penal substitution as viewed by the reformed and the Catholic

In comment found here: 458 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/

 " In the lecture below, Eleonore Stump explains how that claim (i.e. that God could not forgive us without punishing something) is incompatible with God’s love."

from comment 111http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/#comment-39666

You’re using the term “PSub,” meaning “penal substitutionary atonement,” but it is very important to be aware that the term “penal substitution” has a different meaning in Catholic theology than it does in Reformed theology. At the beginning of the article at the top of this page, you will see a link to a video by R.C. Sproul explaining the Reformed conception of penal substitution. If you watch it to the end, you will see that according to Sproul the Father essentially says to the Son, “God damn You.” According to that conception of penal substitution, bearing the curse means bearing the full punishment under justice for every sin committed by the elect. But that’s not what the term ‘penal substitution’ means in Catholic theology. In Catholic theology, ‘penal substitution’ means that Christ endured the curse of physical death (which was the curse God imposed on man after Adam’s sin) for our sakes, and offered Himself in a perfect sacrifice of loving obedience, in our place as our High Priest and Victim. That is also how the Orthodox and the Church Fathers understand the curse; see, for example, the letter of St. Augustine to Faustus, linked in the article above. It is a completely different conception of ‘penal substitution.’ So it would be equivocation to use the term ‘penal substitution’ as if in Catholic theology it meant the same as it does in Reformed theology. (Hence the statement by Fr. Murray is not about the Reformed conception of penal substitution, or indicate that there is dogmatic ‘space’ with the Catholic Tradition for the Reformed conception of penal substitution.)

It is true that in the Church Fathers there are distinct explanations of what was taking place on the Cross, but penal substitution (in the Reformed sense) was not among them, and is incompatible with the satisfaction account provided in the Catechism, and with Catholic soteriology considered as a whole. The doctrine taught by the magisterium is laid out not only in the Catechism but also in the Tradition taught and developed in both of the first two millennia. See, for example, the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas on this subject, in “Aquinas and Trent: Part 6.”

You asked:

On what grounds are you asserting that the Father’s pouring out of wrath (holy indignation) towards sin which was borne by Christ (in behalf of the sinner) and therefore Christ experiencing the wrath of God toward sin (in view of redeeming man and exalting Christ) will diminish the beatific vision?

The ground is that hell is not heaven. If receiving God’s full wrath for sin did not “diminish the beatific vision,” there would be no difference between heaven and hell.

Regarding Novo millennio ineunte, it does not teach the Reformed conception of penal substitution, but rather the Catholic conception of penal substitution. My only point in making reference to it is that it upholds the traditional teaching that Christ maintained the beatific vision even during His passion.

from 17

Christ really is our substitute. He really did bear the curse, by bearing in His body the suffering and dissolution of death, and by bearing in His spirit the desolation that is the absence of spiritual consolation. By taking these upon Himself, freely, in self-sacrificial love, Christ offered something more pleasing to the Father than all our sins are displeasing. And in that way Christ merited for us the grace by which our sins are forgiven, we are restored to friendship with God, and we are saved from the punishment of hell. So Christ bears the curse, and in doing so participates in our punishment (i.e. the punishment of the curse), so that we can participate in His divine life, and avoid the ultimate punishment (i.e. eternal separation from God, in hell). In that (carefully qualified) sense, Christ’s atonement was one of penal substitution. But it was not one in which the Father imputed all our sins to Christ, and then poured out all His wrath for that sin, on Christ. The Father never hated the Son or hated any sin in the Son, because the Son was always sinless, and God the Father always sees the Son as the Son really is, sinless. Christ took on all human sin not by becoming intrinsically guilty (and thus deserving of punishment), or by imputation (and thus being falsely accused by an omniscient Being), but by (1) allowing Himself to suffer the effects of the curse, and (2) by seeing all the sin of all men for what it is in all its evil, and in solidarity with us (as one sharing our nature), with the grief of contrition freely and lovingly offering Himself as a perfect sacrifice for it.

from 18

Let me add something as a point of clarification and qualification. To be damned is to be without hope, and without charity. It is to know that one is eternally separated from God, with no hope, not even the possibility of there being hope. That is utter despair. To be damned is to hate God, and to hate His justice. To be damned is to hate oneself with never-ending hatred that knows itself to be never-ending. But Christ endured the cross for the joy set before Him; He always retained hope and charity. He did not despair (that would have been a mortal sin). Nor did He hate God. Thus He never hated Himself. Nor did He ever lose sanctifying grace; otherwise His human will would have been against His divine will. So, for these reasons, if we say that He experienced what it is like to be damned, we must include some very important qualifications. He experienced the external loss of divine protection, and the interior loss of spiritual consolation. The damned also experience that, so in those two respects Christ experienced what it is like to be damned. But Christ didn’t experience the despair, self-loathing, hatred for God and deprivation of grace that the damned experience. So in those respects Christ didn’t experience what it is like to be damned.

Update: For more on Christ’s vision of the Father while on the cross, especially in response to Balthasar, see comment #4 in the “Harrowing of Hell” thread.

from comment 73:

 What Jesus was doing on the cross was “serving” others (Mk. 10:45), as he did throughout his obedient life. He was not being punished by God, rather he was offering to God an obedient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world.

from 74: in commenting on a quote from Calvin and explaining that Calvin's view was different from modern Penal Sub views:  

In terms of your quotes, he says that Jesus “endured the death which is inflicted ON THE WICKED by an angry God.” That is not quite the same (though it is close) as saying that he “endured the death which was inflicted on him by an angry God.” Also if you look at Calvin’s comments on Matthew 27:46 he makes it clear that even though on the cross Jesus truly did feel the fear and sorrow of sinners as they stand before God’s Judgment Seat, in reality God was NOT alienated from him. Whereas modern penal substitution advocates see in Jesus’ language (My God, My God) an indication of God’s actual subjective abandonment of his own Son, Calvin sees in that same expression a confession of Jesus’ faith that God had in fact not abandoned him, though he could not feel his loving presence at that time.

and 77: Jesus does not cry out “God,” but “My God.” The fact that he does not address God as his father is hardly indicative of the assumptions you read into the language. I guess you’ve never taken the time to notice that in Calvin’s commentary on Matthew 27:46, he takes the cry “My God, My God” as a confession of Jesus’ faith that God had NOT in fact abandoned him on the cross. Despite his experience of suffering and sorrow (which Calvin does take to be a judicial execution of justice upon Jesus as the substitute) on the cross, Calvin does NOT think that God’s wrath was literally and subjectively “poured out” on his own Son. While Calvin did advocate penal substitution, he saw it only as Jesus experiencing the objective consequences of human sin, not as an actual punitive enactment of divine wrath on the part of God the Father. What started out as a minor overemphasis on the forensic context of the atonement in the Reformers, has become a monstrous false teaching in the hands of their less adept theological heirs.

from 253:

Verse 5 says “The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him”. According to Webster, “chasten” means “to correct by punishment or suffering”. Thus, the punishment for our sin fell on Jesus.

First, what you’re doing in this line of reasoning here is presupposing that Webster is the definitive way of determining the meaning of Scripture. And that’s not a neutral presupposition, as I showed in “The Tradition and the Lexicon.” Second, there is more than one sense to the term translated as ‘punishment,’ but your line of argumentation conflates them. The Reformed notion is that on the cross Christ received the full retribution in the Father’s wrath for each sin ever committed (and to be committed) by the elect. The Catholic belief, by contrast, is that on the cross Christ took upon Himself the penalty that had been given to Adam (man) for sin, namely, death. But there was no animosity or break in communion between the Father and the Son, or wrath of the Father for the Son. Nor did Christ bear “the full retribution in the Father’s wrath” for any sin. Your line of reasoning, however, fails to make this distinction, and thus assumes that if Christ endured some penalty, then the Reformed notion of penal substitution must be true.

You can’t just ignore or reword verses that don’t fit your paradigm.

Again, explaining the meaning of a verse is not “rewording” a verse. When Jesus says “I am the door” (Jn 10:7), you rightly don’t conclude that Jesus has hinges.

Our paradigms must align with all of God’s word, as it was written.

Of course our paradigms must “align” with all of God’s word, as it was written. But that does not mean that the only correct interpretation is a wooden interpretation.

If the wages of sin is death, and Christ did not sin, why did He die? The answer is that punishment for our sin was imputed to Christ.

That conclusion does not follow from those two premises. My post above explains that Christ through His sacrifice offered a perfect gift of love to God, a gift that outweighed in its goodness the demerit of our sins, and thus satisfied God’s justice. You’re jumping to the conclusion that these verses entail an imputation of sin (or guilt) to Christ. But not only does that conclusion not follow from the verses, but there is an alternative way of understanding why Christ died, and how His death effected our salvation. That’s the whole point of the post above.

If our sins are forgiven and Christ did not bear the punishment for those sins, then how has justice been attained? It seems to me that your paradigm accounts for God’s perfect love but fails to account for His perfect justice.

The post at the top of this page explains this. If you don’t understand how the Catholic teaching accounts for God’s justice, then please read the post again.

from here  http://catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2013/09/why-penal-substitution-doesnt-work-part.html  Read this for further discussion on the differences and reasons --here is a bit from it:

But of course, God didn’t just simply forgive us. The question then is why the Cross? St. Thomas’ answer is that it was the most fitting way that we could have been redeemed. He writes (ST, III, 46, art. 3):

Guercino, Christ Crowned with Thorns (1622)

Among means to an end that one is the more suitable whereby the various concurring means employed are themselves helpful to such end. But in this that man was delivered by Christ's Passion, many other things besides deliverance from sin concurred for man's salvation. In the first place, man knows thereby how much God loves him, and is thereby stirred to love Him in return, and herein lies the perfection of human salvation; hence the Apostle says (Romans 5:8): "God commendeth His charity towards us; for when as yet we were sinners . . . Christ died for us." Secondly, because thereby He set us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues displayed in the Passion, which are requisite for man's salvation. Hence it is written (1 Peter 2:21): "Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps." Thirdly, because Christ by His Passion not only delivered man from sin, but also merited justifying grace for him and the glory of bliss, as shall be shown later (48, 1; 49, 1, 5). Fourthly, because by this man is all the more bound to refrain from sin, according to 1 Corinthians 6:20: "You are bought with a great price: glorify and bear God in your body." Fifthly, because it redounded to man's greater dignity, that as man was overcome and deceived by the devil, so also it should be a man that should overthrow the devil; and as man deserved death, so a man by dying should vanquish death. Hence it is written (1 Corinthians 15:57): "Thanks be to God who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." It was accordingly more fitting that we should be delivered by Christ's Passion than simply by God's good-will.

In other words, the Cross was the most fitting or best way to redeem mankind, but not because of strict justice (because, as we have seen, God could have pardoned us without any contradiction). The Cross was the best way to redeem us because (in addition to redeeming us) it also manifested the degree of God’s love for us, as well as the gravity of sin, and gave us a perfect example all a multiplicity of virtues, and on and on.

see also the follow up post http://catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2013/09/good-friday-superabundant-atonement.html

and from a comment 288 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/#comment-61530

I hope you don’t mind my butting in.

First, when presented with the Reformed question of how are sins can be paid for without punishment, this article answers that “Christ made atonement for the sins of all men by offering to God a sacrifice of love that was more pleasing to the Father than the combined sins of all men of all time are displeasing to Him.” This idea of God’s choice between pouring out wrath or accepting a loving sacrifice seems like a critical concept since it is mentioned at least twice, but I don’t see any source or citation. What supports this idea, and/or where did it originate?

If you look at the way offering and appeasement functioned in the OT, you’ll see that the concept of penal substitution (as the Reformed articulate it) is completely absent. For example, when Jacob was estranged from Esau and heard that he was only a few miles away heading in his direction, he sent ahead a series of offerings that “appeased” his brother’s wrath.

Likewise after the rebellion of Korah, Aaron was commanded to offer burnt incense in order to quench God’s wrath. In neither of these cases was anyone punished in the place of another. Instead, some sort of gift or action was considered by the offended party to be sufficient to restore fellowship. This is how we understand the sacrifice of Christ.

Second, why must God to choose between pouring out just wrath or delighting in Christ’s loving sacrifice? Under the Protestant view, I often asked why God couldn’t just forgive us without Calvary, and I was always told that God HAD to punish sins to remain Holy, and Jesus took the punishment in our place. The Catholic view described in this article poses a kind of meta-scenario where God can pour out wrath, but that the sin need not be punished if something (Christ’s love-sacrifice) would please Him more.

Ironically it is the Catholic view that actually extols the sufficiency of the cross, since Jesus’ self-offering, in and of itself, satisfies the Father. In the Protestant view God is only satisfied after he has meted out his fury upon his Son (an idea fraught with heaps of Trinitarian problems), whereas in the Catholic view the sacrifice of Christ, as such, appeases the Father.

A good way to make the distinction is by contrasting restitution and retribution. If you borrow my iPad and drop it in the pool by accident, but if you replace it with a new one, thereby making restitution, there is no need for me to seek retribution against you in any form. The only reason retribution would be pursued would be if you failed to make restitution. So if at the cross Jesus made restitution by offering a pleasing sacrifice, why would God need to also punish him?

It seems like the Protestant view involves God as a creditor, mankind as a defaulting debtor, and Christ as the voluntary guarantor who satisfies on our behalf a debt that MUST be paid. Under the Catholic position above, it seems that God is still a creditor, mankind is still a defaulting debtor, but Christ plays a slightly different role. Instead of writing a check to pay OUR indebtedness in His capacity as our guarantor, Christ writes a fat check in His OWN capacity. God apparently prefers the check from “Jesus” as opposed to the check from “Jesus, as guarantor of mankind.”

I am personally less than comfortable with all this accounting language. God is not a creditor, he is (by his very nature) a Father, and as a Father he reproduces his own divine image in his offspring—because that’s what fathers do. His earthly son, Adam, was called to offer himself back to God in sacrificial and self-giving love, because that’s what sons do. The divine Son did just this, thereby overcoming the chasm by assuming human nature so that we can have fellowship with God by a new and living way, through the veil, that is, through his flesh (Heb. 10).

And while it may be hypothetically possible for God to have forgiven sins without the cross in some alternate universe about which we know nothing, if in our actual scenario salvation includes forgiveness of sins and our participation in the divine nature, the incarnation was necessary, and so was the atonement.

from comment  311 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/ a Catholic reply to a Protestant:

............................

I’m sorry if I misunderstood you by claiming you said Jesus experienced God’s wrath. If I understand your last comment, it seems you are insisting that Jesus experienced reprobation, but not necessarily God’s wrath? I don’t understand this, but maybe you can elaborate.

You say scripture doesn’t say how Jesus paid for our sins, but you follow that up by insisting that He paid for our sins by reprobation rather than by an offering of restitution. You seem to be saying that reprobation is the only possible explanation that Jesus experienced mortal death or feelings of forsakenness.

But you are begging the question by denying another explanation. For we are saying there is another explanation, that His whole life was a sacrifice of perfect love and obedience, and that this perfect sacrifice of love (completely giving up His life for our sake) was accepted by the Father as complete restitution for our sins. Our explanation for His mortal death and feelings of forsakenness is that we (not God) inflicted these things upon Him – by our sin.

Why did obedience necessitate experiencing mortal death? God loves us, and He wants us to experience joy, which we can experience only in fulfilling our purpose. Our purpose is to give up our own lives in sacrifice and love for God and others. Only in sacrifice and love do we find true joy.

Therefore since God loved us and wants us to experience joy, He chose to show us a life of superabundant love, by the example of His Son. What is perfect love? 1. Love bears all wrongs. 2. There is no greater love than to give up one’s life for our friends. Therefore, in order to show a life of superabundant love, Jesus was turned over to man to bear the wrongs of the whole world and to give up His life for every man. Nothing short of perfect obedience would have made restitution for our sins. Nothing short of superabundant love would have shown the Son’s perfect obedience. Nothing short of suffering the wrongs for all mankind would have demonstrated God’s superabundant love for us. Therefore, it was necessary that Jesus die, at the hand of all mankind, for the sins of all mankind, in order to pay the price for our sins.

In the article, Brian showed how Jesus’s perfect sacrificial love made complete restitution for our sins. Now, I have explained that theory again, and I have explained why suffering an unjust death at the hands of man was an essential part of that restitution. So, do you you still insist that God’s reprobation for sinners is the only possible explanation for Jesus’s suffering on the cross? Or do you see how it was necessary for Jesus to suffer mortal death at the hand of man in order to demonstrate a life of superabundant love and obedience, and thus make complete restitution for our sins?

If you still insist on reprobation rather than restitution, what is lacking from your side is an explanation of how an offering of perfect obedience would be insufficient to pay the price for our sins, or how paying the price for sins would necessitate furthermore experiencing an unjust reprobation from the Father (rather than an unjust punishment from man). Furthermore, I would appreciate an explanation of how Jesus could have atoned for our sins by penal substitution without experiencing the full punishment for sins. For the full punishment for sin is not just mortal death, but it is eternal death and eternal separation from God. Jesus experienced neither eternal death nor eternal separation from God. Therefore, the theory of penal substitution doesn’t explain how He paid the full price for our sins.

In contrast, the theory of restitution does explain how Jesus paid the full price for our sins.

from nicks blog---the comment section http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2014/04/does-catholic-view-of-christs-atonement.html

Thomas Aquinas in his exposition of the Apostle’s Creed regarding Christ Descent into Hell, he wrote:

“There are four reasons why Christ together with His soul descended to the underworld. First, He wished to take

 upon

 Himself the entire punishment for our sin, and thus atone for its entire guilt. The punishment for the sin of man was not

 alone death of the body, but there was also a punishment of the soul, since the soul had its share in sin; and it was 

punished by being deprived of the beatific vision; and as yet no atonement had been offered whereby this punishment 

would be taken away. Therefore, before the coming of Christ all men, even the holy fathers after their death, descended

 into the underworld. Accordingly in order to take upon Himself most perfectly the punishment due to sinners, Christ not 

only suffered death, but also His soul descended to the underworld. He, however, descended for a different cause than 

did the fathers; for they did so out of necessity and were of necessity taken there and detained, but Christ descended 

there of His own power and free will: “I am counted among them that go down to the pit; I am become as a man without 

help, free among the dead” [Ps 87:5Vulgate]. The others were there as captives, but Christ was freely there.” (Expositio 

in Symbolum Apostolorum, translated by Joseph Collins).

from the CTC link above, comment 435

In Catholic theology, ‘penal substitution’ means that Christ endured the curse of physical death (which was the curse God imposed on man after Adam’s sin) for our sakes, and offered Himself in a perfect sacrifice of loving obedience, in our place as our High Priest and Victim.

In #157, Bryan explains:

It is true that for St. Thomas Christ is our substitute, but He substitutes for us not by receiving the wrath of God, but by offering in love the perfect sacrifice we could not offer. For St. Thomas, satisfaction and punishment are distinct, and the atonement is not by Christ taking from the Father the punishment we deserved, because it is not by punishment. It is by a satisfactory gift of love to the Father. Christ’s sacrifice is meritorious, says St. Thomas, precisely because it is an act of charity in the [human] will of Christ, inasmuch as Christ embraced the suffering of the cross out of love for the Father and the whole world.

from comment 437:

 in that same paragraph (Trent VI.7):

the final cause is the glory of God and of Christ and life everlasting; the efficient cause is the merciful God who washes and sanctifies gratuitously, signing and anointing with the holy Spirit of promise, who is the pledge of our inheritance, the meritorious cause is His most beloved only begotten, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, when we were enemies, for the exceeding charity wherewith he loved us, merited for us justification by His most holy passion on the wood of the cross and made satisfaction for us to God the Father,

He did it for us, meriting justification for us, making satisfaction for us, so that we might have everlasting life.

comment 449:

1. He seems to be saying that the entire doctrine of substitutionary atonement is based on the idea that God affirms falsehood.

   No, that’s over-simplifying what I’ve said. I believe in substitutionary atonement. Christ makes atonement for us, in our place. What requires God to affirm falsehood is extra nos imputation, whereby I’m actually unrighteous internally, but simulataneously declared by God to be righteous, and Christ is actually internally righteous, but simultaneously declared by God to be unrighteous. If God were to pour out His wrath in punishment for our sin on the innocent, knowing that innocent Victim is innocent, that would make God unjust, knowingly punishing an innocent Person for crimes He did not commit. The Catholic doctrine has no such problem.

   My point is that, ironically, he does the same thing albeit in a different way. Bryan agrees (with Keith F.) that in the atonement Christ substitutes his obedience/righteousness for our disobedience/unrighteousness but then explains that this is not literally true but only figuratively.

   Christ’s Person taking our place in the offering of the atoning sacrifice is not the same thing as Christ’s righteousness substituting for our righteousness. In the Catholic doctrine, there is no ontological or legal transfer of obedience, righteousness, sin, or guilt. In His human nature Christ bears our sin through solidarity with us, making an act of contrition to God for us as one of us, in fact, as our High Priest. But there is no ontological or legal transfer of guilt, sin, righteousness, or obedience between Christ and ourselves.

   In effect God affirms something that is not true in any literal sense.

   No, He does not.

   In the atonement, God affirms what is false.

   No, He does not.

   It is the Reformed view that simply takes God at His word. In atoning for our sins, Christ’s righteousness becomes ours literally!

   If that were “literally” true, then you would now be sinless. But even the Reformed believe that Christ’s righteousness remains extra nos (outside of us). Inside, you’re still dung, and filthy rags (unlike Christ, who is perfectly righteous), at least during this present life. So even in the Reformed view you don’t “literally” have Christ’s righteousness, at least not yet. You have to wait until you’re fully sanctified.