Monday, March 29, 2021

Chris Dates on the Christological Danger of the Doctrine of Eternal Torment if One Holds to Penal Substitution

Chris Dates of Rethinking Hell wrote the following about the Christological necessity of rejecting conscious eternal torment if one holds to Penal Substitution:

 

The Christological Danger of Eternal Torment

 

Meanwhile, whereas traditionalists charge conditionalism with being Christologically problematic, it seems the real danger to orthodox Christology lies in their own tendency to locate the substitutionary work of Christ in his suffering. In support of the idea that the union of Jesus’ divine and human natures rendered him uniquely capable of enduring God’s infinite wrath, Grudem writes, “When Jesus knew that he had paid the full penalty for our sin, he said, ‘It is finished’ (John 19:30).” (Grudem, Systematic Theology, 578; italics in original.) Grudem’s use of the perfect-tense “had paid” makes explicit what logically follows from treating Christ’s pain as that in which his substitutionary work consists: On the cross Jesus completely bore the punishment of hell—separation from God and infliction of suffering—and only then did he die. But if the finite duration of his suffering is the substitutionary equivalent to the eternity of suffering awaiting the risen, undying wicked, why did he go on to die? If “he had paid the full penalty for our sin,” as Grudem says, what penalty was left to pay with his death?

 

The doctrine of eternal torment thus risks rendering Jesus’ death irrelevant, unnecessary, and arbitrary. One can hardly imagine a more egregious heresy; to Paul, the substitutionary death of Christ is paramount in importance and definitional of the gospel itself (1 Cor 15:1–3), and one who preaches another gospel—such as one denying the substitutionary death of Jesus—should be accursed (Gal 1:6–9). Conservative evangelicals are ordinarily adamant that it is heresy to deny the substitutionary death of Christ. Bruce Ware, for example, insists that “open theism is an unacceptable and nonviable view for Christians who desire to remain biblically faithful.” (Ware, “The Gospel of Christ,” 310.) Among his reasons is that in open theism, “no actual substitution can be made, for God cannot know, when Christ hangs on the cross, any actual person who will yet be conceived. His death must be seen as a substitution in general, not a specific substitution for sinners who deserved the judgment he received on their behalf.” (Ibid., 333; emphasis in original.) John Piper includes belief in the “substitutionary dimension of the death of Christ” in his small list of salvation prerequisites. (Piper, “What Must Someone Believe.”) J. I. Packer and Gary Parrett insist that “Christ’s atoning death” features at the center of the gospel, and that while there “are many aspects of this glorious atonement,” nevertheless “the other aspects of the atonement disappear if at its heart it is not a substitutionary atonement.” (Packer and Parrett, Grounded in the Gospel, 98; italics in original.)

 

But if it was not until Jesus died that his substitutionary, atoning work was complete, why did he say, “it is finished,” just prior to dying (John 19:30)? The answer lies in “the idea of prolepsis or anticipation,” illustrated by the famous phrase “dead man walking,” in which “the man walking is not yet dead but the reality of his death is very much present.” (Mostert, “Radical Eschatology,” 403.) E. W. Bullinger refers to biblical figures of speech as prolepsis or anticipation “when we anticipate what is going to be done, and speak of future things as present.” (Bullinger, Figures of Speech, 914) Accordingly, as explained by John Gill, Jesus said “it is finished” because all those things he was given to do—“that he should be incarnate, be exposed to shame and reproach, and suffer much, and die; the whole work his father gave him to do”—all these things “were now done, or as good as done.” (Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, 2:117; emphasis added.) And after Jesus drew his final breath, and his heart stopped beating, this work that was “as good as done” moments before was, in fact, done. (Christopher M. Dates, "The Righteous for the Unrighteous: Conditional Immortality and the Substitutionary Death of Jesus," McMaster Journal of Theology and Ministry 18 [2016-2017]:69-92, here, pp. 80-82)