This ingenious theory
raises many objections. How is it, for example, to be applied to peace-offerings,
to votive sacrifices, and sacrifices of thanksgiving? Even if restricted to the
sacrifice for sin, it encounters serious difficulties. The Mosaic Law did not
admit sacrifices for transgressions which merited death. The sacrifice
consisted less in the immolation itself, which a layman sometimes performed,
than in the manipulation of the blood, which was reserved for the priest only.
Has it ever been proved that the laying on of hands, which is susceptible to
such varied symbolism, signified precisely the transfer of the guilt? And if it
did signify that, why did the victim, instead of being defiled, become so holy
that only the priests partook of it? A bloody death is absent precisely in the
ceremony of the scapegoat, in which the idea of substitution is most obvious
and in which, as might be expected, the animal which is symbolically laden with
the sins of the peoples becomes impure and accursed.
Moreover, the theory
of penal substitution, when isolated and exaggerated, presents grave dangers.
It tends to establish a repugnant conflict between the justice and the love of
God on one side and between his anger and mercy on the other. God persecuted a
God; he proceeds against him with all the apparatus of justice; he regards him
as an enemy and as one who deserves all his vengeance; he declares open war
upon him; he delivers him over, as a victim, to the fury of his irritated
justice and inflicts upon him in a certain way the punishment of the damned. How
much better than these oratorical figures and exaggerated metaphors, the
hyperbole of which must be reduced, is the simple doctrine of St Thomas that God
gave up his Son by decreeing his death for the salvation of the world, by
inspiring him with the willingness to die for us, and by not protecting him
against his enemies.
It is said that the innocent
is punished for the guilty; but that is not exact nor even intelligible.
Punishment cannot be transferred from one person to another without changing
its nature. A debt can indeed be paid by an intermediary, but a punishment
cannot be undergone by proxy. Punishment is essentially a personal thing,
inseparable from the sin; if it falls upon a stranger, it is no longer a
punishment. If the law of nations has sometimes allowed the faults of one of
their members to be imputed to a family, a city, or a nation, it is because the
family, city, or nation were considered as moral entities; it is not by virtue
of the principle of penal substitution, but by virtue of the wholly different principle
of solidarity.
If we suppose that St
Paul really had in mind the theory of substitution, how comes it that he never
formulated it? Why does he always say that Christ was crucified for us (υπερ,
and exceptionally περι), for all man, for sinners, that he
went to death for us, that he was made a curse for us, that he
was made sin for us, and that he gave himself up four our sins;
and why does he never say that Christ died in our place (αντι)
which logically would dispense us from dying? No doubt what one person does for
another is often done in his stead; it is what he ought to have
done, and makes up for his lack of ability, and therefore is somehow done by
way of substitution; but it does not follow that the two expressions have the same
meaning. In the New Testament not a single example of this equivalence is
quoted, and even if to die for men can be understood, in the last
analysis, as being a substitution of the innocent for the guilty, can “to die for
their sins,” be interpreted in the same way? Is this not a clear proof that
the idea of substitution does not convey the whole thought of the Apostle, and
that it must be corrected or completed by a notion of another kind?
Ever since the
principle of penal substitution has been applied, there has been a temptation to
exaggerate. This is what a great number of Protestant theologians did,
especially in Lutheranism. They maintained that Christ had suffered identically
the punishment due for sin: death, the divine curse, and damnation itself. Thus
Jesus suffered the anguish of hell in Gethsemani, when his soul was oppressed
with a deadly sadness; he suffered the tortures of the damned on Calvary, when
he uttered that cry of agony: “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” He suffered
all this also, not extensively, according to duration of time, but intensively,
essentially. This line of thought has been generally abandoned; but these absurd
consequences have been thrown upon the theory of penal substitution an amount
of discredit which it is far from overcoming. (Fernand Prat, The Theology of
Saint Paul, 2 vols. [trans. John L. Stoddard; Westminster, Md.: The Newman Bookshop,
1927], 2:196-)
St Paul
changes the logion (Matt. xx, 28; Mark x, 45: δουναι την ψυχην αυτου λυτρον αντι πολλων) in
a way which seems intentional (I Tim. ii, 6: α δους εαυτον αντιλυτον υπερ παντων).
In the new version the idea of substitution is so attenuated that it almost
disappears; for αντιλυτον (like αντιμισθια, Rom. i, 27; 2 Cor. vi, 13 for μισθος,
and ανταλλαγμα, Mark viii, 37; Matt. xvi, 26 for αλλαγμα) does hardly more than strengthen the meaning of λυτρον and
does not indicate the exchange of this ransom for the persons liberated.
The relation with the interested parties is expressed as usual by υπερ. After
this, it is superfluous to inquire whether υπερ not
sometimes equivalent to αντι.
Let us note, however, that the two examples in Thayer’s dictionary (4th edit, sub
voce) are not very reliable. In fact, we know that baptisms for (υπερ, I Cor. xv. 29) the dead was conferred
by the Corinthians in favour of the dead, but we do not in the least
know whether in was in their place. As to Philem. 13, it may be granted that υπερ σου is almost equivalent to αντι σου, but many authors (Vincent; Haupt, St John Parry,
etc.) dispute it, precisely because this is contrary to Paul’s usage. See,
however, Lightfoot on this last passage and on Col. i, 7: πιστος υπερ υμων (or υπερ ημων) διακονος (Ibid., 197 n. 6)