As I mentioned in converting to Catholicism, I'm in the process of reading more theological works with an attempt to better understand my own beliefs and the beliefs of my wife. I've lately been on a soteriology kick.
I am bemused by the many attempts to identify the "one" Christian soteriological method. Very few of these theories are mutually exclusive. There is infinite richness to Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and everlasting reign; and there is facets of meaning in every (orthodox) soteriology. For instance, I believe in:
- Imputed righteousness, with substitutional aspects. Relevant hymns: "How deep the Father’s love for us" (it was my sin that held him there, until it was accomplished), "Yet not I but Christ Through Christ in Me" (The future sure, the price it has been paid. For Jesus bled and suffered for my pardon), "In Christ Alone" (The wrath of God was satisfied)
- Christ as ransom. Relevant hymns: "In Christ Alone" (1) (Light of the world by darkness slain), "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" (Ransom captive Israel)
- Christ as the perfect Israel, recapitulating Israel but perfectly, in whom all the nations of the world may be blessed (representative rather than substitutionary). Relevant hymn: "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" (2) (O come, O Branch of Jesse’s stem, unto your own and rescue them. From depths of hell your people save, and give them victory o’er the grave. O come, O Key of David, come and open wide our heavenly home. Make safe for us the heavenward road and bar the way to death's abode).
- Christ as the Passover Lamb, providing himself as the feast that lets us commune with the Triune God and yet live. Relevant hymn: "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent" (Lord of Lords, In human vesture, In the body and the blood; He will give to all the faithful, His own self for heavenly food.)
Andrew Rillera's "Lamb of the Free" is one such recent example of a "new" perspective that intends to dispense with the "common" ("popular" as well as "low") soteriology of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA). Rillera seeks to correct the belief that Levitical sacrifices were substitutes for the peoples’ sins. This "incorrect" belief is what has (allegedly) lead to the proliferation of belief in PSA. Yet while Rillera brings plausible scholarship to the Levitical sacrificial system (I, a layman, am not an expert on the nuances there), I think his resulting conclusion on the soteriological import of Christ’s death is not adequately supported and ultimately incorrect (indeed, I think it heterodox). Rillera, unfortunately, also writes with some condescension, using epitaphs like "wrong-headed" and "debunked". Having recently finished Khaled Anatolios's excellent "Deification through the Cross", who also posits an alternative soteriology (and one that I believe is orthodox) but is much more charitable in his contrasting with alternative soteriological theories, this meanness is jarring.
And yet there is good work in this book. Rillera, I believe, is an Old Testament (OT) scholar, and feels more comfortable in the Pentateuch than in the New Testament (NT). The first half of the book provides his perspective on the Levitical sacrifices, and I don’t see any real issue with his description or the rationale behind them, outside of some circular logic (eg, page 91 where he assumes the conclusion). His major points are:
- Very few, if any, Levitical sacrifices were made to atone for moral sin
- Blood mattered more than death.
- Sacrifice is limited, and cannot atone for moral impurity
- Only exile or death can purge “the land” of moral impurity.
- PSA is not a natural extension or consummation of the Levitical sacrificial system.
I can buy most of these points (though Hebrews 5 implies that sin sacrifices had paramount importance in a priest's duties). However, Rillera makes a leap of logic when he then concludes that PSA isn’t supported in the Bible. Romans 3 states that God displayed Christ publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. Romans 5 says that Christ died for us (though it stops short of claiming he died in our place), and it is clear that we are justified through Christ’s blood which saves us from God’s wrath. Isaiah 53 says that the suffering Servant "was wounded for our transgressions, the chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed...the LORD [YHWH] has laid on him the iniquity of us all"; with clear substitutionary implications (3). Colossians 2 states that Christ "canceled out the certificate of debt....having nailed it to the cross". I'd be willing to say that there is no substitutionary death implied in the Bible but that the blood is the means of substitution. Rillera myopically calls out substitutionary death as if that is the only possible substitutionary aspect. He also characterizes PSA as substitution for death, and in the book’s conclusion says that the greatest danger in believing PSA is that it implies we don't have to follow Christ to the cross. But that is not what substitution means: indeed, we will all die and we are all called to take up our crosses. What we are now freed from is the consequences and penalty of our sin. (4)
While Rillera's OT arguments point to sacrificial atonement for ritual (but not moral) impurity, the NT forces him to acknowledge the moral atoning nature of the sacrificial element in Christ's life, death, and resurrection. But he argues that this is not the core part of the Gospel (the "good news") but is a subtle symbol linking back to the OT sacrifices. In Rillera's view, the Last Supper is a sacrifice of thanksgiving and inauguration of the new covenant, not a sin/atoning sacrifice. (Again, 1st Corinthians 5 and Rillera's own Anglican Communion Liturgy have a different perspective). As Rillera walks through 1 John and Hebrews (210 - 240), Rillera is forced to admit that Jesus’ non-Passover activities were also a sacrifice. While he initially states that "on behalf of sins" does not mean that he was an atoning sacrifice (224), he does relent (page 225) and says that the Christ’s blood’s potency gives it an atoning aspect despite the Levitical sacrifices not being morally atoning (a key point of his argument during the first half of the book).
Rillera, despite being arm-twisted by the NT texts into acknowledging the atoning nature of the blood, does not appear to believe there is anything directly salvific in Jesus' death. The only reason for death is that it is required for the resurrection, which is the "proof" of Christ’s identify as the agent of moral and ritual purification (165-166). Rillera does say that Jesus' death is "soteriologically unique" (274), but solely due to its temporal precedence. Putting aside questions of substitution and sacrifice, the NT heavily leans on Christ’s death as the means of our salvation (5). Some example passages:
- Colossians 1:20 "Having made peace through the blood of His cross"
- Colossians 1:22 "Reconciled you through death"
- Romans 5:10 "Reconciled through the death of his Son"
- 1 Corinthians 11:26-27. "As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, your proclaim the Lord’s death...whoever eats or drinks...in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord."
While not desiring to attribute atoning or salvific import to Christ's death, Rillera doesn’t offer an alternative for the means of salvation. Rillera points to Christ as the "agent" of both ritual and moral purification without describing the mechanism. There seem to be three options that are consistent with the rest of Rillera's thesis.
- Christus Victor. There are certainly hints at Christ as victorious over death (eg on page 180) but the ransom component Rillera explicitly denies (203, 205).
- Vicarious (6). Rillera does state that Jesus lives a perfect representative life and his death is a "murder" as the ultimate moral sin which requires the temple to be destroyed to "atone" or "purge" the sin on the land. There is a "double participation" (240) where Jesus participates in humanity, and humanity participates in Christ's death and sacrifice. There is a "solidarity" with humanity (255). This isn’t perfectly aligned with the Vicarious soteriology, but at least rhymes with it.
- No salvific mechanism at all in the cross and resurrection. Rillera does say that God can forgive out of his own desire, which would mean there is no necessity for the cross other than as a ritual and as a proof of Jesus’ agency as the "forgiving one". This would seem to open the door to universal salvation, which Rillera hints at in his discussion of 1 John (214), though he more explicitly goes after the "Limited Atonement" of TULIP.
Outside of my theological concerns, Rillera introduces his book with culture-war fodder: that believing in PSA leads to authoritarianism, hierarchy, and support of the death penalty. Granting that these things are, in fact, bad, this by itself isn’t an argument for or against PSA. This odd and off-putting opening salvo is trivially refuted on two fronts:
- Historical: the countries that were the first to promote liberty and freedom as "us moderns" understand those terms were exactly those countries that were the strongholds of Reformed and Puritan theology, the leading adherents of PSA.
- Levitical: it doesn’t take an academic to see that outside of the detailed descriptions of the various sacrifices, Leviticus spends its time on how to correctly construct hierarchies and enact the death penalty.
I was disappointed by this book. I was hoping for a thoughtful book I could wrestle with even as a disagreed with the conclusion. Instead, the tone is brash and severe, the NT support in particular is unsatisfying, and he doesn't offer a clear alternative. I sense that he is searching for evidence for his pet theory, rather that believing the plain language of the Bible. And the soteriological implications of his pet theory he leaves to the side, perhaps due to its heterodox nature.
(1) Yes, you could do a whole soteriological study from "In Christ Alone"
(2) Yes, you could also do a whole soteriological study from "O Come, O Come, Immanuel"
(3) Rillera does talk about Isaiah 53 but only to say that the NT doesn’t consider Isaiah 53 to be about sacrifices. He does not attempt to cover the substitutionary aspects of Isaiah 53.
(4) There are myriad other verses. Hebrews 5:1 on the OT Sacrifices for Sin, Hebrews 7:27 on Christ as an offering that atones for Sin, Hebrews 9 12-14 on how purification can atone for sins, 9:26 again having Christ as Sacrifice, Hebrews 10:10 on Christ as a sanctifying offering. Rillera intentionally does not engage with "all" the verses that can be marshaled against him, seeming to treat them all as falling under a broader set of categories that he can dismiss. Yet if a plain reading of essentially the entire NT needs to be explained away, it does suggest that the original argument may have some flaws. To his credit, Rillera does wrestle with the Hebrews passages, and does seem to agree that there is some atoning aspect to Christ as sacrifice (even if there is no salvific aspect).
(5) The resurrection is necessary (and in fact, not at all surprising) given Jesus' deity. If the incarnation is true (God as Man), then the shock is God dying, not his coming back to life.
(6) Vicarious is perhaps my least favorite soteriological theory, positing that the Incarnation was sufficient for our forgiveness due to God now "understanding" us. Where Christ’s death plays into this is left as an exercise for the reader.
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Notes -
Last thread I recommended Cur Deus Homo, which has elements of substitution but I really liked how it laid it out.
I also like Vicarious in some formulations, not yours. It's not about God "understanding us" in a way He couldn't before. It's that God set out to the depths of evil and suffering, went to the furthest reaches of Not-God, to find us and love us from the full range of God and Not-God. He descended into Hell. We recite that in the Apostles Creed but do we appreciate what that means? There is no where we can run that He has not traversed.
Melito of Sardis' On Pascha is a lovely meditation as well, short enough to read in one sitting. I suspect it was read on Good Friday in the 2nd century. It seems to hint at a Typological soteriology, which is interesting.
Ultimately, it is a mystery. I don't mean mystery in the secular sense, where there is one answer and if you find it you can stop looking. I mean in the Christian sense, mystery is something like Jesus' parables. Something that you need to keep coming back to, something that always has more to understand, something you can meditate on for all eternity and still find more to appreciate. Trying to pin it to a wall like a butterfly will kill it.
For example, I have heard protestant pastors explain Penal Substitution by saying things like "God damned Jesus on the cross," "The Father hated Jesus on the cross," etc. Those are all theologically fraught statements. Jesus's willingness to sacrifice Himself was pleasing to God.
I would just say that this Not-God language does not align with traditional Catholic and neither Orthodox understanding. Evil or Not-God is thought of in terms of privatio, there is no "Not-God" realm that would turn God into a dialectic, in fact this thinking led to many heresies. Not-God has no ontology, such a reality it would cease to exist there is "no" there to find find anything. Even Satan is not true "Not-God", he does not sustain himself, he derives his existence from rebellion against God, which is not the same as "Not-God", again there is no true dialectic as with let's say Manicheans or Gnostics or Bogomils and other religions or heresies.
Partially true. We see this by holistic reading of The Scripture. For instance consider John 6:32–35
There are many foreshadowing and multiple meanings in The Bible, the famous quadriga of the exegesis, where the text has literal and historical meaning, allegorical and moral meaning, it can be foreshadowing of future things or all of the above at once. Another famous example is the Destruction of the Temple at 70AD described in many passages from Old Testament, New Testament such as Mathew 24 but also in Revelations. It is at the same time a prophecy of actual historical event, it is also an explanation for the Church to be new Israel and it is also at the same time prophecy about eschaton. It is all of the above 100%. It is not 20%/60%/20% or anything like that.
But there is also more to mystery. For instance Church fathers talked about sacraments as a Mystery. Talking about mystery in purely intellectual term is in this sense a category error, mystery can be known by divine Grace, that is how you "pinpoint" the mystery. That is the very nature of the process of deification. You do not pin the mystery on piece of paper to examine it like a butterfly by your intellect, you pin yourself onto the butterfly so to speak.
Pretty nitpicky for flowery language, when the sentence before I said what I mean by not-God - the depths of evil and suffering. In God there is no evil and suffering, in God there is no privation or lack. Jesus experienced both.
You cannot meditate on a mystery of the faith without it being an act of prayer. God initiates all prayer. Do I need to add this disclaimer to everything I write on spiritual topics?
This is definitely not nitpicky or flowery language it is the point, your claim is borderline Nestorian, which is by the way the error of PSA. Jesus descent to Hades was not descent to suffering in form of any range of Not-God. That is the point, Jesus is God and he was in no way damned or suffered in form of being severed or diminished from consubstantiation with the trinity. His sacrifice ontologically changed the nature of all humans, it was not some exploration of suffering. That is a very important Christological distinction. Jesus descending to Hades as a victor over death to preach Gospel to dead with now healed nature, he was not exploring some realm of Not-God or suffering, paying some debt to justice or anything like that.
Again, this is not about prayer or meditation. It is about ontological change and deification. Also God goes not "initiate a prayer", he makes you able to pray, he is the source of grace - but we have free will and we are coworkers in our salvation through willing participation on Grace. Synergism vs monoergism. If you agree with synergism, then we are in some substantial disagreement.
All this is important especially in context of Calvinist PSA the OP discussed.
And I did not imply this.
Yes, and that's God in Hell as a victor over it. God in the place that is defined by God's absence - the place of His willing withdrawal to allow us freedom. So there is no place you can go where God is not right next to you, loving you. That is the point I made, not that Jesus stopped being part of the Trinity or whatever odd thing you are imputing to me.
You misunderstood me and keep accusing me of heresy. I am mostly summarizing Bishop Barron's words, and Bishop Barron is influenced by Hans Ur Von Balthazar here. Balthazar proposes:
Within the Trinity, the Father’s act of generating the Son is an act of total self-emptying love (kenosis). In generating the Son, the Father opens up an infinite "distance" or space of love between Himself and the Son, filled and united by the Holy Spirit.
Because there is already an eternal "space" of self-giving love between Father and Son, that space can stretch to encompass the finite distance created by human sin. The abandonment on the Cross is not a sudden rupture of divine love, but the manifestation in historical reality of the divine, self-emptying love that exists eternally within God.
By bringing His divine, obedient love into the abyss of non-communion, Christ transforms the "place" of absolute abandonment from within. The ultimate darkness is inundated with divine light.
This is not penal substitution. This is not a rupture of the Trinity. This theory aligns with prior revelation and doctrine.
I... we have such different background assumptions on this I don't think we'll get very far here. Separating deification and ontological change from the progression of prayer is breaking my brain a little to try to figure out what we even might have in common.
Again, this is the main point. There is no such thing as God's absence even in Satan. There is only refusal of God or accepting God, but the ontology is always as privatio, an act of will, there is no ontological substance to rebellion. There is no ontological reality to refusal of God, some "God's absence" realm. Refusal is act of will, not an ontological reality. God created everything and named it as Good. There is no corner of created or uncreated world where the God is absent. This is important as it impacts Christology. Christ did not descend to Not-God place. He has command over all creation and preached gospel to the dead. I just want to point out that Bishop Barron draws heavily from Hans Urs von Balthasar, and these are considered as heterodox theology that runs close to denying several established dogmas with Church Fathers and dogmas established by various councils. It is one thing to claim metaphorical language of "Not-God" as internal experience of somebody severed from Grace. It is another to posit ontological power of such severance to create a "space" or "realm" where damned reside collectively and which is cut off from the God completely. In classical view, Jesus waltzed into Hades and preached gospel to individual trapped souls. He did not walk to unassailable "evil" Manichean prison outside of God's creation to free the souls. That is dangerously close to Manicheanism and assigning evil the ontological status, thus even promoting Satan to some sort of ontological Evil God who creates his own "realm" of Not-God in Hades.
In the theology there is a difference between God uncreated attributes, powers and operations and human ones. You can love your neighbor and it is analogous to Father loving his Son. But it is not the same. And it does not matter if you look at it through Thomist Absolute Divine Simplicity or Palamas Essence-Energy distinction, "energies" or operations of God such as Divine Glory, Mercy etc. are either divine essence or uncreated energies and thus outside of purview of not only humans but also angels and any other creatures. In that sense there is no "space" of self-giving love between Father and Son. Divine love is either consubstantial part of Divine Essence eternally present between Son and Father or it is Palamian uncreated energy that is the operation of divine nature of both of them. This is important trinitarian dogma. As in John 16:15
This includes Divine love, which is operation of divine nature. There is no "space" between The Father and The Son. There are distinctions between persons such as Jesus being begotten and Father being the source and archaea. But these are relation of opposition inside the ousia of the Trinity, there is no space inside the trinity as an extra attribute dictating this relationship inside Thomism, that would be against Absolute Divine Simplicity. Palamism says that Father and Son share uncreated divine energies, however these are operations of divine nature of persons within Trinity. In the same way as it is appropriate to human nature to let's say talk or breath (an operation of human nature), it is natural for Father and Son and Holy Spirit to express Divine Love.
There is no space there as some independent variable, there is no "Divine Space" between persons of Trinity outside of it, dictating operations of God. Wherever Son is, Father and Holy Spirit are also fully in their consubstantial form, they are there 100%, no "spatial distance" can diminish it to 99.9999% as space is not an attribute dictating operations of God as said above. That is the main point of retarded view of PSA - if Father punishes the Son, he punishes himself and the Holy Spirit, he cannot separate himself from the other and do "Divine Punishment" operation on them as that would break Trinity. That is why PSA is Nestorian heresy trying to divide Jesus in his human/divine hypostasis as if it was separate created "human Jesus" who descend to Hades while "divine Jesus" rested at the right hand of his Father somehow watching his alter ego doing stuff in Hades or maybe laying and chilling in the tomb or whatever.
Church Fathers had it correct, you start with Christology which is deeply tied to overall Christian theology. And then the rest flows out naturally. You cannot change soteriology (as it depends on Christ and his resurrection) even ecclesiology (it posits Christ as the head of the Church) as it has butterfly effects on Christology and Theology, eventually distorting the overall view.
Again, when Jesus conquered death in his dual human/divine (in his hypostatic union) nature healing the rift brought upon human nature by Adam, he came as a victor to Hades - a created realm by God (Niceno-Constantinoplitan creed names God as creator of of all things visible and invisible) to preach gospel to individual souls who now had healed human nature. They had the same opportunity as we healed humans have now through baptism and deification. They could participate in Gods's grace individually - maybe some did and some didn't. It is not as if Jesus took away redeemed souls of prophets and other righteous from "Not-God" realm of Satan toward the "Yes-God" realm of creation or something like that. It was individual choice of each soul in the same way we now have on this Earth now. We are not living in Not-God realm if there is overwhelming sin around us as in Sodom, where the sin creates some splinter-reality of "Not-God" and where the space or air is imbued by this ungodly property, it is incredibly heterodox thought.
Evil is the privation of the good, Yes or No?
God is absent from Hell in terms of grace and beatitude, Yes or No?
Hell is the subjective experience of God’s uncreated glory and presence by those who reject Him, Yes or No?
Hell is far from God in affection, spirit, and beatitude, Yes or No?
I am not saying that Hell or Evil is a substance in and of itself, which is what you keep arguing against. Anything that exists has the grounds of that existence in God. But Hell is defined by having a separation from God and a lack of the beatific vision.
By calling evil a lack, I'm avoiding giving it a substance of its own.
Yes, however it is a decision of will, not a place of privation. More specifically it is privation of due good, bonum debitum. Good and Evil is natural inclination of creatures with free will, it is not natural expression of other creation such as rocks, trees or even invisible ones such as Hades. All these created things are automatically "good" as they were declared such by God in Genesis, they lack nature and ability of privatio.
No, Hell/Hades is an invisible place created by God and thus cannot be absent of God. Even under Thomism God's grace is part of his essence, so uncreated grace or other operation of God is in effect even in Hell. Hell is absent of sanctifying grace, but that is Thomistic created effect meant for humans. Not all places or creatures that lack sanctifying grace are hell.
But beware. If you are using Thomistic framework, the relations of persons within ousia of godhead are unlike any created effects. Divine glory or love or grace flowing between persons in the godhead are uncreated, and unlike anything outside. God can withdraw sanctifying grace, but he cannot withdraw the divine uncreated grace flowing between person of the Godhead. Christ cannot be spacially diferentiated from Father or Holy Spirit. Again, there is no "Divine Separation" as an attribute of the Holy Trinity.
Additionally while God can withdraw some created attributes such as sanctifying grace from creation, he cannot withdraw everything as it would functionally mean annihilation. Not-God place is nothingness and impossibility.
Yes AND. As with other things, hell is also a place created by God. One word can have multiple referential points.
Yes and No depending on what you want to say.
Also these stupid Yes/No questions are exactly the source of false dialectic that poison the mind of many modern thinkers and especially protestants. Let me give you an example of similarly stupid question:
"Killing is against God's law, Yes or No"
Incorrect. Beatific vision is something that is going to happen after eschaton with certain exception such as angels or saints etc. It does not mean that everything that does not have beatific vision is Hell. This is exactly what I wanted to say, this stupid theology dangerously skirts Gnosticism and Nestorianism due to incorrect Christology.
No, you give it substance by tying it to a place. Place does not have will to deny God.
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