Theology question: If you’ve moved away from penal substitutionary atonement as your (at least main) understanding of the atonement, (how) has your understanding of “God made him to be sin who knew no sin” in 2 Cor. 5:21 changed?

@joshuapsteele In the whole incarnation, by the action of God, the Word who was not subject to all that sin is and does took on fallen human nature in its fallenness, knowing in the body all that sin is and does, sinlessly experiencing not all the divine punishment for sin but all the human consequences of sin

@joshuapsteele My first instinct now is some scapegoat language: God allowed human power structures to kill him as a sacrifice to maintain their status quo, placing on him the "sin" of challenging those power structures, exposing the injustice of that system in the process.

@joshuapsteele The book Lamb of the Free deals with this at length

@joshuapsteele
1. I post this with fear and trembling because theology on the internet is almost universally a pestilence.
2. I understand penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) to teach that God’s wrath must be appeased and His honor restored for God to forgive. Reading that into “God made him to be sin who knew no sin” seems a heavy lift. If this were a trial, I’d move for judgment on the evidence or a directed verdict without putting on any case.
3. I, a layman chastened by how wrong I had been for five decades about so many things, personally “moved away from” PSA by leaving Calvinism and entering Orthodoxy. That God felt wrathful about my sin is not how I first learned Christ, though I picked it up later in an Evangelical hot house and later still reinforced it with obsessive reading in arch-Calvinism. (It wasn’t my parents’ fault, except insofar at they unwittingly entrusted me to false teachers.) I was more than happy to shed it twenty-seven or so years ago.
4. PSA is not in Orthodox (i.e., ancient) liturgies or hymnody, predating Anselm who introduced the concept to the West. (I’m aware that some try to read it back into third or fourth century fathers.) On the contrary, we constantly hear affirmed that God is gracious and loves mankind.
5. I’m aware that this is an argument from authority, but that’s a feature, not a bug.

@joshuapsteele PSA is so grotesquely blasphemous and contrary to the Church's original understanding that if one text appears to support it, I'll figure that the meaning of the text is beyond me.

@joshuapsteele It's about identification, solidarity, and--yes--substitution, but not of the penal sort.

@ReaderJohn @JohnBrady @nathanrhale -- I’d be curious how you respond to this proposition:

Jesus’ death on the Cross was not so much a sacrifice, but more like a "repayment" for our having broken something God gave us, i.e., creation, which includes our own lives.

In the vein of curio-shop signs that say, "Lovely to look at, a pleasure to hold, but if you break it, consider it sold," is our situation one in which justice demands that we make good something we've broken? The original creation, including humanity, was perfect, but we cannot perfectly restore it, in part because it would require that we give ourselves (i.e, one of things we've broken) to replace God's original perfect creation.

But, because we are manifestly imperfect, we're not able to make full recompense or do full justice. But Jesus' sacrifice of his perfect self on our behalf frees us from that box. In his giving of himself, Jesus/God is simultaneously just and merciful. So, think of the Cross not so much as a sacrifice to appease an angry God, but as a simple act of justice: being responsible for our having broken creation.

Moreover, in this combined act of justice/mercy, God defeated the power of Satan. The exact manner by which this came to be is a holy mystery, but suffice to say that Satan, who traffics in neither justice nor mercy, but only in power and enslavement, cannot withstand a God who is both just and merciful.

Thoughts?

@JimRain @JohnBrady @nathanrhale

I already went as far out on a limb as I care to.

The Nicene Creed expresses no theory of the atonement, and neither will I. I'll leave it to the realm of apophasis, saying "no, it's not PSA," without venturing a cataphatic answer.

@JimRain @JohnBrady @joshuapsteele I could get behind a lot of this, I think. The "justice" I see in view is not "retributive" or even so much "repayment" so much "restoration" or even "healing" to me.

@ReaderJohn Fair enough. And thanks for "cataphatic."

@drewbelf Thanks. That rings true of what little I know of St. Anselm. I shall learn more!

@nathanrhale Yes: restoration (or maybe "restorative justice") sounds right. And healing is certainly the product of God's justice and mercy.

@JimRain Lovely little thread to read from everyone.

I’m very happily agnostic on this topic. (“Reverent agnosticism” is the term, borrowing from George Hunsinger. Not a term about faith itself but about particular contested doctrines of the faith.)

I’m a million miles — and a million words — from being even a Barthian layman, but I think he took a similar apophatic-like approach, and one that I quite like.

Here’s something from his Dogmatics IV/1 (emphasis mine):

“He himself [the priest of the Old Testament] must receive the sacra no less than others. There is no such reservation in the case of Jesus Christ. As the Son of God He acts exclusively on behalf of the people and not for Himself.

“For this reason He is the true, and essential and original Priest, the ‘great high-priest’ (Heb. 4:14), ‘not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life’ (Heb. 7:16) … [Skipping stuff about Melchizedek, etc, etc 🤓]… What the priest after the order of Aaron does must be authorised by the Law, which is before him and after him and therefore over him and those like him. And the dignity and force of his offering consists in the fact that it is brought according to this Law, that the bringing of it is a single case under this Law. That is why it has to be repeated. That is why—and this is the great limitation of all other priestly work—it is not the thing itself, the reconciliation of man with God, but only the ‘type and shadow’ of it (Heb. 8:5), an indication only, a powerful symbolising and attesting of the atonement which will be made by God Himself. [And here comes the apophatic — but more importantly, humble and praiseful — bit.] If in Jesus Christ we had to do with a high-priest of this kind, with another symbolical representation of the atonement, then we have to ask under what law He stands, what He represents, what general necessity there is for the ‘satisfaction’ He makes, what higher truth is revealed in the reality of His cross. There is always a strong temptation to look for Him on this level and therefore to put questions like this. But He is a Priest after the order of Melchisedec. That is, He is an instance of priestly action for which there is no parallel, which cannot be deduced from anything else, which stands under no law but that established and revealed in the fact that there was this instance. And this is the instance of effectively priestly action because in it the action is complete. It is not the symbol for a general truth which lies above it. It is the instance in which satisfaction—that which suffices for the reconciliation of the world with God—has been made (satis fecit) and can be grasped only as something which has in fact happened, and not as something which had to happen by reason of some upper half of the event; not, then, in any theory of satisfaction, but only as we see and grasp the satis-facere which has, in fact, been achieved.”

@joshuapsteele @ReaderJohn @nathanrhale @JohnBrady @drewbelf

@tinyroofnail thank you for this

@tinyroofnail ... "which cannot be deduced from anything else," -- that's wonderful. Thank you,