The Odious Penal Substitutionary Theory of Atonement

Of course they had “bogus ideas”, as I’m sure folks who look back at us 3000+ years from now will think about us as well. But it’s not terribly difficult to put yourself in the shoes of someone who lived back then and imagine the reasoning that would have justified the idea of sacrifice/scapegoating. Yes, we think “poor goat”, but they would have thought “better the goat than my firstborn”.

Sorry, brevity isn’t always useful. Of course ‘illegal does not necessarily equate to immoral’ but it seemed a pointless generalization when that was never the issue at hand, so I wanted to ask if you brought up that truism because you thought that in this case it did not. Or whether you were just reading my initial comment as some sort of strawman argument that the law was the definition of morality.

I think the problem is that PST seems so obviously immoral to me, that if I’m trying to discuss with someone who thinks it is the pinnacle of grace, then it is difficult to find common ground. Arguments from analogy are a form of bridge-building. To avoid just throwing our hands up and imagining we’re different kinds of being, we try to figure out a situation in which we do agree, and then figure out, as we both move to our sides of the bridge, where the logic changes for one of us.

So we might agree that it is immoral for me to get my mate to take my speeding points, but you might suggest that if the law was fine with this, if it was no different to your friend giving you the *money* for the speeding ticket (clearly totally legal), then the act becomes not just moral, but loving. If I knew my mate was short of cash and had been hit by a speed camera, I would probably offer him the money, because I love him… for example.

So we might first try to agree on a case of penal substitution that we agree is immoral (and you’ve still not said whether this is such a case). Then what changes from there to a PST christology are significant in inverting its moral state?

The other side-effect of this, is that a certain proportion of folks have never thought about the PST they’ve been taught, and so these kinds of arguments can be important in getting people to actually think about what they’ve been taught. Note, I am not saying that those who believe in PST are unthinking, just that it is usually taught as a doctrine, not as the conclusion to a line of reasoning.

“because the situation is simply unparalleled” That is just assuming your conclusion, of course. The situation is plenty paralleled, as far as I can see, its just that the moral conclusion of those parallels is one you don’t like :).

But most of your comment comes over as arguing for one horn of Euthyphro: God is good, by definition, there is no basis on which we can judge the morality (or otherwise) of God. That’s fine, of course, but it does mean talk of God being good and loving and kind, and so on, is just tautological and meaningless. Not many believers I know are really willing to face up to the implications of going along that horn.

“If it’s relative, then there’s no point in discussing it.” – It is a common failure of imagination to not understand how morality could possibly exist without God, but it is hardly a active problem in philosophy. You may want to look up ideas such as moral universalism, moral realism, ethical naturalism, and so on, on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Given the fact that the absolute moral standards that religious folks ascribe to God are highly culturally contingent, it is pretty clear that the common theological claim to moral objectivism is horribly naive.

I’m not quite sure how we got here, but if you’re arguing there is no such thing as objective morality, except by redefining morality tautologically, then that conclusion is fine by me.

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But that’s irrelevant to my original question.

We really don’t need to establish a metaethics to have this conversation, insisting we do is just muddying the water. We agree on some moral issues, so clearly we have some commonality of moral sense. We disagree on others, perhaps, and the question is what, and why? If folks had to agree on a philosophical position on metaethics before being allowed to discuss morality, there would be no moral conversation.

For example:

“judges/arbiters holding people to impossibly high standards, but then – in a fit of mercy – taking on the punishment for themselves that they had meant for those who could not live under their impossibly high standards”

So, to me, a person who acted this way would be a vile tyrant. Any law-giver who institutes a law that is impossible to live under and which requires them to choose not apply the punishment, at their discretion, is a a despot, I’d say. If we were talking about the ruler of some country who did this, would you agree?

If so, again, the question is, what changes between this hypothetical, and your view of God that suddenly makes behaving this way, good and moral?

Is it just that God is defined as good, so you drop out of your normal moral assessment when it comes to God and won’t process the question? Or is there some actual feature of the situation that is significant. I.e. can you come up with some hypothetical situation that is non-theological, where you also think acting like that is moral?

“Is it wrong to accept charity?” Hardly charity if the tyrant set the punishment in the first place. Particularly if the punishment was something that would affect you more than they. Like a fabulously wealthy person capriciously paying a poor person’s fine, or an immortal being ‘dying’ (for a day or two) in place of someone’s eternal death.

An ‘impossibly high standard’ just means there is no standard at all. It is like saying to a class ‘I’ve set the the pass mark so high, it is impossible to attain’ It is functionally equivalent to having no pass mark. An ‘impossibly high standard’ is just a euphemism for ‘I can punish anyone I chose’. I don’t see how that isn’t a vile sentiment in any worldview. But I guess Stockholm syndrome is a powerful force.

“I cannot rule out the possibility that there may be acceptable reasons for why the standard exists” Tyrants often use this kind of excuse. We’re doing this to you for your own good; it has to be this way, for reasons you wouldn’t understand; if you knew all the facts you’d see I’m acting out of love; this hurts me more than you… Stop by a spousal abuse recovery group and you’ll hear the same things. Of course, they may be true, the guy may genuinely have very moral reasons for hitting his wife. But most folks can see through the ‘I’ve got reasons, but you wouldn’t understand them’ shtick.

Re: metaethics

Okay, so if I say I hold roughly a moral realist position (subject to qualifications about the nature of language), i.e. I believe that morality is objective (though the term is normally misused), and ethical behavior is always utilitarian (though the term is normally misused) – does that help you address the question of what features of PST you think make it moral when compared to my original justice analogy? Or do we need agree on our theory of language first too? ‘Cus it sure looks like you’re trying to avoid the question

As for metaethics, knowing the positions you hold does not help me understand my own better. I’ve already explained my thoughts on the matter, for some reason you think this is “dodging”. I take the “I don’t know” position on PST. I don’t think it is rock-solid, but neither do I think it is necessarily “abhorrent” (although with certain assumptions it obviously can be).

That you take a utilitarian perspective is interesting, however. Presumably, if you are a utilitarian, the consequences of PST are the main thing to consider. So, what is the consequence that you object to? Seems to me that PST – if true – increases happiness and reduces suffering, although perhaps not in an empirically measurable way. But I assume you don’t hold that for something to be “moral” we have to actually be able to measure it’s impact…?

Utilitarianism isn’t an epistemology – it doesn’t tell you whether something is true or not, but whether it is moral. Would it there be more benefit, given you intend not to punish an individual, to demand that an innocent pay with their life for the crimes of the person being forgiven, or simply to forgive the crime without demanding blood? It seems clear the utilitarian answer to that. You can, of course, posit a whole bunch of additional mystical unknowns to change the calculation, but on its surface, PST seems to fail the utilitarian test pretty obviously.

cdbren, forgive me if I don’t engage with you, but we’re having a discussion about penal substitutionary atonement. As James pointed out above, that is a *penal* model of christology. If you don’t think that is a good model, then that’s fine, but the truth of the model isn’t what we’re discussing. So I’d respectfully suggest you drop out of this conversation if it isn’t something you are into.

“I don’t think PST fails nearly as much as you do.” – are you saying I fail more than PST? 😉 – sorry read it that way on first glance and it amused me….

So I think your other point is right here. PST on its own, seems to me to be a net moral loss over alternatives (in the absence of additional information). But as we’ve seen in the legal analogies, there are cases of effectively PST (like paying a friend’s fine) where the additional information can easily sway the moral calculus. So I agree, to that extent, my view of PST in that narrow sense (or ‘specific’ if ‘narrow’ sounds judgemental) is of a minor moral failing.

So it is a good observation that what we’re actually talking about w.r.t. God is PST in the context of other orthodox claims about God. And with those additions, PST becomes a darker horse. Does that match how you are reading my comments?

The other thing I’ve been mulling over with this, is the notion of what we think the constraints of the situation are. So one of the reasons I think utility based morality is important is that it recognizes that moral decisions only ever exist relative to alternatives. And it seems to me that different assumptions about what the alternatives are, and what the choices actually entail, gives very different moral judgements. This is very half-baked at the moment, I might post on it on my blog soon.

Regarding charity, I will go ahead and presume that you do not think accepting charity is wrong. However, in the case of PST, you seem to think the “vile tyrant”s sacrifice wouldn’t count as “charity”. You justified this by stating that this is because the tyrant had initially set the punishment. Not sure how this follows. Can it not be the case that the charity in question is to right a wrong? Even if it isn’t, what you’re objecting to is the standard, not the atonement. And like I tried to point out, unless you know the reason(s) for why the standard exists, it’s tough to find grounds to object.

So, I think we agree that charity/mercy is not bad or immoral. We also agree that impossibly high standards are immoral if they are arbitrary, capricious, etc. I am curious if you agree that it is at least *possible* that there are good reasons for such a standard to exist (even if we don’t know what they are).

And I think it is obviously false that “impossible” = “none” with regard to standards. Say, for instance, a Martian invites you to live with them on Mars (see, I don’t think analogies are useless). Unfortunately, a pre-requisite for them is that you have to be able to breathe (and live afterwards) carbon dioxide. Now, there’s a perfectly good reason for such a standard to exist. So, that’s not the problem. Nor would it be a problem if the Martian then (somehow) made it possible for you to breathe their atmosphere. What you may wonder is why the Martian wouldn’t just make that possible before extending his offer. And that is a legitimate question. However, I wonder if you’d agree that we wouldn’t *necessarily* have to consider the Martian immoral for acting the way he/she/it did.

As for Stockholm Syndrome/battered spouses, of course such people do exist. But you undercut your own analogies when you admit that there may be legitimate reasons for a husband to hit his wife (or vice versa). You may think that these are few and far between (and I’d agree). So, we could even say that it seems more probable than not that a person who holds impossible standards is capricious/tyrannical. But that is different than merely asserting that PST is abhorrent. Not having all the information seems (to me) reason to withhold judgement – or at least properly qualify it.

You seem to be under the impression that God somehow created or caused sin. Yet that is not the case at all. I know that is how you read it or come to understand it, but that is not the case.

And yes, a human beings decision to do this or that is beyond God’s control because he gave us free will. We were not created to be puppets on a string.

That is the flaw in the whole conversation of this post. There are some misconceptions about what the Bible says and teaches.

God gave us free will, under the orthodox Christian doctrine, fully knowing in advance that so doing would condemn most people who ever lived to hell because they would be unable to live up to the impossibly high standard he set. So you’re right, you can say that God didn’t cause us to sin, but it doesn’t help the story much.

cbren, if Adam stood condemned after the Fall, then the question is: who condemned him? Obviously, he didn’t condemn himself. The Biblical account is pretty clear in depicting God as pronouncing a series of curses. I don’t think the “God doesn’t condemn” line really works.

So, it isn’t charity if the person giving is simply rectifying a problem they caused? I think this is problematic, but rather than quibble on this, let’s just go with your “steal all your possessions” analogy. Is it morally wrong for the person who steals to give these possessions back, and is it wrong for the victim to think that it is right and proper for them to be given back? Of course not.

You point out differences between my Martian analogy and PST, all of which are fair. Again, however, you aren’t disputing the critical point, which is that it is possible for there to be good reasons as to why the situation was the way it was.

Instead, conceding that, you basically assert that we are obligated to ignore that point, and treat God as a tyrant or spouse-abuser, because… well, there are similarities in the situations. What are these similarities? Well, the fact that people claim that there could be good reasons, but we don’t know them.

So, the questions are: does this similarity obligate us to ignore the fact that there could, in fact, be good reasons; or, should we withhold judgement, or even give the benefit of the doubt?

It seems to me that the reason we have to intervene with tyrants and spouse abusers, is that in some way a situation is untenable. If there is active abuse going on, we need to intervene. So, we separate the couple, or we depose the tyrant. But, this needs to be pointed out: they all get their day in court. Even those suspected of domestic violence are innocent until proven guilty.

What situation exists with PST that is so untenable, that we think we must sever ties with God first, before we actually try to evaluate the situation?

OK, so it isn’t morally wrong for people to right wrongs, even ones that they may have caused. We’ve established that much. (In fact, I’d guess that we’d both agree that it is morally right). However, you add: “combined with the idea that the person is not giving the possessions back to everyone they stole from, their culpability isn’t lessened I’d say.”

I think here the analogy is probably not entirely helpful. In the analogy, we are assuming that all fault lies with God, and none with our victims, but of course that isn’t what Christianity would claim. In any case, your objection is essentially one leveled against exclusivism, which really isn’t related to PST.

I think you’ve made it clear that what you’re objecting to really isn’t PST in principle. It is, in fact, a particular “story about God” that you find repugnant – one that includes PST, but other things, such as demanding blood sacrifices and sending people to Hell. These things, while often believed, don’t necessarily need to be true in order for PST to be true.

It is only when we assume these dark things to be true that the analogy you draw of a tyrant or abusive spouse seems similar, and “unknown” reasons seem dangerous. PST simply states that Christ’s atonement for our sins involved Him taking on what should have been our punishment. Having served our sentence, so to speak, we are free to live. There isn’t anything necessarily morally evil about that. You are free to object to other things that you want to add on, but then you should at least acknowledge that you aren’t necessarily objecting to PST in principle, only a specific “story”.