Saturday, February 5, 2011

Why did God kill Himself?

Within Evangelical theology, Jesus did not merely choose to die for Christians' sins. The wages of sin is death, and someone had to pay that penalty. Jesus had to die, or else everyone would go to hell.

This fundamental belief is not merely unsupported by evidence, which goes without saying in theology. There are also three fairly obvious problems with the basic idea.

The first problem is that it portrays God as a judge who is in the unpleasant position of having to uphold a law that calls for mandatory sentencing. Sin calls for death, so God's hands are tied. The obvious flaw here is that the reason sin calls for death is because God chose for that to be the penalty. Or perhaps rather than the penalty being the result of God's choice, it's due to God's nature, God's will, or God's character. I don't care in the slightest which aspect of God is to blame for this.

The second problem is that the punishment is set up as something that's transferable. Punishments aren't like that. I can't go to prison in someone else's place. I can't have points put on my driving record in place of someone else. I can't die in the place of someone on death row, even if I and the criminal agree. If any of these happened, it would be called “corruption.”

A monetary debt analogy is often used to explain how someone could “pay” a penalty for someone else. However, the analogy is flawed at precisely the point that the analogy is designed to make. With a monetary debt, it's not that the debtor has to pay, the point of the agreement is that the creditor needs their money back. Someone else can pay the debt, just as someone else can give money to the debtor who can then give it to the creditor. This isn't some special exception; it simply follows naturally from the fact that wealth is transferable. Non-monetary penalties aren't like that. The point is not that the victim of a crime needs someone, anyone, to serve 20 years for them. The point is that the criminal needs to serve 20 years. Either the criminal “pays” the “price” himself or it goes unpaid.

The third problem is that Jesus didn't pay the penalty for sin. Precisely what are the wages of sin? Death is a fairly clear answer in ordinary language, but theology has a way of mincing even the clearest of words. Death could mean the destruction of the body, death could mean eternal separation from God, death could mean an eternity in hell, or it could be some combination of these.

Here's the key question: do the wages of sin include an eternity in hell? Certainly, the answer must be yes or no, although multiple positions are encompassed by either answer. If no, then what's the point of hell? God just keeps a torture chamber around not because it's demanded by justice, but simply because he's the sort of being who wants hell to exist. Furthermore, if the wages of sin do not include hell, the fact that Christians still physically die means that Jesus' death didn't take away the penalty. If yes, then Jesus didn't pay the penalty for sin. The penalty for sin includes hell, and Jesus certainly didn't go to hell for eternity.

Furthermore, Jesus' only paid the penalty of physical death in a legalistic sense. Suppose a judge sentences a convict to be executed, legally declared dead, and then revived afterward. Assuming everything goes as planned, this is not capital punishment. There is no real difference between sentencing someone to death followed by resurrection and sentencing someone to a painful experience. So it's not even clear that Jesus paid the penalty of “death” in any sense of the word.

Using clear language, here's a fairly common Evangelical position:
An eternity in hell is the penalty for sin. Jesus paid this penalty by temporarily dying. Notice how different this sounds when you use “death” to equivocate between literal death and hell: “The wages of sin is death. But Christians don't have to pay the penalty, because Jesus' paid the penalty of death.” “Death” is one of the many weasel words concealing flaws in Christians beliefs that become crystal clear whenever the beliefs are stated clearly.

Were I engaging a position that gives more than lip service to reason, I would expect the usual response to this to at least have the general form of “here's why the substitutionary atonement makes sense.” But rebuttals to reasoning about theology are usually of the form “even though it doesn't make sense, here's why you should believe it anyway.” For instance, it is suggested that we shouldn't expect the mysteries of God to make sense to our minds. More educated Christians are likely to give a very long and drawn out analysis of first century culture and Jewish sacrificial traditions, and buried within the explanation will be the assertion that we have no right to question God's plan.

But notice that Christians never object to reasoning about the things of God when it is used to support their ideas. Jesus had to die because someone had to pay the penalty of death. The reason that someone had to pay the death penalty is because people sin. The penalty for sin is infinite because the sin is against an infinite God. If Christians really don't think that the things of God can be reasoned about, Christians need to stop giving the impression that they are intending to have a coherent position.

The real reason that Christians object to skeptics' reasoning about God is that the conclusions of reason differ very sharply from Christian beliefs, and so they wish to downplay the role of thinking. It is absolutely vital to the Christian faith to have the word “mystery” and other synonyms available to serve as blank checks to wish away all ways in which faith clashes with reality. What could hold together an obviously false belief more securely than a justification for believing even in the teeth of the realization that Christian beliefs do not hold together? As Mark Twain put it, “faith is believing what you know ain't so.”

9 comments:

  1. I find your objections to be somewhat inconsistent. In the first objection, you blame God for not exercising some sort of divine prerogative with regard to the degree of punishment involved. In the second, you forbid God from exercising any such prerogative because you believe that punishments are non-transferable. If the aim of the divine judgment is to render some form of justice, then is God not, in a goal-oriented sense, bound to do certain things for the sake of justice? And, if the divine court should find mercy a more appropriate response to repentance than punishment, is that such a problem, even if the means by which the court obtains mercy is not terribly obvious?

    In your third objection, you fail to take into account Jesus’ innocence, righteousness, and status as Messiah. Do those things not make his death much more significant than a sinner’s? And surely you recognize that the Christian’s hope is not to avoid death but to be resurrected in a recreated world, a world without evil or suffering.

    The last way that I think this post is short-sighted is that it only considers one description of the atonement. Penal substitution language certainly appears in the New Testament to describe the saving role of Jesus’ crucifixion, but it’s hardly dominant. Those writers discuss the atonement as an animal sacrifice or hostage-and-ransom scenario just as often. You need to consider the possibility that the courtroom story is an analogy, especially since it wasn’t really a popular way to talk about the atonement until the twelfth century (Anselm of Canterbury).

    And, if the courtroom description of atonement is an analogy, does that mean that it has no explanatory value? No. Computer scientists talk almost exclusively in metaphors—there are really no ones and zeros whizzing around inside wires. Chemists and biologists use a lot of them too. Perhaps the courtroom description is just a way to acquire a limited understanding of an intellectually challenging metaphysical process.

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  2. >In the second, you forbid God from exercising any such prerogative because you believe that punishments are non-transferable.

    My second objection does not claim that God couldn't have made the rules differently.

    I'm saying that if the rules add up to a punishment, then this punishment had better be a punishment. If it's not a punishment, then don't call it one, and don't act like it's a punishment when thinking through, say, the justification of hell.

    >If the aim of the divine judgment is to render some form of justice, then is God not, in a goal-oriented sense, bound to do certain things for the sake of justice?

    “Certain things?” Yes. Killing himself? My three objections certainly say no.

    >In your third objection, you fail to take into account Jesus’ innocence, righteousness, and status as Messiah. Do those things not make his death much more significant than a sinner’s?

    The biggest difference Jesus' innocence makes is that it causes the idea of a punishment transfer to him all the more unjust. This is quite a problem when Justice is the only justification for why it had to happen at all.

    Also, you need to argue far more than just that Jesus' temporary death is “more significant.” You need to go so far as to say that a few microseconds on the cross for Jesus equals one person going to hell for eternity.

    And even if a few microseconds/person covers it, why not make the method of execution swifter, so that it lasts only several seconds? Is a few nanoseconds of Messianic suffering simply too far below the going rate on souls? The whole story sounds like a poorly thought out after-the-fact justification, and not like a cosmically designed ultimate expression of love.

    >The last way that I think this post is short-sighted is that it only considers one description of the atonement.

    I do depend on some assumptions about what Christians believe, but I don't think that's one of them.

    For objection 1, God decides what is just.
    For objection 2, sin results in a punishment – this is less than assuming the Penal Substitution view.
    For objection 3, the wages of sin include more than physical death.

    >Perhaps the courtroom description is just a way to acquire a limited understanding of an intellectually challenging metaphysical process.

    Most counter-intuitive ideas are simply false – especially when even after careful thought, they still don't add up. I see no reason why this should be an exception.

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  3. I would agree with your 3 objections if the wages of sin were death, but it's not. The wages of disbelief may be death, but not sin. Presumably, all chrisians going to heaven were sinners, and all people going to hell likewise were sinners. So, if "death" means going to hell, as opposed to going to heaven, sin is not the reason for going to one place versus the other. Rather, the distinguishing factor is one's beliefs, and in particular, faith in Jesus Christ. So, the wages of disbelief may be death, but not sin. This may seem like a mere technical contradiction within Paul's theology, but it's more important than that. God sends people to hell not for a person's sinful actions/thoughts, which presumably are easily understandable by that person himself, but rather for his beliefs in a God that is inherently not understandable in the first instance. That is, we are told that God's ways are not our ways, that we cannot fathom his wisdom, that his will is a mystery, and so. So, in order to reach heaven, we must have faith that we understand and believe in something that is inherently beyond our comprehension. If God wants our beliefs to be correct as the one and only prerequisite to heaven, why does God presist in being a mystery? Why not explain himself clearly, instead of leaving a very confusing and conflicting set of stories, allowing people to interpret them in various ways.

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  4. >The wages of disbelief may be death, but not sin.

    I agree. If you start with what Christians believe, then "the wages of unbelief is death" is a perfect description of how it works.

    However, in this case I started with what Romans 6:23 says, rather than with what Christians say it says.

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    Replies
    1. "The point is
      not that the victim of a crime needs someone, anyone, to serve 20
      years for them. The point is that the criminal needs to serve 20
      years. Either the criminal “pays” the “price” himself or it goes
      unpaid."

      this is a good point. do you have more points like this?
      anyone who does not pay the price by experiencing the penalty has not really paid the price, right?

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    2. "In your third objection, you fail to take into account Jesus’ innocence, righteousness, and status as Messiah. Do those things not make his death much more significant than a sinner’s? "

      "The biggest difference Jesus' innocence makes is that it causes the idea of a punishment transfer to him all the more unjust. This is quite a problem when Justice is the only justification for why it had to happen at all."

      what do they mean when they say that jesus died for past, present and future sins?

      do sins move about? do thought and action miraculously move about ? or did god prevent the transfer of sins to the cross? if he did, then why didn't he prevent original sin?


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  5. I have a question. Why couldn't God just repeal his sin death penalty and replace it with something else?

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  6. SteveMarch 31, 2011 at 5:20 PM
    I would agree with your 3 objections if the wages of sin were death, but it's not. The wages of disbelief may be death, but not sin.
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Romans 6:23
    King James Version (KJV)

    "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

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