Jerry Walls The issue here is what would perfect love do if faced with the scenario of the three children. It's very telling that Calvinists always cast the issue as one of justice rather than love. Moreover, if the atonement is understood as Calvinists often do, in terms of penal substitution...
i) We cast it in those terms because that's how Scripture casts it. Even when Scripture speaks of God's love, it's using love as a synonym for God's mercy or pity or grace. God's love for sinners rather than creatures. It's a mercy/justice dialectic.
ii) It's striking that he comes out of the closet as an opponent of penal substitution. Walls has quite a following among Arminians. Yet many modern-day Arminians espouse penal substitute. Yet to judge by this comment, Walls regards penal substitution as a part of the Calvinist package rather than the Arminian package.
iii) Since Walls is not a universalist, how does he justify eschatological punishment if divine love trumps divine justice? I don't know if he espouses annihilationism or everlasting hell. But in either event, that's retributive rather than remedial.
Scripture definitely treats eschatological judgment as punitive: just deserts. Comeuppance.
By process of elimination, he's committed to retributive punishment. There are three basic options: deterrence, retribution, or remediation.
Postmortem punishment can't be for deterrence. Too late for that. And since he's not a universalist, it can't be for remediation.
It's possible that given his belief in postmortem salvation, he'd include remedial punishment to motivate postmortem conversion. Mind you, that's coercive, so that collides with his commitment to libertarian freedom.
But even if he thinks postmortem punishment has some remedial benefit, he doesn't believe all dead unbelievers will be responsive to God's postmortem overtures. So he must still fall back on retribution for that recalcitrant subset.
But if love is God's primary attribute, then why does God punish anyone for not believing in him or reciprocating his love? Assuming (arguendo) that he can't make them love him or trust him, how are punitive measures the alternative to salvation?
Why not make the lost as comfortable as possible? Why not continuously treat unbelievers better than they deserve?
Given Walls's theological assumptions, eschatological punishment seems petty and vindictive.
Here is some of Wall's observations on penal substitution in his book Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy -
ReplyDelete"The heart of salvation is to change us so we gladly love and obey God. This is how we are united to him in a relationship of mutual love. He has always loved us, but we have not always loved him in return. The heart of atonement is eliciting our trust and willingness to be changed in the confidence that God's will is really for our true good and flourishing.
"I am, however, inclined to think that no single model of the atonement captures all of what it accomplished and that penal substitution, properly qualified, is a part of it, although a secondary part. The essence of salvation is the real transformation that allows us to love God and enjoy fellowship with him. The element of forgiveness, although crucial, is secondary to this. The point of penal substitution is not that God needed to be placated, for Christ himself is God and he is the one who gave his life as a sacrifice. However, in keeping with his truthful relation with us, God must take our sin seriously. Hare's account of the penal nature of Christ's death dovetails nicely with this emphasis on truth. It demonstrates the true value of him whom we have disobeyed and disregarded and displays our value relative to him. It vividly expresses how wrong we have been in treating God with mistrust, ingratitude and contempt, while vindicating his perfect goodness."
Kindle loc. 836-843.
Earlier in the book when laying out John Hare's theory of penal substitution (and namely the substitutionary aspect) he quotes the following illustration: "'If the child steals, the parents pay. It may be that the only way the child can be cured is through the sufferings it causes the adoptive family; the sufferings may be great enough practically to destroy the family. We can imagine, though, that there is a kind of life which the family leads which eventually becomes the kind of life the child leads.' As Hare notes, there is here a sort of mutual transmission in this relationship. The parents bear the shame when the child steals and may apologize for him and help him to apologize himself. Since he is now part of their family, his guilt is in some sense theirs as well. but eventually there will be a transmission of their integrity and love to the child, and he will himself become a person of character.'"
Kindle loc. 792-799
What's clear is that Jerry Walls wants to focus on the transformative effects of Hare's model. That's partly due to his purpose in this chapter and in the over all book to explain the logic of heaven. But I wonder what room it leaves for imputation?