Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

So we have our students reading Homer and Milton and Calvin and a whole bunch of Bible along the way rather than reading textbooks, and then we discuss them in three-hour seminars. We're not worried so much about delivering content or summarizing fields, we're inviting them into a conversation that's been happen over the last 3,000-4,000 years in a way that just brings them into a life that we're leading. It just a really different approach to their general education.

But I knew I needed to get a PhD and I didn't have a clue what I wanted to focus in. If anything I was leaning towards studying Plato for my doctorate. But I spent a lot of time praying, taking with friends, talking with mentors, reading. I was sitting in my mentor's office, this was a couple years after graduating, and we were talking and I almost had a – it was like a conversion experience. You know those art installations where you look at them and it's a big pile of junk and then the camera with pan around and all of a sudden it all comes into focus and it's an image, like a man smoking a pipe or a dog sitting. So what looks like trash, all of a sudden takes form. Pretty much that's what happened in my life.

As I sat there I realized all along I'd been interested in the doctrine of the atonement and I just couldn't see it before. The movies I'd been interested in – the first book I re-read after college was Anselm, Why God Became Man – the conversations I had had, and so that was sort of a realization happen. And ever since I've been working on the doctrine. I've just been completely in love with it.

So after I had this conversion experience, we'll call it, I went from there and just started reading on the history of doctrine. That's how I'd been trained to do. I didn't really go read a bunch of contemporary books. I started reading Athanasius and some Aquinas, Edwards, Irenaeus. I wanted to see what those guys thought when they were asking what happened on the cross. And when I came to my conclusion, then I realized that Barth was the best guy to help me unpack this project. So in some ways this book really isn't a popularization. It's more like the prequel and I'm bring in all those other voices to provide a much more compelling narrative.

So basically when people think about the atonement, they try to boil it down to one main thing, more often than not. They try to find one – it's a little bit like when people might want to explain what's the best thing about their home state. Maybe they want to boil it down to one thing and say, "Oh, Washington State is the best because of –" and they'll say something. Problem is, most of us come from states that are so rich in culture and history and natural beauty and folklore that there's just so much more to say than one thing. And folks prior to 1800, when they talk about the cross, they don't try to boil it down to one main thing. They just try to – they're like poets trying to unpack how beautiful an event this is and how much is going on.

So my dissertation and then this book was really a matter of asking why is there so much going on on the cross? Why is the biblical language so rich and varied? Why is the history of theology so rich and varied when it comes to explaining this? That's what I was asking.

It's much more along the lines of representation where if this event didn't happen so that it wouldn't happen to me, it happened to me in Christ, so that that really happened to me in some way. So substitution? Absolutely. But scripture is much more diverse. It includes a number of other ways of thinking about it that I would want to be able to tie in.

Now I mentioned a second list. The first list that we've been talking about is asking, how are we connected to the person of Christ? Is he just another man? No. But as a man, he does something that happens so that it won't have to happen to us, but there isn't that much distance, because what's happening to him is pulling us into that event, and yet in that, he's opening up and revealing things in a way that is objective and truth bearing. He's casting a light so that we can see clearly for the first time. That's a very elemental, foundational list. It is trying to explore, how are we connected to this man.

There's another list that people like to talk about, and that has to do with different theories of the atonement. Lots of folks that heard that Jesus is – well, one major theory is that Jesus defeats Satan, that's the Christus Victor. That Jesus is in some way the one who provides satisfaction or is the penal substitute, that has to do with Anselm and Calvin and that line of thought. And then a third element on this list is that Jesus is the example. That his way of life is a way of loving and living so inspiring that it catches us up into this way of life.

The funny thing is, that list goes back to Gustaf Aulén who was writing in the 1930s, early 1930s, I think. In his context, all he heard was penal substitution. So when people wanted to talk about, "What was Jesus doing on the cross or what was God doing on the cross," all people could talk about was penal substitution. And as he was reading around in the history of theology, he realized, "Oh, there's more to this." We don't just have to say our wives are beautiful. We could also say they're really intelligent or gracious or they're amazing hosts.

He wanted to add to this list, so he did. Problem was he made the list small and stunted. As you read back through the history of the churches reflection on this, as you read through the Old and New Testaments, you end up finding a far greater number of theories of the atonement, we might call them, throughout the history of the church. I read one book that puts the number at thirteen. I'm not very interested in putting a number on it. I just have fun trying to find new ones.

But penal substitution, the word penal there is very important. That's one form of penal substitution in which the penalty that I ought to receive is taken by someone else. But there are other kinds of substitution. For example, let's say that we're in a context in which shame is a huge matter. Someone could try to restore the honor of someone else.

Let's say I shamed someone by accident. A friend of mine could be my substitute and go and try to repair or restore the honor of that person in a public way in my stead, which is still a form of substitution, it's just not working with penal categories any more. It's working with the categories of honor and glory and shame. So that basic list of substitution representation and revelation, it's so basic that it's waiting to be unpacked in different ways. Penal substitution is one of the ways of unpacking substitution, but there are others.

Penal substitution, as I understand it, is really – is the fulfillment of the judgement of God upon a people that breaks it's covenant. So the whole framework of the Pentateuch, as it's summed up in Deuteronomy, around 30 thru 32, if I'm right, but right around there, is a great place for thinking about how the Old Testament approaches that topic too.

Then Moses says, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What will the Egyptians think?" And it's the most bizarre argument. It's almost like Moses is using a peer pressure argument against God. "What are the Egyptians gonna think?" And you would think that God would say, "I'm God. I don't care what the Egyptians think. I just judged them in a series of 10 plagues and showed my glory among them. What do I care about the Egyptians?" But God responds to that. God cares about his reputation and his name and his glory throughout creation.

And so what he does is he then gives a partial judgement upon Israel but continues to work with that stubborn and stiff-necked people in order that his reputation in Egypt will remain as a God who's powerful and removed his people from slavery. That's just one funny little instance where it seems to be going the route of judgement and penal substitution and instead ends up working with the categories of name, glory, honor, and those kinds of topics. As you start looking for that stuff, you end up finding it all over scripture.

Not that it's more important than penal substitution, but if we trace this back to who God is, penal substitution relies on thinking about God as judge or being one who is just and righteous. Now, is God just and righteous. Absolutely. And anyone who wants to hedge on that is really gonna have a hard time interpreting who sections of scripture. But is God also one who is honorable, who is worthy of honor and who's name is a glorious name and that name ought to be recognized and praised and worshiped throughout all creation by angels and ourselves and all creation? Absolutely. So is God more just than he is honorable or glorious? No.

What these theories do is they each take one part of who God is and unpack the work of Christ from that perspective in a way that does us a real service. It helps us understand how God is just and how he brings about his justice in creation. But then another theory will do the same thing, drawing on another aspect of God's character in a way that will help us scripture. So this is helping us get a fuller picture.

Then one way of reading the arch of scripture is how does God bring himself glory when he's been shamed as his creation is rebelling against him, but how does he restore us to glory and clothe us again in white and pure garments. You could paint the whole picture in terms of we fell into shame and God restores us into honor. To do that well, you need plenty of tools at your disposal.

One of the big ones is the resurrection. Most people can talk a long time about the atonement and just talk about the cross. And the cross is a huge component of what's going on. By the way, he was crucified in a public way to be shamed. It was primarily a shame strategy in terms of what the crucifixion actually means. But the resurrection, Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that if Christ hadn't been raised, we'd still be in our sins, we're fools, and we haven't been justified.

The resurrection is really the key mechanism here by which everything is reversed and then we are brought into honor and glory and we're given his name. We're crowned – all these things happen which restore to us what was lost in the Garden of Eden. So there's this beautiful picture of God finding a way to restore something to us in restoring honor and glory to his creation so it can be restored to him too.

So God is vindicating Jesus and demonstrating that Jesus is actually who he claims to be, and of course the idea coming out of the resurrection, particularly developed in Luke-Acts of Ascension, is the idea that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father. He shares the presence and glory and authority of God, which is the product of this vindication. So what you're saying to us is that you can't tell the story of the atonement and the cross without telling the story of what came out of the cross, which is the resurrection and ascension that emerged from it. Is that right?

A better way of understanding the doctrine of creation is Jesus's resurrected life than anything that happens in the Garden of Eden. This is creation as it was meant to be and one Person and all who are in him will someday taste that as well, when the new city rejoins a new Earth and all things will be as God meant them to be. But the key for that is God enters it, makes it his own, and then brings it to where he wanted it.

And so there's something inherently unjust about that. It's like God committing "suicide." That's the way the question was posed to me. And my answer was, "Well, if the death were the end of the story, you might be able to raise this as an objection, but the fact is the death is not the end of the story and the resurrection completes the story and it's actually a very important element in telling the story. Isn't that part of what you're saying by extending the cross into the resurrection? That what happens with atonement is very much related to the vindication that comes out of it?

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a Navy Seal. I wanted to go to war. I thought that would be glorious. The thought of going to war meant nothing but glory to me. The thought of sending my own son off to war, I don't know if I could do it. I'd go in his place a hundred times, but to send my son for that, I wouldn't do it. That question relies on the father and the son being two separate persons and personalities, two gods, and one sends the other, and why wouldn't you send yourself. So to do this well, God has to be one God who lives out his life, these three eternal ways as father, son, and Holy Spirit, but if we affirm the monotheism that's the basis of this whole doctrine, then it's God telling God – God sending God, not God sending another God.

Another way of picturing what's happening is God is bringing the human problem into the life of God. Instead of sending the son, he's just bringing the problem here. Then God can deal with this problem within his own life as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rather than just judging and punishing his creation at a distance.

There's a lot going on here with the doctrine of the trinity, and the more you think about God as three different Gods, the bigger this problem gets. The more you think of this as the work of one God who is eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but one God not three Gods, then it's a very, very different sort of conceptual terrain for thinking about that question.

If we want to say the experience of Abraham was the experience of God and the experience of Isaac was the experience of God, that God was experiencing both of these realities and perhaps the experience of his mother as well. 'Cause you have Father, Son, and Holy Spirit here doing this work. This is one God making this problem his own, because he doesn't want someone else to have to deal with it or to have to suffer the full reality of it. You know what? Basically I want to be really careful about mapping on Abraham and Isaac onto that and just saying, yeah, that's like the father and the son. I'd be doing a lot more hedging than I would affirming.

The sacrifice, it doesn't lead to a permanent death, because there's a vindication on the other end of it, and it is the vindication that actually is as key a part of the story as the sacrifice. And when you ask the question, you're asking the question in such a way that the entire focus is on the sacrifice and not, if I can say it this way, the epilog. The epilog is actually pretty important to this whole journey.

You're pointing out the narrative and the role that narrative plays in helping us think about this properly, and that's absolutely correct. From what I was emphasizing just a moment ago was the role of the trinity within this narrative. So that's just another angle that gives us a fuller picture. So yeah, just to be clear, I wasn't trying to say in anyway that what you were doing was a bad direction. It's just, this takes a lot of tools.

If you want to be a really good coach, as you think about like an NFL coach – you watch some football. Right? Houston's your team. Those head coaches, they're not just thinking plays. They're managing a whole business. They're thinking at so many levels at once in order to be a good coach. That's what we have to do as Christians in order to think well about this even, because there's an awful lot going on here. And that's what I'm trying to unpack a little bit.

But then it has all these other little things that it wants to talk about too. You have the angels kind of longing to know what's going on and the idea that God is gonna reconcile the heavenly things to himself. Well what are the heavenly things? I take it that those are the angels. But then Romans also talks about the Earth groaning. So it's not just our sin. The Earth is groaning and waiting to be restored.

And then you have the whole animal kingdom which was at peace with us in Genesis, is at peace with us at the end in Revelation, and in the meantime we have the prophets looking forward to that time. But right now it's a time of rebellion and of strife with animals. So the Bible invites us to think about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ not just in terms of our sin, but in terms of God bringing all of creation back to it's proper order and place.

Part of that is defeating the rebellious angels, Satan, and the demons and putting them in their proper place. But another part of that is restoring the animal kingdom, is bringing the earth back to a place where it's no longer groaning with the pain of childbirth. And even C.S. Lewis in his space trilogy in Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength and Perelandra, he had a vision where the death and resurrection of Jesus restores the Earth to the music of the spheres, which was this ancient idea that the Greeks and the Romans had that the planets made a song.

So the death and resurrection of Jesus restores the earth to that song within the heavens, so even the heavens themselves have a fuller experience, are as they were meant to be because of Jesus's work. So the more you start poking around the scripture with an eye for this, the more you see it's thinking about us, but it's thinking about more than that. It's thinking about all of creation.

I think the best way to think about the role of Satan is not as a separate theory, "Oh, that's the ransom theory." Satan is one of the characters that's involved in every theory of the atonement if we develop it properly. Who receives the payment? I'm inclined to side with Anselm and say Satan is not being paid anything, but God is a God who treats his creatures according to the rules that he sets up.

When he says, "You are the ruler of this land," he will treat you as the ruler of this land and you will be judged or blessed as you fulfill that role. But he will treat you as the ruler. And if you play the role of a corrupt ruler, he will still treat you that way. So he's treating Satan as the corrupt ruler of our land, but he still gives him the dignity of treating him the way God – with the role that God gave him. So God plays by his own rules. In doing that, he's not paying Satan, giving him anything that he owes in an exchange so Satan comes out with like – with money or some benefit or something like that. But he's playing according to his own rules, and that means he's giving Satan what Satan deserves.

And so in the process, Satan gets what he asks for. He gets the death of Jesus. He gets a lot of suffering throughout creation. But in the process, God's undermining his power. So I think ransom theory is primarily a matter of God undermining the power of Satan while playing by his own rules and not cheating, not just destroying Satan, in a way that will restore Christ as the head of creation. Where Satan was trying to take that from us.

God wants to be known. God wants to be known and worshipped accordingly. But we don't have the tools for knowing him given our fallen condition. Even though creation might be testifying and witnessing, we are not the kinds of creatures who can absorb and respond to that properly. So part of what God is doing is coming, and as the God who wants to be known, he's making himself known through his own activity.