Non-resistance is atonement theology in motion.
Good theology is always practical. There is scarcely a better example than the connection between what we believe about Christ’s atonement and how we love our fellow men. Jesus died for us on the cross—the just for the unjust—to redeem us to God. He did not avenge Himself on His enemies, but instead suffered on the cross to save their eternal souls. He died in the place of sinners to save them from sin and its consequences. Christ’s atonement is the pattern non-resistant love applies. When we love our enemies and refuse to return evil for evil, we follow Christ’s example of love.
Non-resistance and substitutionary atonement are interdependent. Non-resistance gets its logic from substitutionary atonement; substitutionary atonement finds its ethical expression in non-resistance. Non-resistance (or suffering love) is biblical atonement theology in motion.
An Ethic of Love
“Non-resistance” is often used as shorthand for the broader ethic of biblical love. The term comes from a phrase Jesus uses in Matthew 5:39: “I tell you not to resist an evil person.” “Not to resist” becomes “non-resistance.” Jesus defines this by telling His followers how they should respond to three kinds of evil: personal (slapped on the cheek), legal (tunic taken unjustly), and militant (forced to carry a soldier’s pack for a mile). In each situation, Jesus’ disciples are to be willing to suffer injustice and loss rather than seek justice for themselves. They do not defend their rights but respond in meek love and trust God to care for them.
But this ethic is not just about how we respond to personal injustices. In verse 42 Jesus says we are also to give to those who have need. “Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.” As Christians, we not only defer from seeking justice for ourselves (not protecting our own resources), we also seek to bless those around us (using our resources to meet the needs of those around us). Notice that Jesus doesn’t qualify whom we should help. If someone has a genuine need, and we are able to help them, we are to do so. Jesus wants us to be people who are quick to give.
Jesus takes this still further. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you…” Not only do we not defend our own rights, and not only do we help our neighbors who need our help, we also do good to those who are actively doing evil to us. In response to words spoken to demean, defame, and damn us, we respond with life-giving words. In response to hatred, we show love through kind and good works. In response to abuse and persecution, we do not pray for increased judgment but rather ask the Lord to show them mercy.
Jesus commands three degrees of Christian love. (1) Do not seek justice for yourself. (2) Do good to those around you who need what you have to give. (3) Do good to those who are actively opposing you. Christian love is others-focused, blessing even those who are actively making our lives difficult. The ethic of love which includes non-resistance extends far beyond whether or not we go to war. Jesus is not asking us to merely tolerate our enemies. He isn’t asking us to simply seek peace with them. We are to love, and that means desiring and doing good for those who are actively doing evil to us.
All the way through, the Christian’s life is marked by love. This is what love truly is—desiring and doing good to others whether we think they deserve it or not. This is precisely what Jesus says next. We love others because we are “sons of [our] Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good.” God’s goodness toward us is not conditioned by whether we have earned it. Rather, He does good to all. That’s who He is—a giving God. He does good to all, even to His enemies. We model His love when we act the same way toward our enemies. As God’s children, we are not to love only those who deserve our love, nor only those whom we feel like loving. No, we love all people, whether or not they deserve it. Why? Because that’s what love is, and God has shown us.
All of this sits under the narrow heading of “non-resistance” and under the broader heading of “biblical love.” God’s love is demonstrated in general in His goodness to all men, and peculiarly to His people through Christ. His love is, in essence, His doing good to the undeserving. All men experience a measure of this in His common graces: life, provision, and the tangible joys of living in a good world. Those who are in Christ experience love’s fullness in God’s redeeming grace. Our acts of love are a shadowy reflection of God’s love.
What Is Love?
Since non-resistance is modeled after God’s love, we do well to understand what this love looks like. While God’s love is manifested in manifold ways, the cross itself is the greatest expression of God’s love. “By this we know love, because [the Son of God] laid down His life for us” (1 John 3:16). “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). What does love look like? Jesus showed us on the cross when He willingly died our death to save us from our sin. He laid down His life to show us His love and bring us His life. And this is not just an expression of love; this is the penultimate love. “Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13).
This love is our pattern. “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” (Ephesians 5:1-2). As God’s children, we must manifest His character by imitating Him. Here in Ephesians 5, Paul has a particular aspect of God’s character in mind—His love. What kind of love? Love patterned after Christ. We are to love as Christ loves us; His love is crystallized in the cross.
1 John 4:9-10 makes the connection especially clear. “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” First of all, the love of God is manifested (made visible) in the incarnation. God the Father sent God the Son into the world to bring us life. Jesus, the Word, “became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). God loves us, and we see this in His action toward us. Christ left the glories of fellowship with the Father and the Spirit to take on a body of dust.
But John says not only that God’s love is seen in the incarnation; he also says that love is seen in God’s giving Himself to us and for us. Love compels God to send His Son to save us. He desires to do us good, to bless us, though we are utterly undeserving. That love finds expression in Christ; that love is seen on the cross. “In this is love…that God sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Do not miss the connection here between love and substitutionary atonement. How do we experience the love of God? In Christ as He propitiates our sin on the cross. He died for us—His enemies—to save us from judgment.
The word “propitiation” is central here. It speaks of a sacrifice given to divert wrath from one who deserves it. Jesus is that sacrifice Who, on the cross, diverted the wrath of God from sinners. We are “saved from wrath through Him.” (Romans 5:9). Jesus experienced separation from the Father (which we deserve to experience), and we experience the love and blessing of the Father (which only Jesus deserves to experience). Jesus is our substitute. By His death, we live. He is our sin-bearer, dying the death we deserved to die, suffering death for us. He is our propitiation. John connects propitiation to love, showing us that love is only understood when we appreciate the reality of the cross. Christ’s substitutionary atonement is the clearest manifestation of the love of God. And it serves as the greatest example of non-resistant love.
Don’t get hung up on atonement theories and miss the whole point. You may disagree with some particulars of how I’ve described the atonement above. But if you are at all biblical you will believe that Jesus, by giving His life for us, has saved us from God’s judgment. He laid down His rights and died so that we, His enemies, can live. This is non-resistance modeled in full color. Non-resistant love imitates Jesus’ atoning sacrifice. Though He could have justly condemned us for our sin (we rebelled against Him and brought death upon ourselves), He gave His life to save us from our sin. He did not return evil for evil, but rather overcame evil with good.
Non-resistant love is patterned after Jesus’ love. The Bible defines that love in terms of Jesus’ death on the cross. He gave Himself for us, dying our death, suffering God’s judgment in our place so we can be freed from it. He substituted His perfect life for your unholy life. He loved us when we were His enemies, blessed us when we cursed Him, and did not bring justice on us when we deserved it but rather extended mercy. To put it bluntly, when we reject substitutionary atonement, we reject the strongest picture the Bible gives us of what love is. And we lose the basis for a non-resistant ethic.
I’ve heard things like this before and always find them confusing. Isn’t the degree to which Jesus’s death serves as a sort of ethical paradigm for us precisely the degree to which it is *not* substitutionary? Substitution is something done “in the place of” or “instead of,” something that we thus *escape*, not something that we *emulate*. You would have to use another word instead of “substitution” for the argument to make sense, something like “participation” or “solidarity” or “union.” Again, the degree to which Christ suffered as our “substitute” is precisely the degree to which we *do not suffer*, or else using the language of “substitution” doesn’t make sense *by definition.* The language used in the New Testament that calls us to emulate Christ in His Passion and death is *not* substitutionary (see for example 1 Peter 2:21-25, 3:17-18, Mark 10:38-45, etc.). Christ certainly suffered *for* us (for our sake, for our benefit), but the aspect brought out in these passages is not that He suffered *instead of* us (substitution). See Acts 9:16, 15:26, 21:13, Col 1:24, 2:1, etc. for the sense of “for.”
I’m not sure I follow everything you’re saying, but I’ll respond a bit and we can go from there.
Regarding Christ’s atoning work as the grounds of our justification, we do not participate. He died “for our sins.” That seems to be your point in saying “the degree to which Christ suffered as our ‘substitute’ is precisely the degree to which we ‘do not suffer.'” He suffered in our place to save us from the consequences of our sin, and we are justified by faith in Him.
There is a view (termed “moral influence theory”) which stands in opposition to substitutionary atonement and says that the primary (or sole) purpose of Jesus’ death was to show us the extent of God’s love–and not to propitiate our sin. That is not my view. And I am not focusing in this article on what the atonement accomplishes for men before God. Rather, I’m looking at the implications of the atonement in our lives, within what is sometimes called “progressive sanctification.” How does Christ’s atonement inform how redeemed persons are to love others?
By “emulate” I mean “imitate” or “embody”, not that we participate in our own redemption but that we love others the way Christ loved us–by choosing to suffer loss rather than cause others to suffer. So it’s not that we complete or confirm His work by our obedience, but rather that we follow in the same kind of love.
I’m just saying that I don’t understand the link with substitution. Saying “Christ did X and we should also do X” doesn’t make sense if X is substitutionary. It is only non-substitutionary aspects that we can emulate.
Well, I wouldn’t want to reduce it to as simple a formula as that. We cannot die to redeem someone. Only Christ could die on the cross to save sinners; our death would be inefficacious. But Christ’s self-giving love does seem to be the biblical pattern for the Christian’s love. This is especially clear in Ephesians 5:1-2 (cited in the article), where Paul says we are to love each other “as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us.” Christ gave His life to save us. Our walk of love for others is modeled after Christ’s love. What kind of love is Paul expecting? Love as Christ loved us, described in terms of His giving himself for us. This seems to me to make the link between the kind of love which led Christ to die on the cross and the same kind of love which we are to have, though it is expressed in different ways (e.g. not in substitutionary atonement). Same kind of love, but a different expression.
We are not propitiating the sins of those whom we love. We are, however, following the self-denying, self-sacrificing love of our Lord. He gave His life to save us. We give our lives to serve others so that others may see in us a dim shadow of the love God has for them (as displayed in Christ).
Yes, I completely agree with you that we should follow “the self-denying, self-sacrificing love of our Lord,” and that we show others God’s love for them in doing so. But I still don’t see how the link you are attempting to make between specifically *substitutionary* aspects of the atonement and this love we are to show others logically follows. It seems to me that one could completely deny any substitutionary aspect of the atonement and come to the same conclusion. Christ loved His enemies, He suffered horribly and died for our sake, and by doing so He showed us God’s love for us, the kind of love that we are to show others. None of this has anything to do with any specifically *substitutionary* aspect of the atonement. It in fact all has to do with *non*-substitutionary aspects, aspects that we are called to participate in (“die with Christ,” “take up your cross and follow me,” “the cup that I drink you will drink”, etc.).
I follow. I suppose you could argue for sacrificial love from Christ’s life and works apart from a substitutionary framework. Deny substitution, but still hold suffering love.
I didn’t think about it that way because I wanted to address a disconnect in the other direction. I’ve been told there are Anabaptists who are accepting substitutionary atonement while rejecting non-resistance. In my opinion, those who believe in substitutionary atonement (the greatest expression of self-sacrificing love) should logically accept non-resistance as well. I admit that many evangelicals are living contradictions of this, but I think the biblical logic compels us toward suffering love.
Ah, I was thinking primarily of your closing statement where you seemed to be arguing that rejecting substitutionary atonement means that you “lose the basis for a nonresistant ethic.” This is the implication that doesn’t seem to logically follow to me, for the reasons I outlined.
In the other logical direction that you brought forward in your comment, it does seem somewhat relevant that the Christian tradition that most strongly holds to penal substitution and has developed most of the theology around it (the magisterial Reformed tradition broadly speaking) is not at all nonresistant. So that might lead one to question whether or not nonresistance truly logically follows from that view of the atonement, or similarly whether the concept of “suffering love” logically leads to the Anabaptist conception of nonresistance. But that is a longer argument that I don’t want to attempt to make in a comment section :).
And your point is taken. I may have overstated my case. It would have been better to say “compromise the basis” or something of that nature rather than using an absolute.
It is odd to me that (as you say) “the Christian tradition that most strongly holds to penal substitution…is not at all nonresistant.” In my judgment, it is a glaring inconsistency. It seems to me (in my cursory knowledge of the issue) that the disconnect between penal substitution and non-resistance has to do with the long history of Protestant sacralism. The early Protestant movement remained married to the state, so they (of necessity) could not argue against political and military involvement. In many cases, two ethical standards emerged–one for peacetime and one when called to war. Christian’s were excused from the command to love their enemies if the state commanded them to go to war. Because the Anabaptists have held to a believer’s church–free from the state–they have typically avoided that conundrum. But as you say, that would make for a much longer discussion!
I do interact with these ideas a bit more in the next article, though not thoroughly. That’s scheduled to come out August 1. I welcome your thoughts on that article as well.
Yes, good discussion. I do find it interesting that you use the term “sacralism.” As I understand it, this is something of a 20th century neologism that likely originated with Verduin in the 1920s, and that only a few obscure writers used after that point. I question whether the term actually captures much of value (in the sense of “carving reality at the joints,” as it were), as it seems to depend on a philosophical conception of “the state” that really only came into being with the development of the modern liberal (in the classical sense) nation-state. But, long discussion :).
I did pick up the term from Verduin. If I recall correctly, he admits in “The Reformers and Their Stepchildren” that he coined it because he couldn’t find a suitable term.
That aside, do you think there is a legitimate connection between the magisterial Reformers’ relationship with the state and just war theory?
I’m not sure that the question is well-defined enough for me to give a good answer. A lot depends on how you define various terms and how that compares to the way that they were understood historically in different time periods. Broadly speaking, I will say that I don’t believe that the underlying causal/deterministic narrative you are looking for is correct.
Fair enough.
I was thinking about this some more, and thought of perhaps a better way to state my original objection. You said in the original post that “Non-resistance and substitutionary atonement are interdependent. Non-resistance gets its logic from substitutionary atonement; substitutionary atonement finds its ethical expression in non-resistance. Non-resistance (or suffering love) is biblical atonement theology in motion.”
It seems to me that you could replace “substitutionary atonement” with “Christ’s Passion and death” in this paragraph and have the same basic idea. There isn’t anything in your underlying alignment of the concepts that depends on a “substitutionary” idea of the atonement. And all of the practical examples you give in the article of how the type of love displayed by Christ aligns with how we should show love in our lives don’t include any substitutionary component. So in that sense you haven’t shown how “substitution” in particular is the “basis” for a non-resistant ethic, as opposed to any idea of the atonement that views Christ as suffering and dying for us, His enemies, when He had no obligation to do so.
To actually get the idea of “substitution” involved logically speaking, you would have to specify what “substitution” means in the context of the atonement, or how it was actually *substitutionary*, as opposed to just being for our sake or for our benefit. As I understand it, in the model of penal substitution, the actual substitution was that Christ absorbed the wrath of God that was poured out on Him instead of on us, because this wrath must somehow be “spent” upon something. On the theory, Christ didn’t substitute His suffering and death, generally speaking, for ours, because of course we still suffer and die (by definition this would not be substitution, and we are even called in Scripture to participate in His suffering and death). But if He absorbed the wrath and punishment of God, and we do not absorb this same wrath and punishment because of this, then that *would* be substitution.
But it seems quite hard to connect this theory of penal substitution with non-resistance. If “non-resistance gets its logic from substitutionary atonement,” then the underlying logic of non-resistance would have to be something like “we should absorb the wrath of God poured out on us that we don’t deserve, for the sins of others.” (Perhaps our enemies or those who wish to harm us are in this picture instruments of the wrath of God.) But this doesn’t make sense. For one thing, that would “undo” the logic of penal substitution. The very point of the theory, the actual substitution part, is that we *don’t* have to absorb the wrath of God. Again, if the idea is just that “we should be willing to suffer for others for the sake of doing good,” or “we should return good for evil,” or “we should love our enemies and be willing to die for them” then penal substitution (or any substitution at all) is not necessary. Almost every other conception of the atonement can generate such statements.
For another thing, saying that “we should absorb the wrath of God poured out on us that we don’t deserve” quickly gets into quite dangerous territory, particularly when it comes to situations of abuse. Viewing someone who is abusing me as an instrument of the wrath of God, a wrath that it is my duty to absorb until it is sated even though I don’t deserve it, is obviously wrong (I don’t need to elaborate on the types of objectively evil situations this would generate). And to be clear, you didn’t say this or anything at all similar – I’m just attempting to explore how one might attempt to actually connect non-resistance and penal substitution, and it just doesn’t work (or at least I can’t see a way to make it work).
So in this sense I disagree with your statement that I quoted above. As I see things, non-resistance does not get its logic from substitutionary atonement (and indeed cannot), and substitutionary atonement does not find its ethical expression in non-resistance. Of course, I’m always open to counterarguments :).
I intentionally avoided using “penal” because I’m not splitting between penal substitution and other substitution theories (i.e. governmental, in which Christ’s atonement is substitutionary but without justice satisfaction). I intended to split between all substitution theories and theories which reject substitution, those which deny that Christ needed to die “for” our sin. Ransom and Christus Victor views abound within Anabaptism, both of which deny (implicitly or explicitly, I’ve seen both) that Jesus in any way died as a substitute for our sin. I think this broad view of substitution encapsulates my view and yours (if I understand you correctly). We could discuss the particular differences between our views, but that’s not where I intended to cut the line.
I generally accept your definition of penal substitution in your third paragraph, though I would nuance it differently.
In response to your fourth paragraph, I think the connection between substitution and non-resistance still stands. Understand that I am not saying Christ’s substitutionary death is the basis of our nonresistance, but rather the pattern. That means there are some aspects which don’t carry over, and some which do. The parallel is this. We, God’s enemies, deserved judgment for our willful sins against God. God, rather than carrying out justice, came to us as a man—Jesus—who took our judgment on Himself. Jesus suffered so we don’t have to. Non-resistance has many applications, one of which touches on how we are to relate to our enemies. As God chose to suffer (in Christ) rather than punish us, so we choose to suffer rather than punish our enemies—even if they deserve it. Jesus suffers rather than judge us; we suffer rather than judging our enemies.
So it’s not that we absorb the wrath of God for the sins of others against God. In God’s relationship with us, He absorbed the judgment in Christ rather than judging us. God has a just case against us, but He does not carry it out, choosing instead to send Jesus as our substitute. So too, we may have a just case against our enemies when they invade our nation and destroy our homes, but we do not carry out justice (death to those who kill), choosing instead to suffer rather than judge.
My point in the article is, it’s hard for me to see how this parallel can me maintained if all substitutionary aspects of Christ’s work are gutted. If I understand correctly from previous conversations we’ve had, your critique is of the penal aspect of my view, not necessarily with the substitutionary aspect. I think the argument carries even if we remove the penal aspect, because to some measure and some degree, Jesus is still experiencing our suffering for us.
By “Christ’s passion and death,” do you mean His sufferings for us by which we are saved from suffering? If so, then your second paragraph is correct. We could substitute “Christ’s Passion and death” and maintain the connection, because the connection is not with the penal aspect but with the substitutionary aspect.
Non-resistance has sometimes been taken to mean we never fight for our rights or protect ourselves. I don’t think that’s right. I do think, however, that Jesus meant what He said when He said we should not return evil for evil. Yet it is unloving to a sufferer to allow him or her to remain in an abusive situation if there’s a way out.
I think you are thinking along different lines than I am, which may be the cause of some of the confusion. This could very well stem from my lack of clarity in the article. Hopefully this helps with that.
There are two misconceptions which this article aims to address. (1) that accepting non-resistance requires one to reject substitutionary atonement and (2) that accepting substitutionary atonement requires one to reject non-resistance. Each of these ideas are alive and well in the Anabaptist movement, and each (in my opinion) represents a partial truth. Perhaps knowing this will help you see the line I’m trying to track in this article.
Yes, maybe we are talking past each other a bit. I agree with you that both of the statements in your last paragraph are false, as least as far as I can tell. But your article seemed to be arguing differently. If N is non-resistance and S is substitutionary atonement, then my view is that the following are false statements (and you agree): “N implies not-S” and “S implies not-N”. But your article seemed to argue that “S implies N,” which I think is also false (as well as “N implies S” and “not-S implies not-N”). I think that S actually has no logical connection to N whatsoever (a view I am willing to revise).
But this aside, I am still not sure I’m clearly communicating my point regarding substitution. Forget about penal substitution for the moment and just take any substitutionary aspect. You say the following: “By ‘Christ’s passion and death,’ do you mean His sufferings for us by which we are saved from suffering? If so, then your second paragraph is correct. We could substitute “Christ’s Passion and death” and maintain the connection, because the connection is not with the penal aspect but with the substitutionary aspect.”
My argument is that the connection is actually *not* with the substitutionary aspect. I mean His sufferings for us, yes, but not those “by which we are saved from suffering.” We aren’t saved from suffering – we still suffer! Our suffering for others following the example of Christ’s suffering for us follows from non-substitutionary aspects of His suffering. That “Christ chose to suffer instead of punishing us,” or that “He suffered instead of judging us”: neither of these statements depend on the concept of substitution, and many (most?) non-substitutionary view of the atonement can make the same statements. I afraid I still don’t see any necessary connection to substitution, as you can still make the exact same parallel between Christ’s actions and our ethics with these non-substitutionary views. As I think I’ve said before, I *do* believe there are substitutionary aspects to the atonement, but I don’t see how they are at all necessary to make these sorts of ethical statements. Actually, I think the ethical statements might even be intensified in a sense in some of the non-substitutionary views, but that is more speculative on my part.
I think you’re right that my argument in the article doesn’t parallel my main aims as well as it could have.
If “S has no logical connection to N whatsoever”, what do we do with Ephesians 5:1-2? “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.” I understand Paul’s logic to be: (1) imitate God, (2) which means walking in love because God is love, (3) this “walking in love” is modeled after Christ’s love for us, which (4) is demonstrated on the cross where “He has given Himself for us.” This traces the line from S to love, and non-resistance (N) is subsumed under the broad heading of love.
I do agree that there is more to inform our ethic of love in the Bible than the atonement, and perhaps that mitigates against my main argument. As you said, “Our suffering for others following the example of Christ’s suffering for us follows from non-substitutionary aspects of His suffering.” I’m not willing to concede that it follows from this aspect alone, because I still hold that there’s a connection to Christ’s atonement. But I’m willing to be convinced as well!
The “suffering” I have in view is the eternal suffering in hell. I agree–we will still suffer on this earth.
I don’t think most atonement theories would own these phrases: “Christ chose to suffer instead of punishing us,” and “He suffered instead of judging us”, at least not in the way I mean them. Because I’m thinking of His suffering in our place as our substitute in order to satisfy the justice of God. Atonement theories which cut out substitution entirely would not accept the connection between Christ’s sufferings and our redemption.
The problem with your second paragraph is that nothing in Ephesians 5:1-2 indicates S! The preposition “for” does not mean substitution (I mentioned this in my initial post). I agree that our “walking in love” is modeled after Christ’s love for us demonstrated on the Cross where He suffered and died for us, but none of this is substitution.
On your third paragraph, by “non-substitutionary aspects of His suffering” I intended to keep the connection to the atonement, just not any substitutionary aspect. I definitely do think that there is a connection between Christ’s atonement and the way in which we are to take up our cross and follow up him, the way in which we are to do things like love our enemies, etc, so I think we agree on this more basic point, that there is a connection between our ethic of love and Christ’s atonement.
The fourth paragraph to me indicates one of the problems with penal substitution, that the “substitution” part actually doesn’t work out so well when you specify things concretely, but it isn’t my main point here to argue against that.
I disagree with your final paragraph. A specific counterexample would be the theory of “penal non-substitution,” discussed by theologian Oliver Crisp in a 2008 paper in the Journal of Theological Studies. This theory would accept a connection between Christ’s sufferings and our redemption, just not one of substitution in a strict sense. And you could also say on that theory that Christ could have punished/judged us, but He did not, and chose to suffer instead, so he chose to suffer instead of punishing us. Even some moral exemplar theories could accept a connection between Christ’s sufferings and our redemption, just not a substitutionary one. I think part of the communication problem is that the way you mean those phrases is exactly the way that penal substitution means them, but they can be taken/understood in different ways :). I also think you are being somewhat tautological – if you are including “in our place as our *substitute* in order to satisfy the justice of God” as part of your intended meaning, then of course it follows that you can’t mean the same thing if you “cut out substitution.”
I’m going to disagree with you on Ephesians, because I do take it to be a reference to the cross. He goes on to say Christ’s giving Himself was “an offering and a sacrifice to God.” That points to His work on the cross.
On the other points, I’m sure we could continue ad infinitum. This discussion has helped sharpen my thinking. Thanks.
Of course it refers to the cross – I thought I explicitly said that :). It is a specific reference to Christ’s work on the cross, giving Himself as an offering and sacrifice to God.
I must have missed that. I suppose then the disagreement is on what is meant by “offering and sacrifice.” I understand those terms in connection to Christ’s substitutionary death. He, as the sacrifice, dies our death. I find it difficult to understand these terms disconnected from substitutionary atonement.
Yes, in some ways this is the entire point I’m trying to make. He doesn’t die our death in a substitutionary sense, because we still die! (Not to mention that the passage doesn’t say that He dies our death, rather that He died for us.) Substitution means “Christ did X so that we don’t have to do X,” or “Christ did X instead of us doing X.” We don’t do the things that are substituted for, or else it isn’t substitution by definition. Rather, the Pauline picture is more that He died so that we can die with Him, so it is participation, union, solidarity, etc. instead of substitution. As far as the offering and sacrifice terminology, you are aware that there are multiple types of offerings and sacrifices presented in the Old Testament, with different symbolic connotations and cultic purposes. Which type do you think Paul is speaking of here, and how does that type carry with it the idea of “substitution”? Actually, that might be too long of a discussion :). I just don’t see any intrinsic connection between “sacrifice” as presented in the Old Testament and “substitution” generally speaking (Rene Girard to the contrary).
I wouldn’t restrict the purpose of the cross to the exclusion of “participation, union, solidarity, etc.” A part of coming to Christ and being united to Him is identifying with Him in His death and resurrection.
Penal substitutionary atonement sees more in the death of Christ than just His physical death on the cross. There seems to be both physical and spiritual dimensions. It follows a parallel established in Genesis 1-3. God said Adam and Eve would die if they ate the forbidden fruit. They did not die physically right away, but they were immediately sent from God’s immediate presence in the garden. “Death” there includes the severing of their relationship with God. So in Christ’s death, there are physical and spiritual dimensions, and I would argue that the spiritual is the greater. So the gospels record that darkness was over the earth and Jesus said He was forsaken by the Father. He in that sense is separated from the Father spiritually, and that for us. This requires a longer and better treatment than this.
I understand Jesus’ death through the lens of Hebrews as being specifically connected to the Day of Atonement sacrifice, where the death of a substitute was necessary for the priest to enter God’s presence. Christ enters once for all into God’s presence, with His own blood, satisfying God’s requirements and opening access into God’s presence. That’s not to exclude all other types of sacrifices having typological significance, but it does make the connection from “sacrifice” to “atonement.” And I realize we are at risk of opening a much longer conversation again.
Yes, this conversation is somewhat orthogonal to the main point. Not sure I have much more to say on that one :). Again, good discussion!