And Vicarious Punishment is Not Forgiveness

To forgive, according to Merriam-Webster Online, is: to give up resentment of or claim to or requital for, to grant relief from payment of [something].

Forgiveness is synonymous with pardon.  The definition of pardon is: the excusing of an offense without exacting a penalty, a release from the legal penalties of an offense, an official warrant of remission of penalty, excuse or forgiveness for a fault, offense, or discourtesy .

Forgiveness is also synonymous with mercy.  Mercy is compassion or forbearance shown especially to an offender or to one subject to one's power; and it specifically “implies compassion that forbears punishing even when justice demands it."

“But even though God punishes Christ, it is still for the sake of being merciful toward US,” someone may say. Not so. In a penal theory of Atonement, it is specifically US God is punishing in Christ, not the Innocent One Himself. God is not lifting our penalty; He is explicitly inflicting yours and mine upon the only One Who doesn’t deserve it. He is not granting any relief from our debt; but collecting it from the only One who could pay it.

Not only that, but even the infinite debt He is said to have collected (or punishment He is said to have inflicted) upon the Cross is still not enough if you do not believe. He will continue to collect His due from you or inflict punishment upon you for all eternity if you do not believe. There is no mercy.

(No, I do not believe this is overstatement or caricature. But if it is, somebody tell me why it is and how to correct it – but sparing me all the euphemisms in the process.)

“But if you do believe, then what God did to Christ upon the Cross results in your being let off the hook!” someone may try to tell me.

No. It keeps me everlastingly on the hook. It saddles me forever with the guilt of thinking of all the punishment  my Christ endured which ought to have been mine, which I have gratefully but unfairly and unjustly escaped.

"But God wanted you to escape it."

But He didn't want Jesus Christ to escape it, even when He had prayed to be spared?  Sorry.  Forgiveness I can handle, but punishing my Lord instead of me, no.  I know what I deserve.   

Proponents of penal and satisfaction theories of atonement believe it would be immoral for God simply to forgive. For them, that feels tantamount to winking at sin, colluding in evil. Sin, they invariably tell us, must be “dealt with.”

Yes, sin must be dealt with. That's fine, provided it does not mean gratifying what Fr. Stephen Freeman has called our “lust for revenge”,  for getting even is not what justice is all about.  "Dealing with sin" must also not mean indulging that certain, neurotic form of guilt that craves punishment for ourselves.  Either of these ideas of dealing with sin would only be feeding our sickness instead of curing it.

The object of Justice is to make everything as if sin had never happened, to wipe it out and all its damage and all its consequences. Perhaps an analogy is the virus my computer picked up a few days ago. I not only had to delete the malicious files, I then had also to undo all the damage the bug had done, wiping out my security systems and blocking my access to Google (and thereby, my blog and yours). With a computer virus, that takes hours of searching, deleting, and working with a tech support person. With sin, getting rid of it and all its effects and all its consequences involves the one thing so many people consider immoral, and that’s forgiveness. Forgiveness, far from being a way of approving evil, is essential to accomplish the goal of Divine Justice: to make things as if the sin had never happened. That’s what true Justice does. In fact, by transforming deficits into positive good, God makes things even far better than they would have been, had sin never happened. That’s what true forgiveness does. That’s what true Love does.

A penal theory of Atonement, while it is meant to be all about Divine Love and Divine Justice, is at the very least a serious underestimation of them both.  It quite simply has no room for genuine forgiveness, and in fact prohibits it. 

May He, Who is far more wonderful than we can imagine, reveal to us all the heights and breadth and depths of His unfathomable Love, and give us to be able to come to terms with it.