From Morgan Guyton: Four Cringe-worthy Claims of Popular Penal Substitution Theology

 I was reading up on Rachel Held Evans' superlatives blog and she quoted a post by Morgan Guyton that was reposted by Jesus Creed.  I though it an interesting perspective on penal substutionary atonement theory running through conservative evangelical circles these days.  Perhaps I'll write out some of my thoughts on the theory later...
Anyways, here's Morgan's post in full:

I’ve often wondered if the same thing that makes violent video games appealing is why young evangelical guys are so infatuated with penal substitution theology. I figure a scary bad-ass God is cool for the same reason that the loud wet smack of a linebacker knocking the wind out of a quarterback is cool (I was that linebacker once).

I recognize that some guys need to have a God who likes to say “RAWR!!!” but in their zeal over penal substitution, some cringe-worthy and not entirely Biblical assertions are being made. There is a theologically responsible account of penal substitution; it’s part of the mystery of the cross. But I wanted to examine four of the more obnoxious assertions that I’ve heard in what I would call popular penal substitution theology (in places like a recent Steven Furtick sermon I listened to).
1) God is allergic to sin
A pillar of popular penal substitution theology is that God cannot tolerate the presence of sin. I think it’s more accurate to say that sin cannot tolerate the presence of God. The consequence of understanding things the first way is that the cross becomes God’s inoculation for His sin allergy. Ironically, one of the main points of Jesus’ incarnation was to prove that God is not distant and untouchably pure, but rather someone who “eats and drinks with sinners.” Now this doesn’t mean that sin is not allergic to God. People reacted to Jesus’ perfect love and holiness either by repenting of their sin like Zacchaeus did or by lashing out defensively and crucifying Him like the Pharisees did.
It was not that Jesus couldn’t tolerate imperfection but rather that His perfection was intolerable. In John 3:19, Jesus summarizes the relationship between sin and God’s presence: “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” God is light; He doesn’t need the cross to protect Him from our darkness; we need the cross so we can survive entering into God’s light.
2) God sees Jesus instead of us when He looks at us
In the Steven Furtick sermon that motivated this blog post, he said that the reason God gives us His “approval” is because He doesn’t see us when He looks at us but sees Jesus instead. That’s not approval; that’s deception. I can’t understand how anyone could possibly be encouraged by that. God doesn’t need our true selves to be hidden from His view to love us infinitely. His rage against the sin that oppresses us is part of that love. It’s true that Paul tells us to “put on Christ” and says that “in Christ we become the righteousness of God,” but Jesus isn’t a mask that we wear to cover ourselves up; He’s a body in which we become ourselves.
Popular penal substitution theology perverts Paul’s theology because it cannot recognize the sacramental character of the body of Christ from its modern individualist ontology. Jesus is not just our brother who stands in for us before God; He is also the one in whom “all things hold together.” So the substitution Christ provides is really one-to-many rather than one-to-one.
The phrase “in Christ” cannot be understood correctly without recognizing that Christ was already the source of our being as the one “in whom all things were created.” We are not truly ourselves outside of Christ; we are accidental constructions of our social context. It is only when we are “swallowed up” (2 Cor 5:4) by the life that Christ has provided for us that we gain the freedom to be what God has always seen in us. God doesn’t need to see a Jesus mask over our faces to approve us; His unconditional prior approval of us is the reason He sent His Word made flesh to empower us for holy living through our incorporation into His body.
3) Since God is infinite, He is infinitely offended by the slightest of our sins
The legacy of penal substitution theology can be traced to a book called Cur Deus Homo that was written by 11th century theologian Anselm to explain why Jesus needed to be both divine and human. Being from a medieval honor-based society, Anselm thought the primary problem resolved by the cross is the offense that sin inflicts on God’s honor as a king. This became the satisfaction theory of atonement which evolved into penal substitution. Anselm reasoned that because God is infinite, someone who is also infinite (Jesus) had to become fully human to pay the debt owed to God’s honor by humans. Hence the God-man.
When I read Cur Deus Homo, I noticed an interesting phrase that Anselm used to explain why it had to be this way. He says in several places, “It is fitting.” He doesn’t say for whom it is “fitting”
that Jesus pays our debt to God. Does God need it to happen or do we? I think popular penal substitution theology conflates satisfying God’s honor with appeasing God’s anger. They are absolutely not the same thing. We need for God’s honor to be satisfied through Jesus’ blood because otherwise we would not be able to bear the shame of looking into His face.
It is not that God is infinitely unable to understand the moral complexity that is behind our sin. He sees all the mitigating circumstances; He sees the good that we tried to do even in situations where we were ultimately in the wrong. The problem is not that God is an infinitely sanctimonious doosh bag who needed His Son’s blood to get over His pickiness; then it would be a lot easier to make peace with the dishonor we have shown Him. The problem is that we will be convicted and sorrowed to the point of eternal torture to stand in the presence of perfect love and truth without the assurance of Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf. The peasants need the king’s honor to be satisfied; otherwise they live in terror; and that’s why the king Himself paid the price for their sin against Him.
4) God poured out His wrath on Jesus on the cross
The word wrath in Greek is οργή, the root for our word “orgy” in English. When you look at how this word is actually used in the Bible, it’s more mysterious than you might think. It’s not just a synonym for “anger.” Paul tells the Ephesians that they were “formerly by [their] nature children of wrath” (which the NIV theologically edits to say children deserving of wrath). To be a child of wrath according to Paul is to be owned by “the desires of our flesh and senses” (Eph 2:3). It has nothing to do with God being angry.
In Romans 1:18, Paul writes that the “wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness.” If wrath were simply “anger,” we could expect Paul to elaborate on this statement by cataloguing a series of natural disasters with which God responded to punish humanity’s sin. Instead what we find is an account of the degeneration of humanity through the innate consequences of their sinful behavior. God “hands them over” to their lust, idolatry, etc, but He is not actively punitive independent of these innate consequences in His response to sin. This seems to suggest that God’s οργή is the proliferation of sin itself.
When I read these texts, I wonder if we ought to think of wrath as describing the poison that fills the air and curses the ground when God is dishonored rather than an emotion experienced by a God whom we probably shouldn’t presume to have the same kinds of emotions that we do. In any case, what happened on the cross is that God the Father did not prevent God the Son from being killed by the Jewish religious authorities. He let Him drink the cup of (His/our?) wrath which He came to Earth to drink. But this in no way means that the Father was the executioner of the Son for the sake of His own anger management. When we talk about the Father “pouring out His wrath” on His son, we make Him look like a drunken child abuser.
I cannot find anywhere in scripture that makes the Father the primary agent behind the crucifixion of His Son. The closest is the Suffering Servant passage in Isaiah 52-53 in which we read that “it was the Lord’s will to crush him with pain” (53:10). First, I would contend that the Suffering Servant passage is primarily about Israel’s exile and only secondarily about Christ in His
role as the recapitulation of His people’s destiny. The description of the Suffering Servant cannot be mapped completely onto Christ without compromising Christ’s divinity and the full unity of the divine will.
Secondly, in no place does Isaiah 52-53 describe the fulfillment of God’s wrath as the purpose of the Servant’s suffering. Isaiah 53:5 says, “Upon him was the punishment that made us whole; by his bruises we are healed.” In other words, the purpose of the Servant’s punishment is our wholeness and healing . It neither serves to fulfill God’s ego needs nor some primordial cosmic free market principle of retribution that God is obligated to follow.
We are children of wrath; we are born into a world that sweeps us into degenerative cycles of pain and guilt. “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph 2:4-5). I just don’t see the cross having anything to do with God’s anger though it absolutely does rescue us from the οργη that describes the innate consequences of rebelling against God’s plan for us as creatures.
I really think that these problems in popular penal substitution theology might be a reflection of what Christianity Today has called the “juvenilization” of American evangelical Christianity. When church becomes youth group for adults, explanations that speak on a teenage level become the norm for everybody.
When I was a teenager, the purpose
of being a Christian was to avoid punishment. I expected the rules to be arbitrary and incomprehensible. So it made sense to me to accept a savior who would rescue me from the clutches of the infinitely picky and thoroughly uncompromising High School Principal of the universe. That was the salvation I received when I asked Jesus back into my heart as a 16 year old (after I had already done believer’s baptism at age 8).
But I experienced the metanoia that is true repentance when God spoke to me in 1998 through a little girl selling dolls in the square of San Cristobal de las Casas in Mexico. He told me I could never be a tourist again. That was when I gave my life to His kingdom. That was when my heart was filled with wrath against all the ways that the world dishonors a God whose image was reflected to me through a barefoot indigenous girl. I need God’s honor to be satisfied. I need the cross not only for the sake of my personal relationship with God but because I cannot live in a world where the crucified are not resurrected. Penal substitution is an important part of the rich mystery of the cross — just not in the oversimplified, canned version that has come to predominate our juvenilized evangelical church.

Most Honorable Tebow

Tebow mania... I don't get it... and I don't think many other people get it either, much less the ones who are actually maniacal about it all.  He's not that great of a quarterback, at least not yet; of course, that's not the reason people are wild about him anyways.

It's because he's a Christian.  And how he goes about being a Christian is iconic.  There are plenty of Christians in the NFL, but they aren't star quarterbacks, nor do they have a pose, so they don't stand out.

But I'll be honest, I don't think it's because he has Christian faith, or his position as quarterback.  I do think it's about his iconic way of going about his Christian faith.

nothing in full, but not half-empty

I don't have any complete thoughts for today, but two big ones mulling around in my brain are these:

I wonder what the whole issue surrounding Tim Tebow is about.  Is there a reason that evangelical Christians flock to him?  Is it because there is a dearth of competent and strong male or female Christian role models, i.e. fathers and mothers, in the lives of those who do flock?  Or is it something else?

I also wonder about the sexualization of relationships.  It seems a lot of magazines, websites and book shelves in book stores are bound and determined to help us get better at sex for the purposes of relationships.  Why?  Is it because we, as a culture, have centralized our relationships on the act of and acts around sex?

These are just some of my thoughts that I've yet to fully explore.

stupid Jesus

This quote resonated with me:

"I had stopped saying the word “Jesus.”  95% of the time, I only spoke of “God.”  Or if I had to speak of him, I referred to God the Son, the second Person of the Trinity, the Logos…names that sounded intellectual and sophisticated.  If I had to speak of the Son incarnate, then I spoke of Christ, or the God-man.  Never Jesus Christ, and certainly never just Jesus.  Loving Jesus, following Jesus, seeking Jesus — these were the province of fundamentalists, Bible thumpers, Jesus Freaks, crude Christians who wore WWJD bracelets and listened to Michael W. Smith and read Max Lucado instead of Jurgen Moltmann."
If you want you can read the whole blog whole blog here.

Oddly enough, but not really, I have had a similar experience.

Lady Gaga: 1 Christians: 0

I read this article:
Lady Gaga and Self Acceptance

It struck a chord in me.  I mean here is a good way to view and love others; the whole "little monsters" thing is part gimmicky, but more so its very much a reality.
Lady Gaga has not only picked up on the monster part, but also the acceptance part.
Both I think Christians have gotten seriously wrong.

Reading of Scripture and Love Wins

So having a friend who went to Rob Bell's church, I myself liking Rob Bell, being a Christian, being in seminary and being rather familiar with the conservative, evangelicalsI have been not far from the debate about Rob Bell's new book Love Wins.
Personally, I'm not much concerned about what he is saying right now; he has a new book coming out, which is sold by a publisher, a big one at that; publishers have to make money and so they hire marketing firms.  If I were a marketing firm and I wanted to sell a book... I'd make controversy or get good reviews.  Well, in the Christian world good reviews sell well, especially the classics, but nothing sells like an out in the open theological controversy; therefore, if I were a marketer I would make a controversy and props to HarperOne cause that's what they got and I guarantee you that everyone will either buy the book or borrow it; I mean they practically have to now if they care anything about the debate that is now in the public sphere.

cold turkey ain't good turkey

One of the things that I am really against is cold turkey evangelism.  I’ve done enough times to know that I don’t like it.  Of course the argument for it is that you do it with the trust that God will somehow use it for his purposes.  I agree with that, and when I do evangelize I am taking that to heart.

My problem is that it is simply a bad way to evangelize.  It is wrought of love.  Now of course I know that even taking the time to tell them about the Lordship of Christ is loving for me to do, but honestly how loved do they feel?  If all I do is come up and share the gospel with them and then leave them at that what love would they feel?  Would they feel loved that I took the time to come up to them to talk to them about Jesus?  Maybe… if they were already Christian, but if they don’t know Christ yet then what?  If it’s without some sort of continuing relationship what love is really given?  

Loving should go hand in hand with suffering, and there is no suffering in cold turkey evangelism, there is persecution, but not the long suffering that Christ experienced.  He spent 3 years with his disciples only to die without them "getting it" until he rose.  That’s suffering, that expending yourself and not seeing any fruit.  This is the sort of suffering that relational evangelism brings, not cold turkey.  We should expect, and desire, to spend time with people, watch them sin, and never get it.  We should expect them to deny Christ, turn away, make grandiose statements about his divinity and then in the next second be against Christ’s work.  That suffering is much worse than merely being spat upon, that suffering breaks hearts.

I’d be willing to say that that is the model of evangelism that is set up for us.  The gospel isn’t about getting people to convert, it’s about the Lordship of Christ enabling us to truly love and serve God, and, if we are doing that faithfully, conversion will happen whether we want it to or not.  Just going out and throwing out the Word randomly is bad stewardship to.  A farmer sure as heck doesn’t just randomly scatter seed, he does it with purpose and intent, some may fall on the path, but he is sowing seed in the field where he will be sure to tend to it. 

We do have to proclaim it, but it’s different proclaiming a Messiah to people who are looking for one than to people who think they are their own Messiah. And if we are to proclaim it, it should be in the community that we live amongst, that we will be around daily or weekly, not to random people on the beach or a street that we probably will never see again.

It tastes so good, but it smells so bad.

I consider myself an evangelical, and I'm dang proud of it!
Then again, I'm not so proud of it.
I have a love hate relationship with evangelicalism, much like I have a love hate relationship with most things I love/hate... Methodism, the Bulldogs, the Falcons, technology, nature (I love nature out there, I don't love nature when it comes to a yard), etc.

The thing I love about evangelicalism is that its vibrant, in my experience evangelicalism gets it; it gets what life abundantly in Christ is like.  Its not staid or lame Christianity, it inspires life in a way that I didn't get from tradition or ritual.  I love how it one of its doctrines is that all knowledge is measured by Scripture; I love that it sees its purpose is to spread the gospel, not only by evangelism, but by mission work as well.   It doesn't mind going against the grain on somethings that it perceives are wrong.

There are somethings that I don't like, let Evolution and the Big Bang be an example.  Evolution and Big Bang theories are divisive, not because of the science, but because of the application.  It has been applied by many to disprove God, or at the very least used to promote a degree of doubt and ask hard questions.  However, the science itself is neutral; well, at least I see it this way.  Most of evangelicalism, at least the conservative voices that seem to speak louder than the rest, see the science as the problem and the solution is to promote Creationism.
I can't blame them for wanting to counter the evolutionists; I want to as well, but I think that they're going about it in all the wrong way.  The way to do it is to redeem the applications of the science, not deny it the science itself.  Even if they want to deny it, they need to counter it and point out holes in the research; they then need to promote other research that they can prove is reliable, because you know its going to have a bunch of evolutionists trying to poke holes in it.  Unfortunately, I have not seen either of these things done.  All  I am given are unfounded hypotheses that attempt to counter evolution because its "illogical" outcomes or that its wrong because "that's not what the Bible says."  Well, fantastic, but the Bible can be made to say a lot of things! But I have also not seen a good counter to an allegorical interpretation of the creation account; no, the only good responses are those against reinterpretations of the length of it being longer than 6 days of 24 hours each.

Regardless, all I am saying is that the pendulum of scientific understanding swung away from the traditional Christian interpretation and understanding of the universe's origins and instead of reassessing the interpretation and understanding to see if this new scientific model could in fact be more correct, they deny that there is any science that is worth countering and call all of its adherents heretics.  Reminds me of a certain Catholic Church's dealing with Galileo.

It's frustrating for me because I see how it marginalizes others and makes Christianity, much less faith in Christ, unappealing to them, as well as seemingly unattainable.  It's frustrating to experience because I am made to feel guilty and told my belief system is unbiblical Christianity.  Somehow I just don't think Jesus would have done this...  I could go on about why I think it happens this way, but personally I'm tired of typing, haha!  And I'm pretty sure it'd be a moo[t] point; you know a cow's opinion (name the reference!).

That is, of course, unless I'm begged to do so.
Oh and some other things I don't like: the evangelical love for the Republican party or Tea Party, the lack of ascetic practices, the desire to do away with tradition, and others that I could think of I'm sure.
I love evangelical Christianity, it helped me taste and see the goodness of God, but sometimes it just smells so bad...