The just for the unjust

According to JD Walters:

“McIlwain begins by pointing out how odd it is that while theologians have tended to see the cross as revealing the justice of God, in that Jesus bore the penalty for our sin, the New Testament authors tend to think of the cross as revealing instead the injustice of man.”

http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2010/08/biblical-revelation-of-cross-part-1.html

i) I already demonstrated the fallacious nature of this objection in my response to apostate Ken Pulliam.

To say it was unjust for sinners to crucify Jesus doesn’t mean it was unjust for God to orchestrate or instigate that event. Indeed, as Scripture tells us:

“Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23).

“For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!” (Lk 22:22).

"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" (Rom 8:32).

"Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief" (Isa 53:10).

“For truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place” (Acts 4:27-28).

Clearly then, Scripture doesn’t say that if it was unjust for sinners to crucify Jesus, it was also unjust for God to bring about the same event. Scripture is not impugning the character of God when it attributes to Crucifixion to God as well as man.

Someone might object that this is counterintuitive. How can what is wrong for man be right for God?

But even if this is paradoxical, that’s beside the point. The immediate question at issue is whether penal substitution is unscriptural. Whether or not we think Scripture makes sense is a different question than what it teaches. You can’t infer from Scripture that if sinners committed a grave injustice when they put Jesus to death, then God committed a grave injustice by planning that event.

ii) I’d add, however, that this isn’t all that counterintuitive. For the motives of an agent are salient a factor in the moral characterization of his actions. God didn’t have the same motive for ordaining the Crucifixion that sinners had in crucifying Jesus. And that’s a key difference.

“McIlwain argues that it would have been exceedingly unjust of God to punish an innocent man instead of the guilty. This principle is expressly stated many times in Scripture, most clearly in Proverbs: ‘The one who acquits the guilty and the one who condemns the innocent-both are an abomination to the Lord...It is terrible to punish a righteous person, and to flog honorable men is wrong.’ (17:15, 26)…This principle is given its clearest expression in Ezekiel 18.”

There are several problems with this argument:

i) I already dealt with Ezk 18. JD offers no counterargument. And this isn’t just me. Commentators like Iain Duguid and Daniel Block have corrected the facile appeal to Ezk 18.

JD’s kind of perfunctory prooftexting, which can’t be bothered to exegete a text in context, or test its interpretation against scholarly exegesis to the contrary, is arguing in bad faith.

To address just one issue, the historic setting for Ezk 18 is the Babylonian exile. And that’s a textbook case of corporate judgment. Not all of the Jewish exiles were covenant-breakers. Some, like Daniel and his friends, were pious, observant Jews. Same thing with prophets like Jeremiah–not to mention Ezekiel himself. Ezekiel was an exilic prophet who is swept up in God’s collective judgment on the nation.

Even if you deny that he was being punished for the sins of his contemporaries and forebears, he suffered the same judicial consequences. But isn’t that unfair? He didn’t deserve the same fate as his impious, idolatrous contemporaries, did he?

ii) It also overlooks the fact that, in a very real sense, the vicarious atonement of Christ is an exercise in divine self-punishment. Self-retribution. It’s not simply one party punishing another party. Rather, God Incarnate exacts on himself the penalty for our sin.

That clearly falls outside the type of situation envisioned in passages like Gen 18:25, Deut 24:16, Prov 17:15,26, and Ezk 18.

iii) JD also disregards passages of Scripture which undermine his claim, viz. Exod 20:5-6, 34:7, Num 14:18, Deut 5:9-10, 7:9-10, 2 Sam 21:1-14, 2 Kgs 24:3-4. So, once again, JD is arguing in bad faith.

iv) And if that weren’t bad enough, his explanation only trades one problem for another. Even if the death of Christ were not a case of innocent punishment, it is still a case of innocent suffering. And innocent suffering raises the same theodicean issues as innocent punishment. The suffering of the righteous is a standard issue in theodicy.

If it’s unjust for God to punish Jesus because he was innocent (indeed, supremely righteous), then it’s equally unjust to make him suffer and die at the hands of wicked men. So JD’s alternative doesn’t begin to solve the problem he posed for himself.

“Under this aspect we can understanding the significance of the OT sacrificial systems in a new light: the sacrifices were pleasing to God, not because they involved the slaughter (and hence punishment) of animals, but because they were done in obedience to the instructions that He had given.”

Notice the manward reorientation involved in this interpretation. The offerings cease to be tokens of God’s grace and mercy as he forgives sinners by exacting retribution on a surrogate who takes their place. Instead, they become tokens of how pious and faithful the worshipper is. It’s all about our goodness rather than God’s goodness.