Jesus \u2013 God and Man<\/a> is one of the best short discussions of the subject available. Unlike most classical atonement theologies, Pannenberg\u2019s integrates the whole gospel story and the resurrection into his account of the meaning of the atonement. One of the best parts is his discussion of substitution.<\/p>\nHe has high praise for Luther, but faults him for basing substitution not on \u201cthe human course of the event\u201d but on the incarnation (278). His own account is very much rooted in anthropology, what he claims is a biblical anthropology.<\/p>\n
Critiques of substitution fail because they assume \u201can extreme ethical individualism that has been characteristic of modern man\u2019s self-understanding up to the middle of this century\u201d (265; he includes even Ritschl in this condemnation). For Scripture, he argues, there is a \u201cnatural-law relation between the deed and its consequence\u201d (265). Death is the \u201cwages\u201d of sin, and the terminology of guilt and sin in the OT \u201cdesignate the evil deed as well as the misfortune following it\u201d (265). Christ becomes sin \u00a0in that \u201cthe misfortune following from our sin has fallen upon him\u201d (265). Punishment isn\u2019t an arbitrary and extrinsic imposition, but the outworking of the wrong itself. (Though I think this generally accurate, Pannenberg misses a beat , as his formulation seems to mechanize the relationship between sin and judgment and leave little room for the intervention of the God who \u201cdelivers over\u201d idolaters to their idolatry [Romans 1].)<\/p>\n
On this basis, ancient Israelites believed that the wrong done by an individual would have social consequences: \u201cthe deeds of men, especially the evil deeds, pregnant with impending misfortune, have their effect to a great extent independently of the person of the doer. To be sure, they do have a tendency to fall back upon the head of the doer, but so long as their destructive effect has not found its target, it can involve wider circles of society.\u201d This is the basis for punishment, a turning-back of the evil deed on the doer to prevent its spread. Though Pannenberg does not mention it, this is also a way of understanding the symbolism of the purity system: the spread of defilement mimicking the spread of evil. On this basis too, it was believed that \u201cthe catastrophe inherent in the deed can be directed to some other being and so annulled\u201d (267).<\/p>\n
Pannenberg doesn\u2019t accept all of the conceptual apparatus involved in this biblical portrait, but he thinks that the insight that guilt has a social component can be stated in updated terms: \u201cThe relation between guilt and the social group is not sufficiently clarified by an extremely individualistic understanding of guilt. It is grounded in the social character of human existence that every person continually deals in responsibilities that include other people to some degree. Every person is involved in the society i which he lives by what he does and by his share in the deeds of others. In social life, substitution is a universal phenomenon, both in conduct and in its outcome. Even the structure of vocation, the division of labor, has substitutionary character. One who has a vocation performs this function for those whom he serves,\u201d and he substitutes for others because he performs services that others would have to do themselves if he did not perform them. \u201cEspecially in extraordinary times one experiences the fact that the condition of good and evil can be borne vicariously by individuals. Much that befalls the society as a whole affects some of its members in particular who, in such a situation, represent the entire society\u201d (268).<\/p>\n
Pannenberg stays at a high level of abstraction here, but he seems to have in mind something like this: Hitler rises to power, and begins to expunge Jews from Germany. A citizen of German may not be personally guilty for that crime, but he is certainly engulfed in the crime. If he has opportunity to save Jews, he should: He intervenes in a situation of sin and guilty and takes responsibility to correct another\u2019s <\/em>act of injustice. Any time one person repairs the damage caused by another\u2019s evil, he or she is bearing the burden of another\u2019s guilt. In this very sense, Jesus bears guilt without being guilty, takes responsibility for our sins, because He takes action to undo what we <\/em>have done.\u00a0<\/p>\nIn this way, the vicarious work of Jesus can be seen as an expression of the \u201cuniversal phenomenon\u201d of substitution.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pannenberg\u2019s treatment of the atonement in\u00a0Jesus \u2013 God and Man is one of the best short discussions of the subject available. Unlike most classical atonement theologies, Pannenberg\u2019s integrates the whole gospel story and the resurrection into his account of the meaning of the atonement. One of the best parts is his discussion of substitution. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[579,1073,1169],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atonement","category-pannenberg","category-substitution"],"yoast_head":"\n
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