The Crucified God

S. Mark Heim reviews a number of recent books on the Atonement, some of which argue that Christianity should jettison the doctrine altogether, others arguing for a revised understanding of the Atonement, and others defending a more traditional understanding.

One pet peeve of mine is that in discussions of the Atonement Anselm’s theory is often conflated with penal substitution (and usually an extremely crude form of penal substitution at that). But in Cur Deus Homo Anselm explicity denies such an understanding. First of all, Christ’s death is not something inflicted on him by the Father, but the inevitable result of Christ’s living a life of perfect obedience in a sinful world:

God the Father did not treat that man as you seem to suppose, nor put to death the innocent for the guilty. For the Father did not compel him to suffer death, or even allow him to be slain, against his will, but of his own accord he endured death for the salvation of men. (Bk. I, Ch. 8, emphasis added)

[…]

God did not, therefore, compel Christ to die; but he suffered death of his own will, not yielding up his life as an act of obedience, but on account of his obedience in maintaining holiness; for he held out so firmly in this obedience that he met death on account of it. (Bk. I, Ch. 9)

Secondly, Anselm denies that satisfaction for sin can be made by punishing the innocent in the place of the guilty. For Anselm, punishment and the voluntary offering of satisfaction for sin are mutually exclusive. Either man offers satisfaction for his sin or God extracts it by punishment.

The problem is that fallen humankind has lost its ability to make voluntary satisfaction for sin. This is because everything we have, we already owe to God. This includes our death, since death is the consequence of sin.

In Anselm’s scheme Christ saves us, not by volunteering to be punished in our stead, but in offering up his life of perfect obedience and holiness, even unto death. Christ, as the God-man, need never have died, but in voluntarily surrending his life he has blotted out the evil of sin. Christ’s self-offering is a sacrifice of such incomparable goodness it completely overcomes, envelopes, and destroys the evil of humankind’s sin. Orthodox theologian David B. Hart calls it “a gift exceeding every debt.”

This isn’t to deny that there are problems with Anselm’s account (such as his, perhaps, excessively quantitative understanding of the mechanics of salvation), but it definitely shouldn’t be equated with the cruder versions of penal substitution (and it should be noted that there are, in my opinion, credible and sophisticated versions of penal substitution).