution

No consensus exists concerning the conditions sufficient for punishment. But consider Alec Walen’s characterization of some of the necessary conditions of punishment in a standard philosophical encyclopedia:

For an act to count as punishment, it must have four elements. First, it must impose some sort of cost or hardship on, or at the very least withdraw a benefit that would otherwise be enjoyed by, the person being punished.

Second, the punisher must do so intentionally, not as an accident, and not as a side-effect of pursuing some other end. . . .

Third, the hardship or loss must be imposed in response to what is believed to be a wrongful act or omission. . . .

Fourth, the hardship or loss must be imposed, at least in part, as a way of sending a message of condemnation or censure for what is believed to be a wrongful act or omission.[1]

This is a version of what is called an expressivist theory of punishment made popular by Joel Feinberg according to which the harsh treatment imposed must express condemnation or censure in order to count as punishment.

Some critics of penal substitution have claimed that given an expressivist theory of punishment it is conceptually impossible that God punished Christ for our sins for God could not condemn or censure Christ for he did no wrong. The point is not that it would be immoral for God to punish Christ for others’ wrongs, but that any such harsh treatment inflicted on him by God for those wrongs would not count as punishment because it would not express censure. The problem then with penal substitution is not that it is immoral but rather that it is incoherent.

Responses to the Alleged Incoherence of Penal Substitution

I think that this criticism of penal substitution is multiply flawed and therefore without merit. To begin with, we need to get clear on what exactly the doctrine of penal substitution asserts. Penal substitution in a theological context is the doctrine that God inflicted upon Christ the suffering which we deserved as the punishment for our sins as a result of which we no longer deserve punishment. Notice that this explication leaves it open whether Christ was punished for our sins. Some defenders of penal substitution recoil at the thought that God punished his beloved Son. Rather, God afflicted Christ with the suffering which, had it been inflicted on us, would have been our just desert and hence punishment. In other words, Christ was not punished but he endured the suffering which would have been our punishment had it been inflicted on us. We do not want to exclude by definition such accounts as being penal substitutionary theories since Christ, on such accounts, suffers as our substitute and bears what would have been our punishment thereby freeing us from punishment. Of course, our explication also permits the penal substitution theorist to affirm that Christ was indeed punished in our place and so bore the punishment for our sins.

Penal Substitution Without Punishment

A penal substitutionary theorist who holds that God did not punish Christ will be unfazed by, and perhaps even welcome, the present objection. Such a theorist, if he wishes, may simply use a different word than “punishment” to characterize Christ’s suffering. Feinberg, for example, distinguishes penalties such as parking tickets, offside penalties in sports, firings at work, flunkings in school, and so on from “punishments” technically so-called which always express condemnation. Borrowing this distinction, the defender of penal substitution may say that Christ paid the penalty for our sins.

This resolves the objection. But because the coherence objection raises some important and interesting questions, it would be premature to end the discussion here. Accordingly, let us ask how a theorist who holds that God did punish Christ for our sins might respond to the coherence objection.

Punishment Without Expressivism

If the penal substitution theorist holds that God did punish Christ for our sins then it is open to him simply to reject an expressivist theory of punishment. Though popular, it is not as though the theory has overwhelming arguments in support. Indeed, one of the problems with the theory is that, contrary to the claim of its proponents, the line between punishments and penalties in the law does not coincide with the line between condemnatory and non-condemnatory harsh treatment.

Penalties can be very harsh indeed and plausibly often express society's resentment and stern judgment of disapproval for the wrong done. This seems undeniable in cases involving torts such as assault, battery, defamation, fraud, and wrongful death. Indeed, some torts are also crimes in which case the act for which compensatory damages are awarded is also the object of condemnation in a criminal verdict. And even for torts that are not crimes, sometimes the damages awarded are actually punitive damages which exceed the aims of merely corrective justice. Very large awards in particular plausibly express society's strong disapproval of the wrong done to the plaintiff. Even in sports, penalties imposed for fouls like unsportsmanlike conduct and taunting seem to carry censure with them. While these infractions are not crimes since they are not violations of criminal law, still the penalties imposed for such infractions plausibly express censure.

By the same token, there are crimes which are punishable even though such punishments do not seem to express censure. For example, crimes involving so-called mala prohibita – that is, prohibited bad behavior – are punishable even though such punishments may no longer express resentment or strong disapproval such as punishment for violation of federal laws against marijuana possession. Moreover, there are in the criminal law cases of so-called strict liability in which crimes are committed without fault and yet are punishable. These cases are far from unusual, there being many thousands of statutory offenses involving elements of strict liability including crimes like the possession of narcotics or firearms or the selling of mislabeled foods or prescription drugs without a prescription.[2] Punishments for crimes of strict liability seem to involve no censure of the person involved, and yet are still punishments under our criminal justice system.

In fact, penal substitution in a secular context furnishes a powerful counterexample to the claim that punishment inherently expresses an attitude of censure or condemnation toward the person punished. As Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) documents in his classic defense of penal substitution, A Defence of the Catholic Faith against Faustus Socinus, the punishment of a substitute was well understood and widely accepted in the ancient world.[3] Not only so, but those who voluntarily stepped forward as a substitute for someone else were universally regarded as paradigms of nobility. We moderns may regard such a practice as immoral and ourselves as more enlightened for renouncing it, but it would be an example of cultural imperialism to claim that these ancient societies did not really endorse and even practice substitutionary punishment.

A defender of penal substitution could avoid the coherence objection then by adopting some non-expressivist theory of punishment according to which punishment is harsh treatment of someone by a recognized authority for an infraction of a law or command.

Expressivism Without Condemnation of Christ

But does an expressivist theory of punishment in fact rule out substitutionary punishment, as we have thus far taken for granted?  Not at all, for expressivism as typically formulated is wholly consistent with penal substitution. Consider, for example, Whalen's account quoted earlier. His fourth condition states: The hardship or loss must be imposed, at least in part, as a way of sending a message of condemnation or censure for what is believed to be a wrongful act or omission. Notice that this condition does not require that the person punished is condemned or censured for the act or omission believed to be wrong. Censure could be either of the person who did the act or of the act itself. Similarly, on Feinberg’s account “punishment expresses the community’s strong disapproval of what the criminal did. Indeed it can be said that punishment expresses the judgment of the community that what the criminal did was wrong.”[4]

In fact, it is plausible that the critic of penal substitution has fundamentally misunderstood expressivism with regard to punishment. Expressivism holds that there is a certain stigma attached to punishment in the absence of which the harsh treatment is not punishment. It is no part of expressivism that the censure expressed by punishment target a particular person. Expressivist theories of punishment as typically formulated are perfectly consistent with penal substitution which is just as it should be given the attitudes of those in societies endorsing or practicing penal substitution.

The Condemnation of Christ Without Personal Sin and Guilt

Suppose the critic insists that a correct formulation of an expressivist theory of punishment would require that censure be directed toward the person punished. Would even such a theory rule out Christ's being punished for our sins? Not necessarily, for one might espouse a theory of penal substitution which includes the imputation of our sins to Christ such as the Protestant Reformers articulated.[5] On such a theory, Christ, though personally without moral fault, is legally guilty and so condemned by God for our sins. Of course, because our sins were merely imputed to Christ and not infused in him, Christ was, as always, personally virtuous, a paradigm of compassion, selflessness, purity, and courage, but he was declared legally guilty before God.  Therefore, he was legally liable to punishment.

Critics of the coherence of penal substitution admit that given a doctrine of the imputation of sin, their charge of incoherence fails. But they complain that we have no experience of the transfer either of responsibility or guilt from one person to another. This claim, however, is demonstrably false and forms a nice segue to the second issue arising from the theory of punishment for the doctrine of penal substitution – the justification of substitutionary punishment. In response to the coherence objection, the proponent of penal substitution may either agree that Christ was not punished, or else hold that an expressivist theory of punishment is either mistaken or else wholly compatible with substitutionary punishment.

Justification of Punishment

We turn now to the second aspect of a theory of punishment: the justification of punishment. What justifies the state or any legitimate authority in punishing people? One's answer to that question will be determined by one's overarching theory of justice.

Theories of justice may be classified as broadly retributive or consequentialist. Retributive theories of justice hold that punishment is justified because the guilty deserve to be punished. Consequentialist theories of justice hold that punishment is justified because of the benefits that can be realized thereby, such as deterrence of crime, sequestration of dangerous persons, and reformation of wrongdoers.

The Alleged Injustice of Penal Substitution

Critics of penal substitution frequently assert that God's punishing Christ in our place would be an injustice on God's part for it is an axiom of retributive justice that it is unjust to punish an innocent person. But Christ was an innocent person. Since God is perfectly just, he cannot therefore have punished Christ.

One quick and easy way to deal with this objection would be to adopt a consequentialist theory of justice. It is common coin that on consequentialist theories of justice punishment of the innocent may be justified in view, for example, of its deterrence value. In fact, one of the main criticisms of consequentialist theories of justice is precisely the fact that on such theories it may be just to punish the innocent. A consequentialist penal theorist could fairly easily provide justification for God's punishing Christ for our sins, namely, so doing prevents the loss of the entire human race.

But consequentialism seems ill-suited to serve as a basis for divine punishment because God’s judgement is described in the Bible as ultimately eschatological. The ungodly are said to be “storing up wrath” for themselves for God’s final day of judgement (Romans 2:5). Punishment imposed at that point could seemingly serve no other purpose than retribution. In any case, the biblical view is that the wicked deserve punishment (Romans 1:32: “those who do such things deserve to die”). So retributive justice must be at least part of the justification of divine punishment. God’s justice is in some significant measure retributive.

During the first half of the twentieth century, under the influence of social scientists and psychologists, retributive theories of justice were frowned upon in favor of consequentialist theories. Fortunately, there has been over the last half-century or so a renaissance of theories of retributive justice, accompanied by a fading of consequentialist theories,[6] so that we need not be distracted by the need to justify a retributive theory of justice. This change is due in no small part to the unwelcome implication of pure consequentialism that there are circumstances under which it is just to punish innocent people. Unfortunately, it is precisely the conviction that the innocent ought not to be punished that lies behind the claim that penal substitutionary atonement theories are unjust and immoral.

Responses to the Alleged Injustice of Penal Substitution

Penal Substitution without Punishment

It is not widely appreciated that this objection also has no purchase against penal substitution theorists who hold that God did not punish Christ for our sins. Christ may be said to have voluntarily taken upon himself the suffering which would have been the punishment for our sins had it been inflicted on us. Since Christ was not punished for our sins, his voluntarily suffering on our behalf cannot be said to be unjust on God’s part. So the objection is only pressing for penal substitution theorists who hold that God did punish Christ for our sins.

Meta-Ethical Contextualization

Suppose that we do accept that God punished Christ. An assessment of this objection requires its contextualization within an ethical theory about the grounding of objective moral values and duties. Who or what determines what is just or unjust in the first place? The proponents of penal substitution were all proponents of some sort of Divine Command Theory of ethics, according to which moral duties are constituted by divine commands. These commands are in turn reflections of God’s own nature. There is no external law hanging over God to which he must conform. Since God does not issue commands to himself, he literally has no moral duties to fulfill. He can act in any way consistent with his nature. He does not have the moral duties that we have, and will have unique prerogatives, such as giving and taking human life as he wills. This is the lesson of the astonishing story of God’s commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac.

Now if such an ethical theory is even coherent, not to say true, as I have elsewhere for wholly independent reasons argued it is[7] then the present objection will have difficulty even getting off the ground.[8] Even if God has established a system of justice among human beings which forbids the punishment of the innocent (and, hence, substitutionary punishment), he himself is not so forbidden. He refused Moses’ offer of himself as a substitutionary sacrifice for the people (Exodus 32:30-34), just as he refused the sacrificing of Isaac; but if he wills to take on human nature in the form of Jesus of Nazareth and give his own life as a sacrificial offering for sin, who is to forbid him? He is free to do so as long as it is consistent with his nature. And what could be more consistent with our God’s gracious nature than that he should condescend to take on our frail and fallen humanity and give his life to pay the penalty for our sins exacted by his own justice? The self-giving sacrifice of Christ exalts the nature of God by displaying his holy love.

The Nature of Retributive Justice

Perhaps the best face that one could put on this objection is to claim that retributive justice is part of God’s nature, and so it is impossible that he act contrary to the principles of retributive justice.

But what is retributive justice? There are different accounts of retributive justice. What distinguishes retributivism as a theory of justice is the positive thesis that the punishment of the guilty is an intrinsic good because the guilty deserve it. God is a positive retributivist who will by no means clear the guilty (Exodus 34:7). While a so-called negative retributivism holds that the innocent should not be punished because they do not deserve it, the essence of retributive justice lies in so-called positive retributivism which holds that the guilty should be punished because they deserve it. The defender of penal substitution may maintain that while God is unqualifiedly a positive retributivist, he is only qualifiedly a negative retributivist. Even if he has prohibited human beings from punishing innocent persons (Deuteronomy 24:16), and even if he is too good himself to punish innocent human persons, still he reserves the prerogative to punish an innocent divine person, namely, Christ, in place of the guilty. This extraordinary exception is the result of his goodness, not a defect in his justice.

This suffices to dispense with the objection, but even more can be said.

Punishment and the Imputation of Sins

But suppose that the prima facie demands of negative retributive justice are essential to God and could not be overridden. Would God be unjust to punish Christ? Not necessarily. Up to this point we have assumed that Christ was indeed innocent. But for classic penal substitution theorists who affirm the imputation of our sins to Christ, there is no question in this case of God’s punishing the innocent and so violating even the prima facie demands of negative retributive justice. For Christ in virtue of the imputation of our sins to him was legally guilty before God and therefore liable to punishment. Thus, given the doctrine of the imputation of sins, the moral objection to penal substitutionary theories is a non-starter being based on a false assumption; namely, that Christ was innocent!

The typical complaint by critics of penal substitution is that we have no experience of the transfer of either responsibility for actions or of guilt from one person to another. But is that really the case? Are we so utterly bereft of legal analogies to imputation as the critics allege? I think not. It is worth noting that the question does not concern the transfer of guilt from one person to another in the sense that guilt is removed from one person and placed on another. For the doctrine of imputation does not hold that when my guilt is imputed to Christ, it is thereby removed from me. Guilt is merely replicated in Christ just as according to the doctrine of original sin Adam’s guilt was replicated in me, not transferred from Adam to me. Adam remains guilty, as do I when my guilt is imputed to Christ. The entire rationale of penal substitution is, after all, the removal of guilt by punishment.

What is at issue then is whether we have any experience of the replication of guilt in a person different from the person who did the act. The question is not the removal of the primary actor’s guilt but the imputation of guilt for his wrongdoing to another as well. So understood, we are not wholly bereft of analogies in our justice system.

In civil law there are cases involving what is called vicarious liability. In such cases the principle of respondeat superior (roughly, the master is answerable) is invoked in order to impute the liability of a subordinate to his superior.[9] For example, a master’s being held liable for acts done by his servant in the discharge of his duties. On the contemporary scene, this principle has given rise to a widespread and largely uncontroversial principle of vicarious liability of employers. An employer may be held liable for acts done by his employee in his role as employee even though the employer did not do those acts himself. Cases typically involve employers being held liable for the illegal sale of items by employees, but may also include torts like assault and battery, fraud, manslaughter, and so on.

It needs to be emphasized that in such cases the employer is not being held liable for other acts such as complicity or negligence in, for example, failing to supervise the employee. Indeed he may be utterly blameless in the matter. Rather, the liability incurred by his employee for certain acts is imputed to him in virtue of his relationship with the employee even though he himself did not do the acts in question. The liability is not thereby transferred from the employee to the employer; rather, the liability of the employee is replicated in the employer. In cases of vicarious liability, we have the responsibility for an act imputed to another person than the actor.

It might be said that in such civil cases guilt is not imputed to another person but mere liability. This claim may be left moot, however, for vicarious liability also makes an appearance in criminal law as well as civil law.[10] There are criminal as well as civil applications of respondeat superior. The liability for crimes committed by a subordinate in the discharge of his duties can also be imputed to his superior. Both the employer and the employee may be found guilty for crimes which only the employee committed.[11] For example, in Allen v. Whitehead the owner of a café was found to be guilty because his employee to whom management of the café had been delegated allowed prostitutes to congregate there in violation of the law. In Sherras v. De Rutzen a bartender’s criminal liability for selling alcohol to a constable on duty was imputed to the licensed owner of the bar. In such cases, we have the guilt of one person imputed to another person who did not do the act. Interestingly, vicarious liability is a case of so-called strict liability, where the superior is held to be guilty without being found blameworthy. He is thus guilty and liable to punishment even though he is not culpable.

Thus the vicarious liability that exists in the law suffices to show that the imputation of our guilt to Christ is not without parallel in our experience. In the law’s imputation of guilt to another person than the actor we actually have a very close analogy to the doctrine of imputation of our guilt to Christ.

In sum, the objection to penal substitution based on the justification of punishment is insufficiently nuanced. It applies only to theories which affirm that Christ was punished for our sins. It makes unwarranted assumptions about the ontological foundations of moral duty independent of God’s commands. It presupposes without warrant that God is by nature an unqualified negative retributivist. And it takes for granted that Christ was legally innocent in opposition to the doctrine of imputation. It thus fails to show any injustice in God’s punishing Christ in our place.

Conclusion

Penal substitution will be a central facet in any biblically adequate theory of Christ’s atonement. Philosophical objections to that doctrine based on either the coherence of penal substitution or the justice of penal substitution turn out upon examination to be not so powerful as they might initially appear. There are numerous ways of responding to each that are available to the advocate of penal substitution. Therefore, abandonment of this biblical doctrine on philosophical grounds is unjustified.

QUESTION: One thought that came to me is: Does the arguments against penal substitution take into account mercy and grace – those characteristics and those aspects of God? What would they say in response to that? Say penal substitution doesn't fall into God's character. And then a person can say it does if you count his mercy and his grace.

DR. CRAIG: It seems to me almost the opposite. If you only consider God's mercy and grace then the question would be: Why doesn't God just pardon everybody's sin? Why does he require the satisfaction of divine justice? There it would be the appeal to God's essential justice that would say that the pardon of sin requires satisfaction of divine justice. I think that penal substitution is a wonderful reconciliation as it were of God's essential love and justice. His mercy and love are shown in that he himself provides the satisfaction that his own essential justice demands. So both his justice is met and the demands of his mercy and love are met.

QUESTION: Have you read Marilyn Adams’ view of the atonement? In her book Christ and Horrors she talks about how God . . . she takes a different approach to God who counts as the superior. But for her, the atonement . . . what that suggests is that the atonement is what atoned for God's choice to create the world. Because of the fact that God chose to create a world that was finite and he's infinite, she talked about how there's this ontological distinction between God and us such that it is inevitable that there be evil in the world and suffering. So for her that then implies that God has to then come down and share in that suffering in order to justify his own act of being the creator. So in a way it's like the superior is answerable but it's not because we are liable, but because he's in a way liable.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I understand. The reason that I undertook this philosophical study of the atonement is because for years I have been very dissatisfied with the work of Christian philosophers on this subject. I think what you just explained exemplifies the reason for that. However congenial such a theory of the atonement may be, that's simply not what the word “atonement” means biblically. The word for “atonement” in English translates the Hebrew word kpr and the Greek term hilaskesthai. These have the meaning “to purge” or “to cleanse.” The object of atonement is sin or impurity. So the biblical doctrine of atonement is the doctrine of how sin and impurity are cleansed and done away with so as to reconcile us to God. It seems that Christian philosophers who have not undertaken a serious exegetical study of the doctrine of the atonement concoct these theories of the atonement which just do not connect with the biblical data. I didn't say very much at all to justify penal substitution, but I would double down on what I did briefly say; namely, that a serious exegesis of Isaiah 53 and then especially its employment in the New Testament I think shows that Jesus of Nazareth himself thought of himself as the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 who would die for the sins of the people and that the New Testament writers also thought that in his dying this was a sacrificial offering to cleanse and purge of sin. So I do think that penal substitution has to be at least a facet of any biblically adequate atonement theory.

QUESTION: You gave some examples of vicarious liability in the workplace. Are you aware of any cases in which capital punishment was applied to the superior?

DR. CRAIG: No, I’m not.

FOLLOWUP: That seems to me like that would be analogous to penal substitution instead of just some finite losses like going to prison or a fee.

DR. CRAIG: Right. I think the penal substitution theorist would quite rightly argue that the sins of the world are an offense against the justice of a holy God that merits capital punishment and that God's being willing to take that on then is a demonstration of his tremendous love and mercy.

QUESTION: If God the Father had came as a sacrifice instead of the Son, would have that made the atonement problematic or anything like that?

DR. CRAIG: That's a really interesting question that gets into the doctrine of the Trinity and probably depends on whether you think that there is a difference between what theologians call the ontological Trinity and the economic Trinity. The ontological Trinity are the three persons of the Godhead considered in and of themselves, not in relation to the world. The economic Trinity would be the Trinity insofar as they play different roles in the plan of salvation. If you think that whoever plays the role of the sin-bearer and sacrifice for sin is the Son then you would see the question in a sense doesn't make sense because whoever plays that role would be the Son and that could have been any one of the three. But if you do think that there is this distinction between the Father and the Son then you're asking whether the Father could have become incarnate and in his human nature died for sin. I've never seen that discussed. It's not obvious to me why that would be impossible because Christ died not in his divine nature but in his human nature. So if the Father had a human nature, that could similarly suffer and die. It might make difficulty for the submission of the Father to the Son. That would seem to invert the order of subordination that could be problematic.

QUESTION: I'm very interested in what you have to say about the atonement specifically on what you mention about legal cases that could be analogous to what happens in imputation. I was just wondering if they are really parallels to each other . . . because it seems that in the legal cases the employer is guilty because he was not operating . . . he was not taking complete control over his establishment so his employee not abiding according to the law was actually his fault as well because he was the superior and he should have trained them well and made sure that they had . . .

DR. CRAIG: You are using these words that imply some fault in the employer, and that's not right. As I said, this is a strict liability offense which means that he's not in any way blameworthy or culpable for the wrongdoing of his employee. There are certain necessary conditions that need to be fulfilled in this superior-subordinate relationship, and it's striking that Christ does stand in such a relationship to us. Namely, the employer has to have either the duty, the power, or the right to prevent the wrongdoing of the employee. While Christ doesn't have the duty to prevent our sin, he certainly has the power and the right to prevent them (by not creating us, for example). So he would stand to us precisely in the same legal relationship that is required in our Anglo-American system of justice for the imputation of vicarious liability.

QUESTION: What implications does penal substitution have for the debate between limited atonement and unlimited atonement? Because it seems that if the sins of all humanity were imputed to Christ, but Christ's righteousness was only imputed to a few people, then that would mean that he was punished too severely. Would it not?

DR. CRAIG: I don't think that would follow. Usually, as I indicated in response to that earlier question, the gravity of the offense against God is taken to be infinite in its proportion. So the punishment that Christ endured would be similar to whether it included everybody or just a portion of humanity because of the infinite offense rendered to God by sin. The relevance of the doctrine of limited atonement which, for those who are not familiar with this notion, says that Christ only died for the elect – he didn't die for the sins of the whole world, he only died for the sins of the elect. Where that would come in is that some advocates of penal substitution (namely Calvinists, Reformed theologians) as well as critics of penal substitution have said that if Christ really did pay the penalty for all persons’ sins then this should result in universalism. Everyone should be saved. The critic of penal substitution therefore rejects penal substitution. The Reformed theologian instead limits the scope of penal substitution to the elect. I don't think either of those moves is necessary. It seems to me that Christ's sacrificial death can be sufficient for the sins of all persons. That is, it provides sufficient satisfaction for God's justice. But it isn't actualized in a person's life until it is appropriated by faith and repentance so that Christ on the cross potentially wins the salvation of all persons but this needs to be actualized by repentance and faith over history in individual lives. I think the Reformed thinker himself acknowledges a distinction like this in that the Reformed thinker distinguishes between redemption as accomplished and as applied. He will say redemption is accomplished at the cross, but it is applied to individual lives as they turn to God in repentance and faith. That distinction is necessary because if redemption were actually accomplished at the cross (or applied as they would say at the cross) then the elect would be born regenerate. They would never be separated from God. And yet Paul says in Ephesians we ourselves were once children of wrath like the rest of mankind. So even in the lives of the elect there is a period of time where they are unregenerate sinners under the condemnation and wrath of God. Even though their redemption was supposedly accomplished at the cross, it hasn't been applied. The only way I can make sense of that distinction is by saying that Christ's redeeming death was sufficient for everyone’s sins that day on Golgotha, but that it needs to be actualized or appropriated in individual lives through repentance and faith, in the absence of which it remains ineffectual.

QUESTION: Along that note, the distinction between redemption as applied and redemption as accomplished, do you take a stance on what exactly is necessary for redemption to be applied, specifically whether God can unilaterally apply redemption? J. P. Moreland and other Christian thinkers have said that, for example, in the cases of unborn children sometimes God can unilaterally apply redemption independent of whether a person makes a conscious decision. Do you think that this can be applied in that case? In cases of people who had never heard of Christianity. What are the prerequisites in the application?

DR. CRAIG: I think in the case of infants or the severely mentally retarded we could say that God extends his grace to them so that they have salvation because they're incapable of responding either for or against it. But for anyone who is a normally situated adult and has freedom of the will, my inclination is to say that God allows that person to choose whether he wants to be reconciled to God or not, and that God will respect that free decision rather than unilaterally overwhelm his free will and force him to become a believer. So in that sense I'm not a Reformed theologian.

QUESTION: My question is: In 2 Corinthians 5:21 it says that “Jesus who knew no sin became sin so that we may become the righteousness of God in him.” I have had the question that you were talking about here tonight before. I think you answered that, but have you ever heard of an objection to us being imputed the righteousness of Christ and how would you go about answering that?

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I think 2 Corinthians 5:21 is a key verse which does suggest that our sins were imputed to Christ and then in turn God's righteousness is imputed to us. Paul says that faith was reckoned to Abraham as righteousness, and in Philippians Paul says that even though under the Jewish law his righteousness was blameless – he was blameless under the law and had righteousness of the law – he says, “I regard that now as dung compared to the righteousness of Christ that I have through faith.” He says, “This is the righteousness that I want to have – the righteousness that comes through faith in Christ.” I think that the righteousness of God described in the book of Romans and Philippians is not a mere verdict of not guilty. It is a positive ascription of the righteousness of God himself that is analogous to the imputation of my sin and guilt to Christ. God's righteousness is imputed to me. I think that a good case can be made for that in the way that I just did through Philippians 3 and Romans with regard to the character of the righteousness that is declared to our account. Now, there are critics of that who say, yes, it's true that our sin is imputed to Christ, but they deny that reverse imputation of God's righteousness to us. They would simply say it's like a verdict of acquittal – there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ, but not a positive ascription of the righteousness of God. I think for the reasons that I just explained that view is inadequate. It does not take seriously the character of divine righteousness which is ours. It must be admitted, however, that Paul refers to this as the righteousness of God. He doesn't say the righteousness of Christ. He says the righteousness of God is imputed to us. So some critics, really insisting on the letter of the text, say it doesn't say Christ's righteousness is imputed to us, but God’s. But, of course, for Paul and others, they believe that Christ is God, so it seems to me that while exegetically you couldn't prove that it's Christ's righteousness that is imputed to you, there is certainly divine righteousness that is imputed to you. And the claim of Reformed theologians that this is Christ's righteousness which is won by his perfect life and obedience to the law connects the life of Christ nicely to your atonement theory. Sometimes penal substitution is criticized because it focuses just on the death of Christ, but what about his whole life? Well, this claim that the righteousness of Christ which he demonstrates through his perfect obedience to the law is imputed to us, would nicely connect with the life of Christ and would make the life and death of Christ a kind of unified package in the atonement. So while that wouldn't be exegetically required, I think it would be permissible for a biblically adequate atonement theory. Your atonement theory can go beyond just the letter of the text so long as it's consistent with it. I think that would be quite consistent if you wanted to connect the life of Christ with our imputed righteousness in that way. But I do think that on the central point that there is a positive imputation of divine righteousness that we should definitely affirm that. Very good question.

QUESTION: Would you affirm penal substitutionary atonement and deny other competing theories such as governmental, Christus Victor, moral exemplar; or only hold to a penal substitutionary atonement as the keystone in a comprehensive atonement theory?

DR. CRAIG: The latter. I think that the doctrine of the atonement is like a beautiful jewel, a multifaceted gem. Gemologists call the central facet in a gem “the table” of that gem, and the other facets around that table reflect and refract its light so as to magnify the beauty of the cut jewel. I would say that penal substitution is the table of the jewel that is the doctrine of the atonement, but that doctrine will include things like Christus Victor, moral influence, redemption, and so forth. I think those are all important facets, too.

QUESTION: Going off with his question he just asked, N. T. Wright seems to put the emphasis on the atonement accomplishing victory over sin, over death, over the powers of the rulers of this world, that Jesus' death renders them powerless. So would you say that penal substitution is the heart of that – that makes that possible? Does N.T. Wright deny penal substitution altogether or would he be somebody that falls under what you talked about – someone who agrees with penal substitution but doesn't believe that God inflicted punishment on Christ?

DR. CRAIG: I would say no, yes, and no to those questions. Now, what was the first question of which I answered ‘no’? [laughter] Oh. He doesn't hold to that model of Christus Victor triumphing over the powers and so forth. No, that's not his approach. He does in the end believe in penal substitution, but Wright has this way of writing whereby he caricatures traditional atonement theories to be the doctrine that there is an angry, bloodthirsty God and that somehow Jesus got in the way and prevented this wrathful tyrant from sticking it to us, which is just a tawdry caricature of the theories of Anselm, Aquinas, Grotius, and others. The reason he does this is that then this strawman can serve as sort of a foil for his own views on the atonement which actually turn out to be fairly traditional but now could be portrayed as radical and dangerous. Those are a couple of favorite adjectives to describe his view, in contrast to this strawman caricature that he's set up. So, right at the end of the day he will affirm things like penal substitution. He won't affirm the imputation of Christ's righteousness to us, and part of that is because he has a defective concept of divine righteousness. He tends to adopt this simplistic reductionism of divine righteousness which equates divine righteousness with God's faithfulness to his covenant. While faithfulness certainly is entailed in righteousness (if you're a righteous person you will be faithful to your word; you will keep your word), you can't reduce righteousness, which is a rich variegated concept in Scripture, to mere faithfulness to your promises. So Wright lacks a robust doctrine of imputation because of his defective concept of divine righteousness. Does that answer all of the aspects of your question? I'm not sure it does.

QUESTION: I'm wondering about your use of human systems of law in order to justify the different aspects of penal substitution. It seems to me that a critic of penal substitution who says it's unjust for God to punish Christ would also look at the human systems of law and say those laws are also unjust. And on the flip side, you could argue if someone is saying penal substitution doesn't hold to our law system, you could say as a Christian that divine law transcends human law. Maybe human law got it wrong in terms of what's just and unjust.

DR. CRAIG: I think it's important to see the dialectic here. Remember the objectors are objecting to the doctrine of the imputation of sins because we have no experience of the transfer of responsibility or guilt to a different person than the actor. It is in response to that objection that one can show that is not true. This is a widespread feature in the Anglo-American justice system. One isn't appealing to this to justify one's doctrine of penal substitution, but rather to answer the objection to imputation that we do not have any such experience. This is very common. These theologians don't know the law, and it is just constantly repeated that you can't do this – you cannot impute crimes or responsibility to a person who is utterly innocent. And that's just not the case. We do have experience of that. So that is the dialectic here. I think it's perfectly legitimate to say, yes, we do have experience of this and that therefore the imputation of sins cannot be disqualified because it's something we have no experience of. Now, in addition to that though, suppose somebody did say that the practice of vicarious liability is itself unjust. Think about that. When would the ascription of vicarious liability be an unjust thing to do? It seems to me that so long as the superior voluntarily offers to pay the penalty for his subordinate that there's no injustice involved in exacting the punishment from him alone. Suppose the employer has compassion on his employee and his family and he knows that the fine, say, would be so heavy that it would ruin the man. Therefore, out of compassion for his employee and his family, he says, “Let me pay the fine. I'll take care of it.” I can't see anything unjust about that. Of course, on the Christian view Christ voluntarily becomes incarnate and dies as our substitute to pay the penalty for our sin. So I can't see that there would be anything unjust in that kind of vicarious liability so long as it's voluntary.

 

[1] Walen, Alec, "Retributive Justice", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/justice-retributive/>)

[2] See David Ormerod, Smith and Hogan’s Criminal Law, 13th ed. (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2011), chap. 7, “Crimes of Strict Liability,” for many examples.

[3] Hugo Grotius, A Defence of the Catholic Faith concerning the Satisfaction of Christ, against Faustus Socinus, trans. with Notes and an Historical Introduction by Frank Hugh Foster (Andover:  Warren F. Draper, 1889), chap. IV. See further Simon Gathercole, Defending Substitution: An Essay on Atonement in Paul (Grand Rapids, Mich.:  Baker Academic, 2015), chap. 3. According to Gathercole, the pre-eminent example of substitutionary death in classical literature is Euripides’ Alcestis, who was willing to die in place of her husband Admetus.  In Romans 5.7-8 Paul compares the death of Jesus with other heroic deaths that his Roman readers might have known.  Gathercole thinks that Alcestis may well be the example that Paul had in mind.

[4] Feinberg, “Expressive Function of Punishment,” p. 100 [my emphasis]. An even stronger attitude or judgment of condemnation on the part of the community may be directed as well toward what the criminal did.

[5] Martin Luther, Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, trans. Theodore Graebner, Christian Classics Ethereal Library (Grand Rapids, Mich.:  Zondervan, 1939), pp. 63-64. See the similar, if more cautiously expressed, views of the great French Swiss Reformer John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion II.16-17.

[6] See, e.g., Mark D. White, ed., Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Michael Tonry, ed., Retributivism Has a Past; Has It a Future?, Studies in Penal Theory and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).  Ironically, some theologians, unaware of this sea change, denounce in the strongest terms a God of retributive justice (Steven Finlan, Options on Atonement in Christian Thought (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2007), pp. 97-8), not realizing that their objection to the justice of penal substitution depends on a view of divine justice as retributive, lest God punish the innocent on consequentialist grounds. Kathleen Dean Moore, Pardons: Justice, Mercy, and the Public Interest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), chap. 5, gives a moving account of the horrendous results of consequentialism for our penal system.

[7] Robert Adams, Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); William P. Alston, “What Euthyphro Should Have Said,” in Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide, ed. Wm. L. Craig (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), pp. 283-98; Philip L. Quinn, Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).

[8] I have since discovered a forceful statement of this point by Alvin Plantinga, “Comments on ‘Satanic Verses: Moral Chaos in Holy Writ’,” in Divine Evil?: The Moral Character of the God of Abraham, edited by Michael Bergmann, Michael J. Murray, and Michael C. Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 113-14.

[9] See L. H. Leigh, Strict and Vicarious Liability: A Study in Administrative Criminal Law, Modern Legal Studies (London:  Sweet and Maxwell, 1982).

[10] Ibid.

[11] Leigh notes that vicarious liability takes two forms. In one, a person is held liable for the acts of another who has a mens rea, while in the other, more typical case, a person is held liable for the act of another where the act of the other person amounts to an offense of strict liability (Leigh, Strict and Vicarious Liability, p. 1). For the two examples here see Ormerod, Smith and Hogan’s Criminal Law, pp. 274, 277.