A Nuanced Defence of PSA by Marshall and Holmes

I have just finished reading two books on the atonement, where the authors offer a nuanced defence of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) – the view which states (the way I would put it) that on the cross the God-man Jesus bore the penalty of our sin in our place, satisfying God’s wrath against our sin and enabling forgiveness to come to us.

The first book is by Ian Howard Marshall, Aspects of the Atonement: Cross and Resurrection in the reconciling of God and humanity (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007). This book really consists of 4 essays written by Marshall, each constituting a chapter in the book. In the 1st chapter, Marshall defends the concept of the penalty of sin, with the aim of hopefully persuading us to a stand like: “Well, maybe terms like penalty and anger are open to misunderstanding, but properly understood they express the heart of the matter.” (p.12). He explores the vocabulary of ‘punishment’, ‘vegeance’, ‘wrath’, ‘judgement’ and ‘destruction and death’ from the New Testament (p.11-19), and concludes that there is ‘no legitimate way of avoiding the fact that these terms refer to the (personal) attitude of God himself that results in action being taken against sinners’ (p.19), and may we add, actions that also include the results or consequences of sin which sinners bring upon themselves. If the God of the Bible is fundamentally holy and loving, and both of these attributes are relational, then they will find expression in his grace and mercy towards his creation, but yet also judgement and wrath when that creation is spoilt by sin (p.24). Marshall also explores and upholds the concept of ‘retributive judgement’, broadening it beyond a simply legal consideration, but including the whole breadth of the consequences of sin in the Bible (p.32). What is attractive about Marshall’s proposal is his suggestion that the ultimate element in judgement is the exclusion from community, from the kingdom of God – a suggestion which has mileage in developing the idea of penalty and penal substitution (understood in this broad sense) for Israel within her covenant relationship with God. In the 2nd chapter, Marshall attempts to go deeper into the atonement itself – what exactly is happening on the cross. He begins by taking the cue from P.T. Forsyth and suggests that it is the ‘Holy Love of God’ that undergirds the nature of the atonement and calls for it (p.34-38). He then explores the various New Testament metaphorical language used to describe the work of salvation – ‘sacrifice’, ‘curse’, ‘redemption and ransom’, ‘reconciliation’, ‘forgiveness’ – and concludes that ‘essentially the same basic principle is expressed in each of these different understandings of the death of Jesus. The principle of one person bearing the painful consequences of sin is the modus operandi of the different understandings of the cross’ – God did something in Christ that involved Christ dying while bearing our sins (p.51). Thus, the concept ‘penal substitution’ can be appropriately used of the cross, though the ‘penal’ should be understood in the broadest sense of the word as mentioned above, and though we might need to think of improving on the term to cover the concept in today’s theological climate. Marshall concludes this chapter with 4 points about PSA (p.64-67):

• A clarification of the nature of judgement (as what Marshall has done in the 1st chapter) helps us to a better understanding of the death of Christ
• It is possible for us to hold fast to the concept of penal substitution while looking for terminology that may communicate it more effectively to our contemporaries.
• The doctrine of the Trinity is our firm defense against any false suggestion that God the Father had to be appeased by the Son in order to bring about the purpose of redemption.
• As we clarify and defend PSA, we can and should continue to subscribe to declarations of the evangelical faith that enshrine this fundamental and essential doctrine and to sing with reverent thanksgiving and praise.

In the 3rd chapter, Marshall turns to the resurrection, and conducts an in-depth study as to how the resurrection of Jesus is related to the achieving of salvation on behalf of sinful humanity. He explores passages in Hebrews, and several other NT passages, before zooming in on Rom 4:25 where it is stated that ‘Christ was raised from the dead with a view to our justification’, i.e. our justification is in some way tied to Jesus’ resurrection. Marshall concludes:

[The link between Christ’s resurrection and our justification] goes beyond the simple understanding of Christ’s resurrection in terms of God’s vindication of him, purely as a demonstration to humanity that he was the Messiah after all and that his sacrifice has been effective. Rather, in raising Christ from death […], God is not so much vindicating what Christ has done and saying that he approves of it, but is bringing him back from the dead as the One who is now just and experiencing the new life that God grants to those whose sin has been taken away; this is happening representatively to Christ so that believers may share in this new life.” (p.90)

In another words, Jesus is our substitute in dying on the cross for us and bearing our penalty, but Jesus is our representative in experiencing justification and living this new relationship with God.

In the 4th and final chapter, Marshall searches for a term that best encompasses all that is happening in the salvation and work of Christ, and he finds it in the candidate ‘reconciliation’. Marshall explores passages which have the word (2 Cor 5:17-21; 1:19-23; Rom 5:1 and Eph 2) and also passages which contain the two other closely connected word-groups of “peace” and “forgiveness”. He then compares ‘reconciliation’ with other ‘models’ of salvation such as ‘justification’, ‘redemption’, ‘salvation’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘family’ and ‘covenant’ and show how while these other models are similar in structure to the motif of reconciliation and often closely linked with it, reconciliation might still be the most comprehensive and apt of the models used. Four points in particular stand out: Firstly, reconciliation particularly brings out the relational and personal element in the problem between us and God – There is a breakdown or lack of a positive personal relationship between sinners and God. Secondly, reconciliation highlights the divine initiative of God in bridging this chasm. Thirdly, reconciliation highlights the fact that in salvation, the sinner is brought back into a restored relationship with God, and both the negative and positive sense of salvation is brought out – not only cancellation of sins or imputation of righteousness, but also the positive righteous status and the ‘peace’ we now have. And lastly, reconciliation as a term and concept highlights the social dimension or implications of being saved to God better than some of the other terms. Marshall concludes:

“[…] Reconciliation is a model that expresses clearly the basic pattern of human need, God’s action, and the resultant new situation that shapes all the biblical imagery of salvation, and that it does so in a way that is particularly comprehensive and is especially relevant in a world where the need for new relationships between human beings is so clamant.” (p.137)

The second book is by Stephen R. Holmes, The Wondrous Cross: Atonement and Penal Substitution in the Bible and History (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2007). Unlike Marshall’s book, which is a compilation of his essays written over various occasions, Holmes book is more of a bird’s eye view on the topic of the atonement, written in an accessible style targeted for both lay readers and pastors. After an introductory chapter laying out the issues, Holmes begins by exploring atonement as seen in the Old Testament and the New Testament. He focuses mainly on sacrifices and the suffering servant of Isaiah from the OT, concluding that perhaps the biggest feature portrayed for us in these several different pictures is that of mystery (p.27) – God commands the sacrifices, he states that the suffering servant will suffer vicariously, he commands Abraham to sacrifice his son but intervenes at the last moment by providing a sacrifice – in all these, we see what God commands, but we do not know how or why they work. As for the New Testament, Holmes concludes that the New Testament writers did focus on the cross, but used many different images to illustrate what was happening, with each of these images in and of themselves being either partial or incomplete. All this leads to Holmes’ conclusion that the ‘best way to think of the cross is to use many and complementary models or stories of salvation that hint at or point towards the indescribable truth at the heart of the matter’ (p.41). In this regard, Holmes views that there is no clearly worked out doctrine of atonement n the NT, only the raw material by which we may and must attempt to construct such a doctrine (p.41). And in our attempt to construct such a doctrine, it is tempting and very easy to read these images or stories of salvation as different ways of describing PSA, especially when we already know from somewhere else that PSA is the (only?) right way to understand the atonement. Holmes believes that the NT language in and of itself does not demand to be read this way. In the next 2 chapters, Holmes looks at the doctrine of atonement from Christian History (from key Church Fathers to Medieval theologians to the Reformation and all the way into present day twentieth century) with him concluding that the early church fathers right through to the Medieval Fathers had different stories of salvation to tell. It was only from the Reformation (John Calvin) that penal substitution became a common and successful way of talking about the cross, with this being the case till recently. Holmes defends his thesis most strongly in the 6th chapter – that the Bible itself does not have just one picture of how Jesus saves us, but has different pictures ‘put right next to one another with no suggestion that one is more important than the other’ (p.76). And Holmes argues further that such a many-and-complementary picture way of viewing the cross has to be the way, because the cross is far too fundamental, far too basic, to be just one example of some more general part of human life (p.78). So if we try to understand the cross of Christ through an exclusive idea of sacrifice, or love, or anything else in the world, what we end up doing is making the cross of Christ just another example – it might be the supreme example but still just an example – of love, or sacrifice or whatever the thing might be. Rather, the centrality of the cross obliges us to understand sacrifice, love, and every other human reality by thinking about the cross of Christ (p.78). And only a many-and-complementary picture view of the cross allows for such a view. In the 7th and 8th chapters, Holmes explores the place of PSA within such a many-and-complementary picture view, and defends that it has a valid place and is one valid story to tell of the cross, even amidst the theological and cultural objections to PSA. Holmes has some interesting insights along the way, such as his proposal that it is by seriously considering union with Christ that the objection that it is not fair to transfer guilt from one individual to another can be answered – God can take our guilt because he identifies so closely with us that our guilt can be shared, or transferred (p.97). Holmes also reminds us that PSA must be thought of as a work of the Trinitarian God and that it first arises and begins out of a hermeneutical horizon of the divine love of God. As Holmes reminds us, John Calvin insisted at length that the only reason we have an atonement theology is the prior love of God. The following paragraph perhaps best captures Holmes’ thoughts on PSA:

“[…] Properly told, penal substitution is a story that helps us make sense of the cross of Christ, of the astonishing thing that happened at Calvary. But it is not the only way of describing the cross – not even a privileged one. […] However, penal substitution is a way of talking that we should hold on to, because it preserves certain truths that are taught better by telling this story than by telling any other story I have ever heard.” (p.100-01)

What do we make of Marshall and Holmes’ proposals? On the one hand, I agree with Holmes’ many-and-complementary picture or ‘stories of salvation’ view that he upholds. Perhaps we as evangelicals have quite often presented PSA as the only and exclusive way in explaining the atonement, and have either ignored the other models or stories, or ‘subsumed’ them under PSA. And PSA has been a good story to tell so far in our time and age, where a sense of sin and guilt and courts of law and justice were pictures and terms that individuals could easily identify with. But as Holmes pointed out, does the story of PSA still resonate so deeply in today’s culture, where sin and shame and guilt are no longer felt and experienced so deeply as before? (p.114-15) In this regard, perhaps Marshall’s suggestion that the ultimate form of judgement as exclusion from God’s community might be something that resonates stronger with people today – in another words, the sense of alienation and exclusion is stronger than that of shame and guilt?

But here, on the other hand, is where I disagree with Holmes. Must we, in holding onto this many-and complementary picture view of atonement, at the same time state that there is no privileged picture or story of salvation? Here is where Marshall helps tremendously. If as Marshall as shown, there is an underlying principle of one person bearing the consequences of sin as the modus operandi of the different pictures or stories of salvation, then can we say that penal substitution undergirds all the different pictures? In saying this, I am of course going for a very broad definition of ‘penal’ being the consequences of our sin and rebellion, rather than the narrowly-defined definition of ‘penal’ being the consequences of breaking some law in a court of justice (which I suspect is the definition Holmes works with throughout his book). Finally, I think there is much worth exploring into Marshall’s suggestion of ‘reconciliation’ being a suitable term to describe the multi-faceted work of the cross as shown through the different pictures and stories of salvation – a header term that connects and brings together the different pictures and stories not by subsuming and collapsing the different pictures into one, but summarising the different effects of the atonement won by Christ for our salvation.