One such objection states: “It is unjust
to punish an innocent person, even if he is willing to be punished.” Analytic
philosopher Eleonore Stump argues this objection as follows:
[Penal substitution] seems not to
emphasize God’s justice but to rest on a denial of it. For all the talk of debt
is really a metaphor. What (P) is in fact telling us is that any human being’s
sins are so great that it is a violation of justice not to punish that person
with damnation. What God does in response, however, is to punish not the
sinner, but a perfectly innocent person instead (a person who, even on the
doctrine of the Trinity, is not the same person as God the Father, who does the
punishing). But how is this just? (Eleonore Stump, Aquinas [London:
Routledge, 2003], 428)
Christ’s innocence is clearly attested
in Scripture (Jn 8:46; 1 Pet. 2:22; 2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 4:15; 7:26), as is God’s
justice (1 Pet. 2:23; Rom. 3:25). If the objection stands, then penal
substitution falls; and the objection, moreover, seems to be supported not only
by natural moral reason, but also by divine revelation: “The soul that sins
shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father
suffer for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be
upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself” (Ez.
18:20). The authors reply by appealing to the concept of Christ’s representation
in order to explain how our sins really become Christ’s on account of our union
with him in faith; but the balance that they attempt to strike between
representation (we in Christ) and substitution (Christ instead of us) is at
best unconvincing. Unable to integrate the two concepts, they are forced to
alternate between them: at the moment of judgment and condemnation Christ is
our representative (but not our substitute); while at the moment of execution he
is our substitute (but not our representative). (John P. Joy, The Atoning
Death of Christ: St. Thomas’s Doctrine of Vicarious Satisfaction [Grass Lake,
Mich.: Cruachan Hill Press, 2022], 31-32)
. . .another objection becomes a real
problem, namely that “Penal substitution implies a division between the persons
of the Trinity.” . . . The essential punishment of hell, deeper than its fiery
flames, is the state of separation from God (Mt. 25:41; Lk. 13:27; 14:4; Rev.
22:15). If Christ suffered this, one can only choose between a Nestorian schism
between the divine and human natures of Christ, such that his humanity alone experienced
damnation, and an Arian schism between Father and Son, such that the Son was really
abandoned by the Father. (John P. Joy, The Atoning Death of Christ: St.
Thomas’s Doctrine of Vicarious Satisfaction [Grass Lake, Mich.: Cruachan Hill
Press, 2022], 33, 34)
