A Hideous Doctrine
By John R. Gavazzoni

Referencing Jonathan Mitchell's Translation of the New Testament, Amplified, Expanded, with Multiple Renderings, we have Jesus' explanation and declaration of what would be His ministry as commissioned by His Father:

In contrast to the above explanation and declaration, by the Lord Himself, of what would constitute His ministry, pseudo-orthodoxy insists that, first and foremost, Jesus came to bear, as a substitute, the wrathful punishment from God that was due to sinners. Strange that the Lord mentioned no such thing, if (supposedly), above all, that's what the Father sent Him to do. It is believed by the vast majority of western evangelicals, that the whole of Jesus' ministry of teaching, healing, comforting, delivering from demonic spirits, was only the lead up to, so to speak, toward the grand finale of God arranging for Him to be tortured and killed instead of all the world's sinners, i.e., "in our stead," as is popularly expressed.

This doctrine is formally known as penal substitutionary atonement, or as it was in the circle of fundamentalism from which I received my first biblical mentoring, vicarious, substitutionary atonement. What this hideous theory posits is that, because of God's holiness, because He's a righteous God, He is bound to, as a matter of moral and ethical necessity, inflict a sufficient amount of torture upon sinners leading to their death, BUT that death will proceed to becoming agonizing separation from God, by God's abandonment of them to that fate. It takes a stretch of inference to equate Jesus' suffering and death, as horrible as it was, to torment without end, as if, because He was God's Son, God's anger reached a level of rage, equal to, or surpassing His rage against the aggregate of humanity. One really can't read any, even perverted, logic into such madness.

Speaking of strangeness, even some believers who hold to the truth of universal salvation in Christ, also known as ultimate reconciliation, final restoration, the greater hope, restorationism, and more formally, apocatastasis... even some of those so enlightened, nevertheless embrace the notion that all mankind will be finally restored to God, only by God doing to His Son, what is thought to be our just punishment. Talk about holding in one hand, a beautiful conviction, and in the other hand, a hideous misrepresentation of the nature of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then to try to bring those two hands together as a harmonious combination.

This theory of the atonement, to be clear, holds that God could only be satisfied, propitiated, expiated... to reference a contemporary concept... find closure, by torturously giving vent to His anger upon sinners. Now, since even among those who embrace such ghoulishness, there is no doubt in their minds that, St. John was right in describing God as Love. Twice, in his first epistle, John declares, in these very words, "God is Love," that the character-constitution of Deity is love. One wonders, if God is love, implying that He is full of love, how that would leave room for something opposite to love, as in demanding to get even with all those sinners who have offended His holiness.

So, clearly, God is portrayed as a conflicted deity. If He is love, He would find no delight in torture, but nevertheless, it is insisted that His holiness and righteousness enter the picture demanding a torturous reaction to men's offense against Him. The two can, in no way, be harmoniously true. When I have explained how it is that no such conflict can dwell in God because the nature of God's holiness and righteousness IS His love, more often than not, I get that "deer-in-the-headlights look as if, for some strange reason, they cannot get their heads around such a concept. God is righteous; God is Holy, because He is love. There can be no conflict between love and holiness. No resolution of (supposed) tension between the two is required since holiness and righteousness are bound together with love in an indissoluble union.

An analogy of the penal substitutionary atonement imagined scenario:

Long ago, there lived a great man with a vast family of sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, even great, great, great grandchildren for his was a very long, procreative life. His every thought was for their welfare, though he, at times had to make choices regarding the unfolding of their destiny, that could be misunderstood, but His heart was full of perfect love toward them, and all that he arranged for them came from a perfection of wisdom matching his perfect love both working as perfect complements.

But, in time, all of his progeny, except his eldest Son, came to believe that they had a case against him in his arrangement of things pertaining to their unending welfare. Their misunderstanding of his administrative ordering for their welfare, led to a rebellion against him by all except that eldest son. At every corner, they sought to give him grief. At every turn, they hurled spite in his face. It got so bad that the old man came to his eldest son, saying, "I'm beside myself in anger at their treatment of me. Inside, I seethe with resentment at their infamy. Night and day, this volcano of wrath boils over within me. I cannot bear it any longer, but I've invested so much of myself and my resources on my family, that I can't bear to bring myself to destroy them utterly. There is only one way open to me. I must find satisfaction for my wrath, by pouring it on to someone, and yet not destroy our family.

The best I can ascertain re: such madness of conclusion, is that, in the darkness and ignorance of men's hearts... and we all have remaining pockets of that darkness... is the failure to understand the difference between the "wrath" of God, and the "wrath" of men, with the latter being projected onto the former. I'm, for purposes of accommodation, using the word "wrath," because of the general familiarity with the King James/Authorized translation of the original languages, but in terms of how that word is used and understood, it is a poor option for translating, for instance, the Greek word, "orge." Our brother Jonathan has it right in his translation, though, again for purposes of accommodation, in some places, he includes "wrath" in the expansion of the Greek, but only after revealing the essential, root meaning of the Greek, which is "inherent fervor." So, pray tell, what might be the inherent fervor of perfect love, except that such love increases in its burning passion toward us in proportion to our rebelliousness against Him, thus we can understand that, "where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound."

The nature of the atonement, involves the Father, through His Son, the Christ, in and by the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit of, and which is, Him acting salvifically TOWARD man, rather than the action via His Son being toward Him. This is clear from John's quotation of Jesus in the Greek, has Jesus promising to send the (Gr:) "paraclete" to His disciples as an Advocate, a Comforter, Consoler, Intercessor, One called alongside to help. The ministry of the Paraclete, the promised Spirit of Truth comes from God to man, AND likewise, in John's first epistle, John calls Jesus our advocate, and that, WITH the Father. So, what we have is not Jesus pleading our case before the judgment bar of God, but rather, the Holy Spirit, Jesus, and the Father, together pleading their case of love and grace to our hearts.

From the Book of Leviticus: "I have given YOU the blood upon the altar." (the blood upon the altar is not for the appeasement of a petulant deity, the blood upon the altar of our heart is for the cleansing of our hearts from defiled consciences, as laid out clearly by the writer of Hebrews. The broken body of Jesus was not for God's vindictively reactive consumption. Rather it was to and for US, Jesus said, "eat YE, all of it." The cup of the new covenant in His blood, was not meant to be drink for a petty, resentful, easily offended deity. The cup was/is for our drinking: "drink YE all of it."

Hear God saying, "you, in the darkness and ignorance of your hearts, have believed it is righteous on your part to demand my blood for treating you so badly, and I have given YOU that blood, upon the altar of your hearts." Harry Robert Fox explained so sublimely: "when man did his worst to God, God did His best for man."