Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Is God’s Justice Undermined if one rejects Penal Substitution?


Many argue that the moral government view undermines God’s justice, for it means that the sins of forgiven people go unpunished. Indeed, one of the most frequent arguments made on behalf of the penal substitution view is that it makes sense of how an all-holy God can forgive sinners without compromising his just wrath toward sin. Two things may be said in response.

First, it is not at all clear how the penal substitution view makes sense of God’s justice when it is premised on the incoherent notion that guilt can be transferred from a guilty party to an innocent party. To say that our sins were paid for when God smote Jesus does not clarify anything. It just adds another mystery to the discussion.

Second, there is nothing unholy about forgiving people. On the contrary, God’s forgiveness is as much an expression of his holiness as is his just anger toward sin. This objection, like the penal substitution theory from which it arises, assumes there is a rule in the universe that says past sins have to be punished (though not necessarily the person who committed them!). But why assume this? We do not insist on this when we forgive people. Why must God? Indeed, as noted earlier, if God insists on payment, he does not truly forgive people. Furthermore, the Bible frequently teaches that God, out of his love and mercy, can and does simply forget the sins of the past when a person repents and turns to him (Ps. 103:8-14). He is a God who truly forgives, for he cancels their debt without payment. (Gregory A Boyd and Paul R. Eddy, Across the Spectrum: Understanding Issues in Evangelical Theology [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2002], 130, emphasis in original)