Bore the wrath?

Penal Substitution has been criticised and defended avidly by a variety of people in the blogosphere and elsewhere recently. Sadly, it's descended to personal insults on both sides. I've noticed an extremely ungracious attitude on the part of a lot of the anti-PSA lot, and I suspect that the only reason I haven't noticed a similarly ungracious attitude on the pro-PSA lot may well simply be because I'm one of them and thus don't get personally hurt by any insults they throw, and thus remember fewer of them. To be honest, I strongly suspect that lots of people on both sides need to think about what they've done, and probably offer private and public repentance. And I strongly suspect that anyone on either side is looking at this and saying "yeah, the other side really need to do that", without really thinking about whether it applies to them personally.

I don't want to talk about that. Largely because I get inappropriately worked up about such things, and might well write ungraciously. In fact, I almost certainly would. I've got a real temper when it comes to these kinds of things. I've steered clear of commenting too much as this has come up for similar reasons.

But as the PSA riots have died down, I figured it might be appropriate for me to talk about some thoughts that have occured to me during this. I think controversies, if used properly, can be brilliant for helping the church refine her teaching, and indeed refine even correct doctrine. And I'd really like to offer some thoughts on how we ought to express penal substitution.

Punished in our place
Scripture says that upon Jesus "was the punishment that made us whole" (Isaiah 53:5), that in Jesus, God "condemned sin in the flesh" (Romans 8:3). It's clear that Jesus took the punishment that we deserve.

What's more, it's clear that this was done to fulfill God's justice - it was "so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." (Romans 3:26). God didn't unjustly punish Jesus in our place, but he did it in accordance with his own just nature - in order

So I'm all for the doctrine of penal substitution - that, because of his great love for us, God punished Jesus for our sins, so that he might be just in his justification of us.

What I'm not quite so keen on is it's expression in terms of 'wrath'.

Wrath
Scripture is very clear that God is a God of wrath. Tonnes of the old testament expresses God's wrath, and the fact of it is very much present in the New Testament. Paul builds much of his case in Romans upon the statement at the very beginning of the argument (just after the introduction has finished) - "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth." (Romans 1:18). He then spends the next two chapters explaining that this is the case against all men for all have sinned, and then explains that justification is possible because Jesus' death propitiated ("turned aside") his wrath, and fulfilled God's justice (3:25-26).

Wrath doesn't sound like a very nice term. What it basically means is anger - but in a more "biblical" sounding way, thus implying for many say that it's greater, or nastier, or whatever - depending upon people's preconceptions. ("Wrath" is probably a term that's more likely than anger to "turn off" people who aren't familiar with it, because it ties in with unhelpful stereotypes about biblical teaching. That's one reason I'm not dead keen on saying "Jesus bore our wrath".)

So God has anger. One thing evangelicals are united upon saying is that this anger is thoroughly just. We human beings might well get carried away with our anger, take it out irrationality, but God never does. His anger is always the completely rational emotional consequence of his justice. God's anger is his rational justice made passionate!

Now, when people say that Jesus bore our wrath, they don't mean that Jesus took any anger we might feel, and felt it himself. Nor do they mean that instead of God being angry with us, Jesus felt angry, - that the anger was a fluid that moved away from God, so he wasn't angry anymore. Either of those might be a more literal interpretation of the phrase "bore our wrath" or "bore the wrath of God", but they're also both, a) not what people mean, and b) disgustingly absurd.

What people do mean is that a) God justly punished and judged Jesus in our place, and b) as he did so, he felt and expressed (an entirely rational) anger towards Jesus.

I believe a passionately. But I'm pretty ambivalent towards saying b.

Did God feel angry towards Jesus?
Firstly, I'm uncomfortable about saying b on occasions when I'm talking to people who aren't quite familar with the various doctrines of divine wrath, Penal substitution, etc, because if you're not familiar, it sounds much more unpalatable than talking about justice. It sounds repulsive initially, and plays into a lot of caricatures of penal substitution - caricatures like lovelessness, or the idea that on the cross God is "venting" his anger - a bit like someone refusing to take their anger out on the person they're angry with, so instead they take it out on their door/cat/child. Aside from myself in the past, I know of at least one specific example of someone not having any trouble with PSA, until it was expressed in terms of wrath. I suspect there are many others. So simply in the interests of clarity, I'd suggest expressing PSA in terms of "justice" rather than "wrath", until one has the time to express the latter term better.

But more than that, I have issues with teaching on God's anger being felt towards Jesus. I'm not aware of any occasion where the bible explicitly talks of God's emotions towards Jesus on the cross as being anything like anger. (Please correct me if I'm wrong here, though!) Its dominant way of talking about it is certainly justice, condemnation, etc, with wrath not really making an entrance. This ought to convince us at the very least that the dominant way we ought to talk about it, barring cultural differences that make it harder to communicate, is through that kind of terminology.

But more than that... if the bible doesn't speak of God's emotions towards Jesus on the cross being anything like anger, what liberty do we have to do so? We can, I suppose, assume that God had some kind of emotional response to the guilt of sin being in the flesh of Jesus to be condemned - although even there we have to be cautious when assuming things about God that revelation doesn't speak of. But I very much doubt that that emotional response was exactly the same as his emotional response to an unjustified sinner. I imagine His emotional response was a lot more complex than our formulations allow, and I don't want to make statements about what that means until I actually have good grounds for thinking that I know!

I just want to remain a lot more agnostic about what exactly God felt towards Jesus when he was on that cross - at least, until I'm shown that God has revealed something of what He felt.