The Trinity & the Penal Satisfaction Theory of the Atonement
The relation that exists between a particular aspect of the Trinitarian teachings of classical Christianity and a particular theory regarding the atonement of the cross (a theory which is now widely assumed to be the only acceptable version of the atonement) was initially perceived by this writer while doing research on the subject of the popular teaching of Unconditional Eternal Security (a.k.a. Once Saved Always Saved). The connection that exists between the atonement of the cross and intra-Trinitarian relations became evident because of how Unconditional Eternal Security advocates would very often attempt to support their arguments by appealing to the atonement of the cross. They commonly assert that all of our sins have been paid for (past, present, and future) and can never be charged back to our account because God’s wrath has been satisfied—Jesus took the punishment from God that we deserved.
Like Charles Stanley (president of the S.B.C. 1984-1986), advocates of Unconditional Eternal Security often assert that holding to a position of Conditional Security is tantamount to denying the finished atoning work of Christ.[1] However, not only can it be proven that Unconditional Eternal Security advocates depart from the earliest, most universally held consensus of Christian teaching on the subject of salvation security, but in their desperate efforts to defend their doctrine by appealing to and arguing from the Penal Satisfaction theory of the atonement, they only reveal how inconsistent this concept of the atonement is with a well-established key element of Trinitarian doctrine—the inseparability of the three divine persons.[2]
Many modern-day proponents of Unconditional Eternal Security, which is also sometimes referred to as Perseverance of the Saints (which is what the “P” in T.U.L.I.P. stands for, being a “Calvinistic” doctrine which actually gained initial entry into the Church by way of Augustine’s deterministic teachings on Predestination), appear to have simply assumed that the penal satisfaction model of the atonement is the only correct way to understand the atonement of the cross.[3] Indeed, this understanding of the atonement has become so popular that even many proponents of conditional security (“Arminians”) hold to this penal satisfaction atonement theory as well due to the doctrinal “cross-pollination” that so often takes place, even though Anselm’s satisfaction theory appears to have taken on the particularly “penal” element due to the teachings of John Calvin. When Calvin was commenting on the phrase from the Apostle’s Creed that mentions Christ’s “descent into hell” (which originally referred to Hades instead of Gehenna), it can be seen that he gave a unique interpretation to this phrase (in light of the Masoretic rendering of Isaiah 53 rather than the Septuagint rendering) and asserted that it referred to the punishment that he believed Jesus had to endure at the hands of the Father. He wrote:
How should we understand Christ’s ‘descent into hell’ which is mentioned in the Creed?…Nothing would have been achieved if Christ had only suffered physical death. In order to come between us and God’s anger, to satisfy his righteous judgment, it was necessary for him to feel the full force of divine vengeance…he endured the death which God has to inflict on the sinner. It is ridiculous to object that this [i.e. Calvin’s interpretation] makes a mockery of the order of the Creed, because an event [i.e. Jesus’ punishment by the Father] which came before the burial is placed after it.[4] After explaining what Christ [physically] endured, the Creed rightly speaks of the unseen and incomprehensible [spiritual] judgment which he endured from God [i.e. being punished with the pains of Gehenna, enduring God’s wrath]. This teaches us that not only was Christ’s body given as the price of our redemption, but there was a greater and even more amazing price: he bore in his soul the torture due to condemned and ruined man.[5]
But is the penal satisfaction theory of the atonement in harmony with the overwhelming consensus of teachings held by normative Christianity regarding the inseparability of the three divine persons of the Trinity? Surely upon giving the matter due reflection, the reader will have to admit that there is definitely a conflict between these two teachings, which would then hopefully prompt the reader to investigate other models of the atonement.
The fact that teachings on the Trinity are related to teachings on the atonement of the cross is clearly seen in the explanations that are often given of Matthew 27:46/Mark 15:34, where Jesus quotes Psalm 22:1 while on the cross and cries out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” For example, the highly popular Calvinistic Baptist preacher John F. MacArthur Jr. comments:
As Christ hung there, He was bearing the sins of the world. He was dying as a substitute for others. To Him was imputed the guilt of their sins, and He was suffering the punishment for those sins on their behalf. And the very essence of that punishment was the outpouring of God’s wrath against sinners. In some mysterious way during those awful hours on the cross, the Father poured out the full measure of His wrath against sin, and the recipient of that wrath was God’s own beloved Son!
In this lies the true meaning of the cross. Those who try to explain the atoning work of Christ in any other terms inevitably end up nullifying the truth of Christ’s atonement altogether. Christ was not merely providing an example for us to follow….He wasn’t merely making a public display so that people would see the awfulness of sin. He wasn’t offering a ransom price to Satan—or any of the other various explanations religious liberals, cultists, and pseudo-Christian religionists have tried to suggest over the years.
Here’s what was happening on the cross: God was punishing His own Son as if He had committed every wicked deed done by every sinner who would ever believe. And He did it so that He could forgive and treat those redeemed ones as if they had lived Christ’s perfect life of righteousness.[6]
MacArthur says similar things in his study Bible.[7] There are multiple problems with the statement of MacArthur’s that was given directly above to represent the penal satisfaction view of the atonement, all of which beg to be identified and expounded upon.[8] However, the problem with his statement that this article seeks to focus on is how it violates one of the basic, guiding principles concerning intra-Trinitarian relations that was universally held to be true by classic, normative Christianity—the inseparability of the three divine persons. In the penal satisfaction view of the atonement there is not only a separation between the Father and the Son, but the Father is then set against the Son in that the Father pours out His wrath upon the Son. Therefore, not only is God the Father separated from God the Son, we then have God (the Father) punishing God (the Son). But how is such a teaching consistent with the affirmation of classic Christianity that the three divine persons are eternally and inseparably united or one in their essence, will, power and work?
This writer, having been brought up in the Calvinistic Baptist tradition and having been a fan of John MacArthur (listening to his broadcasts, reading his many books and fully digesting the many study notes in The MacArthur Study Bible) once held to this same view of things until being exposed to the teachings of the pre-Nicene Christians. One aspect of their teachings regarding the nature of the relationships that exist between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit that can be seen being continually and repetitively stressed is that the three divine persons cannot be separated. The pre-Nicene, Nicene, and post-Nicene Christians that were, for the most part, considered to be orthodox and even including orthodox Christian writers well into the Middle Ages (at least up to Anselm) all apparently believed that it was faulty thinking to imagine that there can be a separation between the divine persons. They insisted that there were distinctions to be maintained between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but they also insisted that these distinctions existed without separation. Although they taught that there were distinctions in order and that one divine person may have a special emphasis in the role or work that can be seen being attributed to them in Scripture, in reality, all three divine persons work together—with no separation—in doing the one work of God, and this is eternally true even though there are observable distinctions being portrayed as existing between the divine persons within the pages of Scripture. Therefore the Father could never have separated Himself from the Son or acted against the Son by pouring the full force and fury of His divine wrath upon the Son.
The penal satisfaction view of the atonement introduces division between the Father and the Son, thus going directly against the basic affirmation concerning intra-Trinitarian relations that the three divine persons are permanently co-inhered and have existed that way from all eternity past and have never been separated at any time and never will be. According to 2 Corinthians 5:19, it does not appear that the Apostle Paul (whom Calvinists especially like to point to as teaching their understandings of Election and Predestination) necessarily understood the Father and the Son to have been separated when Jesus was on the cross.[9]
Even the writings of Augustine (the person from the “early church” that the Calvinists would point to as being the progenitor of their T.U.L.I.P. doctrines) fail to provide support for the penal satisfaction theory. For example, in book one of Augustine’s The Trinity, he says that “just as Father and Son and Holy Spirit are inseparable, so do they work inseparably.”[10] Then, in book thirteen of The Trinity, Augustine asks some rhetorical questions that seem to cast a high degree of doubt on the basic assumptions of the penal satisfaction theory.
Is it really the case that when God the Father was angry with us he saw the death of his Son on our behalf, and was reconciled to us? Does this mean then that his Son was already so reconciled to us that he was even prepared to die for us, while the Father was still so angry with us that unless the Son died for us he would not be reconciled to us?…Would the Father not have spared his own Son but handed him over for us, if he had not already been reconciled?…Nor does the Father’s not sparing him mean that the Son was handed over for us against his will…Thus the Father and the Son and the Spirit of them both work all things together…[11]
Augustine also reveals in book thirteen of The Trinity, by way of a number of scattered statements (found on pages 357-368 of Hill’s translation), that he held to a version of the atonement that is more akin to the Ransom theory or the “Christus Victor” Classical/Triumphant theory of the atonement where the temptation for Satan to shed Jesus’ blood served as a type of mousetrap or fishhook which caught Satan when he fell for the bait. Therefore, while Calvin (like Luther), may have drawn from Augustine concerning the determinism that was inherent to their doctrinal systems, Calvin’s thoughts on the atonement of the cross did not come from Augustine.
But if the Father did not forsake and pour out his wrath against Jesus when he cried out with a loud voice and quoted Psalm 22:1 while he was hanging on the cross, then what was happening at that moment? One possible explanation is that Jesus may have begun quoting Psalm 22 in the hearing of the Jews gathered around the cross to bring it to their memory so they might see the similarities between that Psalm and the situation at hand (see Ps 22:6-8, 12-31) in order to show them that prophecy was being fulfilled in their very presence.
However, even though the three divine persons cannot be separated, there is at least one sense that Jesus was left alone on the cross. Only the Son of God who had taken on flesh could perform the act of blood atonement by suffering and dying on a wooden cross or “a tree.” In this sense, Jesus was “left alone” to do the work of redemption, to tread the winepress alone. He was “forsaken” to do what only the Incarnate God-man could do. He was left alone, but yet, he was not alone because God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor 5:19).
In all of the early Christian commentary that I was able to find concerning Matt 27:46/Mk 15:34 (such as from Tertullian, Dionysius, Origen, Hilary of Poitiers, Jerome, Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine) none of the writers say that Jesus is literally forsaken or literally separated from the Father according to divine essence. These early Christian writers, in wrestling with the text, will only go so far as to affirm or explain that the Father and the Son were separated in some sense (the explanations mostly relate this to Jesus’ humanity). Two examples of such commentary will be given in closing.
First, Tertullian, writing at approximately 208 A.D., comments as follows:
You have Him exclaiming in the midst of His passion: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”[12] Either, then, the Son suffered, being “forsaken” by the Father, and the Father consequently suffered nothing, inasmuch as He forsook the Son; or else, if it was the Father who suffered, then to what God was it that He addressed His cry? But this was the voice of flesh and soul, that is to say, of man—not of the Word and Spirit, that is to say, not of God; and it was uttered so as to prove the impassibility of God, who “forsook” His Son, so far as He handed over His human substance to the suffering of death. This verity the apostle also perceived, when he writes to this effect: “If the Father spared not His own Son.”[13] This did Isaiah before him likewise perceive, when he declared: “And the Lord hath delivered Him up for our offences.”[14] In this manner He “forsook” Him, in not sparing Him; “forsook” Him, in delivering Him up. In all other respects the Father did not forsake the Son, for it was into His Father’s hands that the Son commended His spirit.[15] Indeed, after so commending it, He instantly died…For the Son, therefore, to die, amounted to His being forsaken by the Father.[16]
Second, in the works of Dionysius of Alexandria (a pupil of Origen’s), who was writing at approximately 262 A.D., there are two separate expositions amongst his exegetical fragments that deal with Jesus’ cry of dereliction (“Why hast Thou forsaken me?”). Dionysius gives his explanations (one is longer than the other) and concludes them both with exactly the same words: “This I judge to have been the Saviour’s meaning in this concise utterance. And He certainly spake truth then. Nevertheless He was not forsaken.”[17]
NOTES
[1] Charles Stanley, Eternal Security: Can You Be Sure? (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990), 9, 11, 154.
[2] It is an ancient teaching that the Trinity cannot be divided, separated, or severed. For some clear (but non-exhaustive) pre-Nicene examples of this Christian teaching, see: The Ante-Nicene Fathers (ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson; 1885-1887; repr. 10 vols. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994): Vol. 3, p. 598, 599, 601, 603, 604, 605, 607, 609, 613, 615, 617, 619, 623; Vol. 5, p. 230; Vol. 6, p. 93, 292, 295; Vol. 7, p. 365, 366; Vol. 9, p. 486.
[3] Calvinists are quick to point to Augustine’s deterministic teachings as proof that their distinctive doctrines were taught by someone in the “early church,” but as will be demonstrated in this paper, Augustine did not teach the satisfaction theory as it was taught by Anselm or the penal satisfaction theory of the atonement as it was taught by Calvin. Therefore, the penal satisfaction model of the atonement seems to have originated from within the Calvinist tradition independent of Augustine. The penal satisfaction theory seems to be a morbid twist on Anselm’s earlier version of the satisfaction theory of the atonement. Unfortunately, this Calvinistic penal explanation of the atonement (in which God the Father punishes God the Son with all the pains of hell that every member of God’s Elect that has ever been born would have otherwise had to suffer) has now spread into non-Calvinist Christian traditions as well. However, for non-Calvinists, because their understanding of the extent of the atonement is general rather than particular, or unlimited (universal), rather than limited, Jesus would have been punished not only for the sins of God’s Elect, but for the sins of every person that has ever been or will ever be born, even those who actually end up in hell. Therefore, under such an arrangement, the sins of those who end up suffering in Gehenna will be twice-punished—Jesus being punished for them once on the cross and the condemned sinners themselves being personally punished for them again in hell.
[4] The Apostle’s Creed says that Christ descended into ‘hell’ after he had been buried. Calvin anticipates and preemptively ridicules the very reasonable objection that people might make to his strained interpretation in which he claims that Christ’s descent into ‘hell’ which took place after his death actually referred to God the Father pouring out all of the divine punishments & the pains of the lake of fire upon the Son while he was still alive on the cross in his ‘God-forsaken’ condition.
[5] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. Tony Lane and Hilary Osborne, Abr. ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, reprint 1987), 2:16:10. Words in brackets and underlining mine.
[6] John MacArthur Jr., The Murder of Jesus (Nashville: Word Publishing, 2000), 218-219.
[7] John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (Nashville: Word Publishing, 1997), 1445 commenting on Matt 26:39; 1449 commenting on Matt 27:46; 1500 commenting on Mk 15:34; 1772 commenting on 2 Cor 5:21.
[8] One of the many problems with MacArthur’s statement is that the Scriptures repeatedly stress Jesus’ suffering, not His being punished. Where does the New Testament ever specifically state that Jesus was being punished?
[9] 2 Cor 5:19: “…that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself…” (NKJV).
[10] Saint Augustine, The Trinity, 2nd ed. Translated and annotated by Edmund Hill. Edited by John E. Rotelle. (New York: New City Press, 1991), 70-71.
[14] This is the sense rather than the words of Is 53:5-6.
[16] Tertullian, Against Praxeas 30. (ANF 3:626-627). Bolding mine.
[17] Dionysius, The Works of Dionysius: Exegetical Fragments 2 & 3. (ANF 6:115, 119). Bolding mine.