Atonement Theories & Anger, Part 5: Why Penal Substitution Stunts People’s Emotional Development

Mako A. Nagasawa

An Eastern Orthodox cross (left) and a Protestant cross (right), representing the medical-healing atonement and the legal-penal atonement

Atonement, Anger, and Emotional Development

In this blog post, and the four earlier posts, I compare and contrast how our emotional development is impacted by Medical Substitutionary Atonement (MSA) and Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA).  As a reminder, the word “atonement” is used to designate an explanation for, or theory about, why Jesus had to die.  “Atonement” is supposed to be the center of Christian theology, because it has to do with Jesus making right the relationship between God and human beings.  As such, it should touch everything in the Christian life, at least in theory.

Let me be clear from the outset what I am not saying.  I am not saying that people who believe in MSA are categorically emotionally mature.  Nor am I saying that people who believe in PSA are categorically emotionally immature.  No one is spiritually and emotionally formed by Christian atonement theories alone.  No one is formed by theology alone.  Other aspects of Christian spirituality, practice, and theology serve as resources to people.  All kinds of factors outside of our theological formation play a role in our emotional development:  parents, nutrition, extended family, friends, mentors, the condition of the economy, possible conflicts in the community, etc.  My point here, though, is that Christian theories of atonement do exercise an influence.  They help us perceive the work of God, and define the character of God.  They help us organize Scripture.  They help us interpret the world around us.  They help us grapple with our emotions.  So to the extent that we can reflect on the relationship between atonement theologies and emotional development, I think it is worth doing.

One can try being eclectic, of course.  My early approach to “anger” was based on the “topical study” approach limited to the New Testament.  But that had its limits, too, which I hope I’ve shown in the last four posts. 

In my earliest days as a Christian and my early experiences in Christian ministry, I approached anger through the “topical word study” method drawn from a few New Testament passages:  Matthew 5:21 – 26; Ephesians 4:26 – 27; James 1:20.  That was an important start.  But it was just a start.  I wasn’t sure how exactly how to fit those three passages together.  Paul and James leave “room” for human anger in a very limited way.  Jesus, by contrast, appears to give dire warnings about feeling angry at all.  How do these three passages fit together?

Anger was an emotion I felt like I kept trying to “manage” in myself and others.  I suspected that this was not quite right.  Also, I saw the need to integrate more Scripture – and more of God, church history, and human experience – into my understanding.  Ultimately, for this reason and others, my attention was drawn to the atonement, and two theories of the atonement in particular.  You read some of my conclusions earlier.  Now let me pull back the curtain. 

Medical Substitutionary Atonement:  The Framework, and the Tools of Divine Anger

What made it possible for me to affirm the insights from Jesus’ anger by Lazarus’ tomb in John 11 is Medical Substitutionary Atonement.  “Medical Substitutionary Atonement” is the nickname I give to the teaching about Jesus found throughout the early church, especially in the early Christian worship material called The Odes of Solomon (possibly late 1st century),[1] the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons (2nd century),[2] Athanasius of Alexandria (4th century),[3] the three Cappadocian Fathers (4th century),[4] and the poetry of Ephrem the Syrian (4th century).[5]  Because modern Christians – especially Protestants – tend to be less familiar with how these early Christians understood Scripture and Jesus on atonement, I will spend a bit more time re-introducing and explaining it.

In the medical framework, God wants to make us partners with Him in His anger; He does not make us the objects of His anger.  On a human level, when we go to the doctor, the doctor makes a distinction between us and the problem in us; the doctor wants us to think and feel the same way.  This corresponds nicely with a medical framework for atonement theology, where God distinguishes between us and the corruption of sin in us.  In a medical framework, God’s love for us and desire to heal us are fundamental.  God’s wrath is simply His love in action, just as a surgeon’s wrath against the cancer is one activity showing love for the person.  God expressed His love as wrath in and through Jesus’ human partnership:  Jesus first killed the corruption in his own human nature, in order to battle it in us by the Spirit, with our human partnership.  God’s anger is analogous to the anger of a surgeon, who loves the patient and hates the cancer in the patient’s body.  He wants us to think and feel the same way.

When I read the biblical narrative with this medical distinction in mind between the patient and the problem, I found it to be fairly straightforward, and clarifying.  God made human beings to grow in relationship with Him – for we are human beings and human becomings, drawn by the desires God implanted in us for His love, goodness, wisdom, beauty, justice, and order.  Adam and Eve’s fall brought about a corruption of human nature.  The rest of us inherit from them a self-centered human nature, where we try to define good and evil from within ourselves, as opposed to leave the definition with God alone.  From that point, God’s anger is directed at the problem in the patient.  And Scripture draws our attention to that problem within us. 

Our mortality (and natural death) became one of God’s surgical tools, not a retribution by a God who wanted to “get even.”  God did not want us to eat from the tree of life while in a corrupted state.  That would have meant we would immediately eternalize human evil in fallen human nature.  So God exiled human beings from the garden of Eden, guarding it with a flaming sword (Genesis 3:21 – 24).  The flaming sword represented God’s desire to burn away and/or cut away the corruption of sin from us, before we returned to the garden.  It also set a literary pattern where God used the motifs of fire and swords/knives to represent a refining and surgical work that He wanted to accomplish within His people, with our cooperation as His patients. 

The problem was evident in the biblical story through a tightly compressed story of Adam and Eve’s descendants.  Cain did not need an external voice of temptation like the serpent because, for him, the voice of jealousy was internal to him (Genesis 4:1 – 8).  And Cain made the problem in himself worse (Genesis 4:9 – 16). 

The biblical story also draws our attention to “diagnoses” of human nature punctuating the narrative: 

“Then the Lord saw that… every intent of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5 – 6)

“If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their forefathers… or if their uncircumcised heart becomes humbled so that they then make amends for their iniquity…” (Leviticus 26:40 – 41)

Healing from self-centeredness and sin requires our participation in God’s other-centered love, and participation in God’s anger against the problem within us.  God wants us to be as angry as He is about the damage in us.

However, since most human beings quickly became “uncooperative patients,” God called together a focus group, Israel, to love Him and love one another (Genesis 12ff.).  God gave them a very demanding “moral health” regimen which would have had a profound effect on the human nature of the Israelites, if they had been able to successfully follow the Doctor’s orders.  They would have “circumcised their hearts” (Deuteronomy 10:16; Jeremiah 4:4; 9:25 – 26; 17:1 – 10), and written God’s law on their hearts (Proverbs 3:3; 7:3).  That is, they would have even cut away the corruption of sin.  This was reenacted by God’s design in many ways:  God commanded the Israelites to physically circumcise male infants and male converts which cut away uncleanness (Leviticus 12); God used the annual cycle of sin offerings to cut and burn away the toxic waste product organs from the animals, as a vehicle to draw Israel’s uncleanness to Himself even as He ultimately sent it away (Leviticus 16), like a modern-day dialysis machine operates, giving back purified life-blood.[6]  All this served as outward, physical reminders of the inward, deeper work occurring in the human nature of Israel.

As patients, Israel sometimes cooperated with the divine Doctor, followed God’s rigorous health regimen, and experienced some healing.  But they also did not cooperate fully.  Rather than partner with God by sharing in His anger against the corruption of sin, they fell in love with the disease, the corruption of sin, and partnered with it instead.  As a result, God allowed Israel to experience exile from the garden land, similar to the way He had exiled Adam and Eve from the original garden land (although there were differences), but God also promised that He would heal their human nature, the fundamental condition of sin-sickness that made mortality and exile necessary.  God promised to “circumcise their hearts” (Deuteronomy 30:6) and restore them from exile back to the garden land with the “clean heart” (Psalm 51:10a), the heart with God’s commandments written on it (Jeremiah 31:31 – 34), the “heart of flesh” as opposed to the “heart of stone” (Ezekiel 11:18; 36:26 – 36), which was the resting place of the Spirit (Psalm 51:10b; Ezekiel 37).  The apostle Paul recalled that his experience as a Jew under the Sinai covenant was to confirm Israel’s production of a “medical diagnosis” of sorts of human nature itself:  The sin-sickness was not original to us, but it was eating away at us, because it is an evil within us (Romans 7:14 – 25) that damages us, our relationships with one another, and with God.

We might read the Old Testament in such a way that we think God treated those who attacked Israel the objects of His anger.  But there is a back story to that surface reading of the Old Testament.  Jesus offered himself to those who died before he died (1 Peter 3:18 – 20; 4:6).  That means that God was protecting Israel  Ultimately, God did not treat Israel’s enemies (both outside and inside Israel) as objects of His anger.  Instead, He treated them like He treats everyone else, fundamentally:  He was still targeting the corruption of sin in each person’s human nature, and calling for their participation in Christ.  The sole difference is that they jeopardized Israel’s existence, and therefore Jesus’ genuine human experience, so God held them in stasis until Jesus could awaken all the dead and present himself to them so they could choose him as healer over the disease of sin as well.  The same was true of Moses, who God caused to die before he could enter the promised land (Numbers 20:12; Deuteronomy 34:4 – 8).  But God certainly did not consign Moses to condemnation and hell, effectively. 

This is one demonstration that whether people before Jesus died of “natural causes” or some act of God, there was no fundamental difference.  The question is not how people died, but why death was important at all.  And that leads us all the way back to God’s exiling of human beings from the tree of life:  Death was one of God’s surgical tools.  Death served God’s purpose of preventing people from immediately making their sinfulness immortal without at least being confronted by Jesus as healer.  The back story provided by the New Testament on what was called by the early Christians as Jesus’ “descent to the dead” means that God treated all those who died before Jesus the same as us – that is, we who have a chance to choose Jesus during our lifetimes.[7]

In the meantime, God needed an Israel in order to give birth to, and nurture, Jesus in his real humanity, including Jesus’ very real helpless infancy and childhood development.  On a deeper level, therefore, God was always drawing Israel to partner with His anger, because His anger served His covenant love.  This is why the great hope of the Hebrew prophets was not that God would vent His anger somewhere besides Israel, but that God would help Israel to overcome their inward enemy and defeat the worst version of itself.

Medical Substitution:  Jesus Was Faithful in Our Place to Surgically Remove Sinfulness

So God sent His Son to be the ideal patient to fulfill Israel’s hope.  Jesus was born among the Israelites to take on human nature, and take up Israel’s vocation of partnering with God to fight the sin-sickness.  Jesus acquired the corruption of sin in his own human body, fought the self-centeredness faithfully according to the Doctor’s orders, and cleansed his human nature of it as a true Israelite (Romans 8:3; Galatians 4:4).  Through his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus “substituted” himself in for Israel, in a “medical” procedure where he was perfectly faithful to the hard regimen of love by the Spirit.  By his death, Jesus killed the corruption of self-centeredness that was killing us (Romans 6:6).  By his resurrection, Jesus raised his human nature “circumcised of heart” (Romans 2:28 – 29; 8:4) cleansed by the love of God, and fully united with God.  Jesus perfected in himself the antibodies to the damage Adam and Eve did to our human nature, and the things we did individually to make it worse.

In MSA, Jesus’ humanity, human journey, and human emotions redeem us in our humanity, human journey, and human emotions.  Jesus’ humanity carries a normative weight for our human experience.  Not his occupation as a carpenter, or his gender as male, or his geographical location, but Jesus’ vocation as a human being who is partnering with God’s Spirit to fix and fulfill human nature by bearing God’s image and likeness to the full – that does mean something for us all.  Jesus shows us what it means to be truly human – human as God intended it.  And what the Son unites to himself, takes as his own, he redeems.  Then he calls us to participate in the Spirit in what he has done for us, by imitating him.

Jesus was never the object of the Father’s anger, or God’s way of demonstrating to others something that happened within His Triune Being, as he is in Penal Substitution.  Instead, he was the agent of the Father’s anger.  So where did Jesus focus his anger?  What was, or is, the object of his anger?  The corruption of sin in human nature, starting with that very thing in himself.  That is why Jesus had to be baptized, “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15), and why he knew he needed to die and rise, to fulfill what his baptism signified. 

In John 11, Jesus was angry and grieved by human death.  Why?  Jesus took Lazarus’ human mortality as a focal point to target the corruption of sin which lurked behind it and made it necessary.  Jesus’ human emotion over Lazarus and Mary was part of “the glory of God.”  Jesus said, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” (11:40)  “The glory of God” means “the revealing of God.”  And it wasn’t the last time or the fullest time Jesus showed forth “the glory of God.”  In John’s Gospel, “the glory of God” culminates at Jesus’ death and resurrection (7:39; 12:16, 23; 13:31 – 32; 14:13; 21:19).  We know that exegetically, because Jesus prayed for the Father to “glorify” him as the Son, with the “glory” which they had together before the world existed (17:1 – 5), which brought to a climax John’s theme of “glory” which he noted in his prologue (1:14).  God revealing His “glory” through the Son is a theme that develops through the story.  “Glory” is not scattered through a few unrelated events, but “signs” consistently representing Jesus’ redemption and restoration of humanity (2:11; 7:18, 39; 8:50, 54; 9:24; 11:4; 12:28, 41; 15:8; 16:14). 

At his death and resurrection, Jesus did not just fix the human nature in himself, but fulfilled it.  He did not just correct his own human nature; he completed it.  John represents this by portraying the resurrected Jesus as the human embodiment of the “shekinah glory” of light and fire which once stood between the two cherubim on the mercy seat of the lid of the ark of the covenant (John 20:12), when God entered the tabernacle sanctuary (Exodus 25:18).  That presentation completes the tabernacle picture John began when he introduced Jesus in those terms:  “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among/in us” (John 1:14).

At his resurrection, Jesus brought forth a healed and transformed new humanity in himself which now has the “glory” of the Son prior to his incarnation.  All of Jesus’ miraculous signs pointed forward to this by anticipation:  the abundance of wine from the six stone jars pointed forward to Jesus’ abundantly sharing the Holy Spirit from his transformed humanity; Jesus’ healing miracles pointed forward to Jesus restoring human nature to fullness; etc. 

Recall that Jesus did not actually resurrect Lazarus in John 11.  Rather, Jesus resuscitated, or reanimated, Lazarus.  That was amazing in its own right.  But Lazarus died again, eventually.  In fact, the chief priests later planned to kill Lazarus again because people were believing Jesus on account of him (John 12:10 – 11)!  Although the narrative leaves off the remainder of Lazarus’ story, Jesus had suggested to Martha that Lazarus would die again when he said, “The one who believes in me will live, even if he dies” (John 11:25).  Yet Jesus would be resurrected bodily (John 20).  He would rise with a human body which now bears his stamp of the investment of the fullness of divine power and life in it, the fruit of his human partnership with the Spirit of God.  Jesus’ resurrected humanity was the embodied condition that God wanted to share with everyone from the garden of Eden. 

It is essential to say that Jesus’ death and resurrection are two sides of the same coin.  At his resurrection, Jesus showed the result and the goal of his obedience:  to bring forth a freed and fulfilled humanity.  At the cross, Jesus showed how absolutely committed he was to conquering the venomous corruption in his human nature, killing the thing that was killing us (John 3:14 – 15).[8]  He did not become the passive victim of the Father’s judgment, because the Father judges no one (John 5:22), not even the Son, because the Father has given the Son the role of judge, including judging the sin-sickness out of human nature.  And the Son did not suffer the abandonment of the Father at the cross, as a kind of punitive discipline which would have been intended for us, because although the disciples left Jesus, as Jesus said, “I am not alone, because the Father is with me” (John 16:32).

Medical Substitution:  Participation in Jesus’ Anger by the Spirit

Jesus’ anger, therefore, carries normative weight for our sanctification (Christian growth and maturity).  Jesus’ anger is even a precondition for our salvation.  Why do I say that?  Because we slowly begin to apprehend it, experience it, and demonstrate it ourselves in partnership with Jesus.  A genuine conversion involves some degree of acknowledgement and participation in his emotion – we are either disgusted enough with our own sin that we turn away from ourselves and towards Jesus; or we become hopeful enough that Jesus can change us that we give ourselves to him; etc.  Christian baptism also reflects our partnership with Jesus in his anger against our sin-sickness, because we die in the waters and rise from them in solidarity with Jesus’ baptism, which was his commitment to death and resurrection, the purification of his human nature.  We become partners with Jesus in his anger, not objects of his anger.  Where is Jesus’ anger directed?  At human mortality, and the corruption of sin that made human mortality necessary from God’s perspective.  Where does Jesus’ anger come from?  His anger at the sin-sickness is fueled by his love for us.

Pastor and author Joshua Ryan Butler describes what he learned when he started serving victims of genocide and sex trafficking in Rwanda and Cambodia.[9]  Of course, God is opposed to genocide and sex trafficking, Butler told himself.  But he learned -- perhaps on a deeper level -- that God in Christ traces the root of genocide not simply back to murder or violence, but into the heart, where anger gets out of control, turns into hatred, and targets another person.  Jesus taught that in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:21 - 26) as he pointed to each human heart as needing transformation (Matthew 5:1 - 7:28) because each human heart has become a separate source of evil (Matthew 15:18 - 20).  God in Christ traces the root of sex trafficking not simply back to a few pimps or bad law enforcement, but to lust that turns a vulnerable child or woman into a means for pleasure and/or profit.  Jesus taught that also in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:27 - 30) as he pointed to the human heart as “hardened” (Matthew 19:8) to varying degrees after the fall and in need of transformation and healing by him.  Butler writes:

“And there is good news for our world: God is going to kick sex trafficking and genocide out of it. But there is a rub: he is more serious about it than we are. The spark that sets the wildfire lives in us; the root of the wicked tree is in our hearts; the poisoned spring from which the deadly waters flow is not just “out there,” it is “in here.” The problem is us.”[10]

If we get angry at someone else, Jesus will remind us that we, too, share the sin-sickness, the poison, the bad root.  And Jesus will remind us that he shared in it, too, but never gave into it.  Hebrews says, “Although he was a Son, he learned obedience from the things which He suffered,” in his struggle against temptation and selfishness.  “And having been made perfect,” through his faithfulness all the way to death and resurrection, “he became to all those who obey him the source of eternal salvation” (Hebrews 5:8 - 9).  So now that Jesus comes to dwell in us, what else is he going to do?

Jesus takes our anger with others and ourselves, and turns it into a settled, determined conviction to partner with him, because he is the only way human evil can be healed and eventually defeated.  Jesus guides our anger at the corruption of sin, its true target.  He helps us peer through the anger and the sorrow without moving into despair.  He calls us into partnership and participation in him.  It is vital and inescapable.  Human beings now have choices to cultivate our desire for Jesus or not.  Put in a slightly different way, we have choices to cultivate Jesus’ own desires in us.  That is, we are called to adopt God’s perspective on humanity, human mortality, and the corruption of sin.  We are called to work with Jesus by the Spirit for our healing, and to desire our ultimate healing in him (Philippians 2:13) more than the other things to which we, in our self-centeredness, could become addicted.  By sharing his Spirit with all who believe in him, Jesus is able to do in us what he did in himself, with our voluntary participation:  the “circumcision of the heart” (Romans 2:28 – 29; Deuteronomy 30:6) which is the “requirement of the Law” (Romans 8:4) and in Christ, the “end-goal of the Law” (Romans 10:4). 

In eternity, those who have cultivated an anger with the corruption of sin and the larger desire towards which it opens – a desire for Jesus himself – will experience him with joy.  I for one believe that people who did not have the chance to know Jesus during this lifetime, and people who only had terrible Christian witnesses, might reveal this about themselves.  But those who have cultivated an opposition to him will experience him as torment, as if he were an alcohol addiction counselor and they had become absolutely addicted to alcohol and totally resistant to giving it up.  As the early Christians understood it, and as the Eastern Orthodox maintain, hell is a state of being in which the love of God becomes torment.[11]  People who reject Jesus embrace some sin of their own, which has so deformed their sense of love and selfhood that they make it their identity. 

Some may insist that Jesus accept them and accommodate them, like those who say, “Lord, Lord, did we not do miracles in your name?” (Matthew 7:22; 25:11) without embracing the internal transformation Jesus taught (Matthew 5:1 – 7:28) for which the Holy Spirit offers himself as fuel like oil for lamps (Matthew 25:1 – 13).  But Jesus will deny their claim and instead call them to repent, that is, to become his partners in his anger against the distortion of love and self they have brought about within themselves.  That endless call to repent will be painful, just like it is painful for addicts to be denied the evil to which they have become addicted.  And it will be Jesus’ ongoing call to repent which drives the sin-addicted further away and further into frustration and anger.

All these points of Christian theology would be changed by Penal Substitution.  So would our understanding of Jesus’ anger, and how we relate to it.

Penal Substitutionary Atonement and Divine Anger

Formally speaking, Penal Substitutionary Atonement was developed by John Calvin (1509 – 1564), with some inspiration from Martin Luther (1483 – 1546).  Although a few scholars argue that PSA was taught by the Christian leaders of the first few centuries, most acknowledge that it was not,[12] and I have done considerable work to confirm that.[13]  According to PSA, God makes us the objects of His anger.  God takes infinite offense at our sinful actions, and must satisfy His own sense of retributive justice and wrath in order to forgive us and fully enter into a loving relationship with us.  God was angry that He did not receive the fullness of our human obedience, so He intends to “satisfy” Himself with human suffering instead.[14]  In this paradigm, we deserve the penalty of “death” in its fullness — a sense that goes far beyond physical mortality, to “death” in a deeper emotional and spiritual sense:  an eternal torment in a hell from which we will want to get out, but where an angry God will keep us in.

In PSA, Jesus died on a Roman cross to substitute himself in for us, to take the penalty that God’s retributive justice required and demanded.  Jesus was our Penal Substitute, and hence the name.  It was not simply Jesus’ physical pain and mortality that mattered here, although that was certainly terrible enough.  The spiritual eye is meant to see Jesus endure something that went beyond the physical eye.  Either while he hung on the cross, or when he physically died, Jesus absorbed enough of God’s terrifying retributive anger, categorically, so that God has none leftover for us — or at least, for “the elect,” as most Calvinists understood it.  God the Father now views people as “innocent” if they believe in Jesus because Jesus functions as a type of “lens.”  God the Father “looks at” them through the “lens” of Jesus, and sees Jesus’ legal innocence “covering” them.  Otherwise, outside of that “lens,” God’s anger remains unabated and unsatisfied.

Penal Substitution encouraged me to reflect very little on my own anger and its sources.  It encouraged me to be very attentive and attuned to God’s anger.

Penal Substitution and the Importance of Understanding God’s Anger

When adherents of PSA put their theology into practice, they believe in producing an emotional sequence in human beings.  R.C. Sproul, a well-known five-point Calvinist, in his book The Holiness of God, retells the famous story of Martin Luther, as a young man, being thrown to the ground by the force of a lightning bolt almost striking him.[15]  Shortly after that harrowing experience, Luther quit his studies in law and became a monk at an Augustinian monastery to study theology.  He maintained a fear of a violent death, divine judgment and punishment.  Biographers of Luther accept that his constant and painful stomach ailments were linked to his neurotic phobias.[16] 

Sproul approves of Luther’s basic emotional response as a pre-condition for appreciating Jesus.  He says:

“Some theorists argue that a person may have a more accurate view of reality when they are insane than when they are sane… [Luther] realized that if God graded on a curve, He would have to compromise His holiness.  To count on God doing so is supreme arrogance and supreme foolishness as well.  God does not lower His standards to accommodate us.”[17]

In emotional terms, PSA advocates like Sproul believe that God has to be presented as angry before God can be presented as accepting, approving, or at peace with us.  And apart from Jesus, God would be angry with us.  And if God is angry with us, He condemns us.  In some sense, they wish to share “bad news” before they share “good news.”  It’s not that every “altar call” or every sermon has to reproduce this emotional sequence, at least as I observed it, read about it, and practiced it myself.  But PSA adherents tend to believe that this emotional sequence ultimately produces the most reliable conversions and faithful Christian obedience.  Those in the PSA camp are repeatedly told to “preach the gospel to yourself,” where “the gospel” means “Penal Substitution.”  And this shapes our emotional development.

Questioning Penal Substitution:  Is “Satisfaction” Satisfying?

A frequent emotional response to God in the framework of PSA is confusion, suspicion, mistrust, and sometimes rejection.  The idea that, at the center of Christian theology – in the atonement – there is a God who wants to “satisfy” Himself, is puzzling.  The word “satisfy” itself has been used in modern English to refer to sexual satisfaction, not just satisfying the law by serving your prison sentence, or satisfying your creditor by paying your debt.  Of course, this was not a usage that this word had centuries ago.  Yet, if “satisfy” has self-serving connotations built into it in today’s English, it only serves to underscore the fact that PSA has genuine trouble shaking off the accusation that it presents a narcissistic God.  British evangelical scholar and advocate of PSA, John Stott, acknowledges:

“To be sure, ‘self-satisfaction’ in fallen human beings is a particularly unpleasant phenomenon, whether it refers to the satisfying of our instincts and passions or to our complacency.  Since we are tainted and twisted with selfishness, to say ‘I must satisfy myself’ lacks self-control, while to say ‘I am satisfied with myself’ lacks humility.  But there is no lack of self-control or humility in God, since he is perfect in all his thoughts and desires.  To say that he must ‘satisfy himself’ means that he must be himself and act according to the perfection of his nature or ‘name.’  The necessity of ‘satisfaction’ for God, therefore, is not found in anything outside himself but within himself, in his own immutable character.  It is an inherent or intrinsic necessity… What is within Yahweh [i.e. divine anger] must be expressed; and what is expressed must be completely ‘spent’ or ‘satisfied’.”[18]

I agree with Stott about one point here.  Certain words, when used for human experiences and characteristics, must be qualified or reconfigured when used for God.  For example, the Nicene Council clarified that “Father and Son” language does not at all imply gender in God or a point in chronological time when the Son was not.  The “Father and Son” names are nevertheless important to establish that there is identity of nature.  “Sculptor and sculpture,” by comparison, do not share identity of nature, for a sculptor is human and a sculpture is inert stone or metal.  Some aspects of human words and concepts must be affirmed when we use them for God, while other aspects of those words and concepts must be excised.  And explanations must be provided as to which, and why.

Unfortunately, Stott’s defense of the term “satisfaction” does not fall along these lines.  Stott is not arguing that some aspects of the word “satisfaction” are important where other aspects must be excised.  For he does not address the well-known, much-discussed conceptual issues behind the meaning of this term.  To seek one’s own “satisfaction” above all – especially in the release of anger – is to be self-serving.  Insisting that this pursuit actually constitutes moral divine perfection simply begs the question.  Why does he suggest that?

If God’s goal in atonement is to “satisfy” Himself, and if God can “satisfy” Himself by either punishing us in anger, or punishing Jesus in anger instead, then logically, God would have to be fine with doing either.  That is a strange conclusion, but logic demands it.  If “self-satisfaction” is central to who God is, then God will satisfy Himself no matter what.  God will do so by making the objects of His anger the victims of His anger.  Therefore, God must be indifferent to whether we love Jesus or not.  But emotionally, a problem registers on us.  On a human level, what kind of parent would say, “It doesn’t matter if you obey or disobey me, because either way, I will “satisfy” myself”?  I find it hard to reconcile that portrait and logic with a God who claims to love us, and be Love at God’s very core (1 John 4:8). 

A further problem comes up when we recognize that “limited atonement” is the most logical corollary to Penal Substitution.  That is, if God poured out all His anger on Jesus, then there would be no divine anger left over at all.  That would mean that there would be no hell, defined as PSA advocates do as a prison where people want to escape but God shuts them in.  Since there would be no hell, there would be no actual need for conversion, at least in this lifetime.  Since there would be no need for conversion, there would be no need for evangelism, and no need for the church in principle.  This is why many PSA advocates – including such measured scholars as J.I. Packer – believe that God did not pour out all of His anger on Jesus.[19]  He only poured out enough anger on Jesus to save a “limited” or “definite” number of people.  This is what Calvinist thinkers call “the elect.”  I will explore the Arminian proposal below, too.

God declares His love for “all” (Romans 11:32; 1 Corinthians 15:27 – 28; Ephesians 1:10; Colossians 1:15 – 20) or “the whole world” (e.g. John 1:29; 3:16) repeatedly in Scripture.  These are not simply free-floating statements.  On numerous occasions, those statements occur while the biblical writers are discussing Jesus’ mission and the atonement itself:  John 3:16; 1 John 2:2; 2 Peter 2:1; 1 Timothy 4:10; Titus 2:11.  Scripture says that God does not will, or take delight in, anyone’s unrepentance (1 Timothy 2:3 – 4; 2 Peter 3:9; Ezekiel 18:23, 32 – 33). 

However, PSA advocates like John Owen and J.I. Packer assert that these passages do not and cannot mean what they seem to say.[20]  I will discuss the Arminian alternative in a moment.  Sadly, “satisfaction” theory means that God does, in fact, will the spiritual torment of quite a few people, and take delight in it.  Otherwise, we would not call God “satisfied.”  And this would mean, remarkably, that a Christian cannot logically say to a non-Christian loved one, “I know Jesus died for you.”  Quite possibly, you might love your non-Christian friends even more than God does.  It is also noteworthy that John Stott, in his book, The Cross of Christ, avoids the matter.  In his index, there are no entries for “limited” or “definite” atonement, nor “unlimited atonement” with which to compare it. 

On a human level, it is hard to navigate deeply fractured friendships, where you love two people while those two people have an active distaste for each other.  When we transpose that relational dynamic onto ourselves, God, and others in a PSA framework, we feel the same dilemma.  But it gets worse.  God’s hidden purpose might be to reject the very people you love, while He keeps His own counsel.  That is emotionally challenging, but it gets still worse.  God has told you to love them on His behalf – as Jesus said, “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:38 – 48) – while He leaves you in the dark about whether He does so.  That feels as challenging as being a child to parents who are going through the most dysfunctional of divorces.  The emotional problems get even deeper because we are told by Penal Substitution that God’s “self-satisfaction” matters more than your feelings.  We feel like we are at the mercy of an emotional tyrant, from whom there is neither admission of hypocrisy nor escape.  Significantly, John Stott does not address these problems.

From that point, we can take a step further and say that in PSA, God is actually complicit with human evil, which makes us angry.  For if God’s way of sanctifying people into being more loving, empathetic, and Christ-like is to bring them to Christ himself, then the question is:  Does God really want all people to come to Christ?  Since PSA and limited atonement logically require that we answer that question with a “no,” we would have to conclude that God wills for some human beings to refuse Jesus, or that He gives up too easily for now.  God may offer “rewards” to those who do believe, and “penalty” to those who do not, but these “rewards” do not remove the accusation that God is two-faced.  Rather, the selective “rewards” are the very reason we are uncomfortable. 

God may wish for, or will, some people come to Jesus and other people not.  But “some people” is not enough.  We have all experienced people who are two-faced.  The emotional and moral question in those cases is not, “How do I get on that person’s nice side?”  The emotional and moral question is, instead, “Why would I relate to that person at all?”  The logic of “satisfaction” which stands behind Penal Substitution makes God partly evil, and two-faced.  The emotional and moral question for us, then, is, “Am I really drawn to a two-faced God?”  These are the well-known problems that John Stott does not address. 

We then have to wrestle with feeling angry at God.  As I mentioned in Part 3 of the Anger series, an early Christian bishop-theologian named Diadochos of Photiki described anger as “a weapon implanted in our nature by God when he creates us.”[21]  While he said that this weapon of anger can cause trouble and mischief if not submitted to the Spirit, Diadochos also said that we can “put ourselves in harmony with the purposes of God’s justice and goodness.”[22]  It is clear that by “God’s justice,” He does not mean a meritocratic-retributive justice of simply rewarding good actions and punishing bad.  He means the biblical concept of restorative justice which refers to God restoring things to the way He intended them.  If Diadochos’ insight is true – and it is biblically rooted in Paul’s discussion of the conscience in Romans 1:20 and 2:12 – 16, as well as the “I myself” of Romans 7:14 – 25 – then God gave us the weapon of anger to detect human evil and respond to it with Him.  God intended to develop us and refine our anger, using it to “overcome weakness in our soul,” said Diadochos.  But when our intellectual “systematic theology” makes God complicit in human evil – either actively or passively – we confound that anger and produce incredible confusion in people. 

We must then turn that anger against God.  If we do not see a way to be angry “with” God as in “aligned with Him in partnership” as Jesus was angry “with” Mary as in “aligned with Mary,” then we will be angry “with” God as in “at God.”  And becoming angry “at God” means that we will try to turn a weapon God gave us against God Himself.  Or, we will turn it against ourselves, thinking we can be rid of this moral conscience.  Or, we will turn it against other people who are the manifestation of human evil that is closer to us.  What happens in all these cases is quite dangerous.  If “ideas have consequences,” then so too “theologies have consequences.”

James Arminius’ Attempt at Finding a New Home for Penal Substitution

These problems are shifted around by the Arminian attempts to reconfigure Penal Substitution with a few changes in the overall Reformed tapestry.  In my estimation, they are still not resolved.[23]  Those who follow James Arminius (1560 – 1609) move the tension onto other threads which arguably do not hold up the weight of the problems.  Many Arminians, both classical (e.g. Baptist) and Wesleyan (e.g. Methodist) alike, hold to Penal Substitution, as did Arminius himself.[24] 

Arminius, trying to defend God’s goodness above all, believed in “unlimited atonement” according to the “satisfaction” model of divine retributive justice, as in Penal Substitution.  He began to move the puzzle pieces of Christian theology around to accommodate this view.  This was very important, and represented a partial return to early church sources, especially in the way Arminius defined God’s goodness and love as God’s real nature, and maintained that God’s sovereignty be understood as conditioned and controlled by God’s nature.  Arminius was adamant that God’s sovereignty did not mean that God was deterministically causing everything else, especially human choices.  For that would make God the author of sin, indeed the only sinner.

Nevertheless, in the Arminian reconfiguration, there are some emotionally fraught questions.  Arminius did not fully escape the Calvinist predicament about God and human evil in the present (theodicy).  Arminius, like Calvin, believed that the human will was dependent on God’s “prevenient grace” to draw the human person to Christ.  Roger Olson, an Arminian theologian, makes the helpful point that Arminius did not so much believe in “free will” as he did in a “freed will.”[25]  Since that is the case, then for the Spirit to not exert “prevenient grace” on every person is to make the Spirit, rather than the Father, the target of our human anger and confusion.  If the Father and the Son have done all they could to undo human evil, then why is the Spirit doing so little by comparison?  If the Father genuinely desires to save all, and if the Son’s atoning work is penal and universal or “sufficient for all,” then why is the Holy Spirit’s application of that atonement “efficient for some”?  Is the connection between the Holy Spirit and the Son compromised in this arrangement?  Configuring the theological pieces this way, so that the Spirit, rather than the Father or the Son, is formally responsible for leaving human evil unaddressed, simply takes the confusion, discomfort, and anger we feel about human evil, and shifts it from one person of the Trinity to another.  In the Calvinist system, we feel it towards God the Father.  In the Arminian system, we feel it towards God the Holy Spirit.

Another question involves God’s anger in hell.  Who would not wish to benefit from Jesus’ atoning work after one second in a purely punitive hell, suffering the penalty for their disobedience?  And if they want to repent in hell, then why would God insist on making them pay the penalty of infinite retribution?  Roger Olson says of hell:

“Calvinists fear that Arminians’ emphasis on the universality of the atonement results inexorably in universalism; if Christ actually bore the sins of every person, why would any person go to hell?  Wouldn’t all be saved by Christ’s atoning death? Wouldn’t hell be redundant punishment?  Arminians respond that this is indeed what makes hell so tragic—it is absolutely unnecessary.  People go there not because their punishment was not suffered by Christ but because they reject the amnesty provided by God through Christ’s substitutionary death.”[26]

But Olson’s response is puzzling.  If hell is redundant punishment, because it is punishment God pays out twice, then it need not be doled out at all.  And if it need not be doled out, then God inflicts it arbitrarily, for no reason.  “It is,” as Olson offers, “absolutely unnecessary.”  I am not reassured that this answer is an improvement over TULIP-based Calvinism.  This hardly saves God from the charge of being partly evil and arbitrary.  At least with TULIP-based Calvinism, God had an immediate rationale for paying out an infinite punishment:  He was infinitely angry.  Whether that immediate rationale held up with other affirmations about God’s character was a further problem, but there was a rationale offered. 

I respect Roger Olson’s biblical-exegetical work, because like him, I believe that hell is portrayed by Scripture as everlasting.  Unfortunately, Arminius, like other Reformers, considered us only from the vantage point of our human personhood, and failed to consider the journey of our human nature.  He did not fully account for God creating us as human beings and human becomings.  Nor did he consider that sin is addictive and at some point, can become completely self-imprisoning.  Thus, I cannot agree with the rationale for hell offered by Arminian systematic theology.

In November of 2016, an old disagreement between Calvinists and Arminians played out in the Southern Baptist Conference, at one of their leading seminaries, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.[27]  One Arminian Southern Baptist pastor who spoke at a chapel service called Calvinism a “Trojan Horse” that would undermine evangelism.  Four Calvinistic seminary students walked out.  SWBTS President Paige Patterson closed the chapel service by saying, “I know there are a fair number of you who think you are a Calvinist, but understand there is a denomination which represents that view.  It’s called Presbyterian.”  Christian Post reporter Brandon Showalter acknowledged that the disagreement centered on the “L” for “Limited Atonement” in the TULIP system.  Some Arminian Southern Baptists were loudly resisting the logical implications of Penal Substitution because of the effect it would have on evangelism.  Some Calvinistic Southern Baptists insisted that they were being consistently misunderstood, and presenting the more rational theology, anyway.  I would suggest that the point of underlying agreement, Penal Substitutionary Atonement, is what causes this type of situation, as different parts of Christian thought and practice are pitted against each other. 

Questioning Penal Substitution:  The Intellectual and Emotional Development of People

What interests me here is the relation between emotional development and intellectual development in the Calvinist and Arminian branches of the PSA trunk.  Most of this section will be focused on the Calvinist branch because of how God’s sovereignty is fitted to work with PSA. 

In March of 2012, Calvinist pastor, professor, and author Kevin DeYoung, writing for The Gospel Coalition, titled an article, “Does Calvinism Make People Jerks?”[28]  He began his piece by saying, “No. But Calvinism is a useful tool for jerky people to act like jerks.” 

Then in December of 2016, following the incident at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, journalist Brandon Showalter wrote an article for the Christian Post entitled, “Why Do Many Christians Think Calvinists Are Arrogant Jerks?” in which he explored the actual thought system.[29]  Showalter, like DeYoung, mentioned common stereotypes.  If you do a Google search for “Why are Calvinists”, the auto-fill feature in Google returns the words, “wrong,” “so angry,” “so arrogant,” “such jerks,” and “so negative.”  This was an observation made by a Calvinist, to caution Calvinists. 

I appreciated DeYoung’s article very much, as he was speaking to people in his own camp and trying to correct for something we mutually view as a challenge.  I agree that the Calvinist thought system does not require that its adherents behave in a “jerky” way.  However, I also think DeYoung underestimated the type of emotional development that his tradition does encourage, and specifically what Penal Substitution itself facilitates.  That is because the branches off the PSA trunk – especially the Calvinist branch, but to a lesser degree, the Arminian branch as well – center understanding God’s anger and “satisfaction” the way they do.  I think this results in fewer resources for robust Christ-centered emotional development that leads its disciples in more fruitful directions. 

Does PSA undermine the basic rationality of Christian belief?  When atheists say that the universe is only matter, yet claim that science can construct a morality for human beings, most Christians would say that there is a contradiction there.  It is impossible to go from what is to what ought to be.  In light of the second law of thermodynamics, which implies that the universe will burn out into coldness and death at some point in time, if everything continues the way we observe it, even human species survival cannot be said to be a moral cause under the weight of this scientific knowledge. 

At the same time, when Christians believe in Penal Substitution and say that God is good and loving, or that God is neither evil nor narcissistic, atheists (especially ex-churchgoers) would say that there is a contradiction there, too.  A few PSA advocates simply embrace the accusation.  Roger Olson, in his book Against Calvinism, notes:

“It is not at all difficult to find Calvinists on the Internet (e.g., bloggers) who boldly state that Calvinism requires confession that God is the author of sin and evil.  One such person is Vincent Cheung, who writes about Calvinism as a Calvinist at his website www.vincentcheung.com.  Like many others one can easily find on the web, Cheung ridicules fellow Calvinists who say God is not the author of sin…

“Another Calvinist who affirms that God more than merely permits sin and evil, but without actually calling God the “author of sin,” is John Frame (b. 1939).  Frame taught for many years at Westminster Theological Seminary and now holds a chair in theology at Westminster Theological Seminary… Although he demurs from saying God causes or authors evil, Frame says the language of permission is not strong enough and prefers to say that God “actually brings evil about.””[30]

The details of articulation matter, but can be set aside for my purpose here.  My point here is simple:  PSA advocates who wish to defend God’s goodness and deny God’s complicity in human evil have to deploy the word “mystery” or “paradox” in place of “contradiction.”  Whether that is any more persuasive is an important question, and must be handled elsewhere.  My purpose in raising these examples is to point out that there is a certain kind of emotional development that has to accompany intellectual development like this.

Where, by accounts, Martin Luther was hot-headed in conflict, John Calvin had “ice in his veins.”  Nevertheless, in A Treatise of the Eternal Predestination of God, when he debated the Dutch Roman Catholic theologian Albertus Pighius and George the Silician, Calvin said:

“For though I confess that in some things they differ, yet, in hatching enormities of error, in adulterating the Scripture with wicked and revelling audacity, in a proud contempt of the truth, in forward impudence, and in brazen loquacity, the most perfect likeness and sameness will be found to exist between them.  Except that Pighius, by inflating the muddy bombast of his magniloquence, carries himself with greater boast and pomp; while the other fellow borrows the boots by which he elevates himself from his invented revelation.”[31]

In his constantly revised magnum opus, Institutes of the Christian Religion, in response to people who objected to the inconsistencies in his presentation, Calvin said they were:

“foolish men [who] contend with God.”[32] 

Attacking people’s motives and character rather than their positions is something we discourage today, and with good reason.  Now, some allowance for rhetoric like this needs to be made for the historical context and maybe cultural conventions of wittiness.  It is hard to know, exactly.  Certainly, at times, people knew their very lives were in danger.  Also, the early Protestants themselves were not in agreement with each other and felt embattled.  Then, they and the Roman Catholics launched pitched and lengthy intellectual debates with each other, as demonstrated here. 

Still, after centuries, we can be concerned about the rhetorical choices made here.  Calvin steadfastly refused to acknowledge that there were questions he could not answer.  Instead, Calvin insulted his critics.  One might even say that he was gaslighting his critics, turning against them ad hominem attacks undermining both their intellectual competence (“foolish”) and moral discernment as well (they “contend with God”).  For Calvin, disagreeing with his interpretation of God was disagreeing with God.

This is concerning because some followers of Luther and Calvin tend to see “Catholics” – even “Pelagius” – behind all their critics.  They reproduce this rhetoric because they find it in their sources and because they imagine that they face an existential threat.  If people believe the stakes are as high as that, then they can excuse themselves for setting aside emotional restraint and sensitivity to others.  But that is almost always unnecessary.  While we must be faithful to God as we understand Him, the threat from other Christians over theology is decidedly not the same.

Of course, there are non-Calvinist Christians who also use personal insults and speak in a condescending way.  And conversely, some Calvinists engage with their critics with great humility and care.  But as many Calvinist writers themselves acknowledge, there is a well-known tendency for Calvinism to draw to itself people who like the rigidity of the intellectual system, who set aside people’s emotional responses to the intellectual system itself on the grounds that the Christian faith should focus on God, not on humanity.  Notably, these people include assertive men who seem like they would be less inclined to care about other people’s emotions anyway.  Calvinism simply gives them an intellectual justification for doing so.

Consider what Edwin H. Palmer, author of The Five Points of Calvinism, says about human minds who perceive a contradiction in the theological structure driven by the engine of Penal Substitution:

“When God speaks – as he has clearly done in Romans 9 [which Palmer interprets as God predestining some to salvation and some to damnation via the mechanism of Penal Substitution] – then we are simply to follow and believe, even if we cannot understand, and even if it seems contradictory to our puny minds.”[33] 

In response to the critique of “contradiction,” Palmer admonishes his readers to set aside their objections.  As his final recourse – his “ace in the hand” – he replies by saying our minds are “puny.”  Not simply “limited” or “perhaps reasoning on the wrong side of the analogical predication required by the analogy of being.”  But “puny.”  Some Calvinists cannot seem to help slipping into derogatory and disparaging language like this.  And this is one of the most mild cases.  But it is still a form of emotional bullying.  Including himself in the word “our” does not cushion the blow.

In the Calvinists’ defense, perhaps there is self-talk that is being turned outward.  It is easy to imagine that Calvinists use derogatory and disparaging language amongst themselves to describe human beings as compared with God.  Compared to God, our minds are “puny,” they might say.  It is also easy to imagine that Calvinists draw from their “Calvinist insider” self-talk language when they talk with people outside Calvinist circles.  Be that as it may, the emotional tendency is concerning.  The Calvinist intellectual system itself seems to give its advocates license to speak to their critics with the same disparaging language with which they refer to themselves in their piety, in relation to God.  Emotional disregard is encouraged, not just by various personalities, but by the theological system itself.  When humans claim credit for God’s initiative, activities, and glory, what else does God do but them in their place, sometimes with anger?

Does PSA encourage an “ends justifies the means” thinking among Christians?  Do PSA advocates use emotionally insensitive rhetoric because God, in their own view, does not regard many human emotions other than guilt, humility, moral self-abasement, gratitude for our escaping pain, etc.?  Facing logical and emotional challenges from non-Christians, sometimes Christians say, “Let God be God.”  But does “let God be God” repackage the saying, “might makes right,” only in Christian verbage?  Joseph Haroutunian (1904 – 1968), a Calvinist professor of systematic theology, is one prominent example of someone who affirmed that.  He:

“gloried in Protestantism’s insistence that God’s sovereignty pushed the conclusion that God decrees evil as well as good.  Double predestination was, for him, the last assertion of God’s ultimate freedom as He creates the world, a last terrible tribute to the fact of reprobation as known in this world… These doctrines distinguished Calvinism from theological traditions that suffered a failure of nerve and let down a culture that was desperate for a theology with iron in its blood.”[34]

This is a secondary source summarizing Haroutunian’s posture, which is an important point to make.  These scholars of Calvin and advocates of his describe Haroutunian’s posture in approving terms.  For Haroutunian, backing away from Calvinism – of which PSA is the centerpiece – is a capitulation to weakness.  It is a “failure of nerve.”  It is a disappointment to a society which Haroutunian and his interpreters believe wanted “iron in its blood.”  It is not insignificant that Haroutunian held this position during the post-WWII golden age of American imperialism, in which the U.S. was doing evil while claiming to be good.

I have an additional concern that this rhetoric and more might – might – be coming from misguided anger.  Again, perhaps Diadochos of Photiki was right, that anger is “a weapon implanted in our nature by God when he creates us,”[35] an emotion that detects human evil in some form, and rouses us to oppose it.  Our anger can be a blunt instrument and always needs proper refinement and guidance from Jesus.  But if the systematic theology one believes makes God causally responsible for, or complicit in, human evil, then where does that anger get directed? 

One real possibility (not necessity, I stress) is that the anger gets directed at non-Christians.  Why?  Because it is intimidating to be angry with God, and impractical anyway.  So when we experience human evil, the theological system in the mind helps guide the anger.  In the high federal Calvinist account, human evil and unbelievers exist so that God can manifest His anger and retributive justice at it/them.  In the Arminian account, human evil and unbelievers exist for mixed reasons:  their free will, sure, but also the inaction of the Holy Spirit.  Since God will pour out His anger on them anyway, does that give me subtle permission to not love them as much as I could?  Even if this age of Christian mission has not yet drawn to a close?  Does PSA contribute to Christian anger at non-Christians, since they are the reason Jesus puts me “on mission”? 

This anger is rarely articulated and seldom acknowledged.  Nevertheless, it can be felt.  Has anger led the mostly Arminian, white Southern Baptists to build public institutions on the principle of retributive justice?  If white Southern Baptists saw black people and non-Christians as “other,” as people who are more prone to criminality and sin, then do the low levels of public investment in Southern States represent anger towards “outsiders”?  Does a “you’re on your own,” “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” style of economics rather than public investment with social safety nets reflect a subtle anger?   How about investing more money in “law and order” policing and prisons rather than education and health and parental leave?  And if Christians also believe in constructing some form of theocratic “Christian nationalist” government, as Calvin himself did in Geneva, and Southern white evangelicals did with the Lost Cause ideology, then is that motivated by anger at non-Christians? 

Conservative Christians need to ask themselves many questions about anger in the post-Trump era.  One of them should be this:  Does PSA, to varying degrees, contribute to desensitizing people to the emotional and political dangers of narcissistic people, especially leaders?  After all, PSA does place God’s “self-satisfaction” as the highest goal.  Does it contribute to Christians directing their anger – subtle and not subtle – at non-Christians and other Christians who disagree with them, theologically or politically? 

If pastors and preachers and writers are willing to mock their critics, that is in poor form, but that is a function of personality and personal decisions.  The issue goes deeper.  If the theological system itself implies that “the ends justifies the means,” alters the definitions of the words “good” and “evil” as the Calvinist wing of the PSA family suggests, or says God causes suffering that is “absolutely unnecessary”[36] and therefore gratuitous, as the Arminian conception of hell asserts, then how does that contribute to the spiritual and emotional formation of those who listen?  If God is an authority who acts this way, can other authorities act this way, too?  Should they?  If PSA, no matter who teaches it, and in what tone, trains us to sublimate certain intellectual reservations and emotional intuitions, in order to serve a God whose chief aim is to “satisfy Himself,” then what else should we be willing to tolerate?  What are we shaping ourselves to become, emotionally?  And where else might our anger go?

Tendency #1:  John Piper’s Distance from Jesus’ Anger

One example of how PSA shapes our emotional development is provided by John Piper’s interpretation of John 11.  As I examined in post 3, John Piper, in his treatment of Jesus’ emotion and Mary’s emotion at Lazarus’ tomb, interprets Jesus’ emotion in such a way that it belongs exclusively to God.  Recall that Piper’s interpretation differs from mine in several ways. 

●      First, Piper believes that Mary was struggling with believing Jesus would do the miracle, like her sister Martha was.  By contrast, I believe Mary’s struggle was not like Martha’s. 

●      Second, Piper believes Jesus was indignant – more or less – at not being believed.  Functionally, Piper suggests that Jesus’ anger related more to his divinity or to his unique identity as the Savior.  In effect, Piper believes Jesus was close to being angry at Mary.  By contrast again, I believe Jesus was indignant about Lazarus’ mortality, the emotional toll it took on Mary, and the corruption of sin which made human mortality vital, though unfortunate, in the first place.  I believe Jesus was angry with Mary – with her, as in, on her behalf – sympathetically, like the Jewish priest standing with other Israelites presenting their prayers and cries to God the Father.  I believe Jesus’ transition to tears and grief is much more understandable this way. 

●      Third, Piper distances Jesus’ angry emotion from us.  The rest of us human beings should not share it.  For we are not supposed to be personally offended when people respond with skepticism when we proclaim Jesus as Savior and Lord.  While Piper is not a dispensationalist, notice that he shares with dispensationalism the tendency to bracket off Jesus’ emotions from us.  By contrast, I believe Jesus’ angry and sorrowful emotion is one in which we can share, and should, on similar occasions.  We can and should share in Jesus’ emotion and share it with others, as long as we take into account others’ emotions and maturity, and our own relationships with them, like Jesus did with Mary out of his love for her.

Seen in light of the Calvinist, PSA-centered tradition’s tendency to downplay or even denounce the emotional intuition that questions the logic of the intellectual system, this concern takes on more force.  How does this example suggest that there is an emotional formation taking place under PSA?  How is the discipleship of the emotions taking place here? 

Piper’s interpretation of John 11 is a case study example of how PSA discourages us to be sensitive to the emotions of Mary, which can become emotionally self-serving for readers.  I showed how early Christian theologians from the fourth and fifth centuries interpreted this passage in all the ways John Piper does not:  They interpreted Mary sympathetically, Jesus’ emotions as triggered by human loss and the corruption of sin that made mortality necessary, and Jesus’ human emotions as showing forth the glory of God in God’s love for us.  Significantly, they held to MSA, where the humanity of Jesus, including his human emotions and human journey, is the center point and source of God’s salvation of our humanity.  This difference is striking.

As I said before in post 3, John Piper approach to John 11 illustrates my concern about men setting aside other people’s emotions, in the reading of Scripture and in general.  The high federal Calvinist system – anchored by PSA – encourages them to do so.  In John 11, Piper relates Jesus’ anger, for all practical purposes, to his divinity; that is, Jesus acted like God (“you will see the glory of God”) when he performed the miracle of raising Lazarus.  He does not relate showing forth the glory of God to Jesus’ everyday human emotions, and his empathy for Mary in her loss. 

Piper’s interpretation of John 11 distances us not only from Jesus’ anger, but other people’s anger and other emotions.  In the last post, I expressed my concern that people may wind up imitating Jesus’ emotional dynamic with Mary in a manner that is “sideways.”  Christian men might ignore the emotions of a woman and focus on who is being “believed” and whether God is “receiving glory,” because “spectacular actions” give glory to God more than “emotions.”  White American evangelicals might pity themselves for not being “believed” and losing the “culture war,” while they ignore other people who have pains of their own, like Mary grieving for Lazarus. 

I suspect in John Piper’s case, his commitment to Penal Substitution influences his interpretation of Jesus by Lazarus’ tomb.  I am not saying that one necessarily comes before the other in the mind of any given believer.  There is not a chronological relationship.  But there does seem to be an organic relationship, a mutually reinforcing link that starts somewhere and draws the person who subscribes to PSA into the gravitational pull of aligning the interpretation of various biblical passages with the PSA system.  It exerts a pull on the mind and the emotions.  Atonement theology and the interpretation of biblical passages dealing with anger – especially John 11, because of its great significance in the Gospel of John and to interpreting Jesus – are necessarily related.  That’s because we develop emotional associations with, and responses towards, both God’s anger and human anger, together.

Tendency #2:  Dispensationalism and Distance from Jesus’ Anger

“Dispensationalist” theology, taught especially at Dallas Theological Seminary, also provides another helpful case study of PSA and emotional development.  Early in my Christian life, I was exposed to teachers of dispensationalism, which is a particular expression of Penal Substitutionary Atonement. 

While not everyone who subscribes to Penal Substitution are dispensationalists in a formal sense, dispensationalism as a theological system has the tendency to bracket off Jesus’ human life and emotions into a realm removed from us.  In dispensationalism, the Christian life only became possible and visible after Jesus’ resurrection and Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came into the disciples and began the “dispensation” of the church.  A few dispensationalists and Lutherans even read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5 - 7) not as Jesus’ expectation that we would really live it out, but instead as his “amping up the moral pressure” on us to heighten our sense of sin and guilt, to drive us to “grace.”[37]  Therefore, for the brief time that I kind of operated in something like the dispensational framework, I read Acts and the Epistles for clues about how to live as a Christian.  While I took the Sermon on the Mount far too seriously for the dispensationalist framework to make sense to me, I did not look at Jesus’ human life in the Gospels as in some sense normative.  I read other parts of the Gospels with a sense of detachment, because I thought Jesus was fulfilling the role of an obedient Jewish person under the Sinai covenant, and preparing his disciples for the “dispensation” of the church.  I was not Jewish.  So what did Jesus’ human journey mean for me?  I was drawn to Jesus, but not sure what to do with him.

Curiously, despite my varying approaches of reading Scripture in my first decade of being a Christian, I remember having the distinct impression that human anger was something that needed to be managed carefully.  God had some patience for human anger, Paul and James told me, tolerated it to some degree, and even had compassion on it in the sense that He didn’t judge it right away.  But I wasn’t sure Jesus meant the same thing.  And ultimately, human anger was categorically “other” than divine anger.  And I needed to manage anger personally in myself; I needed to help manage it in others.  Why?  Because human anger was an experience of the fallen world, yes, but it was laced with the experience of our own fallenness.  And it could not be trusted to be a positive aspect of spiritual life. 

I had the impression that God tolerated human anger for a limited time and in a limited way, but ultimately reserved anger for Himself, because only God’s anger was purified and true, and God only accepted His own anger.  God alone had the true “right” to be angry. 

Medical Substitution’s Theological Tapestry and Vision of the Human

Now that I briefly sketched the conundrums that Calvinists and Arminians faced as they tried to work with Penal Substitutionary Atonement, I will sketch how earlier Christians avoided those problems by relying on Medical Substitutionary Atonement and other aspects of Nicene Trinitarian theology.  It is appropriate to talk briefly about atonement, hell, and God’s anger, since this is a reflection on anger, both human and divine. 

PSA advocates tend to see human nature as static.  Therefore, human actions in the PSA framework earn “merit” or “demerit” in God’s view.  With that view, the atonement has to be a Penal Substitution solution for the “demerits” that human persons have accumulated in the eyes of God.[38]  MSA, however, perceives in Scripture that human nature is not static, but dynamic.  Human actions in the MSA framework do not earn “merit” or “demerit” with God.  Instead, our actions have an impact on ourselves and our desires.  With that view, the atonement has to be a Medical Substitution solution because we have damaged ourselves.[39] 

Which view has more biblical support?  Drawing on the language of Genesis 1:26, for example, Irenaeus of Lyons in the second century said that God made us “in His image,” and called us to grow “in His likeness.”[40]  The former was about our being; the latter was about our becoming.  The former was a gift; the latter was a calling.  The former was ontological; the latter was teleological, relational, and moral.  The former could not be lost; the latter could be lost.  The former was God’s work alone; the latter was a work of partnership between God and us.  Or, said Irenaeus also simply, God created us “to ascend” infinitely, in a relational and spiritual sense:  “making progress day by day, and ascending towards the perfect, that is, approximating to the uncreated One.”[41]  That is logically required by the fact that God made us to be finite beings, and called us to participate in the infinite love of His Triune relations.  Given that God is the Triune Father, Son, and Spirit, there was no other way God could have created us.  The early Christians concluded that God created us grow in goodness and relationship and virtue, which would have supplied Adam and Eve with the experiences they needed to trust and love God more and more.  Our choices were to shape our natures towards being more and more other-centered, and our desires to participate in God’s love more and more. 

On the one hand, the early Christians were sensitive to a basic Jewish insight that resonated in the Jewish wisdom literature.  Since God is a good and wise Creator, who made His creation from His wisdom, and gave us commands from His wisdom, we expect a “fit” between His creation and His commands (Proverbs 8:22 – 36).  His commands serve as God’s invitation to partner with Him in the growth and fulfillment of our humanity.  On the other hand, as Irenaeus of Lyons demonstrates, the early Christians synthesized passages about creation (Genesis 1 – 2; Proverbs 8; Colossians 1; John 1) and passages about the Father, Son, and Spirit (John 13 – 17).  Based on God creating us “in His image,” (Genesis 1:26 – 28), and giving us commands to grow as God intended (Proverbs 8:22 – 36; Psalm 1; 19; 119), the early Christians reasoned out that God created us to desire Him through our desires for love, goodness, beauty, justice, etc. and to grow in these qualities and characteristics ourselves.  God did this because God is love (1 John 4:8), and by definition does not override our agency but seeks to win our partnership. 

In the third and fourth centuries, the Christian vocabulary for humanity came to formally mirror the Trinitarian discourse about divine persons and divine nature.  We are human persons with human natures.  God invites us as persons into a joint partnership with Him to mature our human nature. 

Disordered loves, however, were possible, resulting in evil.  Evil was possible not because God made evil things, or created evil in us, or required evil to teach us good by pedagogical contrast, but because we can receive good things in a disordered way that God did not intend, like prioritizing one’s spouse beneath one’s parents (contra Genesis 2:24 – 25).  In fact, Adam and Eve internalized the very desire to define good and evil from ourselves and our own vantage point – a power that belongs properly to God alone.  Athanasius called sin a “disorder”[42] and a “corruption”[43] which leads away from the greater life God has, and instead in the direction of “death,” or non-being, though never reaching non-being because we do not have the power to uncreate what God has created, including ourselves.  The corruption of sin in our human nature becomes more powerful in our lives the more we choose it, especially because of our capacity for self-deception, shown right away in the biblical narrative concerning Cain (Genesis 4).  Sin became a disorder in our nature accompanied by a pattern of addictive desire (e.g. Romans 1:21 – 32; Ephesians 4:17 – 19).  However, despite the fall and our consequent stubbornness, God’s commandments are good for us (Proverbs 8:22 – 36; Romans 7:12).  God still acts in our consciences (Romans 1:20; 2:12 – 16; 7:14 – 25) to draw us by our desires for love, goodness, beauty, justice, etc. even if those desires became muddled.  In effect, God is always deploying a form of “prevenient grace” with everyone.  Which is how God could call Israel to be His partner and focus group to diagnose the problem and hope for the cure.

Theories of Atonement, Theories of Hell, and Anger

This returns us to the related topics of atonement, eternity, and the nature of God’s anger.  Jesus, in his atoning work, fixes and fulfills human nature, and offers himself to us by his Spirit as the remedy for our addiction to sin.  Jesus is not the object of God’s anger, but the agent of it, because God has no such category of His personality – no attribute or characteristic – called “retributive justice” which needs to be “satisfied.”  Thus, when the likes of Irenaeus and Athanasius exposited MSA from Scripture, it led to the traditional Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic understanding that people’s choices in the future will eventually become fixed, either for or against Jesus, because our choices are formational for our human nature, directional for our “face” or relational personhood, and will affect our ultimate response to Jesus when he returns.  In eternity, believers will be unable to sin, whereas unbelievers will be unable to repent, because our natures and our desires will have been shaped by a love for Jesus or a love for self. 

John of Damascus (676 – 749 AD), was a Syrian Christian who was among the first generation of Christians to live under the Arab Islamic conquest.  He debated Muslims, among others, and wrote what is widely respected as a very good summary of Christian teaching to that point, closing the patristic chapter and opening the Byzantine.  He is called “the seal of the fathers.”  He said this about hell and God’s goodness:

“In eternity God supplies good things to all because He is the source of good things gushing forth goodness to all... After death, there is no means for repentance, not because God does not accept repentance – He cannot deny Himself nor lose His compassion – but the soul does not change anymore... people after death are unchangeable, so that on the one hand the righteous desire God and always have Him to rejoice in, while sinners desire sin though they do not have the material means to sin... they are punished without any consolation.  For what is hell but the deprivation of that which is exceedingly desired by someone?  Therefore, according to the analogy of desire, whoever desires God rejoices and whoever desires sin is punished.”[44]

Jesus in his love will keep wanting to purify people of the corruption of sin within each person’s human nature, along with their desires to sin which come as a consequence.  In response, they will interpret him as denying them what they really want, and denying them what they believe love requires.  Hell will be torment, indeed – but because sin is self-imprisoning, while Jesus will constantly offer people himself.  He will eternally oppose the damage in their human nature which they inherited from Adam and Eve, which they individually made worse by their own choices.  But he will do this on their behalf, because he loves them, and cannot change his love, because that is his nature. 

This explanation is consistent with the presentation of Scripture in its exegetical details and its most panoramic literary development.  The theme of human growth and development is the most important one.  Joined to that, for example, is fire.  Fire as a motif and theme in every biblical book in which it is used reflects God’s invitation to be refined, to have the sin burned away (e.g. Genesis 3:24; 4:3; Exodus 3:2; 19:18; Isaiah 1:25; 4:4 – 5; 6:6; Malachi 3:2; Matthew 3:11; Luke 3:16; Acts 2:3; etc.).  Only when people resist that refinement, tying themselves to the “dross” of sin, does divine fire take on a quality that indicates pain of some sort.  This pattern holds true in Revelation, where Jesus is introduced as the fiery one who bears the sword of his word (Revelation 1:12 – 20); Revelation wraps Jesus in the mantle and purpose of the fiery sword guarding the way back to the garden of Eden (Genesis 3:24), requiring us to let him burn and cut sin away from us in order to return.  Jesus’ people are those who are purified, like “pure gold, like transparent glass” (Revelation 21:21).  The fire of hell (Revelation 20:14 – 15) is simply the fire of his presence and love (Revelation 14:9 – 11), but experienced by those who refuse to let go of what he wants to burn away.  Jesus loves them, but he opposes their choice to hold onto the disease of sin and the damage they have inflicted on their human nature.

Many people feel pulled emotionally towards a Christian universalism, perhaps with a retributive version of hell that is not infinite, but finite.  This is due to the fact that both the Arminian and the Calvinist conceptions of hell posit endless divine anger against human personhood.  Whereas most human experiences with anger come to an end, why would God’s anger be endless?  It is difficult to imagine, relate to, and explain.  Whether or not Scripture envisions a finite hell is an important question by itself; I think it is not finite, and I understand that that demands an explanation that continues to deepen our spirituality of anger. 

While attractive on one level, this “hell of finite retribution” proposal runs the risk of making light of human evil in the present, human choices in the present, and the journey of human nature, motivations, and desires.  If God has a hell of finite retribution in the afterlife, then Christian faith would resemble a Hindu karmic system, and human motivations can collapse into the principle of self-centeredness, especially self-centered pain-management.  Why should anyone strive that hard to follow Jesus and his teachings, when it can often lead to discomfort and death?  If there can be a trade-off of some pleasure now for some pain later, why would that not be worth it?  If so, then it would appear that no one’s self-centeredness would be fundamentally changed, or even need to be.  For God would be like a human debt-collector collecting on a finite debt, extracting suffering in exchange for all the obedience He did not receive from us before.  And in eternity future, anyone who falls into sin again can be punished again.  Which reintroduces the typical Hindu karmic cycles of fall and return, fall and return, etc. endlessly.  And that highlights a vexing problem.

Many advocates of this “finite hell” proposal would say that, in the end, on the other side of the torment, “love wins.”[45]  I am not so sure.  It seems more accurate to say that, if finite retribution were true, then what really wins is self-centeredness and self-love.  Everyone could and would be acting according to their self-centeredness.  And if so, then human anger could never truly be more than the outburst of a petulant child not getting her or his way.  Even God’s divine retributive anger would have to be placed in the same category.  God’s anger would be the sound and fury of a divine parent who may have had to wait a little while, but who eventually got to vent because God has more power to be heard and felt than the rest of us.  God’s anger will have to be endured by children who just want to get their consequence over with after having eaten lots of sugary junk food.  This is the problem of the petulant child.  This problem demonstrates that in the scenario of the “finite hell,” what would win is not love, but self-centeredness and self-love.

But what if God in eternity is not punishing people for stealing cookies, but rather setting a banquet of more nutritious and exquisite food that people refuse to acquire the appetite to eat?  What if God is preparing our eyes to see by the bright light of His presence, but some people refuse to train their eyes and instead pamper them in the dark?  What if God is preparing us to develop musical instruments and vocalizations that are challenging and difficult and rewarding and provide whole new possibilities for music, but some people refuse to practice and acquire an appreciation for the discipline?  What is God is preparing us to wade and swim in the river of life, but some people refuse to learn to swim and instead choose laziness?  What if Jesus wants to lead the family of God on a grander vacation, replete with gardening and exertion and shared responsibility and adventure, but some people want to stay in the car and be miserable?  What if God is preparing us for new relationships with each other and the creation, but some people refuse the heart-level training for it?  What if God means for others to joyfully demand that we share in their joys, but some people come to hate being told what to do?  Paul said that love is not simply our duty, but our destiny (1 Corinthians 13:13).  What if Christian love – in every detail and every demand – is training and preparation for something greater?  What if Christian love is a duty that we fail in every day, but nevertheless participate in over and over again because the issue is not our score, but the shaping of our desire, of our ability to respond, and the joy we take in noticing it?  What if the fire of hell signifies both Jesus’ demand that we grow up, and some people’s petulant and increasingly vocal refusal to do so?  What if they interpret Jesus’ new food as grotesque, his new light as blinding, his new activity as cruel, and his new relationships as a rejection of who they chose to become?  What if the lake of fire is a lake because some people would rather be like Pharaoh’s warriors (Exodus 14:21 – 28) or the legion of demons (Matthew 8:32; Mark 5:13; Luke 8:33), and skulk under waves of defeat, fury, and self-pity rather than run when Jesus says run?  What if, contrary to Calvin, hell exists not because God is backward-looking, but forward-looking, and because some people are the backward-looking ones?  What if, contrary to Arminius, there is every reason – compounding and infinite reasons, in fact – for hell to be eternal, conscious torment?[46] 

If our human nature and human desires are not real categories, and really offered a radical new development in the resurrected Jesus, and if we are not accountable for the condition of our human nature and desires, if there is no pivotal choice we can make whereby we participate in an act of self-offering and other-centeredness that binds us forever to the self-offering and other-centeredness happening constantly within the relationship between the Father and Son in one Spirit, then human anger could never aspire to be more than another movement of self-centeredness.  Trinitarian love is truly other-centered love.  For unless God’s love is a truly other-centered love by His very nature, then His anger can never be genuinely motivated by it.  And unless human nature itself can come to rest upon a higher foundation of other-centered love in the very humanity of Jesus, then human anger can never refer to more than itself, or be called to a higher and deeper purpose.  I doubt any human emotion could.  And this reflection could have never begun. 

Instead, we press onward.  In MSA, God’s anger revealed in Jesus’ anger is an invitation to us to participate in it.  Christ calls us to live in partnership with him, in his love for us, and his anger against the corruption of sin within us.  MSA leads to the surprising discovery that in the midst of our human anger is a window through which we discover more and more about what it means to be truly human, as Jesus defines it, and for God to be truly God.  For this is the only arrangement that vindicates God as wholly and totally good, not evil in the slightest, whether actively or passively.  God can be the object of our genuine admiration and affection, not of our obsequious vassalage where self-serving and self-loving beings are simply using each other for pain-avoidance, flattery, and convenience.  Why is the admiration and affection genuine?  Because God is truly lovable, and opens Himself up to us by His Son and His Spirit, calling us to find our highest good in Him, along with the right ordering of all other good things.

Conclusion

I charted, above, what I consider to be the “standard” course of emotional development encouraged by Penal Substitution, especially in the high federal Calvinist context, but also in an Arminian register.  I explained why the problems that Calvinists and Arminians alike face in their theological systems were avoided by the early Christians.  In the next post, I chart how PSA seems to negatively impact people with more complex emotional challenges, like attachment disorders and various types of trauma.

[1] For the text of The Odes of Solomon and some analysis and commentary on them, see: www.anastasiscenter.org/atonement-sources-ec-odes-of-solomon.

[2] For the relevant writings of Irenaeus’ writings and some analysis and commentary on them, see: www.anastasiscenter.org/atonement-sources-ec-irenaeus-of-lyons.

[3] For the relevant writings of Athanasius’ writings and some analysis and commentary on them, see: www.anastasiscenter.org/atonement-sources-ec-athanasius-of-alexandria.

[4] For the relevant writings of the three “Cappadocian fathers,” Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory of Nyssa, along with some analysis and commentary on them, see: www.anastasiscenter.org/atonement-sources-ec-gregory-of-nazianzus, www.anastasiscenter.org/atonement-sources-ec-basil-of-caesarea, and www.anastasiscenter.org/atonement-sources-ec-gregory-of-nyssa.

[5] For the relevant writings of Ephrem the Syrian, along with some analysis and commentary on them, see: www.anastasiscenter.org/atonement-sources-ec-ephrem-the-syrian.

[6] See Mako A. Nagasawa, Temple Sacrifices and a Bloodthirsty God? Found here:  https://newhumanityinstitute.wordpress.com/atonement-foundations-temple-sacrifices-and-a-bloodthirsty-god-new-humanity-institute/.  See especially the fifth post in that series, God as Dialysis Machine: The Sacrificial Calendar as the Renewal of the Covenant and the Retelling of Moses’ Mediation on Mount Sinai, found here:  https://newhumanityinstitute.wordpress.com/2018/10/18/god-as-dialysis-machine-the-sacrificial-calendar-as-the-renewal-of-the-covenant-and-the-retelling-of-moses-mediation-on-mount-sinai/.

[7] For a very helpful survey of biblical and patristic sources on Jesus’ descent to the dead, see Archbishop Alfeyev Hilarion, Christ the Conqueror of Hell: The Descent into Hades from an Orthodox Perspective (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009)

[8] See also Mako A. Nagasawa, Jesus, the Bronze Serpent, and the Healing of Humanity, available here:  www.anastasiscenter.org/bible-messiah-john.  This is an exegetical paper for a New Testament class on John’s Gospel which I wrote for Dr. Bruce Beck at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary.  In his discussion with Nicodemus, Jesus compares his coming crucifixion to the incident of the bronze serpent (John 3:14 – 15).  I explore Jesus’ citation in some depth.  I believe that the bronze serpent was far from a mere physical parallel to Jesus being affixed to the wooden pole of the Roman cross.  The incident has deep literary-theological resonance that illuminates both the entirety of the Pentateuch and the Gospel of John.

[9] Joshua Ryan Butler, The Skeletons in God’s Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2014), ch.2

[10] Joshua Ryan Butler, The Skeletons in God’s Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2014), ch.2

[11] See the resources I have collected and commented on at www.anastasiscenter.org/gods-goodness-fire.

[12] Adonis Vidu, Atonement, Law, and Justice: The Cross in Historical and Cultural Contexts (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2014), p.1 admits,

“It is a well-known fact that patristic reflection on the cross did not usually take the form of a full-fledged theory of penal substitution… While some would like to trace the doctrine of penal substitution precisely as understood by Calvin all the day back to Athanasius, Irenaeus, or Augustine, this is usually done at the cost of grossly distorting their thought.”

[13] Mako A. Nagasawa, Penal Substitution vs. Medical-Ontological Substitution: A Historical Comparison, found here:  www.anastasiscenter.org/atonement-sources-patristic. 

[14] John Piper, Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Publishing, 2011), p.111 gives a preliminary definition this way:  “The good news of Christ, crucified in our place to remove the wrath of God and provide forgiveness of sins and power for sacrificial love.”  In chs.9 – 10, Piper identifies the Reformed tradition, explains the five points of Calvinism including penal substitution and its downstream corollaries:  limited/definite atonement and the Reformed legal version of justification by faith.

[15] R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1985), p.103.

[16] R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1985), p.104.

[17] R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1985), p.115, 117

[18] John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), p.124, 126.

[19] J.I. Packer, ‘An Introduction to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ’, reprinted in J.I. Packer and Mark Dever, In My Place Condemned He Stood (Wheaton, IL:  Crossway Books, 2007)

[20] J.I. Packer, ‘An Introduction to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ’, reprinted in J.I. Packer and Mark Dever, In My Place Condemned He Stood (Wheaton, IL:  Crossway Books, 2007), p.126, where Packer argues that penal substitution necessarily means limited atonement: 

“[John] Owen shows with great cogency that the three classes of texts alleged to prove that Christ died for persons who will not be saved (those saying that he died for ‘the world,’ for ‘all,’ and those thought to envisage the perishing of those for whom he died), cannot on sound principles of exegesis be held to teach any such thing; and, further, that the theological inferences by which universal redemption is supposed to be established are really quite fallacious…So far from magnifying the love and grace of God, this claim dishonors both it and him, for it reduces God’s love to an impotent wish and turns the whole economy of ‘saving’ grace, so-called (‘saving’ is really a misnomer on this view), into a monumental divine failure.  Also, so far from magnifying the merit and worth of Christ’s death, it cheapens it, for it makes Christ die in vain.  Lastly, so far from affording faith additional encouragement, it destroys the scriptural ground of assurance altogether, for it denies that the knowledge that Christ died for me (or did or does anything else for me) is a sufficient ground for inferring my eternal salvation; my salvation, on this view, depends not on what Christ did for me, but on what I subsequently do for myself…You cannot have it both ways:  an atonement of universal extent is a depreciated atonement.” 

See also R.C. Sproul, The Holiness of God (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2nd edition, 2000) for another example of a theologian who explains the verses above as referring to ‘limited atonement.’

[21] Diadochos of Photiki, On Spiritual Perfection 62.  Quoted in Joel C. Elowski (editor) and Thomas C. Oden (general editor), Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament IVb: John 11 – 21 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), p.19 – 20. 

[22] Diadochos of Photiki, On Spiritual Perfection 62.  Quoted in Joel C. Elowski (editor) and Thomas C. Oden (general editor), Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament IVb: John 11 – 21 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), p.19 – 20. 

[23] James Arminius, The Writings of James Arminius, III, 454; cf. Roger E. Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006). 

[24] Roger E. Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), ch.10.

[25] Roger E. Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), p.142 – 146.

[26] Roger E. Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), p.65.

[27] Brandon Showalter, “Why Do Many Christians Think Calvinists Are Arrogant Jerks?” Christian Post, December 13, 2016; https://www.christianpost.com/news/why-do-many-christians-think-calvinists-are-arrogant-jerks.html.

[28] Kevin DeYoung, “Does Calvinism Make People Jerks?” The Gospel Coalition, March 28, 2012; https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/does-calvinism-make-people-jerks/.

[29] Brandon Showalter, “Why Do Many Christians Think Calvinists Are Arrogant Jerks?” Christian Post, December 13, 2016; https://www.christianpost.com/news/why-do-many-christians-think-calvinists-are-arrogant-jerks.html.

[30] Roger E. Olson, Against Calvinism (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), p.59, emphasis his.

[31] John Calvin, A Treatise of the Eternal Predestination of God, available here:  https://www.monergism.com/treatise-eternal-predestination-god-john-calvin.

[32] John Calvin, Institutes 3.23.2

[33] Edwin H. Palmer, The Five Points of Calvinism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1972), p.109.

[34] Stephen D. Crocco, “Whose Calvin?  Which Calvinism?  John Calvin and the Development of Twentieth-Century American Theology,” edited by Thomas J. Davis, John Calvin’s American Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p.177 – 8.

[35] Diadochos of Photiki, On Spiritual Perfection 62.  Quoted in Joel C. Elowski (editor) and Thomas C. Oden (general editor), Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament IVb: John 11 – 21 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), p.19 – 20. 

[36] I am deliberately quoting Roger E. Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), p.65 in his Arminian explanation for why God has a punitive hell and keeps unbelievers there.  See above for discussion.

[37] David L. Turner, “Matthew Among the Dispensationalists,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 53/4 (December 2010), 697 – 716; https://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/53/53-4/JETS_53-4_697-716_Turner.pdf demonstrates both the more traditional and the more recent “progressive dispensationalist” approaches to Jesus’ commands.  The traditional dispensationalist views the Sermon on the Mount as part of a “kingdom of God” that was offered to Israel and rejected.  The view is taught by the Scofield Bible.  Gerhard O. Ford, “The Lutheran View,” edited by Donald L. Alexander, Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988) demonstrates a rather extreme tendency among Lutherans to view all commands as “law” and forgiveness and mercy as “gospel.”  This would mean the Sermon on the Mount, especially, because of its depth and demand, is viewed as not truly livable.  However, Douglas Moo, “The Law of Christ as the Fulfillment of the Law of Moses: A Modified Lutheran View,” edited by Wayne G. Strickland and Stanley N. Gundry, Five Views on Law and Gospel (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996) shows that a different course can be found within the Lutheran tradition.

[38] This view is supported by Tertullian of Carthage and Augustine of Hippo’s distinction between “nature” and “grace.”  Nature is the realm of creation, including humans.  Grace is the activity of God, acting within and upon creation.  Augustine’s framework tends to dominate Western theology despite robust views of divine providence, because Augustine asserted that Christians were the recipients of more grace than non-Christians to support his theory of double predestination. 

On Tertullian, see Gösta Hallonsten, “Theosis in Recent Research: A Renewal of Interest and a Need for Clarity,” edited by Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung, Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007), p.285 – 286 notes,

“Tertullian’s emphasis on the relative independence and special character of creature in relation to Creator, however, seems to be a common inheritance in the subsequent Latin tradition. Thus, we see the tendency to distinguish between nature and grace in a way that is foreign to Eastern tradition.”

On Augustine, see Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church (New York: Penguin Books, 1993 2nd edition), p.219 – 220; http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/history_timothy_ware_2.htm#n2 notes,

“According to Augustine, man in Paradise was endowed from the start with all possible wisdom and knowledge: his was a realized, and in no sense potential, perfection. The dynamic conception of Irenaeus clearly fits more easily with modern theories of evolution [and the text of Genesis!] than does the static conception of Augustine.” 

Augustine can certainly be faulted here.  He quoted from Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.2.7 and 5.19.1 in his writings against Pelagius and Julian of Eclanum (Contra Julian 1.3.5), and mentions Irenaeus by name (1.7.32), yet apparently did not consistently understand Irenaeus on this point.  (He might also have quoted Against Heresies 4.30.1 in Christian Doctrine 2.40.60.)  Also, Ambrose of Milan (340 – 397), Paradise, chapter 5, paragraph 29 shows that Ambrose held to a developmental view of humanity in creation:

“Man, therefore, was, figuratively speaking, either in the shadow of life because our life on earth is but a shadow, or man had life, as it were, in pledge, for he had been breathed on by God. He had, therefore, a pledge of immortality, but while in the shadow of life he was unable, by the usual channels of sense, to see and attain the hidden life of Christ with God. Although not yet a sinner, he was not possessed of an incorrupt and inviolable nature… Hence, he was in the shadow of life, whereas sinners are in the shadow of death… There is no distinction, therefore, between the breath of God and the food of the tree of life. No man can say that he can acquire more by his own efforts than what is granted him by the generosity of God. Would that we had been able to hold on to what we had received! Our toils avail only to the extent that we take back again what was once conferred on us.”

Ambrose’s Paradise is dated between 374 to 383 AD.  Augustine was in Milan, in his early 30’s, from the fall of 384 to the summer of 386 AD, and Ambrose helped bring Augustine to Christian faith, so his neglect of Ambrose’s teaching requires explanation.  Significantly, Augustine believed that, despite the appearance given by Genesis that God took His time in creation, and lingered over the goodness of His creation, God created instantaneously (Augustine of Hippo, Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 3.7).

Edward T. Oakes, S.J., Infinity Dwindled to Infancy: A Catholic and Evangelical Christology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), p.163 – 164 points out that Augustine

 “placed the dilemma of a free will which was created good but which chooses evil anyway inside his nature/grace dialectic, whereas [Maximus] the Confessor saw the problem primarily inside his Christology; for… Christology dominates Maximus’ thought far more than it does in Augustine, with fateful consequences in the West.”

[39] This view is supported by the Eastern Orthodox understanding that all things exist by and within the energies of God.  “Nature” and “grace” are not truly distinct or meaningful categories because grace never left nature, and God gives all things graciously.  Even a person’s choice to freely reject Jesus is rooted synergistically in God’s grace towards that person, which enabled a genuinely free personal decision.

[40] Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 4.37.4; 4.38.3; 5.6.1; 5.8.1.; 5.10.1; 5.12;4; 5.16.1 – 3; see also John Behr, Asceticism and Anthropology in Irenaeus and Clement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) and Matthew Steenberg, Of God and Man: Theology as Anthropology from Irenaeus to Athanasius (New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2009)

[41] Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 4.38.3

[42] Athanasius of Alexandria, Against the Heathen 5.2; 8.1 – 2

[43] Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation 7.4

[44] John of Damascus, Against the Manicheans 94.1569, 1573.

[45] Rob Bell, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2011)

[46] Readers are likely to notice my indebtedness to C.S. Lewis, especially The Great Divorce (1945), The Weight of Glory (1949), and The Last Battle (1956).  C.S. Lewis himself was indebted to Athanasius and Nicene Trinitarian theology; see his introduction to On the Incarnation.