Monday, March 16, 2020

S.G. Burney on Isaiah 53 Refuting Penal Substitution



Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He  was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isa 53:4-12)

This is perhaps the passage that is cited by proponents of penal substitution to argue in favour of their theory of atonement and the contention that “to bear sin” means “to bear the legal guilty and penal punishment of sin.” Writing in response to such a claim, S.G. Burney, a critic of penal substitution, noted:

Remarks.—however strong these citations from Isaiah liii may appear, the entire contents of the chapter can never be harmonized with the penal theory. We consequently are under the necessity of making the prophet contradict either himself or the penal theory.

This might be shown from a comparison of many expressions in the chapter; but it is sufficient to direct attention to the following:

(1) “When thou shalt make his soul [life] an offering for sin.” His death was sacrificial and therefore not penal, for, as we have seen, a penal sacrifice is a contradiction in the adjective.

(2) “He shall see his seed”—see those to whom his own nature is imparted, or who are born of God. If he died a penal death, then he imparts penal righteousness to men, and saints and Satan are clothed in the same garments, as we have previously seen.

(3) “Shall see the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.” How can the fruits of penalty be a source of satisfaction to the penalty bearer? Penalty, as we have seen, can not satisfy God, for he is angry with the wicked (the only penalty bearers) every day; nor satisfy justice, which is defrauded by all penalty bearers of its claims to their loving obedience; least of all, how can penalty satisfy the penalty bearer, for, having no power to remove its cause, it is neither a satisfaction in itself nor the means of subsequent satisfaction.

On the contrary, if Christ’s travail was such as comes from loving fidelity, then we can very readily see how can be satisfied with the fruits of that travail. It is like the satisfaction that comes to the generous benefactor, or to the self-sacrificing mother, who contemplates with ineffable pleasure the restoration of a sick child which her travail of soul has instrumentality saved from death.

(4) “By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many.” If this text read: By his penal sufferings my unrighteous enemy shall justify any, then it would be in harmony with penal substitution. But reading as it does, all the exegetes and casuists in Christendom can not harmonize it with the penal scheme. This nothing but the most defiant dogmatism can do.

The terms knowledge, righteous, servant, and justify, each of itself excludes penality.

If Christ justifies men by substitutionary suffering, then he does not justify them by his knowledge. If he is a penal substitute for sinners, then he is confessedly guilty or unrighteous, and if he is guilty, then he is not a servant in the sense in which Christ is recognized as such; and if he is not perceptively righteous, then he can not be righteous or justify others, except with the penal righteousness, with which Satan himself is justified.

We can not know precisely how Christ by his knowledge justifies many, but we know the fact. We know the fact that the physician by his knowledge restores the patient; that the wise man may impart his wisdom to others without being able fully to comprehend the process. So of Christ’s knowledge in justifying many. We know that he “learned obedience by the thing which he suffered, [thus] being made perfect he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.” (Heb. v. 8, 9.)

By the knowledge thus “learned” he is able to justify or make righteous those that obey him by making them partakers of his own righteousness, etc. (Heb. x. 12; 2 Peter i. 4.)

(5) “Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong.” For his services God “hath highly exalted him and given him a name which is above every name.” (Phil. ii. 9-11.)

How could God so honor one for the righteousness that consists in bearing a penalty? The idea seems preposterous in the extreme.

(6) “And made intercession for transgressors.” This finds one striking verification in the prayer on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke xxiii. 34.)

I have had frequent occasion to say that if the penal theory is true—if pardon is based upon punishment and comes necessarily out of it, as all consistent penalists hold, then prayer, intercession, and every other means are worthless. If God has made punishment the condition of pardon, then to intercede or pray for pardon is a reflection upon the divined integrity.

Yet Christ prayed for his persecutors. If that has not any pertinency or significance in it, and we know it has, then it proves beyond all reasonable question that his sufferings did not offset the guilty and infallibly insure the salvation of all for whom he died, as substitutionists teach.

These quotations, taken from the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, can not be harmonized with the doctrine of substitution. They, by their logical consequences, contradict it. Hence, it follows, if that doctrine is true, the prophet contradicts himself. Or, if he does not contradict himself, he squarely contradicts the doctrine, and penalists egregiously misinterpret the prophet. His language can not mean what they assume it to mean. (S.G. Burney, Atonement Soteriology: The Sacrificial, in Contrast with the Penal, Substitutionary, and Merely Moral or Exemplary Theories of Propitiation [Nashville: Cumberland Presbyterian Publishing House, 1888], 261-64; on the topic of the Servant' justifying many because of His knowledge, see John Murray on Isaiah 53:11 and the Knowledge of the Servant Justifying Believers)