Idol Killer Interview 5 The Cross & Penal-Substitutionary Atonement

Warren McGrew and Paul Vendredi continue their exploration of Penal-Substitutionary Atonement (PSA), focusing on claims eight and nine. The discussion is based on Anselm's perspective, which suggests that God cannot forgive sin without first punishing the sinner or collecting the debt of sin from an alternate source. This idea is rooted in the notion that all sin is a debt owed to God for robbed honor (claim five)and that infants are also believed to owe this debt (claim six). Anselm, believing God to be strictly just, states that God could not forgive the debt without sacrificing a substitute.

Psalm 135;6 states that God can do whatever He pleases. The hosts suggest that this verse implies that God had various options to redeem mankind. One interpretation called the "restored-icon model" suggests that the second person of the Trinity, in the form of Jesus, restores the human icon by uniting all component parts of human nature with the divinity, restoring the image of God that was shattered by Satan. According to the Restored-Icon Model, Christ assumed human characteristics, including soul, mind, and will, in order to heal them. However, William Lane Craig, a proponent of PSA, asserts that Jesus had no human soul or will. This contradicts the Restored Icon Model's claims and, as Paul suggests, makes the incarnation's meaning and merit questionable. Craig's PSA theory posits that God the Father's wrath was satisfied through the spilling of Jesus' blood. The speaker contends that this view reduces Jesus to merely a "bag of blood" stapled to the second person of the Trinity, undermining the concept of Christ's healing and redemptive work.

Warren and Paul clarify that they do not deny the shedding of Christ's blood on the cross or disrespect the extent of what Christ accomplished. They note their concern with the simplistic understanding of Christ's blood as a mere symbol of atonement. They propose that the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection had deeper meaning beyond the shedding of blood alone. They acknowledge the resistance they may face from Protestant perspectives and emphasize the importance of acknowledging Christ's full humanity, including his human mind, soul, and will, when considering the extent of his redemptive work.

While Anselm's eighth claim is that God could have canceled mankind's debt by any means He desired, his ninth claim is that God is strictly just and cannot forgive a debt without first collecting it from an alternate source and cannot forgive a sinner without first punishing him or her. The hosts argue that these claims create a "lexical mess," as they are not consistent with the concept of forgiveness. Paul highlights three parables in the Bible that refute Anselm's thesis: the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and the Parable of the Uneven Debts. In the parables, forgiveness occurs without collection of the debt elsewhere. Paul emphasizes that the belief that God cannot forgive sin until it is first punished is not consistent with the forgiveness depicted in these parables.

Anselm's tenth claim tells us the atonements must mirror the fall and be as painful as possible. Anselm's first clause, suggesting the cross mirrors the tree of knowledge, is considered acceptable, though not a hard stance. However, it is the second clause that raises concerns. This claim, which holds that since the fall was easy, the atonement must be extremely painful, has influenced both Catholic and Protestant theology. Paul criticizes this notion, stating that there is no biblical support for the idea that the atonement must be brutal and barbaric in comparison to the fall. He uses Isaac Newton's law of equal and opposite reactions as an example, questioning how the easy fall could result in the necessity of an overly painful redemption. He also notes that finding explicit statements of this idea is challenging, though it is implicit in many discussions about the brutal killing of Christ.

The eleventh idea in the PSA model claims that the only commodity capable of recompensing God for his offended honor and making him propitious towards humanity is the shed blood of a god-man. The atonement school uses Romans 3;25, among other verses, as the proof text for this belief. However, the same word used for propitiation in the New Testament, hilasterion, can also be translated as “mercy seat,” leading to a dilemma in translation. Paul suggests that the answer lies in John 3:16, a verse stating that God has always been propitiously disposed toward humanity--which means God does not need to be propitiated!

Paul cautions that interpreting certain Bible verses, such as 1 Peter 3;18, outside of their original context can lead to absurdities. One example is the idea that God himself inflicted the torture upon Christ during the crucifixion. Another issue is how a finite human nature can pay off an infinite debt, which is a problem, as Anselm's doctrine suggests that it is the human nature of Christ that pays the debt. This leads to inconsistencies and an overall house of cards argument that collapses.