An Analogy For Penal Atonement
Posted in Quickies, Religion, Thinking Critically on | 1 minute | 18 Comments →
I’d like to share an experience I had this evening. A mother was tending to her crying baby, presumably related to the pain of teething. While trying to comfort the baby, the mother said,
Aw, I wish I could take the pain of teething for you…
I feel confident in asserting that the majority of individuals would both approve of the mother’s loving intentions, and encourage her to take the pain if she had the means. So why is it that such a disproportionate subset of people object when Christians preach a God both willing and able to take the pain of sin for us?
chroma
says...What pain is taken away from humans by Jesus dying on the cross?
cl
says...Sin entails the pain of death (Romans 6:23).
woodchuck64
says...I think the problem is that we actually deserve the pain of sin, under Christianity. Imagine Pol Pot found guilty by an international tribunal and sentenced to death, but then someone from the audience stands up and volunteers to take his place at the gallows. Of course no one would consider that seriously for a moment. But under Christianity, each (unsaved) person is as guilty and as deserving of death as Pol Pot and the idea that an innocent person can somehow pay that price doesn’t really fit our concept of justice.
As a former Christian, I don’t think I ever really believed that being born into sin meant I deserved death. Instead, it felt more like Jesus was rescuing me from a harshly unfair punishment.
Leah @ Unequally Yoked
says...I partially agree with woodchuck that penal substitution feels strange if punishment is deserved (and I don’t think anyone believes that teething pain is justice being visited on the unrighteous).
My main objection is that a mother loves her child and I’m still perplexed by the idea of love from a creator to a speck or love for a creature you don’t know who doesn’t know you.
chroma
says...cl,
Humans don’t feel the “pain of death”? What is the “pain of death”? How does Jesus dying take away this “pain of death” (what are the mechanisms involved)? Why need we feel the “pain of death” to begin with?
Pains related to “sin,” in theory, are not independent of intentions, choices, circumstances, states of minds, and actions, both past and future, potential an actual. Often realization, enlightenment, wisdom, and change may be delivered through pain and catharsis, and both intellectual and emotional maturity may be stunted via spoiling and sheltering. None of this shows through in the baby analogy. Is this important or negligible?
Can you provide examples of atheists who “object when Christians preach a God both willing and able to take the pain of sin for us” – framed as such, or equivalently?
tmp
says...“So why is it that such a disproportionate subset of people object when Christians preach a God both willing and able to take the pain of sin for us?”
My Christian theology is pretty shaky, but isn’t sin in general, and Original Sin in particular, just God being a dick?
Taking pain from a loved one would be commendable. Threatening to hit a loved one by a 2×4, and then hitting yourself instead is just some sort of weird masochism.
cl
says...Sorry for the delay all. I’m sure you noticed that I spend more time on other blogs than my own.
woodchuck64,
Though I see what you mean, I would say we deserve the consequences of our sin, under Christianity.
I agree. However, imagine a sinner of any degree that would actually concede to wrongdoing and understand why it is wrong. If this person was earnest, would it not be honorable to give them a second chance?
Leah,
Hey there.
Certainly. That’s not what I’m saying.
I would be perplexed by that, too. That’s not the type of faith I have. Rather, I believe God knows each and every one of us from the inside out. Of course, this doesn’t mean God is under any obligation to tolerate our willful, continued unrighteousness. In the same way a loving parent will eventually put out a trouble-making child, I see God as a loving God who will eventually put out His trouble-making children.
chroma,
Because death is the logical entailment of sin.
I agree wholeheartedly.
Again, I agree. In fact, I believe this is precisely why God has made provision for us to escape death. God knew that some of us – despite our former intentions, choices, actions, etc. – would choose righteousness if given the chance.
Neither. The point of the baby analogy wasn’t to be a full-on, complete analogy. The point was to imply that God is motivated by a similar love as the mother.
Do a search for “Penal Substitution Theory” on CSA. They’re all over the place.
tmp,
Well, if your definition of a “dick” is somebody who explains clear parameters to His creation and the consequences of going outside them, and is then willing to give His creation a second chance despite that fact, then yeah – I’d agree.
So is throwing one a life raft to escape death, if you ask me.
I don’t see the biblical account of God thus. God created humans for good purposes, and explained both the parameters and consequences. Then, when humans erred, God made provision to give them a second chance.
woodchuck64
says...cl,
Yes, it would. And if you’re saying that the atonement makes the most sense as God changing (or pretending to change) his mind and giving sinners a second chance by finding (or pretending to find) a loophole in the rules, then I withdraw my objection.
tmp
says...“Well, if your definition of a “dick” is somebody who explains clear parameters to His creation and the consequences of going outside them, and is then willing to give His creation a second chance despite that fact, then yeah – I’d agree.”
It’s probably just the brand of Christianity that I’m most familiar with. Newborn babies are damned by default. Salvation requires (unjustified) faith. That’s dickery with a capital D. No matter what some of your (very) distant ancestors may have done. Also, the entire concept of sin does not make sense.
“So is throwing one a life raft to escape death, if you ask me.”
Yes, but what does this have to do with penal substitution?
Isn’t that one about an aspect of God dying horribly so that mankind can escape arbitrary punisment by another aspect of God? Throwing a life raft is useful. Not sinking the ship would be better still.
“God created humans for good purposes, and explained both the parameters and consequences. Then, when humans erred,”
Humans erred because they were flawed. Their creator was omniscient and omnipotent. That means they were created flawed on purpose. And this means the creator was a dick.
cl
says...woodchuck64,
I’m not sure that “changing of mind” needs to come into play. I’m simply saying there’s nothing wrong, immoral, inconsistent, incoherent, etc. with God deciding to extend grace to whomever shall earnestly embrace it. Aside from that, I’m not sure if I have anything else to add at this point, but, if something comes to mind, I will.
tmp,
I disagree, and I don’t know what else to say. You conceive of God as a “dick with a capital D.” I conceive of God as just to the point of extending grace. If I conceived of God as you do, I’d probably be an atheist, too.
chroma
says...And how is our not having the pain of death the logical entailment of Jesus dying on wood, might I ask? I’ve never been able to heal a friend’s bruise by hitting myself.
tmp
says...cl,
(about sin)
“I disagree, and I don’t know what else to say.”
Sin, as it was explained to me, is kind of a victimless crime. If it does not hurt anyone, it cannot be wrong. It just doesn’t make sense. Well, it might offend God. But then God would be really hypersensitive and prone to excessive punishments. In other words, a dick. :) Of course, it may be that it was poorly explained or I misunderstood. Never had any real motivation to find out more.
Anyway, points about the original analogy, that may make sense even to a christian:
1. We are not talking about undeserved pain, but justified punishment. There is a difference.
2. An omnipotent God would not need to do substitute atonement. He could just declare the crime void. (If you were given options to take the pain or just to make it go away altogether, and you chose to take the pain, people might look at you oddly.)
“If I conceived of God as you do, I’d probably be an atheist, too.”
Well, this is how God was initially explained to me(Salvation from faith in Jesus alone, default mode damnation. I immediately thought about people who lived BC, or in Americas and the like. This seemed very wrong to me. Did I want to be saved by sucking up to such monster?) I think I was seven at the time. It was mildly traumatizing, until I realized that the teachers were full of it. Which really didn’t take very long at all, fortunately.
cl
says...tmp,
Really? Murder, theft, adultery, and the likes are all victimless crimes?
Yes, I know there’s a difference, but that’s not the point. As I said above, the point of the baby analogy wasn’t to be a full-on, complete analogy. The point was to imply that God is motivated by a similar love as the mother.
True, but a just God couldn’t just “declare the crime void,” and the God I believe in is just.
tmp
says...“Really? Murder, theft, adultery, and the likes are all victimless crimes?”
Well, no. But murder is murder in addition to being a sin. I though more about minor stuff like blasphemy or sexual behavior or the like. This is probably limitation of my knowledge; poorly explained and poorly understood. The way it was explained to me, was that sin is not something that is wrong; it is something that God disapproves of. And it is terribly petty to condemn(and punish) things simply because you don’t like them. Even if you are a god.
“The point was to imply that God is motivated by a similar love as the mother.”
And my point is, that it is not necessarily love that people object to. The objection can also be about the implementation. For example, if a mother decides to give a teething baby a stiff dose of painkillers, the act may well be motivated by love but…
“True, but a just God couldn’t just ‘declare the crime void,’ and the God I believe in is just.”
Aha. So 1)God declares the crime void and 2)God atones for that voiding on the cross. It actually makes sense, when put like this. It’s not really substitution, but real substitution would be 1)God declares the crime void and 2)God has an innocent nailed to the cross to make up for it. Which would be worse than simply voiding the crime.
Christian thinking it interesting. Perplexing, but interesting. I must admit that I don’t really get it.
cl
says...tmp,
Hey no problem. In my experience, that’s pretty much the standard when it comes to religion. When I used to go to church, I would often find myself scratching my head because many, many things they teach in church are either vague or in direct contradiction to scripture.
While I conceive of sin as something that is in fact wrong, I agree that it seems petty to punish acts simply on an “I don’t like” basis. However, I don’t think that’s why God judges sin. I think God judges sin precisely because it leads to suffering and misery for the human race, thus interfering with God’s plan.
I know, I get that. At the same time, God’s love is what motivates the implementation, and it always perplexes me to hear people argue what essentially amounts to some variant of, “Grace is incoherent.”
I’m pretty sure that’s not what I’m saying. I think of it more like this: God is just and cannot simply declare the crime void. Therefore, somebody has to take the punishment else God would be perverting justice. Jesus, being innocent, takes the punishment knowing that it would allow grace to extend to the rest of us.
Now, if I were to tell you that this all makes perfect, absolutely-clear sense to me, I’d be misleading you. For example, I wonder about the Old Testament Israelites, many of whom the Bible clearly implies will be present at the resurrection, yet, they lived and died before Jesus even walked the Earth. Of course, this is in no way damning to the arguments I’m making or to the Bible’s claims in general. I just treat it as a invitation to deeper thought and avoiding overly-simplistic, dogmatic theologies – much like the ones you say you were reared on.
To foreshadow a future post [or possibly post series] that I’ve been contemplating writing, I think the history of religion makes much more sense if we proffer Satan at the helms and go from there. But, more on that later.
tmp
says...cl,
“it always perplexes me to hear people argue what essentially amounts to some variant of, ‘Grace is incoherent.'”
It sounds pretty incoherent to me. I admit to very limited understanding, though. But if people argue that grace is incomprehensible, then they very clearly have not comprehended it. It must be at least somewhat hard to comprehend.
“Therefore, somebody has to take the punishment else God would be perverting justice. Jesus, being innocent, takes the punishment knowing that it would allow grace to extend to the rest of us.”
Interfering with just punishment is by definition unjust. If the punishment was unjust to begin with, then it would be noble to take it on oneself(unless you have means to negate it altogether; otherwise it is just masochistic). Pick your poison.
“they lived and died before Jesus even walked the Earth”
This is exactly the argument that prevented me from becoming Christian(well in addition to geography; not all people in the world are given even a chance to hear about Jesus). There is simply no way to make salvation “through faith alone; through grace alone; through Jesus alone” (or whatever the English translation is) even remotely fair.
“overly-simplistic, dogmatic theologies – much like the ones you say you were reared on”
I was not reared on any theology. I just had a few hours of religious education every week at school. I was completely atheistic, in a sense of “absence of god belief” before that. And the church was actually very liberal Lutheran (the roof is high and the walls are wide, as they say). I simply found the basic tenets of Lutheranism unfair(I’m not sure how Lutheranism compares in dogmatism). There is, probably, some more complicated theology later on to explain away the horribleness of the simple version, although I don’t believe we had that at school. I wonder why, actually. I guess they didn’t expect a child to actually question what the teachers were saying.
I’m looking forward to your posts. They can, hopefully, help me better understand religious thinking. I’m really, really, bad at it. :)
cl
says...tmp,
I’ve got some ideas for an expanded analogy that I think you might find useful. I’ll be surprised if you respond that this new analogy is incoherent, but, we’ll see. More on that later.
…and, that religious education is the result of the particular theologies adopted by those who taught you. So yeah, you’ve been reared on at least one theology, and probably components of several.
tmp
says...cl,
“I’ve got some ideas for an expanded analogy that I think you might find useful. I’ll be surprised if you respond that this new analogy is incoherent, but, we’ll see.”
We are working with different definition of grace, I believe. The one I’m familiar with includes forgiveness, which does not make sense, when God would be responsible for the things forgived in the first place.
“…and, that religious education is the result of the particular theologies adopted by those who taught you.”
Yes, but that religious education has very little impact on my upbringing, with the exception of my belief that:
1. Christian God is a dick. Which, in retrospect, is overly harsh. I’m only familiar with on interpretation, and then only cursorily familiar.
2. Teachers (and people in power in general) can and will be wrong.
In addition, you were commenting on overly dogmatic sects, and I really though that basic Lutheranism was pretty tolerant as far as Christianity goes. But I may be wrong. If Christian salvation in general does not require, well, belief in God(and Jesus in particular), then yeah, they are overly dogmatic. It’s this requirement of faith that I couldn’t accept.