Defending Substitution (Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology)

An Essay on Atonement in Paul

Gathercole, Simon, Evans, Craig A., McDonald, Lee

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781441223111
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

In recent decades, the church and academy have witnessed intense debates concerning the concept of penal substitution to describe Christ's atoning sacrifice. Some claim it promotes violence, glorifies suffering and death, and amounts to divine child abuse. Others argue it plays a pivotal role in classical Christian doctrine. Here world-renowned New Testament scholar Simon Gathercole offers an exegetical and historical defense of the traditional substitutionary view of the atonement. He provides critical analyses of various interpretations of the atonement and places New Testament teaching in its Old Testament and Greco-Roman contexts, demonstrating that the interpretation of atonement in the Pauline corpus must include substitution.

1
Exegetical Challenges to Substitution

As has already been suggested in the introduction, there is a strong tendency in current scholarship on Paul to resist seeing Christ’s death as in our place, instead of us. Rather, scholars prefer a view of Christ’s death with us—where he identifies with us rather than dying a unique death alone for us. Indeed, the point that Christ’s death is representative and therefore not substitutionary can often just be made briefly in passing, as if it were understood to be an uncontroversial thought. Robert Jewett’s commentary on Romans is perhaps typical in this respect: he regards it simply as having been demonstrated that the cross in Paul is to be understood in representative rather than substitutionary categories.1

Rather than deal with individual statements across the board in Pauline scholarship, however, I propose to examine in more detail some of the more extensive cases made against substitution. (Again, the aim is by no means to supplant the idea of representation or indeed any other understanding of atonement but simply to argue that substitution is also an important element.) The present chapter will examine what I regard as three of the most intellectually compelling explanations of nonsubstitutionary approaches to the atonement from a spread of international views—one German, one British, one predominantly North American. In addition to being intellectually stimulating, they also seek to take the Pauline epistles seriously. As we proceed, these approaches will be explained and their strengths and (particularly) weaknesses highlighted (1–3). Thereafter, finally, I will draw attention to a common weakness (4).

1. The Tübingen Understanding of Representative “Place-Taking”2

The first option is popular in certain quarters in Germany but little understood outside.3 This approach sees the sacrifices in Leviticus, especially the prescriptions in chapters 4–5 and for the Day of Atonement in chapter 16, as the key to understanding both the Old Testament theology of atonement and Paul’s statements about the death of Christ.

The architect of this approach to atonement is the former Tübingen professor of Old Testament Hartmut Gese. For Gese and his school, atonement takes place not through substitution but through a special kind of identification.4 There is a specific plight that is being addressed in the atoning sacrifice. The plight is that the Israelite’s life is forfeit, and so he or she must be willing (symbolically at least) to die.5 The problem is not so much individual transgressions but that the Israelite needs to be rescued from death. The same is true not just of the individual but also of the nation as a whole.

The solution lies in the sin offering: here, the priest offers an animal on behalf of the sinner to make atonement.6 Gese focuses at some length on how this atonement comes about. We can see first the mechanism and then the symbolic significance. In the mechanics of the sin offering, the priest (at least in Leviticus 16) takes a bull and two goats: one goat is dispatched as a “scapegoat,” whereas the other goat and the bull are slaughtered and their blood sprinkled on the mercy seat inside the Holy of Holies. The bull is the sin offering made for Aaron and his household; the sacrificial goat is slaughtered for (the rest of) the nation. Gese comments that here “two procedures are essential to the cultic process of atonement—(1) the laying on of hands and (2) the blood ritual.”7 We can examine the significance of these two procedures in turn and the intermediate step of the slaughter of the animal, which is also very important.

Beginning with (1) the laying on of hands, Gese emphasizes that the point of the priest laying hands on the animal is not that sins are transferred to the sacrificial animals; rather, by laying hands on the animal the priest identifies with it: the imposition of hands creates a “delegated succession” or identification, not a substitution.8 The animal is inseparably conjoined to the priest, and atonement is therefore made for the whole person and indeed for the whole nation (it does not just deal with “sins”).9 What happens on this line of interpretation is that the laying on of hands establishes a connection between the human being and the animal, and so when the animal goes through death, it symbolically takes the person to death with it.

This death of the animal (between 1 and 2) is necessary for two reasons. Initially, in the death of the animal, the people symbolically enter into the judgment of death. The animal does not switch places with the offerer—it does not die instead of the priest or the people as a substitute. Having forfeited life, the people cannot simply escape death; they must pass through it. This is the significance of the death in itself. It also is preliminary to the blood ritual.

Thereafter comes the second key element in Gese’s account, (2) the blood ritual. Here, the animal—through its blood—symbolically takes the people with it into the Holy of Holies and thereby into connection with God. The sacrificial animal therefore does not displace the offerer but through its death takes the offerer into the Holy of Holies, through judgment, and into contact with God. Negatively, the death is giving up one’s life; positively, the blood manipulation means salvific atonement. When the blood of the animal is sprinkled on the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies, the priest and people are connected and reconciled to God through the blood.

The sequence of connections in Leviticus 16 is as follows:

PEOPLE	→	PRIEST	→	ANIMAL
			→	slaughter	→
				BLOOD	→	HOLY OF HOLIES	→	GOD

Therefore,

• the people as a whole are represented by the priest;
• the priest establishes a connection with the animal by laying hands on it;
• the animal therefore carries the identity of the priest (and so of the people as a whole);
• the sacrifice of the animal enacts the human forfeiting of life;
• the life of the animal (and therefore of priest and people) is carried in the blood;
• the blood is sprinkled in the Holy of Holies;
• the blood thereby comes into contact with God;
• ergo, since the blood of the animal comes into contact with God, so do the priest and the people, whose identity is carried by the animal.

As Gese sums up the process, “in the inclusive place-taking by means of atoning sacrifice, this ritual brings Israel into contact with God.”10

The principal scholar to apply this to the New Testament is Otfried Hofius. In his first article of a trilogy on reconciliation in Paul, Hofius emphasizes some negatives: reconciliation is of people to God, not God to people...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Exegetical Challenges to Substitution
• 2. “Christ Died for Our Sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3)
• Excursus: An Objection—Why, Then, Do Christians Still Die?
• 3. The Vicarious Death of Christ and Classical Parallels (Rom. 5:6–8)
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Authors
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Sources
• Back Cover