Why Our Moral Debt Could Be Transferred to Jesus

In a post addressing “19 Objections and Answers on Penal Substitutionary Atonement,” Derek Rishmawy responds to the objection that “penal substitutionary atonement is morally repugnant because moral guilt is not transferable. It is wicked to punish the innocent in the place of the guilty”:

In response to this, some have noted that some forms of debt are transferable. People can pay off each other’s financial debts all the time. Why not Christ? Well, as long as it is thought of financially, yes, that seems unproblematic. But moral debt seems different and non-transferable. We are not usually supposed to punish the innocent in the place of the guilty. At this point, it seems that a few things ought to be made clear. 

First, Jesus is the Christ, not just any other person. Christ is not just a name; it is a title meaning “Messiah”, the Anointed King. In the biblical way of thinking, kings of nations stood in a special representative relationship with their people. As N.T. Wright says, when you come to the phrase “In the Messiah” in the NT, then, you have to think “what is true of the King, was true of the people.” So, if the King won a victory, then so did the people, and so forth. The King was able to assume responsibility for the fate of a people in a way that no other person could. This is the underlying logic at work in the Bible text. We do not think this way because we are modern, hyper-individualists, but he is the one in whom his people are summed up….

Jesus occupies a unique moral space precisely as the mediator of the new covenant relationship. Most people cannot take responsibility for the guilt of others in such a way that they can discharge their obligations on their behalf. Jesus can because he is both God and Man, and the New Adam, who is forging a new relationship between humanity and God. This, incidentally, is just a variation on Irenaeus’ theology of recapitulation (re-headship). As all die in Adam, so all are given life in Christ (Rom. 5:12-20). If Christ dies a penal death for sins, then those who are in Christ die that death with him (2 Cor 5:14). His relationship is, as they say, sui generis, in its own category.

This is where modern, popular analogies drawn from the lawcourt fail us. We ought not to think of Christ dying to deal with the sins of people as some simple swap of any random innocent person for a bunch of guilty people. It is the death of the King who can legally represent his people in a unique, but appropriate fashion before the bar of God’s justice. He is our substitute because he is our representative. Strictly speaking there are no proper analogies, but there is a moral logic that is deeply rooted in the biblical narrative.

You can read Rishmawy’s response to the other 18 objections here.

Comments

[scblhrm]

When the Immutable pours, and all that is Physicality, all that is Contingency, fills, and this to the bitter ends, we find that such is not mere fantasy to casually read about in our chairs, but is - the Actual. It is not theory. Nor Model. It is what is. Here. Now. Like the concrete which rips the skins off our knees.

All moral lines begin and end inside of love's reciprocity.

There is no getting past that.

Whatever is Moral can and does motion amid, motion among, motion between.

We call it Trinity.

1) Such houses all that can be called the Self.

2) Such houses all that can be called the Other.

3) Such houses all that can be called unity, singularity, or Genesis' peculiar Let "Us" create.

That is what the immutable love of the Necessary Being looks like. That is what love is.

There is no possible world where that God - should He fashion a species in that Image - does not Pour Out, Fill Up, the very species in question and where said species is not thereby - then - filled, brought out of the mutable, out of contingency, and into the Immutable.

What we spy in Christ cannot be otherwise.

There is no such thing as Man not-in-need-of-that. Innocence cannot stop that Path of Old in Jeremiah 6:16 from casually winding its way into Gethsemane - where Innocence thus acquiesces, thus motions in love's reciprocity amid the delight of two beloveds.

In short, there is Sin, and Guilt, and the vacuous abyss there cannot be traversed by Man, and such is the case in all of Man's possible conditions, in Innocence, as the ontology of the Immutable and the ontology of the Contingent are not mere theories, not mere "working models". No. Such are Actuality. Here. Now. Like concrete. There's no mistaking concrete. Ideas don't rip the skin off our knees. Reality does.

Immutable Love there amid Trinity's ceaseless reciprocity finds in Christ all vectors seamlessly, effortlessly converging - ad infinitum. If you want to know what Love looks like - look at Christ. If you look at Man you sill see a fragment of it, marred even, that Image bent in refraction. If you look at God-In-Man, Man-In-God, then you see - there in Christ - Man in his Home - in God - the only thing the Created can see should he taste Joy - for there is in love's reciprocity all those peculiar lines of, affairs of, the stuff of the Self, the stuff of the Other - ad infinitum. His Nature - and therefore His blueprint for us, is unchanging, though we ourselves by necessity traverse the stuff of change - that is - the stuff of Time.

[scblhrm]

In short, ontologically speaking: If you want to know what Reality actually looks like - then look at Christ. Colossians 2:17

[scblhrm]

Amy,

Your post was again very on-target. I wish to clarify that I do not mean to detract from our sin, our brokenness, our raw guilt, nor from the substitutionary nature of His Work on the Cross. All of those are wholly untouched by anything I've said. My descriptive is merely the same landscape from yet one step further back, from the outside looking in, so to speak. The OP's "sui generis" said it well when it comes to speaking of Christ. Thank you for your patience with these descriptives. Mine is a terrible case it seems. I find no way out of Christ. I am trapped by Him. The only way I find that I can rid myself of Him is to denounce - forever - all coherent lines of love, for what love "is" is unintelligible nonsense when I try to shove it into any arbitrary arena. In Him, in Christ, and in Him alone, do I find love's means, love's ends coherently starting, coherently following through, coherently summing inside of intelligibility in such a world, such a state of affairs, as this business of Time, of Contingency, of Love's Ought, of Logic's regress, of Evil, of an inescapably uncaused Actuality. There is no other Genre on planet Earth outside of Christ where I find all such lines, all such vectors, all such contours, seamlessly converging. Even if I wanted to leave Him - there were times in the past I have – two lines prevent me – first – those moments of His Hand, of His Face, the experience of Him, and, second – there just is nowhere to go – logic and all that reality itself just is – outside of His immutable equations – are just unintelligible.

[JBerr]

Amy:

Since I have read N.T. Wright and nearly everything written, I would like to point out what he believes about the penal substitution atonement theory. Wright sort of has a modified penal substitution atonement theory. The idea that Wright supports is that Jesus is a substitution, not just for the world, but for Israel (the people of God). Another words, God's plan for Israel was that Israel become the point of suffering and pain for the whole world, to "bear" the sin of the whole world. But since Israel was unable to live up to its purpose, Jesus took on this mantle upon himself, and bore Israel's destiny of bearing the sin of the world. Thus, the church is now the people of God, and through Jesus' sacrifice, we to are to become the bearers of the world's sin, the point at which the world's sin and suffering is carried. This might sound a little strange, but once you get into Wright's material on Jesus and Paul, you can see how logical this is. Wright posits that Jesus must have meditated on the suffering servant passages in Isaiah his whole life. For Wright, he believes that the argument that Paul and other first century Jewish Christians made was the Jesus was Messiah because he had borne Israel's destiny where Israel had failed (this is sort of a summary as his argument is more complex than this).

I just wanted to qualify your comments above as I am not sure you might feel comfortable with something like this. It is a little different but if you read Jesus and Paul more towards where Wright goes, it makes good sense.

[scblhrm]

Behold the Lamb of God - Who takes away the sin of the world.

The taking-away finds a singularity, a Lamb, a Ransom, and that singularity not being of nor on Man, but being of and on God, and, a bit further, it is not of this or that particular man's sin, but rather, that of an entire World.

There comes a point, a location, a means, whereby one is left with all those lines which begin and end in Man, and, then, there comes another, separate point, location, means, whereby one is left with all those lines which begin and end in God. The starting point and the ending point of those two ontological regresses cannot - literally cannot - be the stuff of Identity. A is not B and if B is swallowed up by A then - all the more - A cannot be B. There is carrying, there inside of love, and then there is taking-away, there inside of love. The Body does both, though when we say Body we must find that (literal) line of taking-away and that (literal) line of carrying, for there is that which is Christ, and, then, there is that which is brought into - found in - Christ.

If I should say that my loving of Mr. John Doe takes away his sin - or if he should say thusly of my love for him - well then - we must say what we mean - thus let him offer to God not Christ's resume', nor Christ's work, but rather, my resume', my work, on a day - whether today or tomorrow matters not - when his sin is charged to him by the Accuser.

We must - in the end - cling to, land in, end in, some motion there within volition's landscape amid His Image of Self/Other - for such is His blueprint for our particular world.

In the end it will be for the Mutable, for Man, for the Contingent, all the affairs of Other/God-ward, in which case we run face first into those immutable lines converging within Christ, or, it will be all the affairs of Self/Man-ward, in which case we run face first into those immutable lines converging within Christ.

The First Adam and the Last Adam find Gethsemane.

There are no other Possible Worlds.

If we want to know what Reality actually looks like then we need only look at Christ.