Since @ThomasdelVasto has made a couple "main-Motte" religious posts I thought I'd join in the fun.
I'm a Protestant with strong Reformed leanings. My wife, on the other hand, has just converted to Catholicism. This has led me to explore aspects of Catholic teaching, though necessarily at a surface level given the rich history. Aquinas alone would take months if not years to digest. I expected to disagree on Mary (perpetual virginity, immaculate conception, assumption) and the Pope (infallibility); and I still do (though I was surprised how recently these have become "dogma": I would have found it much easier to be a Catholic in 1800 than today). I am pleasantly surprised at how much weight they place on Scripture, Christ, and Assurance: there are far more shared hymns than I had anticipated, as as an example.
What follows is some of the reflections I had to this surface exploration. I would be thrilled to be corrected or critiqued by any of the Motte's Catholics, if nothing else to better understand my wife's flavor of the Christian faith. Many of these are reactions to "Catholicism" by Bishop Robert Barron, which my wife kindly bought to introduce me to the titular topic. While I presume he is orthodox Catholic, his interpretations may not be universally accepted by Catholics. If I challenge particular arguments from Barron, it should not be interpreted as an argument against Catholicism unless Barron is arguing for Church Dogma. His "Catholicism" is also meant as an introduction and for popular consumption, and his actual beliefs may have more nuance.
As part of this journey (which is certainly not over yet!), I also read (the dense and repetitive) "Divine Will and Human Choice" by Richard Muller and "Christus Victor" by Gustaf Aulén. These, too, have varying degrees of rigor. Muller and Aulén were both Protestants.
God’s freedom
While Reformed theology would affirm that God predestines both those who are saved and those who are damned, Catholics balk at this concept; arguing that this implies a God who would cause sin. God cannot will that which is against his nature. Catholics would appeal to God’s provision and common grace that allows humans consciences to (partially and weakly) discern good and evil. Yet we cannot perfectly discern this apart from divine revelation (scripture). And scripture states multiple times in the Exodus narrative that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Aquinas (as if often the case) provides the most rigorous Catholic argument I’ve heard for this hardening. God through an act of his will withdrew what grace was granted to Pharaoh. Absent God’s grace Pharaoh drew more into his sin. While Aquinas argued this case for the individual case of Pharaoh, it seems consistent to assume that were God to withdraw his common grace more broadly that all would fall into a state where our consciences are no longer capable of even partial discernment of good and evil. This is also consistent with God giving humans over to their lusts in Romans 1.
So far, this interpretation is consistent with scripture, though I am discomfited by the constraints this threatens to place on God: constraints that come perilously close to being primarily informed by our own interpretation or perspective of scripture and sin. God works and wills, including in sin.
Barron, if I read him correctly, goes a step further. He puts the "problem of sin" as one of the best arguments against God. I’ve never understood this as a problem for Christians. It is a deep problem for atheists, who have to explain or excuse their visceral (though often mis-aligned) desire for justice despite no objective basis for these judgments. Christians have no such need to explain or excuse: of course we are all deeply desirous for justice since we have (again, weakly and with great room for error) a sense of what transcendent goodness could be. A consistent perspective on the problem of evil would be that God defines good, and if we don’t understand his actions to be "good" that is a fault (a mis-calibration) of our fallen nature. The fact that Barron does not take this tack hints that he believes humanity’s desire for a "good" God is compatible with humanity’s definition of "good". This runs the grave risk of putting ourselves as a "judge" or external arbiter of God’s behavior.
Barron continues to put a soft face on hard truths. Later in the book, Barron says "God sends no one to hell, people freely choose to go there". This sharply contradicts scripture. Jesus talks about casting sinners into the outer darkness. Peter says the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. John’s Revelation describes those who receive a mark on their forehead drinking the wrath of God, mixed in the cup of his anger, and tormented with fire and brimstone. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. Again, God is not passive: he works and wills.
How does God work and will (1)? Does God have a an array of potential actions, any of which he can actualize? Yet this runs the risk of these potential actions being "outside" God. Does God create the potentials as he actualizes them? Thus no "possibles" exist for God, simply "actuals"? This also could be seen as a constraint on God and limit his radical freedom. Both these potential concepts of God’s will and freedom (of which I’m sure there are hundreds of alternative concepts) seem to be operating at a level above how Barron conceptualizes God’s freedom. Put crassly, Barron seems to be hinting that God could not "make a triangle a square", that is, that God is constrained by logical impossibilities. But this is such a small view of God. God creates our minds and universe. Our minds invent or discover things like logic, or define things like squares or circles. Whether spawned by our intellect or embedded in the structure of the cosmos, these concepts (including logic!) are part of Creation itself. God created the conditions under which we can model physical reality with math, structure, and logic. Logic is a model. Logos is Truth. Logic is created. Logos is the Creator.
God’s atoning work
The freedom God enjoys in his omnipotence has implications for a theological understanding of Atonement. The "big two" theories of Atonement, Satisfaction and Substitution, emphasize the sacrificial nature of the cross. This sacrificial interpretation retains God’s complete sovereignty with Christ’s death being an act of perichoretic propitiation. The incarnation and death was necessary because of God. It was not necessary because of anything external to God.
Catholics consider Substitution theory, which is the most common concept of Atonement in Reformed circles, to be heresy. Belief in the other concepts of Atonement are allowed. In the Satisfaction theory, which my understanding is that most if not all Catholics affirm, Jesus is our great high priest and a perfect offering, but does not receive the judgement of God. Christ died for our sins, but not in our place.
"Christus Victor" makes the historical case for Ransom theory. In principal, this theory could bring Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox together: the church Fathers at least strongly hinted at Ransom theory being the primary lens through which they interpret the cross, and the church universally recognizes the importance of the church Fathers. Aulén makes the case that Luther was also an adherent to Ransom theory. Yet this theory risks making God subservient to morality or law, proposing that Jesus was paid to Satan in exchange for humanity (2). Uncharitably, this theory makes God beholden to the "laws" of commerce, even transaction with a brigand.
However, I do find Ransom theory to have its merits. In heavily Reformed theology Satan is almost considered an afterthought. Satan plays no necessary role in the arc of human redemption and salvation. Ransom theory, on the other hand, puts Satan in a prominent place: he is either the kidnapper of human souls or is the (legitimate, in some sense) owner of human souls. The exchange of Christ for humanity and the subsequent torture and murder of Christ was simultaneously Satan’s crowning achievement and his destruction. This interpretation echos Jesus’ parable of the landowner who sent servants to collect from the tenants only to have them beaten or killed. The frustrated landowner finally sent his own son, but the tenants murdered him hoping to take his inheritance. At the conclusion of the parable, the chief priests react that the landowner will bring the tenants to a “wretched end”. Christ’s death and resurrection was the ultimate victory over Sin, Death, and the Devil, bringing this triumvirate to a “wretched end”. Indeed, this victory can be interpreted as more complete than Satisfaction or Substitution theories: it not only removes the penalty of sin, but defeats the sin itself.
Conclusion?
I plan to read and think more on this topic. Next on my list is "Deification through the Cross" by Khaled Anatolios. Any other book recommendations are welcome. I'm particularly interested in Catholic perspectives Atonement that go deeper than Barron's book.
(1) As I read "The Divine Will and Human Choice" I had to continuously bite my tongue. My mathematical training was screaming "But Kolmogorov!". Yet Kolmogorov is but a model, and Muller was trying to describe reality. Muller, though, had merely words to try to describe reality and I kept mentally begging for a more rigorous algebraic representation to more clearly and concisely communicate. Of course, the algebraic representation is itself a model, but so are words: anyone who uses ChatGPT or Claude is implicitly recognizing that words are not reality but just a map or model of reality.
(2) In CS Lewis' The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Aslan (representing Christ) is beholden to the "deep magic".
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Notes -
I think the best way to understand modern Catholic atonement theology is by reference to "Paschal mystery theology", which has a lot in common with Christus Victor and Eastern soteriology. This is the overarching way Catholic teaching looks at the Cross since V2, and it has some criticisms among traditionalists, but it does, I believe, tie Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox views of the Cross together in a compelling way, as something mystical which is both transformative on the global level and applicable in an individual way.
Universalism and Theodicy
I am not a universalist, and I in general dislike the way in which Balthasar's "hopeful universalism" often becomes a way to justify not evangelizing. But at the same time I do believe God's dispositional will is for the salvation of all men (not the fallen angels or the devil, who are irretrievably damned), although his permissive will allows people to choose the alternative. It is important in Catholic theology that God permits rather than desires damnation, and I believe this is true to the way Scripture describes the will of God both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. God does judge and send people to Hell or to Heaven, but he does so based on the choices and nature of the person as configured to Christ by grace or not, which is described in Catholicism as infused rather than imputed righteousness. Catholic judgment is "forensic" in the sense of a finding-of-fact, not a finding-of-law.
I'm somewhere between a Thomist and a Molinist on the Predestination question, and Catholicism is famously and officially agnostic on the question. I don't hold as a firm belief that humans have effectively libertarian free-will as regards the universe, and the most motte-brained version of my view is closer to "God ran the simulation and figured out who would freely choose salvation under libertarian free will, and then created the world in such a way that those who would freely choose salvation under libertarian free will would be predestined to salvation even if the world does not possess libertarian free will". I come from a line of Holiness/Wesleyan-influenced preachers, so I think there's a time and a place for fire and brimstone, and I agree with Aquinas, and not Barron, that one of the important elements of the eschaton is the punishment of the unrepentant wicked.
Obviously this leaves open the hole of how and why, precisely, evil and damnation are permitted if God does not desire them, and that's obviously where we open the Pandora's box of theodicy. For my part, I lean towards a narrative theodicy; God is in a sense writing a story, and the story is better if evil exists and good overcomes it, and it's better for the good if villains exist so that the good can be distinguished (very Thomistic of me), and it's better for the just rewards of the good if it's not a consolation prize given to everyone, and it's better if that's based on what they might choose in total freedom than if it's based on a decree. A game of skill is more rewarding than a game of chance.
I don't think any theodicy is philosophically compelling, but I think that's because a story is more compelling to the human person than philosophy. There's a reason the great teachings of Jesus are all stories and parables. Taken from that viewpoint, the stories of the Bible actually have a greater significance than the merely instructive -- the stories of God's triumph and the triumph of the righteous contained therein are actually the project of the existence of the world. Balthasar has a bit of this, in Theo-Drama.
There's also the tendency in more liberal or modernist theology to talk about "maybe suffering is a way to get close to God because God inherently suffers," which I think is really dumb for all the ways classical theists think it's dumb, but I believe orthodox theopaschism -- not patripassionism, where the Father somehow suffers, which is a straight heresy, but theopaschism in which the unity of the natures of Christ in one person is considered vitally important, where we can say things like "God suffered in the flesh," and "God died on the Cross" -- is indispensable in answering the problem of evil. I believe that one of the most important fruits of the Cross is that suffering is transformed by Christ's passion from a separation from God due to sin to a means of Christlikeness, not merely in terms of endurance training (which St. Paul compares it to), but in terms of actually sharing experiences and metaphysical/mystical closeness to Christ himself.
I believe unorthodox theopaschism, especially in modern times, came into existence because orthodoxy neglected orthodox theopaschism, and left open a hole that heterodoxy stepped into.
And that brings us to the Cross.
Substitution
I will also note that substitution theory, taken strictly, is considered heretical by Catholicism, but more metaphorical, spiritual, or allegorical interpretations of substitution are taken seriously in the Church Fathers and in modern Catholic teaching. The idea that the wages of sin is death, yet God in his mercy set aside the curse of death and sent his son, instead, to die voluntarily, has a heroic element to it, and this has never escaped the attention of theology.
I compare it less to the Son being tormented by the Father's justice and more by the Son acting like a POW who offers himself to die in place of others. The key element of penal substitution that I think is heretical is the emphasis on a division in the Trinity, that the Son was "being damned by the father," which is a phrase I've heard Reformed pastors preach, when instead the substitution of the Son is about an act of the Trinity in unity contending against the state that was inherent to man's fallen nature, where sinfulness leads to death and separation from God.
GK Chesterton has his own alarming phrase that "On the Cross, God became an atheist," not as a statement about the actual beliefs of the crucified Christ, but in the sense that Jesus voluntarily took up the cross, which took him to the place of death and as far away from God as man could go, so that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." The point is not "the Father punished the Son by sending him to death," but "the Son, in unity of will with the Father, went unto death to bring grace and truth, chasing down the 1 of the 99 by going to the limit of human experience."
This also means that you can say things like, "Christ's dying on the Cross brought God's goodness to those who are tormented or dying," as an act of solidarity with people who are cast off and rejected, but also a way to bring divinity and grace to people who are far from God. It has a mystical quality to it, that God actually himself, in his flesh, went into the domain of all those things (and even into Sheol), which means that God is no longer absent there. I've compared it before to placing a flag in enemy territory; the Cross is the flag, and one of the ancient Roman Eucharistic prayers describes it as "the boundary post" that sets the limit of death and the devil, claiming the territory for God by erecting a fence.
A Ransom for Many
I actually love this angle on the atonement, although I love most of them.
I understand that Reformed theology (also Luther?) often believes that Michael the Archangel is Christ, but Catholics emphatically do not; he's the guardian angel of Israel and now the Church. So when Catholics read in Revelation that Michael defeats the devil, they see that the final defeat of Satan takes place not by the direct involvement of Christ, but by a subordinate, even a great one. Even the final banishment of Satan to the lake of fire in Rev. 20 is often seen as something Michael does, leading to the long history of Catholic art depicting Michael stamping on the head of Satan.
I often think of this as the great humiliation of Satan. His only encounters with Christ are when he had taken flesh, was weak, fasting, in the desert, and when he is nailed to the Cross with his hands nailed behind his back, and he wins both times. The pride of the devil is he believes he could rival God, and is greater than human beings, but God defeats him in human flesh and restrained in human torment, and he allows a created angel to apprehend and damn him. In other words -- "you are not my equal, and even at my lowest I am incomparably greater than you. Know your place." The foolishness of God is greater than men's wisdom.
There's also the "two screens" effect of this: Satan believes the crucifixion of Christ is his great moment that reveals how grand his ability to contend against God is, and presumably he revels in it. But the view of everyone else is stunned horror, a person being tortured until death. His great moment is not just his destruction, but it's the revelation of the vacuity of his moral authority. He tempted man in the garden with the knowledge of good and evil, but he reveals in this moment that his knowledge of good and evil was catastrophically insufficient, and in fact he believes that evil is good. Any argument to be made that his goal is to free man must contend with the fact that his "crowning achievement," as you put it, was the torture and death of a man.
This also connects to the larger vision in the Church Fathers that Gethsemane and the Cross are the garden and the tree that undo what occurred in the original garden and with the original tree; instead of Satan tempting man with the knowledge of good and evil that properly belongs to the divinity, but which ultimately separates them from God, God instead tempts Satan with the weakness of man's flesh, which ultimately undoes him with the divinity of the God-man. Gregory of Nyssa has a great passage on this, which connects to my larger theme:
To be clear, these are my own views, not necessarily the official Catholic position on things. But they're informed by the Catholic and to an extent Orthodox approach, with my own characteristic views interlaced.
EDIT: Edited significantly to add content, and section markers because of how long it got.
I haven't finished the rest of your comment yet, but wanted to weigh in on this issue.
I have long believed that many of our issues understanding God come from an inability to conceive of Him as outside of time. Rather than God 'running a simulation', it's my contention that He can simultaneously see a person prior to, during, and after they choose salvation, because He is not limited by an arrow of time running in one direction. That in no way negates that person's free choice, any more than a football player's free choices during a game are not negated if I'm watching a replay and already know the result.
I confess it's difficult to explain with our human language, which relies on shared concepts of time. Indeed, I think that's why there's so much contention over the word 'predestined'.
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Thank you for your thoughtful response, it gives me more to think about.
I agree that the History in general (and the Biblical narrative in particular) is part of a cosmic drama. I think Reformed types can often get lost in the "logic" of religion rather than appreciating the beauty of the story. If Jesus was "Calvinist" (in method if not theology) he wouldn't have spent much time on parables! God sharing in suffering humanity is part of this beautiful story, though as you mention there is a tendency among liberal theologians to make this "identification" the means of atonement (God understands us, and thus forgives us...a very narrow view of God's omnipotence and a very low view of sin).
As an aside, I've never heard any Protestant of any denomination say that Michael is Christ; it is certainly not the understanding that I grew up with. However, I did grow up in an environment where Satan rarely mentioned, and if he was it was almost in embarrassment. He played his part in the temptation of Adam and the mirror in the temptation of Jesus (and pre-millennial, pre-trib, dispensationalist types believed that Satan would be unleashed in the end times), but otherwise holds little place in the story.
This is something I actually agree far more with the Reform tradition about. Maybe I’m too intellectually demanding as it’s the primary instrument that drives my thought process about nearly everything but to me the story itself matters little by comparison. It’s why I can’t read conversion stories or personal testimonies and find myself convinced by any of them.
I’m not discounting the importance of the experiential transformation but I’ve never had that, the way people describe it. I don’t deny reality of those experiences but if you haven’t had it yourself, you haven’t had it. I encountered someone once who tried to argue that this “lack” of spirituality was a birth defect and thought it was an interesting argument; but it was difficult for him to formalize.
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