As readers of this blog know, I try to keep an eye out for major Protestant preachers commenting on what they think happened at the Cross. While it seems that quite a few Protestant outlets have been toning down their Penal Substitution rhetoric, I was shocked to recently hear such comments coming from an otherwise well respected conservative Protestant scholar like Dr Daniel Wallace. In a public talk (HERE) he gave at Dallas Theological Seminary a few months ago, February 2019, Dr Wallace gives a reflection about what happened at the Cross. The following are some quotes that stood out, along with the time stamp:
- "It's true that God's Wrath against sin was poured out on His Son; he turned His back on His own Son." (22:00)
- “God the Father, poured out on Jesus the fury of His Wrath. Jesus became the object of the intense hatred of sin and vengeance against sin, which God had patiently stored up since the beginning of the world. At the Cross the fury of all that stored up wrath was unleashed against God’s own son. Should it shock us that Jesus cried out, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (23:00)
- “As awful, as horrendous, as excruciating as death by crucifixion is, the physical pain did not compare to the internal anguish that Our Lord suffered. He took on our sins, all our sins. The torments of an eternal hell for millions and millions of people were borne by one man in a few hours. But His crucifixion is a window on the Lord’s soul, we get a glimpse of His spiritual suffering which we will never experience from the physical torture that is crucifixion. Yet as Paul tersely put it, ‘Christ died’ “ (24:39)
I'm frankly astonished at this commentary, as it has no Biblical basis. Wallace, of all people is supposed to be deeply concerned about exegesis. And yet we get these kinds of comments, given by a professor at a major seminary before a large public audience.
3 comments:
PSA seems to be the default way of describing the crucifixion, regardless of considering the implications. Perhaps, because it sounds the "best" and most emotionally appealing. Never mind it implies temporary Arian or Nestorianism.
Agreed. It seems it's one of those Traditions of Men that has been so ingrained into Protestant culture that nobody dares question it, and to stop and question it is tantamount to denying the Crucifixion entirely. It's doctrines like Penal Substitution that have got me to realize that the Reformation was never about Sola Scriptura because Protestants don't actually follow the Bible at all. None of their unique doctrines are found in the Bible.
PSA has a tremendous psychological and emotional hold on many evangelicals. Consider the evangelical "elevator pitch" version of the gospel- the "if you died tonight, do you know where you would go?" script you hear them read from so often.
The PSA gives you a nice easy answer- you can "know" you'll go straight to heaven irrespective of what you have done or will do, because all your sins past, present and future have been "charged" to Jesus's account by virtue of his taking the punishment for them and your "accepting" it through faith. I think many Protestants honestly don't see how there could be any "mechanism" by which our sins could be forgiven other than the "PSA + double transfer" theory. And, to its credit, it is indeed a very easily grasped theory with immediately personal application.
Consequently, once PSA is rejected, some evangelicals find that they cannot even wrap their heads around how their sins could get forgiven at all, and to the point that I have heard some of them say that if Jesus didn't get *specifically* punished for *my* sins then I must still have all of them hanging over my head and I cannot be saved. The fact that it simply doesn't work like that according to the Bible they claim to follow, and that the overwhelming majority of Christians across space and time have never actually believed that it worked like that, doesn't seem to occur to them.
Almost invariably, you will find that the Evangelical has to start plugging the gaps in the theory using a priori reasoning not contained in scripture- i.e. "God is holy, and in justice He has to punish all sin, and the penalty for sin is eternal damnation, so either your sins have been vicariously punished on the cross or they haven't been, in which case they will get punished in the form of you going to Hell." I find that something like this reasoning underpins the whole facade, and is simply assumed up front to be the underlying logic of Paul in scripture even though its a pretty serious departure from anything the NT actually says. Its an entire arm chair theory built out of extra-scriptural deductions, and almost never recognized as such.
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