Penal Substitution: A Twisted Truth
This essay is about atonement—which means reconciliation, which means forgiveness—and how all of these function in the theology of what happened on the cross.
Firstly, the Bible says a lot of different things and uses different metaphors to talk about forgiveness and reconciliation, like it does other topics. This is why we have theological debates like Arminianism vs Calvinism. I admire the fact that the Bible isn’t clear on things, it humbles our ego and protects us from the dangerous legalism that leads to religious violence. All that being said, I am not claiming to know the answers. I am just opening the door to a conversation that has long been shut, without us even realizing it. Many fundamentalist Christians have been taught that penal substitution theory is the only atonement theory that exists. I’m simply sharing about how my learning about other atonement theories that have existed throughout Christian history changed my life.
Secondly, Before talking about forgiveness, I want to be sensitive to the fact that forgiveness can be used as a weapon, especially in religious contexts. It can be used as a tool for abusers to groom, gaslight, and manipulate their victims. For this reason I would like to clarify: Forgiveness, in terms of human relationships, does not mean the absence of boundaries to protect people from abusive behaviour. Also, no one is entitled to or owed forgiveness. That belief is toxic theology and a twist of the truth. Forgiveness is always a free gift which can bring a lot of healing to those who have been abused. Forgiveness also opens a door to those who have been forgiven to repent and do better.
Thirdly, I am not trying to convince people to throw out the penal substitution theory. Penal substitution theory is the most popular theory today and there is lots of Bible verses to support it. When it comes to the penal substitution theory, I have always been met with confusion in my body and that feeling that something isn’t quite right. The thing is about toxic theology is that it twists the truth just a little bit, and there is a lot of toxic theology that stems from penal substitution theory. Growing up, I would try so hard to make it make sense, and the simplest way I could understand penal substitution and atonement was: Jesus bought us all tickets to heaven, and the price of the ticket was his death. The thing is, I don’t necessarily disagree with that. I just redefined the terms, and its not just me, its a lot of people throughout history. What I’m saying isn’t new. Instead of saying “Jesus bought us tickets to heaven”, I would say he demonstrated how to manifest and access heaven on earth, or as Jesus liked to say, the kingdom of God, and the cost of achieving the collective liberation of all people, the oppressors and the oppressed, is unconditional love and forgiveness which stems from the belief that all people are worthy of redemption.
In this essay, I am going to be focusing on penal substitution theory, Christus Victor, and the scapegoat theory.
There’s two arguments on atonement/forgiveness:
Forgiveness requires payment, retribution, or punishment. This is punitive justice and this is how a penal justice system works. Where I live, in Canada, we have a penal justice system.
Forgiveness is completely free, and the holy response to being forgiven is repentance, making amends, and trying to reconcile, if possible. This is restorative justice and many Canadian indigenous nations have restorative justice systems.
Penal substitution theory argues that forgiveness requires payment, retribution or punishment because that is the Law of “Pure Justice”. It is restoring the scales by placing a “payment” on the opposite scale from the “sin”.
Meanwhile, Christus Victor and Scapegoat theory argues that forgiveness is a free gift and to “balance the scales”, or achieve reconciliation, the sin is just forgiven and taken off the scale.
So what did Jesus teach?
The sacrificial system that functioned in Jewish, Roman, and many other ancient societies around the world, rested on the belief that forgiveness required payment, retribution, punishment, an eye for an eye. So in order to be forgiven by God, you had to make sacrifices to God in order to make amends. Humanity’s relationship with God has historically been transactional. In Second Temple Judaism (when Jesus lived), to be forgiven by God, people went to the temple and purchased sacrifices and gifts—at a premium, with tax—and this filled the pockets of the religious and political elite. The temple authorities had actually ruled it so people couldn’t bring their own sacrifices, it had to be purchased in the temple market (where Jesus flipped the tables). The religious elite had basically monopolized God’s forgiveness (which has continued to happen; for one example, see “Indulgences”). To achieve the full forgiveness of sins, there were multiple rituals. One was that they had to lay their hands on a goat, confess their sins to the goat, and thereby “transfer” their sins out of them and into the animal. They would then flog and torture the goat and sent it out into the wilderness. The other one is the lamb atonement sacrifice, where they would transfer their sins to the lamb (the high priest would do this on behalf of all Israel), and then they would sacrifice it on the alter, and that is how people were appeased of their guilt. These types of scapegoat rituals were very common across cultures.
I don’t want to be disrespectful or anti-Semitic when talking about this, so please hear. Yom Kippur is the Jewish holiday that translates to “The Day of Atonement” in Hebrew. During this celebration Jewish people would perform these sacrifices. It is and was a beautiful celebration because it forced people to reflect on what they had done wrong and needed to make amends for every year; it is an unavoidable, restorative confrontation with yourself. Forgiving ourselves of our mistakes is just as important in our stories of redemption.
So Jesus entered the scene where the largest temples were corrupted by the empire and religious hypocrites. He immediately and repeatedly, through dozens of parables and teachings (the unforgiving brother/prodigal son, the unforgiving servant, the Lords Prayer, etc), taught that forgiveness is free, that God gives it freely, and that we should give it to each other, freely.
He would sandwich this teaching in with a defence that he is not destroying the law, but fulfilling it. He says this because he is literally changing the laws on forgiveness and making the sacrificial system redundant. One of his favourite things to do was go to people and tell them their sins are forgiven. This is what got him killed. Not because he was running through the streets claiming to be God; no one would have cared. They would have just said he was a mad man. He was targeted because he was disrupting the system. Telling people that God forgives them threatened the religious and political elite in two ways: It bypassed their power and authority, and it made their exploitive business redundant. They told him “You can’t forgive sins, only we—I mean, God—can do that. Are you saying you’re better than us? Are you claiming to be God?” And his response was just like, “I do what I want,” [paraphrased] (Matt. 9:1-8, Mk. 2:1-12, Lk. 5:17-26).
This is the most encompassing theme of not only Jesus’ ministry, but the whole Biblical narrative. Even in the Hebrew Scriptures, Israel broke their covenant with God, valued greed and power over justice and integrity, and then God would forgive them, because he loved them, and they’d try again.
Before moving on, I would like to clarify the relationship between forgiveness and repentance, because its not clarified enough in the church and it needs to be because its important and it gets messed up a lot. Did you know that it is proven that forgiving alcoholics is one of the only things that helps them stop drinking. People aren’t forgiven because they repent, people repent because they are forgiven. This is human nature; this is researched, studied, and proven. This is why Jesus said, “You are forgiven, now go and sin no more,” (Jn. 8:11). It speaks again to the fact that forgiveness is free, it does not require an apology or repentance. That would suck if I couldn’t forgive my abusers unless they apologized, when forgiving them is how I find healing. Thats silly, but thats arminianism.
Now the reason we get confused about forgiveness requiring a payment is because of the metaphors used to talk about what sin is. The word sin doesn’t actually exist in the Bible. It’s a simplified English word translated from different words used in the Bible to describe, honestly, different things. Theres three main words translated into sin. ‘Debt’ is called sin, though some translations leave it as debt. This is great because I think all these words should be left as they are. Debt is called a sin for when we harm or abuse someone, one could say we “owe them an apology”. Making amends usually requires that someone restores what they broke, when possible, though often this is impossible. ‘Weakness’ is translated into sin because when we make mistakes, it is a form of moral weakness. In Greek the word for weakness, ‘αμαρτία, is often synonymous with pride. ‘Weight’ is also called sin, because our own corruption can be a heavy burden on us and those around us. So forgiveness of ‘sin’, depending on what metaphor we are using for sin, is either a nulled debt (very popular metaphor in Jesus’ parables and teachings), a strengthened or healed weakness, or a lifted burden.
Two of those three definitions of forgiveness don’t translate to any sort of penal substitution. The only metaphor for sin that makes any room for penal substitution theory is sin as debt.
Debt can be forgiven in two ways:
A debt can be paid back, (but really thats not a forgiven debt, thats just a settled debt).
Or a debt can be forgiven, nulled, thereby settled by the person who is owed.
For example, I can either ask a judge to wave my parking tickets when I can’t afford to pay them, or a debt can be paid by someone else, like when my mom pays for my parking tickets. Penal substitution argues that Jesus stepped in and offered to pay the ticket.
But thats not really forgiveness, forgiveness is saying you don’t have to pay me back. I love you. We’re good.
This is why penal substitution theory, on its own, doesn’t make sense!
Many people believe that: “This is the Law, the only way to balance the scales is by making up for what you’ve done.” However, Jesus says that another way to restore the scales is just by forgiving the wrong done. Jesus advocated for restorative Justice, not penal Justice. He didn’t tell Christians to go pay off their neighbours debts, he told those in charge (which would be God in the scenario of the cross) to just forgive the debts! This is more revolutionary than penal justice and it still can coexist with all the verses around atonement and propitiation and debt.
Penal substitutionists talk about God needing to satisfy the Law. But what law are we talking about. Human law? Scapegoating law? The only law Jesus commanded was the law of loving God and loving your neighbour! (Lk. 10:26-28, Matt. 22:35-38). Unconditional forgiveness is the same thing as unconditional love.
Many people upon hearing the penal substitution theology of the cross are triggered by an image of God as an abusive father, and Jesus paid the cost of sin—God’s wrath—in our stead. Within this image if an abusive father, a mother stands in for her children to take the beating, or an older sibling stands in for the younger sibling. Penal substitution posits that Jesus is the mother or older sibling, and Father God is the abusive father, but he is rightfully acting out of “just intentions”. However, in reality, an abusive father and abusive people, use violence against others as a scapegoat for their own shame and trauma. The abusive father is not God, but the sin of violence and scapegoating. Not God. There’s no explanation beyond that. Violence is never deserved or “just has to happen to satisfy Justice”, whether that violence comes from an abusive father or God or a Judge or anyone. It’s a tale as old as time that vengeance never satisfies.
There’s this thing called “the cycle of violence”. The cycle of violence insists that only way to truly end violence is to be more violent. That is what the idea of God’s wrath is all about. Thats what wars are about. Thats what many superheroes are typically about. We hope that the good guys are more violent than the bad guys. However Jesus came on the scene and radically insisted that the only way to truly end violence is not to retaliate and perpetuate the cycle, but by ending the cycle: taking and absorbing and healing the violence, so it ends with you. “It is finished” (Jn 19:30). Thats what many people are doing when they are healing from generational trauma; they’re cycle breakers. I heard people like this once symbolically called sin eaters. Jesus was a sin eater. Lambs were symbolically sin eaters. To be a sin eater, one must forgive and love unconditionally the human souls who have been co-opted by the cycle of violence. Jesus said, “Forgive them for they know not what they do,” (Lk 23:34).
Seeing the cross in this way doesn’t take away any meaning. For me it gives it deeper meaning, and it changed my whole life and how I view Christ and the gospel. I have peace and freedom and finally, for the first time in hearing the gospel like this, I was actually able to believe what I believe. Before, it was me just trying to convince myself, trying to make it make sense, because I believed in God; but I believed in God not because of the way the cross was described to me, but in spite of the way the cross was described to me.
Anyone who feels or felt like I did, this is who I’m talking to. The cross can be a beautiful story, and not necessarily some weird-blood-magic-transaction that we needed because we are all depraved. That’s just a twist of the truth. The transaction is actually the gift of forgiveness, and we are not forgiven because we are depraved, but because we are loved and worthy of redemption and liberation.
Some may still wonder, as I did, about the belief that death is the price of having sinned. I believe that truth is still very much timeless. Sin, abuse, hate, unforgiveness, violence, all lead to death and destruction and a life that is hell and full of wrath, for you and everyone around you. Not in a transactional sense, but in a cause-and-effect sense. And how are we saved from this “death”? The cross: Sacrificial love and unconditional forgiveness for ourselves and others.