The so-called “Governmental” theory of the Atonement, in my estimation, appears to be a lengthy and tedious detour around the authentic premial nature of the Atonement. Its diversions into the fragility of human government and its dilations on the “necessities” of exemplary, public, punitive justice and penal exactions, although evidently well-meant attempts to outflank full-bore penal, economically-qualified, satisfaction theories, are in the end, themselves unsatisfactory. It is a wobbly careening away from the positive face of God’s exclusively atoning (“protectively sheltering”) premial justice awarded directly to Christ Jesus.
Because the “Governmental” theory of atonement does not start at the center of the Gospel—the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead—it lingers endlessly over matters of mere forgiveness of sins (important as that is for our present well-being and peace of mind), including its conditions and grounds, the punishments otherwise suffered, how God can be just and still merciful, and so forth. But from all this dilatory elaboration, one is left with feelings of ennui, exhaustion. Such defenses of so-called “Moral Law” systems somehow lack the virtues of conclusiveness, exuberance, simplicity, and emotional appeal. They seem, in short, sterile, inert, overwrought, and non-intuitive. In effect, they lack moral influence (ironically). Despite these fatal drawbacks, they may still cover much valuable ground, but it simply is not atoning ground. For to attain atoning virtue, we must explain, indeed proclaim, the justice that overcame death, and hence overcame sin and all lesser enemies. Governmental theories start at the wrong end of evil. Christ’s resurrection is only conspicuous by its absence from their treatises as any vital, indispensable, pivotal, activating factor.
That said, the Governmental view still stands heads (if not quite shoulders) above the Penal Satisfaction view of Calvinism. Yet it is similarly saddled with an exclusively penal conception of justice (but more exemplarist than economic), so the poor beast hobbles and lists always to one side. And because it is penal it must logically employ substitution in its soteriology. It is unable to break away from the disturbing conundrums that have ever afflicted Calvinism in all its broad variations, writhing to escape unsavory implications, painful accusations. Accordingly, far from being the best theory of the Atonement, it comes off second worst.
The Governmental theory of the Atonement fails resoundingly in its “allowance” hypothesis concerning why God can forgive sins. Although denouncing the out-and-out Penal Satisfaction assertion that God needs to satisfy His “personal” wrath against sin in favor of “governmental” wrath (and, by the by, relieving God of “personal vindictiveness” only at the cost of rendering their scheme calculating and impersonal), yet God’s freedom gets corseted by denying Him the authority, right, and power to exert graciousness until He has executed enough governmentally expedient wrath. This is yet another wretched result of totally ignoring premial justice and limiting the entire discussion to penal concerns alone, whether economic or rectoral. God is not permitted even to merely remit sins, much less bestow everlasting life, unless He first shores up His otherwise sagging justice (penal only, of course) lest His kingdom crumble.
However, what about God’s sagging (in fact virtually nonexistent) restorative justice? Shouldn’t He feel obliged to give some concern to rewarding the upright, especially when they have been viciously attacked and left for dead? Will God’s Kingdom (founded on justice!) collapse only if the murderers “are not punished,” but yet somehow inexplicably, miraculously, not suffer demise if the righteous himself is left dead? How is this imbalance justified? Isn’t such merely penal justice—whether “personal” or “governmental”—ultimately worthless unless the righteous get rewarded, raised to agelong life? Doesn’t God’s entire Kingdom hang, finally, on whether He can perform the ultimate justice of super-compensating every injustice, as supremely demonstrated by raising Jesus from the grave? Isn’t He publicly represented as disgracefully inept if He devotes all His divine energies to assure penally “retributive” justice gets thoroughly executed against…someone, lest He look like a celestial wimp, and His Kingdom turn to dust, and yet “leaves undone” the greater “retributive” justice of giving the upright their just due? Do I hear an “Amen!” for heaven’s sake?
Why would the Lord Jesus have cried, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” if that same God were all along inflicting wrath until that moment? This scenario does not quite compute. Alternatively, had God been comforting His beloved Son in his mortal distress until that plea, but thereupon began pouring out His wrath on the pathetic sufferer to intensify his wretched agonies? If so, then had Jesus been experiencing his Father’s favor and graciousness only up to that “turning point”? This, too, strains sound judgment and lacks the backing of explicit Scriptures. Furthermore, it contravenes even penal substitution theories, which insist that the entire previous proceedings were evidence of God’s wrath against him “in our place,” “as our substitute,” none of which dare be mitigated, at the cost of compromising the “vicarious payment of sufferings to God’s penal justice” whose very magnitude constituted the measure of salvation that we need (whether for the whole world, or for all who believe, or even just for “the elect” who are “pre”-destined alone to believe).
Without belaboring that holy scene of a tortured Savior with the added indignity of a tortured logic, let us direct our minds to another (dare I say “satisfying”?) scenario: God’s graciousness never for so much as a nanosecond departed from the Son of His love throughout his life and career on earth, much less the ordeals of his final hours. No wrath from God could possibly have defiled that scene with His shedding of innocent, faithful blood. This was an Enemy’s doing! Satan’s leash was cut by God so he could culminate his criminal career with a crowning achievement of wickedness that would (happily) make necessary divine intervention of a true justice that surprised the whole universe by avenging that extreme vivisection with a rightful super-compensation of extreme vivification, a diametrically opposite crowning achievement of goodness that alone could launch a new creation!
The drawing power of the Story about Jesus’ crucifixion (and, indeed, its “moral influence”) belongs not to a bare recounting of his terrible suffering there but to the “rest of the Story” about Who he actually was, what he had been teaching, the wonders of healing he had been doing for everyone, and the bitter envy, jealousy, and hatred of his nation’s leaders toward him. But “the rest of the Story” whose “moral influence” must be taken into account supremely concerns his resurrection from the dead! For only that event revealed unequivocally, unambiguously, and conclusively that, all along, he had been the Messiah incognito! It is only this “little” piece of the Puzzle—it must be little, right?, or how could Penal Substitutionary theologians of all stripes have missed it for so very, very long?—that precipitated the shocking revelation that this man whom we crucified (gulp!) really was the Son of God, and yet both he and God let us get away with the infamous and treacherous deed scot-free…at least for the time being!
It is the rest of the Story that brought the house down in amazed, wondrous, grateful applause and propelled the multitudes to rush back to God in Christ for His stupendous love and unfathomable graciousness! It was this whole, complete, integral Story that causes conciliation to happen and that makes peace break forth on earth and delight among mankind. For only this fuller context of Scripture demonstrates convincingly not only God’s delight at the manger-birth, but also His lovingkindness toward human beings at the Cross-death, as well.
The altar of sacrifice was the place of death, but the Ark of the Covenant was the place of life. We must weigh the revealing significance of the distance between them. Hence the protective cover on top of the ark was “renewed,” “reactivated,” or “refreshed” once a year by spattering the blood of an unblemished, flawless (figuring a blameless, innocent, sinless) living soul, which was slain on the altar. That blood symbolized the living soul of the wrongly slain animal legally demanding retribution and accordingly receiving it direct from God in the miraculous form of restored life, now transmitting abundant life and wholesomeness and cleansing and release (forgiveness/pardon) from sins and renewal, in turn, to whatever was spattered or sprinkled or splashed with it.
The Day of Atonement (i.e., of protective covering) depicted prophetically both the murder of the Lamb of God on the “altar” of the cross, and his resurrection into a life-making Spirit to cleanse and hallow heaven and earth by employing the ritual symbolism of spattering the blood on the protective cover of the Ark of the Covenant in the “Holy of Holies” (i.e., the holiest place of all)—the Heaven of heavens…God’s throne.
This all means that Romans 3:25-26 is not at all speaking of the “sacrifice of” Atonement, i.e., the cross of Christ, the antitype of the altar in the ancient Levitical ceremony, but of the Ark itself, containing the elements for sustaining, protecting, and directing toward life.
The current stage of the perennial Atonement controversy seems to come down to this watershed question: Is God more honored and glorified by His destroying the wicked or by His rewarding the upright? Or to state the matter with a related question: Is God’s law more honored by Him punishing the lawbreaker or by Him rewarding the law-abiding…and the more so when they suffer at the hands of the lawless?
The issue at stake (ahem) should not have had to come down to such stark alternatives, because in the Bible the two “options” are often linked within the comprehensive system of restorative justice wherein the offender, when apprehended, is required to restore the loss directly to their victim, with interest! Thus their penalty is channeled to reward the one they harmed.
However, the Western legal tradition during the decisive eras when the now dominant satisfaction theories were in their swaddling clothes (whether Anselm’s earlier non-penal, feudal version of honorial satisfaction to a lord, or Calvin’s later explicitly and severely penal and commercial version of satisfying law or “justice”) was biased toward a preoccupation with penalization without a corresponding emphasis on restorative restitution. (Refer to the masterful chapter by Harold Berman, “Theological Sources of the Western Legal Tradition,” in Law and Revolution.) So justice became unbalanced in a vindictive, vengeful, punitive vein that deprived victims of their proper due. The state should have intervened as the arbiter between offender and victim, assuring that amends (including suitable and proportional penalties added for the benefit and compensating enrichment of the aggrieved victim, and not routinely diverted to the state instead) are fairly made. This punitively skewed juridical tradition entrenched a habit of thinking that minimized and marginalized the rightful due that the premial facet of justice required, in favor of the outsized dominance of the penal.
The disadvantaging, when not in fact silencing, of the premial concerns of integral justice has dictated repercussions in theology that are profoundly detrimental to the well-being of the church, not to mention of all those who have been too offended or puzzled by its compromised Gospel of one-sidedly penal justice to ever darken the door of a church. And this distressing state of affairs is only likely to raise up yet more enemies until the premial is reintegrated with the penal epicenter of justice, particularly with reference to the nature of atonement and justification, but also conciliation.
So back to the initial question, is it credible that God is more honored before thoughtful people by delighting in the destruction of the incorrigible evildoer or by celebrating the worthy accomplishments of the resolutely honest and even rewarding them when they suffer injustices at the hands of evildoers? The answer should be intuitively obvious, even if we didn’t have abundant and explicit Scriptures to decide the question. But if this is so, then why has the gratifying truth not ever sifted down into the nitty gritty of theological reflection about atonement, justification, and conciliation? The application seems so evident, so easy, so salutary! So sad, then, that the therapeutic application has not been hitherto forthcoming! This neglect leaves theology and the church-at-large bereft of a winsome and sensibly conciliatory message that truly honors God’s most winning traits and endearing preferences. Regardless of all makeshifts, all soft-pedaling, all excuse making, all truth-stretching, God comes off looking grim, unfair, vindictive, overly-punctilious, or otherwise pathologically disposed. This is not good.
In principle, Jesus shattered a cartload of preconceptions that had collected around Israel’s God among all classes of the population. But as each successive rabbinic generation “played telephone” with the following one, syllables got dropped, words got forgot, punctuation got switched, and the Message of God’s spectacular graciousness got garbled into a penal caricature of God’s premial character.
~to be continued~
The Premial Atonement 