Penal Substitution

The beginnings of an interesting discussion are taking hold at one of the message boards I frequent regarding the nature of predestination. A significant side bar is the doctrine of penal substitution, which I would casually define as justice applied to one party in place of another.

I have not paid much attention to the conflict from "the other side," so to speak, so I thought it might be worth taking some time to recapitulate some of the views on the subject I have seen elsewhere.

As it turns out, there is a lot of material. A chapter from Dr John Miley's The Atonement in Christ is available online. I found it through Theopedia's page on the subject, which has some quotes and links elsewhere. A rather brief description of several theories of atonement may be found there also. (This is a little disappointing, because how the theory evolves from the early fathers to Anselm is not mentioned at all.)


As with many debates, this one really starts with the definitions, and I think the principle ones are "just" and its close relative "justice." I would describe "justice" as "righteousness in action." Just is the adjective that describes one who is righteous.

I tend to think of righteousness in contrast to sin, i.e., "How much sin can I mix with righteousness before it's not righteousness anymore?" (In other words, we might try define righteousness as an absence of sin. This isn't quite fair, though; an absence of sin is innocence, not righteousness.) We may also define it positively, e.g., as adherence to a standard. This is not terribly different than the previous paragraph, though it avoids the parenthetical complication by defining righteousness positively. Justice, then, might be defined as the execution of the standard.

But I think it is really this definition that is questioned. Some views of God's justice either change the standard (so that righteousness is less) or God's nature (so that he needn't be satisfied in a substitutionary way, for example).


I find support from it in a variety of places.

The use of types. For example, in the Passover as a type of Christ's sacrifice. All of the first-born in Egypt were under the death sentence. The judgment was in a sense commuted for those who sacrificed a lamb of certain quality (first year, unblemished) and sprinkled its blood on the doorposts.

We also see the preposition hUPER used in the New Testament when it says that Christ died "for" us. You're free to read some commentary on the use of the preposition and its meaning, along with some others.

The different words for forgive are also a powerful argument. CARIZOMAI is a verb of legal transaction, the satisfaction of a debt. AFIHMI, on the other hand, is a word of fellowship (it literally means "to send [something] away"), and so is used of a wife sending away her husband (1Co 7.13) and of God sending away our sin (1Jo 1.9).

There are others, but these will have to suffice for this hour. This is a subject sure to be revisited as I read more and acquire a better understanding of the other side.