Elihu and Job

One of the interesting follow-ups in the discussion on Penal Substitution is the definition of justice. This theme is woven throughout Job, which I have been reading for two and a half months or so. There's a lot of repetition in the arguments and speeches.

For example, Job's argument may be essentially encapsulated as: "I didn't do anything wrong. God is finding occasions against me. He has taken away my justice." (The last sentence is more or less a direct quote.)

The three friends say, "Bad people get theirs in the end. Bad things happen to bad people. Bad things have happened to Job. Therefore Job is a bad person." This syllogistic reasoning is wrong and fails to persuade Job.

We go through roughly 32 chapters of these sorts of arguments, with some variation (mostly on the side of the friends, who occasionally concede Job's points and set their own in a different context). Job concludes his defense by calling down a lengthy set of curses upon himself if he's not speaking the truth.


At this point, Elihu steps in. He sort of appears out of no where, like Job's initial answer (Job 3.1 says that Job answered, but there isn't anything for him to answer actually recorded) and the whirlwhind that evidently accompanies Elihu's final words. I've not finished all of Elihu's discussion, but he goes to some length to establish his relationship and Job's vis-a-vis God.

Job has styled himself throughout the book as a claimant against God. Elihu accepts that position, and will serve as the mediator between the two.

I can't help but see a type of Christ here. That's one of the reasons I found the following so poignant (Job 33):

6 Behold, I am according to thy wish in God's stead: I also am formed out of the clay. 7 Behold, my terror shall not make thee afraid, neither shall my hand be heavy upon thee.

There's a succinct comfort in this, and that is that when Christ stands between ourselves and God to mediate his wrath, he does so as a human. He is not remote, nor unconcerned with our weaknesses. He knows them intimately. He does not come to terrify, but to comfort. He is, in this respect, a peer and a confidant. He is our Advocate (1Jn 2.2).


This is a bit separate from the issues of justice, but we'll get there soon enough. Elihu will spend a bit of time dismantling Job's righteousness, and his argument differs fundamentally from that of the three friends.

This is going to provide, I think, a good and different perspective on the issues of righteousness and justice that are such a key part of penal substitution.

Penal Substitution, part two

I haven't been idle in doing more research on penal substitution. I ran across an excellent article called The Logic of Penal Substitution by Packer. It's well-written, considers several different views of the atonement, and provides a decent apologetic for the doctrine of penal substitution.


In my conversations elsewhere, the notion of participation as a model for understanding the Passover, and by extension, the cross has come up, and I wanted to expound on it a little bit.

One criticism of the penal substitution model is that there's more going on than the death of the lamb. If we were to expect the focus of the Passover to be penal substitution, wouldn't there be more of an emphasis on the sacrifice than there is? There's plenty of verses there about the preparation of the food, the manner in which it's to be eaten, and so on. Why is all that there if the focus is on the judgment?

The simple response to this is that of course there's more going on than a mitigation of judgment. We should expect more and hope for it also—there's certainly more to our relationship with God than no longer being condemned.

Instead of seeing substitution penally, others see it as a matter of participation. This is a difficult concept for me to explain, but I'll do my best. Packer does do a good job, so I'd advise reading his essay.

But we can see two different (not necessarily opposing) ways of helping others. The first is doing for them what they cannot do themselves; the second is helping them to help themselves. So rather than "I'll do for you what you cannot do for yourself," they see the cross as, "I'll enable you to participate in a relationship with God."

So some see the elaborate instructions concerning the preparation of food and so on as a means of participating in the Passover.


This is all well and good, but it really doesn't change the fact that there is a very clear judgment and condemnation, and that the Israelite first-born faced it as well as the Egyptian. It secondly doesn't really answer the point that the penal substitution model may very well encapsulate others, and properly should. It has a larger scope.

So I am still waiting to see where else it goes, and trying to put my mind in an older frame of reference.

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.