Eucharist/ Father Barron

Gives the Greek word too

Assumption of Mary

This article explains some Protestant/and Catholic reasoning about this doctrine

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/08/solemnity-of-the-assumption-of-the-virgin-mary-into-heaven/

see also http://nannykim-catholicconsiderations.blogspot.com/2013/08/assumption-of-mary.html

Isaiah 53 explained by a Catholic using Hebrew

Here is an explanation of Isaiah 53 that explains how Catholics can look at this passage and not concur with penal substitution. It goes into explanations of the Hebrew words used:

http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2010/05/is-job-suffering-servant-of-isaiah-53.html

Penal substitution attacked /affirmed and attacked using Early Church fathers

http://www.creedcodecult.com/it-is-finished/ good summary here and good comment section on St Augustine

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/

An article against Penal Substitution by an non-catholic named Steve Chalke

http://adrianwarnock.com/chalkeoncross.pdf

A response to this article is given by Dr. Garry Williams who quotes Early church documents which he says supports Penal Substitution: http://www.theologian.org.uk/doctrine/punished.html

An article which attacks the notion that the Early Church Fathers' taught Penal Substitution:

http://therebelgod.com/AtonementFathersEQ.pdf

comment 17 here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/

Regarding your second question, what I said in the post above, and what Andrew said in the link you included, are fully compatible. 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 comment 18:

In His human nature, with His human intellect, He saw all the sins of all men, and how evil they are, and how they offend God who deserves all our love and obedience. That’s the sense in which these iniquities fell on Him, not in the sense that He became guilty in Himself, or guilty in the eyes of the Trinity. They were laid on Him in the sense that He saw all the sins of His brothers and sisters in His human family, and as the great high priest of all mankind, He, in solidarity with us, grieving over these sins of His human family, offered Himself to the Father as the perfect sacrifice for all these sins.

There seems to be a lot more than mere “solidarity” going on here. There seems to be a link between our iniquities being laid on him and the bruising and chastisement being described.

Of course there is a link. Human suffering and death are the result of iniquity. In His Passion Christ is freely bearing the curse of suffering and death to offer Himself as a perfect sacrifice to the Father for the iniquities that have been laid upon Him.

from 25:

At the Easter vigil the reading about Abraham being called by God to sacrifice Isaac made me think of this article. How can this foreshadow God giving up his only son if the theory of penal substitution is correct? Nobody was being punished for anything. The sacrifice was all about whether Abraham was willing to give up something of “infinite” value to him. This seems to fit with other examples of sacrifice from the Old Testament (I’m thinking particularly of Cain and Abel) where a sacrifice is an offering to God of something of value, not God pouring out wrath on something (how could God pour out wrath on a vegetable offering?). Moving from there to the New Testament, it makes sense of how we can say that our lives are now a living sacrifice, i.e. an offering to God. Is this correct?


 from comment 26 by Bryan:

Thanks for your comment, and your question. All three of the [synoptic] Gospel writers refer to the darkness that fell over the whole land from the sixth hour (i.e. noon) until the ninth hour (i.e. 3 pm). (Cf. Matthew 27:45, Mark 15:33, and Luke 23:44.) But so far as I know, none of the Church Fathers interpret this as an indication that God the Father ‘turned His back’ on the Son. This was a sign to those who had called “crucify him, crucify him,” just as darkness was one of the plagues of Egypt before the Passover, a sign that they were opposing God, and that they should repent. This was creation groaning over what was being done to its Creator.

As for the meaning of Christ’s cry “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” we should not understand that as meaning that the Son (in His divine nature) was cut off from the Trinity or separated from the perfect happiness of the divine life. But in His human nature He experienced what it is like to be handed over to His enemies and to suffer and die. In those respects He was forsaken. Likewise, in His human nature he experienced the absence of spiritual consolation, and in that respect too He was forsaken, even though He (in His human nature) did not cease to behold the Father. He spoke these words as man, that is, according to His human nature. But the Father never ceased to love Him, nor did the Father’s love for the Son ever diminish in the least. Everything the Son experienced on the cross, He Himself willed to experience, including these ways of being forsaken in His human nature. I recommend listening to the talk at this link.

from comment 29 (Bryanhttp://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/09/does-the-bible-teach-sola-fide/#comment-2388

How did the Father “make him to be sin”? The Holy Spirit says, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” 2 Cor 5:21 (ESV).

The meaning is that Christ became a sin offering, a sacrifice for sin. St. Augustine explains:

The same Apostle says in another place, “He made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin.” “Him who knew no sin:” Who is He who knew no sin, but He That said, “Behold the prince of the world comes, and shall find nothing in me? Him who knew no sin, made He sin for us;” even Christ Himself, who knew no sin, God made sin for us. What does this mean, Brethren? If it were said, “He made sin upon Him,” or, “He made Him to have sin;” it would seem intolerable; how do we tolerate what is said, “He made Him sin,” that Christ Himself should be sin? They who are acquainted with the Scriptures of the Old Testament recognise what I am saying. For it is not an expression once used, but repeatedly, very constantly, sacrifices for sins are called “sins.” A goat, for instance, was offered for sin, a ram, anything; the victim itself which was offered for sin was called “sin.” A sacrifice for sin then was called “sin;” so that in one place the Law says, “That the Priests are to lay their hands upon the sin.” “Him” then, “who knew no sin, He made sin for us;” that is, “He was made a sacrifice for sin.” (Sermon 84 on the New Testament)

And elsewhere he writes:

Accordingly the apostle says: “We beseech you in Christ’s stead, be reconciled unto God. For He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:20-21) God, therefore, to whom we are reconciled, has made Him to be sin for us—that is to say, a sacrifice by which our sins may be remitted; for by sins are designated the sacrifices for sins. And indeed He was sacrificed for our sins, the only one among men who had no sins, even as in those early times one was sought for among the flocks to prefigure the Faultless One who was to come to heal our offenses. (On the Grace of Christ and on Original Sin, Book II, chapter 37)

And elsewhere he writes:

And they, perchance not understanding this, and being blinded by the desire of misrepresentation, and ignorant of the number of ways in which the name of sin is accustomed to be used in the Holy Scriptures, declare that we affirm sin of Christ. Therefore we assert that Christ both had no sin—neither in soul nor in the body; and that, by taking upon Him flesh in the likeness of sinful flesh, in respect of sin He condemned sin. And this assertion, somewhat obscurely made by the apostle, is explained in two ways—either that the likenesses of things are accustomed to be called by the names of those things to which they are like, so that the apostle may be understood to have intended to call this likeness of sinful flesh by the name of “sin;” or else that the sacrifices for sins were under the law called “sins,” all which things were figures of the flesh of Christ, which is the true and only sacrifice for sins—not only for those which are all washed away in baptism, but also for those which afterwards creep in from the weakness of this life, on account of which the universal Church daily cries in prayer to God, “Forgive us our debts,” and they are forgiven us by means of that singular sacrifice for sins which the apostle, speaking according to the law, did not hesitate to call “sin.” Whence, moreover, is that much plainer passage of his, which is not uncertain by any twofold ambiguity, “We beseech you in Christ’s stead to be reconciled to God. He made Him to be sin for us, who had not known sin; that we might be the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:20-21) For the passage which I have above mentioned, “In respect of sin, He condemned sin,” because it was not said, “In respect of his sin,” may be understood by any one, as if He said that He condemned sin in respect of the sin of the Jews; because in respect of their sin who crucified Him, it happened that He shed His blood for the remission of sins. But this passage, where God is said to have made Christ Himself “sin,” who had not known sin, does not seem to me to be more fittingly understood than that Christ was made a sacrifice for sins, and on this account was called “sin.” (Against Two Books of the Pelagians, Bk III, chapter 16)

And here I showed the contrast between R.C. Sproul and St. Augustine on the sense in which Christ bore the curse.

see also :http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/09/john-calvins-worst-heresy-that-christ-suffered-in-hell/

from Bryan's comment 41 here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/

But what is notable about Roger’s post is what I continue to find among Protestant theologians — namely, a seeming unawareness of any other conception of substitutionary atonement than that of the Father pouring out His divine wrath and everlasting punishment for our sins, on the Son in His suffering and death. But in fact, when the Church Fathers speak of Christ being our sacrificial substitute and bearing our sins, they are speaking not of God the Father pouring out His wrath for our sins, on Christ. They are speaking rather of Christ bearing the curse of suffering and [physical] death, that curse described in Genesis 3 (see, for example, what St. Augustine says here.), and they are speaking of Christ offering Himself up to the Father as both a perfect high priest and a perfect victim, a perfect sacrifice of love, a gift of greater love than the injustice of all our sins. This is the conception of the atonement St. Anselm and St. Thomas later expounded and developed, and which I have described in the post above. It contrasts very distinctly with the Protestant notion epitomized below by R.C. Sproul. At 6’45″ in this video, Sproul says that God the Father says to the Son on the cross, “God damn you.”

to
Sproul seems to interpret Christ bearing the curse as God the Father hating (lit. damning) the Son, and pouring out His wrath for our sin on the Son, who receives upon Himself the Father’s wrath equivalent to everlasting punishment in hell, for our sins. But that’s not how St. Augustine or St. Thomas understood the curse. That would either make the Father the perpetrator of the greatest evil of all time, i.e. pouring out the punishment for all human sin (or at least that of the elect) on an innocent man, knowing that he is innocent (see this video), or if Christ were really guilty and deserved all that punishment, then Christ’s suffering would be of no benefit to us.

Some Protestants think that God pouring out His wrath and punishment for all human sin on an innocent man, knowing that he is innocent, is fine, so long as that man volunteered to suffer it. Roger Olson seems to think that as well. But what makes it unjust to punish an innocent man for another’s crime is not just that the innocent man doesn’t wish to be punished, or didn’t volunteer to be punished, but that he is innocent. When, at the end of Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities Sydney Carton secretly takes Darnay’s place on the way to the guillotine, this is not an unjust act on Carton’s part. But if the judge were knowingly to execute an innocent man, for the crimes of another, that would be an unjust act on the part of the judge.

The reason why punishing an innocent person (knowing that he is innocent) for the crimes of another is unjust, whether or not the person wills that he be punished, is that giving to someone more good than he is due, is compatible with justice because justice does not restrict mercy. But, giving to someone less good (or more evil) than he is due is not compatible with justice. Justice is asymmetrical in that respect. For this reason, punishing an innocent person, knowing that he is innocent, is unjust, whether or not the person volunteers to be punished. That is why the Protestant conception of the Father pouring out His wrath for our sins on Christ makes God the Father unjust to Christ, whereas the satisfaction conception of the atonement does not, because while justice prohibits punishing an innocent person, it does not prohibit receiving a substitutionary gift that makes reparation for the debt owed by another.

This is why St. Thomas uses the language of St. Paul in speaking of the Father “delivering up” Christ, as when St. Paul wrote,”but delivered him up for us all.” (Romans 8:32) St. Thomas writes:

Christ as God delivered Himself up to death by the same will and action as that by which the Father delivered Him up; but as man He gave Himself up by a will inspired of the Father. Consequently there is no contrariety in the Father delivering Him up and in Christ delivering Himself up. (ST III Q.47 a.3 ad 2)

God the Father did not pour out His wrath on His Son; rather, according to His plan He delivered Christ over to the Jews and Romans (i.e. permitted Christ to be arrested and flogged and crucified), and they freely poured out their wrath on Christ. There was no contrariety between the Father and the Son during the Passion, no loss of love from the Father to the Son or the Son to the Father. The Father wholly and entirely loved His Son during the entire Passion. By one and the same divine will and action, the Father allowed the Son to be crucified and the Son allowed Himself to be crucified. (SeeSumma Theologica III Q.47 a.3) (For an explanation of “My God, my God, why has Thou forsaken me?”, see comment #26 above.)

Otherwise, if the Father had wrath for men while the Son had love for men, this either (1) conflicts with the doctrine of the Trinity, in making the Father and the Son be at odds with each other [i.e. "drives a wedge"]; if Christ loves men, then so does the Father, or if the Father has wrath for men, then so does Christ, which doesn’t fit with “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” or (2) it conflicts with the doctrine of the incarnation, in making the Son’s divine will to be that of divine wrath directed toward His own human nature, and either (2a) the Son’s human will contradicting His divine will, by loving His human nature while the divine will hates His human nature, or (2b) the Son’s human will being in perfect conformity with the divine will, and in His enraged human will pouring out wrath on His own human nature and wanting to punish it and kill it, like Phinehas in Numbers 25:7, but toward His own flesh.

This theological mess will continue, so long as the sacrificial and substitutionary language of Scripture and the Fathers is misconstrued as meaning that Christ steps voluntarily into the blind stream of divine wrath so that we don’t receive it. We need to remember and recover the original conception of substitutionary atonement, which long preceded the Protestant Christ-takes-the-divine-wrath version.

from comment 69 Bryan (much more in this comment at the link) http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/

In at least two ways, however, we do not agree regarding what was happening between the Father and the Son during the crucifixion. First, you believe that during the crucifixion the Father was pouring out all His wrath for all the sins of the elect, on the Son. In the Reformed system, the complete punishment for each sin committed by each of the elect, was received by Christ on the cross, meted out directly by the Father. Each of those sins deserved eternal punishment in hell fire. So according to the Reformed view, on the cross Christ received from the Father a punishment equivalent to x eternal punishments in hell fire, where x is the number of all the elect multiplied by the number of all the sinful acts (thoughts, words, deeds, omissions) ever committed by all the elect. Hence, Sproul says that on the cross the Father essentially says to the Son, “God damn you.” (See comment #41.) That’s just what I mean by the Father ‘hating’ the Son, i.e. ‘disfellowshiping’ Him, breaking communion with Him. John Piper’s colleague Rick Gamache claims that during the crucifixion the Father accused the Son of committing a long list of sins. You claim that Christ offers Himself “to absorb the Father’s holy wrath on our behalf,” as though the Son offers Himself to the Father as a punching bag on whom the Father can take out all His wrath justly due to us for all our sins. This treatment of Christ is just, in your view, because the Father has imputed our sin to the Son; that’s how you interpret St. Paul’s statement in 2 Cor. 5:21 that God made Christ “to be sin.”

By contrast, in the Catholic tradition the Father loved the Son during the crucifixion, as He does eternally, and was not angry with Him, and did not think Him to be guilty of any sin, and did not turn away from Him. In the Catholic tradition the Father (and the Son and the Spirit in the one divine will) delivered over the Son in His human nature (Christ complying in His human will), into the hands of sinful men to be crucified. What the Son endured, in His human nature, was the curse for sin, which as St. Augustine explains, is suffering and death, not wrath or anger or rejection or hatred from the Father. (Again, see the link at comment #41.) God did not create man to suffer and die. Suffering and death were the result of the fall, not part of the original design. (See “Lawrence Feingold on Original Justice and Original Sin.”) And that (i.e. suffering and death) is what the Son, in His human nature, endured.

Yes, the Son, through His human nature, satisfies God’s (not just the Father’s wrath, but the Son’s and the Spirit’s as well) wrath for human sin, meriting grace for our eternal life, as I explained above, andon your site. He did this by offering Himself, in His human nature, to the Father as a sacrifice for our sin, and this act of love, in His human will, made satisfaction for our sins, by making an offering that is more pleasing to the Father than all our sins are displeasing. The meaning of 2 Cor. 5:21, as St. Augustine explains, is that Christ was made a sin offering. (See comment #35 above.) That doesn’t mean that sin was imputed to Christ, or that He became legally guilty in the eyes of the Father. It means that He, as innocent, offered Himself to the Father for our sin, as a gift more pleasing than all our sins were displeasing. The meaning of Isaiah 53, likewise, was explained in the body of the post, and in comments #17 and #19. This way of understanding the atonement makes sense of all those passages you cited (Rom 5:9, John 3:36, Rom 3:25-26, etc.). But, nowhere in Scripture does it say that God the Father poured out His wrath on His Son. You are bringing that assumption to the text of Scripture, and reading it into the passages on the atonement, and into the passages on our being saved from God’s wrath. And it is difficult for you, I think, to see the other paradigm, and see these passages through the framework of the other paradigm, because you are so used to reading the concept of “God pouring out His wrath on His Son” into these passages, rather than understanding them as the Son, in His human nature, offering to the Father a sacrifice of love that is more pleasing than all our sins are displeasing. Resolving this disagreement would take some time, so I’ll push this disagreement to the back burner as well.

(The back burner is getting crowded, I know, but we just can’t address all these questions at once; we should treat them one at a time, in their proper place. And I don’t have the time at present to treat them all.)

The second way in which we do not agree regarding what was happening between the Father and the Son during the crucifixion is that you claim that the “ancient, eternal fellowship between Father and Son was broken,” whereas in the Catholic tradition, that fellowship cannot possibly be broken, any more than God could possibly cease to exist. And this disagreement, concerning whether that ancient, eternal fellowship was broken, is the one on which I wish to focus.

I think the argument in comment #62 is solid, in that your claim entails either Arianism or polytheism. I understand that you explicitly reject both Arianism and polytheism. So, I’m not claiming that you explicitly affirm either Arianism or polytheism. But, I do think your position is incoherent, because although you explicitly deny Arianism and polytheism, your claim that the “ancient, eternal fellowship between Father and Son was broken,” entails either Arianism or polytheism. This criticism is not an external criticism that presupposes the Catholic paradigm. This problem is *internal* to the Reformed paradigm.

You think your position avoids both Arianism and polytheism, because you claim that ontologically, nothing changed between the Father and the Son during the crucifixion. Instead, you claim, what changed between the Father and the Son during the crucifixion was that the “ancient, eternal fellowship between Father and Son was broken.” And a temporary loss of that eternal fellowship, in your opinion, does not entail either Arianism or polytheism, because, you claim, during the crucifixion, all the ontology of the Father and the Son remained the same.

The problem for your position is that in order for there to be a [temporary] loss of the eternal fellowship between the Father and the Son, either Arianism or polytheism must be true. That’s because in order for there to be a breach of fellowship between the Father and the Son, the Son cannot be the Father’s own perfect self-understanding, as I explained here. If the Son is the Father’s perfect self-understanding, the Father’s perfect Concept of Himself, the one perfect internal Word of the Father, then necessarily the Father cannot ever lose fellowship with the Son, because the Father cannot lose perfect communion with His own self-understanding, His own Concept of Himself, His own internal Word. (On the Son as the internal Word of the Father, see St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica I Q.27 – Q. 35.) For this reason, only if the Son is not the Father’s self-understanding, the Father’s perfect Concept of Himself, the internal Word of the Father, can there be a loss of the eternal fellowship between the Father and the Son. But if the Son is not the Father’s self-understanding, perfect Concept, and internal Word, then the Son is extrinsic to the Father. That’s the only other option. The Son can be internal to the Father only as Logos; the only other way to be internal to the Father is as the Spirit is internal to the Father (i.e. is the relation between the Father and the Father’s Logos). (Hence your claim that the ancient, eternal fellowship between the Father and the Son was broken would entail that the Spirit ceased to exist, since the Spirit is the fellowship of the Father and the Son.)

This is why the claim that there was a [temporary] loss of the eternal fellowship between the Father and the Son entails that the relation of the Logos to the Father is something *extrinsic* to the Father. And the Son can be extrinsic to the Father only if the Son either (a) has His being independently of the Father (in which case polytheism is true), or (b) was created by the Father (in which case Arianism is true). Your claim (that the ancient, eternal fellowship between the Father and the Son was broken) is based on a three-headed organism conception of the Trinity [as the mythic Cerberus], as though one head could turn away from the other. The problem with the three-headed organism conception of the Trinity is that because God is immaterial, and therefore the heads cannot be differentiated by being composed of different chunks of matter, nothing would differentiate the three heads from each other, unless they did not share the same nature. But the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all are one and the same divine nature. So there must be processions, in order to differentiate the three Persons from each other. And the processions cannot be external, for then the Son and the Spirit wouldn’t be consubstantial with the Father. Hence, the processions must be internal to the Father, and so the Apostle John teaches that the Logos is in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18), and St. Paul teaches that the Spirit searches the “depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:10), which the Spirit can do because the Spirit is internal to the Father."

.....................from comment 3 here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/04/aquinas-and-trent-part-6/
This is why Aquinas says that God the Father delivered up [tradiderit] i.e. handed over, Christ to the Passion. (ST III Q.47 a.3) That is a very different depiction of the Father’s role from that in which God the Father is pouring out His own wrath on Christ.

see also https://archive.org/stream/thedoctrineofato02riviuoft#page/n261/mode/2up/search/conclusion

Catholic and Reformed conceptions of the atonement and Is 53 explained too

http://www.catholicfidelity.com/apologetics-topics/justification-salvation/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement-by-bryan-cross/

The above reference is a pretty good article contrasting the difference and explaining the Catholic view. (Is 53 explained too) . Here is a quote about Isaiah 53 giving a Catholic answer to this question (but the entire article above should be read) Lower down I give some problems with this view for a Protestant:

"A third question, from the Reformed point of view, is this: How then should we understand Isaiah 53? What does it mean that:

Surely he hath borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows: and we have thought him as it were a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our iniquities, he was bruised for our sins: the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, every one hath turned aside into his own way: and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. .. And the Lord was pleased to bruise him in infirmity: if he shall lay down his life for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be prosperous in his hand. Because his soul hath laboured, he shall see and be filled: by his knowledge shall this my just servant justify many, and he shall bear their iniquities. (Isaiah 53;4-6, 10-11)

{RC answer}This means that Christ carried in His body the sufferings that sin has brought into the world, and that Christ suffered in His soul over all the sins of the world, and their offense against God. He bore our iniquities not in the sense that God punished Him for what we did, but in the sense that He grieved over them all, in solidarity with us. That is what it means that the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He suffered the consequences of sin (i.e. suffering, grief, death), by entering into solidarity with us, entering into our fallen world, and allowing Himself to suffer in it with us, for us, even by our hands."

He also states this:

The Catholic conception of Christ’s Passion and Atonement is that Christ offered Himself up in self-sacrificial love to the Father, obedient even unto death, for the sins of all men. The Father was never angry with Christ. Nor did the Father pour out His wrath on the Son. The Passion is Christ’s greatest act of love, the greatest revelation of the heart of God, and the glory of Christ.¹ So when Christ was on the cross, God the Father was not pouring out His wrath on His Son; In Christ’s act of self-sacrifice in loving obedience to the Father, Christ was most lovable in the eyes of the Father. Rather, in Christ’s Passion we humans poured out our enmity with God on Christ, by what we did to Him in His body and soul. And He freely chose to let us do all this to Him. Deeper still, even our present sins contributed to His suffering, because He, in solidarity with us, grieved over all the sins of the world, not just the sins of the elect. Hence, St. Francis of Assisi said, “Nor did demons crucify Him; it is you who have crucified Him and crucify Him still, when you delight in your vices and sins.”² The Passion is a revelation of the love of God, not the wrath of God. The fundamental difference can be depicted simply in the following drawing: (NA)(see article)"

This seems to be , then, the satisfaction theory of the Atonement which Anselm held to---Berkhof states this theory as thus:

Anselm stressed the absolute necessity of the atonement by grounding it in the very nature of God. According to him sin consists in the creature's withholding from God the honor which is His due. By the sin of man God was robbed of His honor, and it was necessary that this should be vindicated. This could be done in either of two ways: by punishment or by satisfaction. The mercy of God prompted Him to seek it in the way of satisfaction, and in more particularly through the gift of His Son, which was the only way, since an infinite satisfaction was required. Christ rendered obedience to the law, but since this was nothing more than His duty as man it did not constitute any merit on His part."

{note: the RC encyclopedia states that after Anselm:," Abelard was unable to accept Anselm's view that an equivalent satisfaction for sin was necessary, and that this debt could only be paid by the death of the Divine Redeemer. He insists that God could have pardoned us without requiring satisfaction. And, in his view, the reason for the Incarnation and the death of Christ was the pure love of God. By no other means could men be so effectually turned from sin and moved to love God. " But it seems the RC now holds to the necessity --not sure on this--for the encyclopedia states: But on the hypothesis that God has chosen to restore mankind, and at the same time, to require full satisfaction as a condition of pardon and deliverance, nothing less than the Atonement made by one who was God as well as man could suffice as satisfaction for the offense against the Divine Majesty. And in this case Anselm's argument will hold good. Mankind cannot be restored unless God becomes man to save }

PROBLEMS WITH THE ABOVE. Berkhof in his systematic theology [the chapter entitled Divergent Theories of the Atonement] states that the problem with this is --"This theory really has no place for the idea that Christ by suffering endured the penalty of sin, and that His suffering was strictly vicarious. The death of Christ is merely a tribute offered voluntarily to the honor of the Father. It constitutes a supererogatory merit, compensating for the demerits of others; and this is really the Roman Catholic doctrine of penance applied to the work of Christ."

Secondly "The scheme is also one-sided and therefore insufficient in that it basis redemption exclusively on the death of Christ, conceived as a material contribution to the honor of God, and excludes the active obedience of Christ as a contributing factor to His atoning work. The whole emphasis in on the death of Christ, and no justice is done to the redemptive significance of His life." Berkhof doesn't give scripture here for the redemptive significance of his life, but in an early chapter, I believe he does.

Thirdly Berkof states about this Satisfaction theory : "It ostensibly does not ground this necessity[of the atonement] in the justice of God which cannot brook sin, but in the honor of God which calls for amends or reparation.

MORE ON THE CATHOLIC VIEW OF THEATONEMENT HERE: http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2010/07/atonement-according-to-scripture-more.html

A MORE DETAILED EXPLANATION BY THE CATHOLIC GUY NAMED NICK ON ISAIAH 53 IS HERE:

http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2010/05/is-job-suffering-servant-of-isaiah-53.html

Thomas Aquinus on the curse of the cross --found this from comment 327 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/#comment-65583

But it is possible to expound this authority both with respect to the evil of punishment and the evil of guilt. Of the evil of punishment thus: Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree, not precisely because he hangs on a tree, but because of the guilt for which he hangs. And in this way Christ was thought to be cursed, when He hung on the cross, because He was being punished with an extraordinary punishment. And according to this explanation, there is a continuity with the preceding. For the Lord commanded in Deuteronomy that anyone who had been hanged should be taken down in the evening; the reason being that this punishment was more disgraceful and ignominious than any other. He is saying, therefore: Truly was He made a curse for us, because the death of the cross which He endured is tantamount to a curse—thus explaining the evil of guilt, although it was only in the minds of the Jews—because it is written: Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. But with respect to the evil of punishment, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree is explained thus: The punishment itself is a curse, namely, that He should die in this way. Explained in this way, He was truly cursed by God, because God decreed that He endure this punishment in order to set us free

also from here at comment 330 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/#comment-67181

I would ask you to think back to the Old Testament and the type/shadows of Christ. God instituted the sacrificial system to prepare the Jews for the Messiah, and for us as our schoolmaster to understand the New Covenant. In the Old Testament, the lamb had to be spotless, without blemish. This was a symbol of perfection and innocence. In fact, those are precisely the concepts an image of a lamb evokes. Christ, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world does so not by becoming a scalawag, but instead He saves us because He is not just a shadow of a perfect, sinless and guiltless lamb – He is the Perfect One, the Son of God, our Pasche.
I think an alternate view of the atonement only makes sense if the lamb of the Old Testament was “punished.” But, it was not. It was sacrificed.
If Christ were guilty of something, then his punishment would been justice for him. Instead, because he is guiltless, the justice of his punishment is for us. In this way, I think that Catholics can admit to a type of vicarious atonement (vs. vicarious punishment). The sacrifice of Christ on the cross, executed by those He was redeeming, satisfied the wrath of the Father – not because it was an act of aggression by God – but because it was a perfect act of Love by God for us. Perfect loves casts out all fear.

Amen

and from comment 331
............................
If you look at the atonement from the perspective of the Catholic paradigm, then you see that the sinless perfection of Christ is necessary in order for the gift of love He offers to the Father on our behalf to be perfect, and therefore superabundant in its meritorious value, such that by this perfect sacrifice Christ made atonement for every sin that has ever been committed, and will be committed, by every human person who has ever lived, and ever will live, and merited the gift of sanctifying grace for every human person who has ever lived, and ever will live.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_theory_of_atonement

Then here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/

someone asked: comment 460

1) God forgives human sin and gives grace by means of Christ’s atonement.
2) God could have forgiven human sin and given grace by other means that did not involve punishing an innocent person.
3) It is unjust to permit the punishment of an innocent person to effect a good when the same good could be effected by other means that do not include punishing the innocent.
4) God acts unjustly (from 1, 2, and 3).

Since (1) and (2) are affirmed by St. Thomas, it would seem you have to deny (3) to avoid the conclusion. That is, unless (4) is a non sequitur that I’m missing. Yet, (3) seems to be true, at least when examined with our moral intuitions. How might one who affirms the Catholic, Thomistic conception of the atonement respond to this argument?

the answer given in 461_

 First, (4) is a non sequitur, because the premises equivocate between “punish” and “permit punishment.” But beyond that problem, (3) is not true in part because “the same good could be effected” conflates the distinction between the goodness of the end achieved and the goodness of the means by which that end is achieved. That distinction is precisely what St. Thomas is talking about in the paragraph quoted in #458 above. Yes, the same end could be achieved (i.e. the Beatific Vision) by mere divine fiat offering grace and forgiveness to sinners. But the goodness of saving us by means of taking on our nature through the incarnation and then, making satisfaction through an act of supreme sacrificial love even unto death through our assumed nature, would be lost if God were to bring us to the same end by immediate fiat. It is not intrinsically unjust to permit an innocent person to choose knowingly and freely to save others by allowing himself to be punished by others, even when the same end can be achieved by other means that do not include punishing the innocent. So a fortiori it is not unjust to permit this if this way of saving others is a better means than the means that do not include anyone punishing the innocent.

penal-substitution/ catholic and protestant views

http://www.creedcodecult.com/it-is-finished/ good summary here and excellent resource in the comment section on St Augustine's statements

see also :http://catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-does-good-friday-work-exactly.html

see also http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2014/04/does-catholic-view-of-christs-atonement.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NicksCatholicBlog+%28NICK%27S+CATHOLIC+BLOG%29

from comment    16     here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/04/aquinas-and-trent-part-6/#comment-46122

 And no, the Reformers did not teach the quirky, modern, evangelical Protestant penal substitution view you are advocating. Listen to Calvin when commenting on Jesus’ use of the words from Psalm 22 on the cross: “Yet we do not suggest that God was ever inimical or angry toward him. How could he be angry toward his beloved Son, in whom his heart reposed? How could Christ by his intercession appease the Father toward others, if he were himself hateful to God? (Institutes, 2.16.11) Calvin did not hold the awful view that you find “Reformed” preachers and even evangelical theologians advocating today.

from comment 140 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/

What people fail to grasp is that Christ does not bear the punishment due to sin in the same manner that sinners do in this life, and will do eternally in hell. Christ bore the punishment due to sin as an act of sacrifice and obedience to the Father’s will. It is not the receiving of God’s wrath that makes the atonement satisfactory (as a substitute punishment), rather it is the Son’s offering up the gift of his blood (his life) on the altar of the cross that atones for human transgression. He suffers in our place as the act of an obedient servant, not as the recipient of wrath from an angry deity. It is not the punishment itself that satisfies divine wrath, but Christ’s humility, obedience, and sacrificial compliance with God’s will that his blood be poured out on the altar of the cross.

The modern evangelical model of penal substitution (not exactly the same as the view of Calvin by the way) severs the link between the incarnation and the cross. The humility and suffering of the Son on our behalf does not begin on the cross, but encompasses his whole incarnate experience. It begins with Jesus’ birth and culminates with his sacrifice at Calvary. It is all of one piece; his unspeakable condescension in setting aside his heavenly glory and becoming one with his fallen creation.

Catholic :https://sites.google.com/site/catholicdefense/ji-packers-penal-substitution-article

The above deals with arguments against J I Packer's view

The ones below give Catholic side in a debate and the Protestant side is given below too:

http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/search/label/Penal%20Substitution?updated-max=2009-01-14T23%3A42%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=20

http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2009/01/penal-substitution-debate-negative.html

http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2009/02/negative-rebuttal-penal-substitution.html

http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2009/03/psub-negative-questions.html

http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2009/04/psub-negative-conclusion.html

Protestant: http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2009/01/penal-substitution-debate-affirmative.html

http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2009/02/penal-substitution-debate-affirmative.html

http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2009/03/psub-affirmative-answers.html

http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2009/04/psub-affirmative-conclusion.html

More on Penal substitution from Cathilic view

http://catholicnick.blogspot.com/2009/03/psub-negative-questions.html

MORE ON PENAL SUBSTITUTION INCLUDING A TRACING OF THE HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_substitution

A look at hints of Penal Sub. in the church Fathers. However, to me, these quotes seem more likely to indicate that he bore the curse of death for us, and not what the Reformed say as being punished---but perhaps they are one and the same? Not sure:

http://www.puritanboard.com/f15/2-questions-emailed-me-9928/

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/ from comment 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 comment 18 on the same thread:
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.

quote below from: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/the-harrowing-of-hell/#comment-7760 from comment 4

If Christ lost the Beatific Vision during His three hours on the cross, then He did not consciously die for your sins and mine, but only for sins in the abstract, because by the natural power of His human intellect He could not have known all at once all the persons of the world and all our sins. Nor could He therefore have suffered for all our sins, interiorly. Only if He knew all our sins particularly and individually, could He grieve with the pain of contrition in solidarity with us, for each of our sins. And therefore only if He retained the Beatific Vision could He make atonement for each of our sins by His internal suffering. In the year 2000 Pope John Paul II wrote of this in his Apostolic Letter Novo millennio ineunte:

26. Jesus’ cry on the Cross, dear Brothers and Sisters, is not the cry of anguish of a man without hope, but the prayer of the Son who offers his life to the Father in love, for the salvation of all. At the very moment when he identifies with our sin, “abandoned” by the Father, he “abandons” himself into the hands of the Father. His eyes remain fixed on the Father. Precisely because of the knowledge and experience of the Father which he alone has, even at this moment of darkness he sees clearly the gravity of sin and suffers because of it. He alone, who sees the Father and rejoices fully in him, can understand completely what it means to resist the Father’s love by sin. More than an experience of physical pain, his Passion is an agonizing suffering of the soul. Theological tradition has not failed to ask how Jesus could possibly experience at one and the same time his profound unity with the Father, by its very nature a source of joy and happiness, and an agony that goes all the way to his final cry of abandonment. The simultaneous presence of these two seemingly irreconcilable aspects is rooted in the fathomless depths of the hypostatic union. (emphasis mine)

Pope John Paul II teaches here that it was precisely because Christ retained the Beatific Vision that He could (and did) see the full gravity of all human sins and therefore suffer for all of them in all of their offensiveness to God whom we should love above all things. How could He suffer more than anyone has ever suffered, while at the same time holding on to the joy of the Beatific Vision? Pope John Paul II says that this is a mystery, and thus we should not try to explain it away by eliminating either Christ’s Beatific Vision or His suffering. Pope John Paul II goes on in the next paragraph to say:

27. Faced with this mystery, we are greatly helped not only by theological investigation but also by that great heritage which is the “lived theology” of the saints. The saints offer us precious insights which enable us to understand more easily the intuition of faith, thanks to the special enlightenment which some of them have received from the Holy Spirit, or even through their personal experience of those terrible states of trial which the mystical tradition describes as the “dark night”. Not infrequently the saints have undergone something akin to Jesus’ experience on the Cross in the paradoxical blending of bliss and pain. In the Dialogue of Divine Providence, God the Father shows Catherine of Siena how joy and suffering can be present together in holy souls: “Thus the soul is blissful and afflicted: afflicted on account of the sins of its neighbour, blissful on account of the union and the affection of charity which it has inwardly received. These souls imitate the spotless Lamb, my Only-begotten Son, who on the Cross was both blissful and afflicted”. In the same way, Thérèse of Lisieux lived her agony in communion with the agony of Jesus, “experiencing” in herself the very paradox of Jesus’s own bliss and anguish: “In the Garden of Olives our Lord was blessed with all the joys of the Trinity, yet his dying was no less harsh. It is a mystery, but I assure you that, on the basis of what I myself am feeling, I can understand something of it”. What an illuminating testimony! Moreover, the accounts given by the Evangelists themselves provide a basis for this intuition on the part of the Church of Christ’s consciousness when they record that, even in the depths of his pain, he died imploring forgiveness for his executioners (cf. Lk 23:34) and expressing to the Father his ultimate filial abandonment: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46).

Here he points out how the great saints have a taste of this mystery in their own lives, in that they simultaneously in different but interrelated respects experience the joy of hope and charity to be fulfilled in the life to come, and the suffering and pain caused by the sins of one’s neighbor (and even of oneself) and by all the present woes due to the not-yet-ness of the culmination of all things in Heaven. On the cross Jesus in His human intellect didn’t lose sight of the loving face of His Father, but simultaneously He experienced in His body and soul the full measure of the desolation, disorder, madness and suffering of this world under the curse of sin. That’s what He is expressing in His “Eli, Eli, lama sabacthani?, His full and total immersion into the God-forsakeness of this fallen world of fallen man in its cursed condition in this present life. This is what it means that He bore the curse, namely, that He entered into the fallenness of this world, even unto death.

UPDATE: One of the best refutations I’ve seen online, of Balthasar’s claim that Christ did not have the beatific vision, is Unam Sanctum Catholicam‘s “Balthasar, Christ and the Beatific Vision.”

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

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.”

from comment 62:
Part of the reason for this error is the mistaken notion of the atonement, described in the post above, in which the Father has to pour out wrath on His Son. That notion of the atonement forces the following dilemma: either the Father pours out His wrath only on a human nature, in which case, the suffering isn’t infinite in value and therefore isn’t redemptive, or the Father pours out His wrath on the Logos, which entails tritheism or Arianism for the reasons just explained.


from article http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/10/a-reply-from-a-romery-person/  below:

In Catholic theology, on the cross Christ in His human nature bore the curse of death, and by His obedience in His human nature, He offered Himself to the Father as a sacrificial gift of love. In this way He gave to the Father something far more pleasing than all our sins were displeasing to the Father. In this way He in His human nature merited from the Father the gift of grace for all men. This is how our debt was paid, not by Christ bearing the wrath of the Father, but by offering Himself up in love to His Father and so meriting for us the gift of grace. We need grace to enter heaven because heaven is a supernatural end. We cannot attain a supernatural end by our own nature because a thing can act only in proportion to its own nature. But through His Passion Christ merited for all men the gift of grace, i.e. the gift of participation in the divine nature. And Christ established means by which we receive this grace; these means are the sacraments. Through baptism we are reborn, that is, we receive sanctifying grace, i.e. the life of God, participation in the divine nature. And through the Eucharist we grow in sanctifying grace, and in agape

and here http://catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-does-good-friday-work-exactly.html  from the comment section

A) that we are sinners B) in need of protecting from C) the Father's wrath is not in dispute.

Are we protected because D)Christ jumped in front of that wrath like a Secret Service agent or are we protected because E) Christ made a way for the Father to extend us His unwarranted love and mercy?

and here comment 3 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/04/aquinas-and-trent-part-6/
The dilemma is between the Father knowingly pouring out His wrath on His innocent Son, or knowingly pouring out His wrath on His guilty Son. The option of the Father knowingly pouring out His wrath on His innocent Son who loves us and wants to stand in our place, does not split the horns, but is a more specific case under the first horn of the dilemma. If the Father poured out His wrath on His innocent Son, knowing that His Son was innocent, then the Father would be unjust, whether or not the Son out of love wanted to take our place. The Son’s love for man does not change the fact that it is unjust to punish an innocent person knowing that he is innocent. The Father can receive a gift of satisfaction from Christ, without being unjust. But to punish the innocent Christ, knowing that He is innocent, would be unjust.

from comment  of the same link:

Why is it unjust to give someone something they requested?

We have to distinguish between will and nature. Just because someone requests something (with his will), does not mean that it is just to give it to him (given his nature). Whether or not it is just to give it to him depends upon what he asks for, and his nature. Socrates gives the example of a man from whom you have borrowed a knife. Normally, it is just to give back to someone what you have borrowed from that person. But this knife-owner comes to your front-door in a raging fury, say, having just caught his wife in an act of adultery, and demanding back his knife. Should you give it to him? No, not at that moment. Why? Because of his emotional state. It would be unjust to give him back his knife at that moment. So according to his will (i.e. his request) it might seem you should give it back to him, but given his state, you should definitely not give it to him. A person can request something that you should not give to him. All sorts of sexual examples come to mind. Anyone who thinks that a request is sufficient to make fulfilling that request just, should not walk through a red light district. Consent does not entail a moral green light, because consent is not sufficient. The notion that consent is sufficient is a kind of Kantianism that prescinds from the natures of the persons involved, and from the order of Divine justice.

First, from the perspective of the parent it isn’t unjust to him because he requested it.

That’s Kantianism. When Saul asked his armor bearer to kill him, the armor bearer rightly refused. (1 Sam 31:4) It would have been unjust for the armor bearer to kill Saul, even though Saul was requesting it. (You can think of other ‘assisted suicide’ cases.) We have to distinguish between will and nature, and the role each plays in the morality of an action.

To punish an innocent person, knowing that he is innocent, is unjust, whether or not the person *wills* that he be punished. Giving to someone more good than he is due, is compatible with justice because justice does not restrict mercy. But, giving to someone less good (or more evil) than he is due is not compatible with justice. And what he is due is not based only on what he requests. Therefore, punishing an innocent person, knowing that he is innocent, is unjust, whether or not the person *wills* that he be punished.

A parent could justly be punished for a child’s crimes only insofar as the parent was responsible for the child’s evil behavior. With regard to punishment, justice doesn’t merely demand that *someone* be punished, but that the guilty person be punished. Otherwise justice is blind not merely in the proper sense of being impartial, but in the sense of treating humanity as an indefinite amorphous mass deserving some magnitude of blind fury. But on the Day of Judgment, what is presented is not the total debt due for all men’s sins. Rather, the Just Judge judges according to each man’s works. In other words, justice ‘sees’ each man, and what he deserves. Justice does not vent wrath blindly, as though anyone could jump in to block the blind stream of wrath.

below from comment 214 here
http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/04/catholic-and-reformed-conceptions-of-the-atonement/

You wrote:

What does the Holy Father mean by the following statements?
“That God in Christ took on our sins and He BECAME the sinner for us.”

And more importantly,

“And my sins are there in His body, in His soul!”

He means not that Christ sinned or that our sins were imputed to Christ, but that Christ took on our sins in solidarity with us, as explained both in the post above, and in comment #157 above.

Is it not metaphysically impossible for our sins to be IN Christ’s soul, or am I not understanding this discussion?

There are two ways to be “in”. One is to be in the will, as a disorder. Sin was not in Christ in that way. But another way is to be in the intellect, as that known through union with God and man, and through direct experience of it being done to him, and then grieved in the will, on account of what is in the intellect. In that sense sin was in Christ.

Also, I notice very little discussion about the propitiatory value of The atonement. … Trent makes clear that Christ’s loving sacrifice appeased or turned away the Father’s wrath. However one believes the immutability of God eliminates the possibility of emotions or passions in God, the council pretty unequivocally ascribes the personal attributes of the Father with regard to Christ’s work on the cross.
Trent, Session 22, Chap. 2: “For, appeased by this sacrifice, The Lord grants the grace and gift of penitence and pardons even the gravest crimes and sins.”

Or

Catechism of the Coucil of Trent: “And as no sacrifice more pleasing and acceptable could have been offered to God, He reconciled us to the Father, appeased His wrath, and made Him favorable to us.”

Right, but the appeasement is not a change in God, but a change in man’s relation to God through what Christ in our human nature has offered to God on our behalf.

The latter statement from the Roman Catechism especially seems to contradict the idea that God’s immutability precludes real anger in God.

No, there’s no contradiction. It simply has to be understood correctly, in the way I just explained above.

However we want to understand it, and as mysterious as it may be, it seems necessary to maintain that divine anger is an attribute of an immutable God. This appeasing of a very personal God was accomplished through Christ’s loving sacrifice which offered to the Father a gift more pleasing than all of mankind’s sins were displeasing. Christ turned away, soothed, or appeased the Father’s wrath, He didn’t endure it.

Right, I agree, but this doesn’t mean that there was a change in God. It means rather, as I mentioned above, that we (mankind) stand in a different relation to God, through the great act of self-sacrificial love for God by Christ in our human nature on our behalf.

In the peace of Christ,

- Bryan

also comment 220

Under a legal system in which legal status is by a stipulation that is not required to correspond to the truth concerning the heart (as an innocent man can be declared guilty, and a guilty man be declared innocent), and the debt in question is extrinsic to the person (e.g. a debt of money, car, house, property, etc.) a debt can be transferred by legal stipulation. But when the debt is to God, who is Truth, and the human relatum of the debt is based on what is intrinsic to the soul, then although the debt can be forgiven by God’s choice (because it is owed to Him), it cannot be transferred to some other person, because the debt is a truth-relation based on what is intrinsic to the soul’s actions in relation to God, not a free-floating label to pinned on anyone apart from the truth concerning that person’s actions in relation to God.

Regarding 2 Cor 5:21, the traditional understanding of this passage is explained by St. Augustine – seecomment #29 in the “Does the Bible Teach Sola Fide?” thread.

In the peace of Christ,

from comment 250

1. On your view, why is it metaphysically possible for Saul to persecute Jesus by persecuting Christians?

2. On your view, why is it metaphysically impossible for God to punish the sins of Christians by punishing Jesus?

That’s a good question, and helps clarify the distinction. In the incarnation Christ took on our nature, i.e. human nature. Through recapitulating His humanity, we are granted a share in His divinity. Hence in baptism we were made partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4). We receive Christ’s Spirit from Christ our Head, and thereby share the same supernatural life. The Church is made from the sacraments (represented by water and blood) which flow from the side of the pierced Christ, as Eve was made from the rib of Adam, and the two became one flesh, through a mystical union that does not obliterate our distinct identities, but elevates us into one divine life that is our animating principle ordered to one divine end. In this way, we are members of Christ’s Mystical Body, and therefore in this sense what is done to us is thereby done to Him.

But the disorder of sin is in the will (as explained in comments #161 – #218 above), and the punishment of sin is against the disorder in the will. In neither the incarnation nor baptism is there a ‘swapping’ of wills. Christ, in taking on human nature, takes on a human will, but it is not someone else’s will that He takes on; it is His human will, by which He chooses, and by which He remained sinless in His human life. Nor does He take on more than one human will. So in the incarnation He does not receive a guilty will, nor does He ever sin. And therefore He cannot be justly punished by God for sins we have committed, since these sins are not in His will, as explained in #161 – #218 above, just as a husband cannot be justly punished by God for the sins of his wife. The union of Christ and His Church does not dissolve our distinct identities, or fuse us all into one physical person with one will. Our distinct personhood (and thus our distinct will) remains intact, even while we are united ontologically in the ways described just above.