In Defense of the Doctrine of the Substitutionary Atonement

Last March, 2014, a friend of mine wrote a newsletter which has bothered me from the moment I read it till now.  At that time I responded with a written rebuttal.  This seemed hasty, both to me and my friends. Other mutual friends urged me to take down my post and treat this disagreement according to the scriptural guidelines, i.e. by going to him privately first.  That, of course, would be reasonable if the matter were simply a moral issue. Instead, it is a very serious doctrinal error which was published to a great many people, which needs to be answered in like fashion.

What really bothered me is his suggestion that this doctrine paints God as "schizophrenic".  This is not original.  The term was used at least 50 years ago by someone discoursing on the doctrine with Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and probably earlier by similar intellectuals.

Evangelicals believe that God is justly angered by sin, that He hates sin, and that His justice must be satisfied; at the same time, we believe God loves man so that He satisfies his  justice and wrath by offering his own Son in our place as an atonement.   His great love is, in some sense, the natural "equal and opposite reaction" to his hatred for sin.  We live in an age where hate is somehow thought of as evil, no matter the cause.  But God hates sin.  He hates divorce. His prophets proclaim,  "You who love the Lord, hate evil!" [Ps 97:10]

Many also have a split view of the Trinity. They imagine that God is all wrath and Jesus is all love. This is not the Evangelical view, though I have met Evangelicals who espouse it because they are careless about studying the Bible.  They read lots of books, but neglect the Word.  On the contrary, God the Father is portrayed in the Bible as most loving; "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." [Ro 5:8] The Son also is described as full of wrath.  Jesus made a whip and cleared the Temple.  And in Revelation, those who rejected him are seen crying out to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!" [Rev 6:16-17]

This teaching about God's wrath, and thus, the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement, bothers my friend who says that the Son did not need to pay a ransom to the Father, because

The heart of God the Father is not offended and he most certainly does not need to be appeased in order to forgive us. Why? His heart is actively loving. This is why he became man – to be “God with us.”

Aside from the logical errors here (namely, God in his love does not simply ignore our sin), the first sentence contradicts great swaths of Scripture in both Testaments.  I will mention a few later.  But this sentence does so happen to align perfectly with Catholic doctrine, which seems to be the real underlying problem with my friend's thinking.  There is also this very telling insight to his reasons for dismissing the PSA doctrine as unimportant:

By knowing [Christ] experientially – through conversion, the Word of God, the process of sanctification, the power of the Sacraments – we constantly receive the antidote to our disease.

At first, this sentence didn't seem to have a point. But after some time, I realized it is the alternative to God's penal substitution in Christ.  It states that our knowledge---that is, knowing Christ through the listed means---is the alternative to Christ's substitutionary atonement.  Evangelicals believe that the finished work of Christ puts man right with God once for all. But if man needs to "constantly receive an antidote" to his disease, he is not cured, but rather a patient for life, something much more business savvy.  Conversion is something that happens once in a person's life.  The Word of God is final and complete.  Our sanctification was wrought on Calvary and is also complete.  But the Sacraments, these are man's addition which, while meaningful, are not a "power" which makes us more knowledgeable of the Lord Jesus, and which most certainly are no substitute for the atonement that was completed in our Lord Jesus.

If our Salvation in Christ is not final and complete as Protestants believe, but really dependent upon sacraments dispensed by the Church, which build up over the lifetime and only find completion in the Last Rites, again, at the discretion of the Church, well then, what my friend has done is to replace the Atonement that truly cures man's sin with a treatment that only helps him get by, at the same time creating a much more dependent parishioner.

His argument is extremely subtle.  Real Catholics are not. The Council of Trent decided in the 16th Century that

If any one saith, that the sacraments of the New Law were not all instituted by Jesus Christ, our Lord; or that they are more, or less, than seven, to wit, Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Penance, Extreme Unction, Order, and Matrimony; or even that any one of these seven is not truly and properly a sacrament; let him be anathema.

If any one saith, that the sacraments of the New Law are not necessary unto salvation, but superfluous; and that, without them, or without the desire thereof, men obtain of God, through faith alone, the grace of justification; -though all (the sacraments) are not necessary for every individual; let him be anathema. 

The Scriptures are not subtle either, and they directly contradict the above canons. There wouldn't have been a Reformation if the contradiction had been subtle.

I realize here that I've strayed a bit from the topic of Substitutionary Atonement and my friend's dismissal of it, because I believe the more important matter to my friend is church unity, not the particulars of dogma.  And so I submit that his dismissal of the doctrine in question is one of convenience, or to make a bridge between Catholics and Protestants, rather than to save souls from Hell, to advance the Kingdom of God or to champion the Truth.  This goal of unity, while noble, is not paramount to the true Christian. For even our Lord said,

 Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division. [Luke 12:51] 

If even the Lord Jesus wasn't upset by the fact that his teachings would divide man against man, father against son and mother against daughter, I don't think Protestants are in the wrong when we contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to us.

What then does the Bible say about the Atonement and the death of our Lord?   Several important scriptures come to mind.  Going through the Bible from beginning to end would not be practical in a short essay. But let us consider at least one passage from Genesis.

As all students of the Bible will recall, God commanded Abraham to offer his only son Isaac as a burnt offering.  A pastor by the name of Brian Zahnd in a debate with Dr. Michael Brown on the doctrine of the atonement, opened his argument against said doctrine thus: 

"Reducing the mystery of the cross to a theory…  but particularly abhorrent is the penal substitutionary atonement theory that turns the Father of Jesus into a pagan deity, who can only be placated by the barbarism of child sacrifice, and this will not do." 

God has never been placated by child sacrifice, and no Christian with even the slightest credibility (certainly not Anselm, Luther, Calvin, etc) has ever made any such an argument, comparing God to pagan deities.  (It is in fact modern unbelievers who suggest this.)  But behold! It is also fallacious in that God DID demand a child sacrifice ... of Abraham.  God was not placated by it, but He did command it. The fact that Abraham obeyed and offered his son Isaac was so pleasing to God that God swore to bless all nations on earth through his Seed.

Thus, the Christ through whom all nations are blessed was promised HERE, when a faithful man obeyed God even to sacrifice his beloved only son.   And remember, it was Abraham on the way to this dreadful altar, who explained to the inquiring Isaac why they had prepared no sacrifice:

"My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering." [Gn 22:8] 

This alone is more than sufficient to prove Scripturally that God does require an offering, and that he is Himself going to provide that Offering of his Son.  My friend, Pastor Zahnd, the Priestess Fleming Rutledge (Anglican) and others seem to have dismissed the prophetic nature of this passage (and many others) as mere coincidence when they say that the doctrine of Christ's penal substitutionary atonement is "not central to the Bible", and that it "turns the Father of Jesus into a pagan deity," and that it "gets a good bit about God the Father, and the death of Christ, quite wrong."

These and many others have totally missed the love of God by trying to make God into someone who is too loving to demand propitiation for sin.  The problem is that they accept the pagan definition for propitiation rather than the Judeo-Christian idea.  The pagan use of propitiation does mean to appease and satisfy an angry deity.  But the Jew had a much different understanding of this word. Indeed, the Seventy, when they translated the Scriptures into Greek, used the same word "propitiation" where one often sees "Mercy Seat" in modern English translations.  This was why the author of Hebrews used the same word in Heb 9:5, "and above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat", i.e. the place where God dwelled and where the blood of the sacrifice was sprinkled, and where thus God forgave sin in mercy.  Even the Douay-Reims (Catholic) translation renders this "propitiatory".  This word was the best the Jewish writers could do to convey it in Greek.  But be very sure! It had nothing whatsoever to do with pagan notions of propitiation.  All its roots and meaning were in Hebrew religion, in the Law of Moses, in the Temple worship, in the Passover and the Paschal Lamb. 

I would mention in passing the Exodus, when God killed many thousands of firstborn sons in Egypt to rescue his people Israel.  This was not an act of atonement but of rescue, which is what my friend wants us to think of Jesus' death. The Passover was the basis for the Day of Atonement when the firstborn lamb was offered for Israel, to forgive sin and as an annual day of remembrance.  It was not a day to remember how God slaughtered Egyptians to rescue them, but how He saved them from slavery to sin through the substitution of a lamb, redeeming them both physically and spiritually.

I would also mention Isaiah, who saw the Messiah prophetically and said [Is 53:10],

"Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin." 

Yes!  It pleased God to put his own Son to death as an offering for our sin.  Why?  Not because God loves violence, as pagan gods, but because he loves US.  "For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son…"   To argue that this is not central to the Bible shows a general disregard for the Bible as divine revelation, and a general deference to modern critical scholarship as well as the corrupted tastes of this godless age. It is an exercise in tickling the ear rather than "holding fast the faithful word as we have been taught."  These are not contending for the faith, but eviscerating it!

Now for the really sad part of this story: these thinkers think they are making God appear more loving by rejecting this doctrine. In reality, they do not understand the love of God at all.  For God's love isn't a mere feeling or impression, it is rooted in the FACTS of the gospel.  Consider Ephesians 5:1,2:

"Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma." 

The Love of God who sent Christ, and of our Lord and Savior, who willingly gave himself for us to be our atonement, the propitiation which pleased the Father, as a "sweet-smelling aroma", THIS act above all their theories of God's love demonstrates and proves God's love concretely.  The theory that God is too loving to demand blood as a payment for sin is simply wrong. He does demand blood. Why?  Because of who we are.  We are sinners, who justly deserve  God's wrath, and all that Hell has to torture us.  We were "dead in trespasses and sins, … we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. " [Eph 2:1-3]  Yet we who were so vile were chosen and beloved by God in Christ before the foundation of the world. [Eph 1:4]

If we are NOT sinners, and God isn't all that angry with us for our sinful, filthy lives, if God is not angered by the lawless and godless world that puts innocents to death by the millions yet condones the vilest immorality EVEN IN THE CHURCHES and will not even stand up for the most basic truths of humanity (e.g. that ones gender is a factual matter of God's choice rather than man's choice), then the atonement isn't necessary at all and couldn't be central.  And if these things are true, the love of God is neither revealed in Christ, nor is it necessary for man's salvation.  What we are left with is an empty, man-centered religion that has as its only goal to unify and make man feel better about himself.    Dismissing the PSA is critical to a liberal worldview and probably to a more powerful church.

But the wrath AND the love of God, as we see it in the sacrifice on the cross, are both equally central to the Christian Faith.  "And this is love:  that a man lay down his life for his friends."  If it is not a substitutionary death, FOR US, it cannot save us from sin.  It may teach us something, but not God's love;  rather without this doctrine of penal substitution, the death of Christ only teaches us man's cruelty and perhaps God's impotence.   This is how Muslims misunderstand the doctrine of the Cross.  I think a great many Christians are also offended by the cross, having not grasped that it was entirely a substitutionary atonement for their sin.

I would conclude then with a quote from someone else, for my words are poor and hardly able to stand up to the clever arguments of those who would dismember our Faith.  I defer here to Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.

The church is in such a bad state because we've evacuated this meaning and God's love by abandoning the doctrine of  substitutionary atonement. …  What I'm suggesting is this: That no one really begins to understand the love of God and the love of the Lord Jesus Christ who doesn't believe the substitutionary and penal doctrine of the atonement.  Think it out. Where do you see the love of God if His Son is simply suffering there in a useless manner, suffering the cruelty and all that men are doing? What's the point of it? It's useless suffering if it achieves nothing, if it isn't substitutionary, if it isn't penal, if he isn't really DEALING with sins?  I say there's no point in it. It's sheer cruelty. There's no love there. 

May God help us in this oh so educated age to accept the Word and faithfully hold to it, despite the whirlwind of doctrinal whims by controversialists and book-peddlers, and find in the Bible the true picture of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, a picture we cannot possibly improve upon with our great modern brains.  May He enable us to see ourselves rightly, as "the ungodly" upon which the love of God has been poured out by the Holy Spirit,

for when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.  [Romans 5:5-6] 

And in seeing ourselves thus clearly as ungodly, more rightly measure the greatness of the love of our Father revealed in the sacrifice of his precious only Son. 

Amen.