BROWN: By "Forensic Substitution" is meant the principle that, under certain circumstances, an action done by (or to) A may be deemed, as a matter of law, to have been done by (or to) B. Thus, if you own a company, an action by one of your salesmen or other authorized agents may be considered by the court to be your action, even if you knew nothing of it. By the term "Penal Subsitution" (often used interchangeably with "Forensic Substitution," although actually a bit more narrowly defined) is meant the principle that a crime done (or penalty borne) by A may be deemed under law to have been done (or borne) by B.
Now, the Doctrine of the Atonement, plainly taught in the Christian Scriptures, is that all men (with One Exception) have sinned and deserve eternal punishment, but that Our Lord Jesus Christ, being innocent and holy, volunteered to be deemed guilty before God of all our sins, and to be punished in our place, and that the demands of Justice are hereby met.
GREEN: The view you have just cited is called the Anselmic theory. It was first formulated in about 1100 CE by Anselm of Canterbury. If it is as plainly taught in the Holy Scriptures as you say, is it not curious that it took about a thousand years before anyone noticed it there? What the Scriptures do plainly teach, and what I would never think of denying, is that Jesus Christ has bestowed on us an inestimable benefit in restoring us to fellowship with God, and that he did so at a considerable cost to himself. Now speaking of this in gratitude, we rightly say that he endured pain in order to spare us pain. (As Saint Paul writes, "though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.") That the Scriptures use the language of substitution, I readily grant. That they use the language of forensic substitution, I categorically deny. I suggest that, coming to the Scriptures with the theory of forensic substitution firmly in mind, you read every reference to substitution as if it spoke of forensic substitution. It is a natural mistake, but should be corrected.
BROWN: There is no question but that the Jewish law spoke of the Passover lamb, and indeed of all sacrifices, precisely in terms of penal substitution. The life of every first-born male was forfeit to God. The Passover lamb was offered instead, a lamb without blemish or spot, and it was accepted by God as a substitute for the life of the first-born (Exodus 13). Again, on the Day of Atonement, sacrificial animals were slain and their blood sprinkled on the Ark and on the altar as an atonement for the sins of the people (Leviticus 16). Surely the whole system of Temple sacrifice, with its emphasis on blood as the Divinely prescribed means of atonement (Leviticus 17:11), was a system of penal substitution. The guilty worshipper brought a spotless lamb to the Temple, laid his hands on its head, thereby symbolically transferring his guilt, and then had the lamb killed in place of himself. If that is not penal substitution, what is it?
BROWN: From the very beginning of the Biblical narrative, the doctrine of Forensic Substitution (or Penal Subsitution) is implicit in God's dealings with sinners. When Adam and Eve had sinned, they covered their nakedness with aprons made from fig leaves (Genesis 3:7). After God had judged them, He clothed them with garments made from the skins of slain animals, as if to tell them that only by the shedding of innocent blood can sin be covered (Genesis 3:21). Again, after they were expelled from Paradise, they had two sons, Cain and Abel, who in due time offered sacrifice to God. Cain brought a vegetable sacrifice, and Abel brought a lamb. "And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard." (Gen. 4:4-5) The reason is given. "By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he received approval as righteous, God bearing witness by accepting his gifts." (Heb 11:4) Abel, unlike Cain, had faith in God's promise of redemption through the blood of Christ, and he offered up a spotless lamb in anticipation of that sacrifice, and so God forgave his sins and accounted him righteous through the blood of Christ in which he had put his faith.
GREEN: As for the skins with which Adam and Eve were clothed, if it were intended to teach the significance of shed blood, surely there would have been some reference here to blood, or to the slaying of the animals. In fact, we read only that God made garments of skins. The text does not even call them animal skins. For all we know, God may have created skin garments out of nothing, without killing any animals to get the skins. After God had judged Adam and Eve, before sending them out of the garden, he clothed them, like a mother bundling up her children in snowsuits and galoshes before sending them out into the snow to walk to school. So Adam and Eve go forth to face the world, banished from God's direct presence, but not from His loving concern and protection. If you are wondering why God gave them skin garments, when they already had perfectly good fig leaf aprons, ask anyone with a leather jacket whether he would willingly trade it for a jacket made of leaves sewn together. Leather is more durable than fig leaves. Given a plain practical explanation that fits the data, there is no need to look for a theological or symbolical explanation. As for the sacrifices offered by Cain and Abel, it is altogether natural that Abel, a shepherd, would bring a lamb, while Cain, a tiller of the soil, would bring part of his crop. But we are told that "Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions." (Gen 4:3-4) Surely the contrast is deliberate, intended to convey the idea that Abel brought the best that he had, while Cain did not, and that this reflected a difference in attitudes. When we are told that one brought his best, and are invited by omission to suppose that the other did not, we have a sufficient explanation, and have no need to insert another explanation not required by the text.
BROWN: When Abraham was commanded to sacrifice Isaac, God provided a substitute at the last minute in the form of a ram. By this, he clearly taught that we cannot offer any sacrifice good enough to pay the price of sin, but must accept the sacrifice that God provides on our behalf.
GREEN: I have no quarrel with that. Actually, I find two morals in this story. The first applies to the immediate situation of the Ancient Habrews. They were surrounded by pagan peoples who offered humans as sacrifices, in particular, in times of great urgency, their own children.(2 Kings 3:27) Doubtless they sometimes taunted the Hebrews, saying, "We have a greater devotion to our god than you do to yours. We are willing to offer to Chemosh the most precious possessions we have, whereas you never offer anything more valuable than a few cattle." To this the Hebrews replied, "It is not that we love our God less. It is that He loves us and our children more. We would be willing to offer Him anything He wanted, but He has made it clear that He does not want human sacrifices, that He has in fact forbidden them." And, because the Hebrews were a people who thought in terms of concrete examples, God gave them this answer in the form of a concrete example. This I take to be the primary significance of the story. Because I believe in Jesus Christ's perfect surrender to the will of the Father as the only perfect sacrifice, I naturally read the story of the Binding of Isaac with this sacrifice in mind. And in doing so, I agree with the interpretation you have just given. But notice, please, that all that you are saying is that it is only through God's action in Christ that we are reconciled to God, and that the best we can offer on our own is not good enough to accomplish the task. That is simply to affirm the saving work of Christ. It says nothing about a particular theory of the atonement, and certainly nothing about Penal Substitution.
BROWN: What about David and the death of his infant son (2 Samuel 12:13-14)? That is a straightforward instance of penal substitution. David is guilty, but his innocent son pays the price.
GREEN: The text treats this as a punishment of David, not as something inflicted on his son. The emphasis is on David's grief, not on the son's suffering. In the same way, the Book of Job is concerned with the death of Job's children only as rough on Job, not as rough on the children. Now you may take this, as some readers have, as evidence that our ancestors had little regard for children, and thought of them only as the property of their parents. Or you may say that when God acts, He does so in loving concern for all the persons involved, and takes into account the effects of His acts on each of them, but that the Scriptures confine themselves to the effects on a few persons, because the Scriptures must be of finite length. (An account written from the point of view of Job's fifth son would show us how the Divine Mercy and Justice were expressed toward him, but since we know nothing about him except that he died, we are in no position to say that it would have been better, strictly in terms of his welfare, to let him live longer. And similarly of David's son, and the Egyptians who perished in the Exodus, and so on.)
THE PASSOVER LAMB
BROWN: When God was about to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt, He told them: "I am about to slay the firstborn, both man and beast, of all Egypt. Therefore, let each houshold take a lamb, and kill it, and sprinkle the blood on the doorposts and lintel of the house. And when the Angel of Death passes through the land, and sees the blood on the doorposts and lintel of a house, he will pass over that house, and spare the firstborn of that house." (Exodus 12:5-7,12-14,21-27) And the Israelites did as they were commanded. And they were told: "This shall be a perpetual ordinance among you. Every first-born male is forfeit to the LORD. If it is human, you must ransom it, if it is a clean animal (such as a lamb) you must sacrifice it, and if it is an unclean animal (such as a colt) you must either break its neck or redeem it by sacrificing a lamb instead." (Exodus 13:11-13 and again 34:20) Clearly, we have here a doctrine of Forensic Substitution. The Passover Lamb is killed explicitly as a substitute, a ransom, for the first-born son.
GREEN: Not at all. In the first place, there is not a hint in the passage that the firstborn have sinned. You may say that the first-born son is guilty because of Original Sin, but he is certainly no more guilty than his brothers and sisters. The first-born animals have not sinned. What is involved has nothing to do with a penalty for sin. Rather, we have an acknowledgement that "the earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world and those who dwell in it." (Ps 24:1) We acknowledge that all the produce that springs from the earth is the LORD's by right, by offering to him the first sheaf of the wheat harvest, the first grapes of the year, the first bushel of apples from a tree, and so on. We offer him the first-born as a token that all are His. (Ex 13:1-2,11-16) That the first-born male lamb is killed is secondary to the point that it is given to the LORD. Where sacrifice would be inappropriate, we carry through the recognition that the first-born is the LORD's by ransoming it. We are told that a colt must be either killed or ransomed with a lamb. We are told that a human male firstling must be ransomed, but "ransomed with a lamb" is not specified, and in fact the traditional Jewish understanding is that the the first-born son is to be ransomed with money -- five shekels is the amount specified in Numbers 3:39-48. Today, an Orthodox Jewish father not of a priestly family will ransom his first-born son by seeking out a man of a priestly family and paying him a sum of money (in Israel, five shekels; in the United States, usually five dollars, preferably five silver dollars). There is no suggestion here of killing an innocent victim to atone for the sins of a guilty party.
GREEN: But there is no suggestion that sins are transferred to the Passover Lamb, or that the first-born has any sins to be transferred. Neither does the foal of the ass have any sins to be transferred to the lamb that is offered in its stead. There is here no idea of sacrifice for sin, but rather two ideas: (1) In gratitude to God for His gifts to us, and in acknowledgement that the whole earth is His by right, we give him the first-fruits of everything. The first sheaf of the new barley crop, the first harvest from an olive tree, the first calf from a cow, the first son of a new family, are all given to the LORD. (2) When God delivered us from Egypt, He displayed His sovereignty and His power, His ownership both DE FACTO and DE JURE of Egypt and everyone and everything in it, by claiming the first-born, the cream of the crop. In thanksgiving for that deliverance, and remembering the mighty hand and the outstretched arm that accomplished that deliverance, we offer to God the cream of the crop. That the sheep and the barley are offered is the main thing. That they are destroyed in the process is incidental. None of the things offered are considered to be objects of God's wrath or of His punishing justice.
BROWN: Granted, this particular ordinance does not teach Penal Substitution. However it does teach Forensic Substitution. A life is forfeit to the LORD, and another life is accepted in its place. The first-born son is to die, and a Passover Lamb is offered in his place.
GREEN: If that were the idea, then you would have the sacrifice of one lamb for each first-born son. But instead, the Hebrews were told to sacrifice one lamb for each ten persons. Two households, each having a first-born son, but having a total of only ten members, will split a lamb between them. A household in which there are no children, or in which the oldest child is a girl, have no lives forfeit, but must offer a lamb nonetheless. There is no trade here of a life for a life. There is rather the notion that we have here a family who are eating a meal in the name of the LORD, sharing a table with the LORD and with each other, and that they are in fellowship with the LORD and are under His protection. The blood on the doorposts is not a sign that the angel is not to stop and collect a life since this family has already donated, but rather a sign that within this house is a family gathered around the LORD's table. When the Passover is commanded to be celebrated after the Exodus (as in Ex 34:25; Lev 23:5; Num 9; Deut 16), no mention is made of sprinkling blood on the doorposts (but see 2 Chr 30:16); indeed, there seems to be more emphasis on the unleavened bread than on the lamb.
THE DAY OF ATONEMENT AND THE SCAPEGOAT
BROWN: We speak in ordinary English of a "scapegoat," meaning someone who is singled out to take the blame when something goes wrong, so as to take the heat off the parties who are really guilty. The team has been losing games, and the coach is worried about his job, so he announces that he is firing his assistant coach, whose incompetence is the cause of all the trouble, and that now things will start to improve. Well, the "scapegoat" finds its origin in the Law of Moses. Let us consider Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day of the Jewish year. (Lev 16) On this day, all the people fast and "afflict their souls." The High Priest (Aaron, or his successor) offers a bull as a sin-offering for himself, and makes atonement for himself and his house. He then sets aside a scapegoat, and lays his hands on the goat and confesses over the goat "all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, and all their sins; and he shall put them on the head of the goat." Here you have a clear-cut example of the idea of transferring one's sins to the head of a victim and letting that victim suffer in place of the sinner. And this points forward to Christ, the ultimate Scapegoat who bore the penalty for the sins of the whole world. And so I say that the notion of Penal Substitution is taught by the Law of Moses.
GREEN: The English meaning of "Scapegoat" is a curious one, since in fact the goat does NOT bear the penalty for the sins of the people. He escapes the penalty. Two goats are put forward, and one of them is chosen by lot as "For the LORD," and the other one is "For Azazel," which perhaps originally referred to a desert spirit, but has come to refer simply to banishment. The one marked "For the LORD" is sacrificed in the usual way, but the other one is spared. The High Priest transfers to it the sins of the people, and then a man leads it away into the wilderness, far enough away so that it (presumably) cannot find its way back, and there leaves it. Since there are wild goats in the desert, this by no means condemns the animal to death by starvation or thirst. The idea is simply to let it carry the sins away, far out of camp. The psychology is similar to that of a man who, after a messy divorce, catches a migratory bird, fastens his wedding ring to its leg, and releases it, saying, "Now, lose this somewhere in Argentina!" Jews in New York today, I am told, write their sins on slips of paper and throw them into the river on Yom Kippur. Many years ago, as a boy, I attended a religious service on New Year's Eve at which we were asked to think of our besetting sins, bad habits, things we wanted to get rid of, and then write them on a slip of paper. We folded the slips and placed them in a metal bowl, and watched while they were burned. All the same notion. Note that the Jewish High Priest did NOT confess the sins of the people over the goat that was to be sacrificed. Note that in all the directions for sin offerings, guilt offerings, traspass offerings, atonements, burnt offerings and the like, although it often happens that the person for whom the offering is made is instructed to place his hands on the head of the sacrificial beast, he is NEVER instructed to confess his sins over the beast. Since this is precisely what he the High Priest does do on the one occasion where it is clear that it is desired to transfer the sins to the beast, I infer that there is never any intention of tranferring one's sins, symbolically or otherwise, to any of the other beasts mentioned in the Law of Moses, the beasts that ARE slain and offered as sacrifices.
SACRIFICES FOR SIN
BROWN: Under the Law of Moses, when a man had sinned, he brought a sacrificial beast to the door of the Tabernacle, and there laid his hands on its head, and then killed it and gave it to the priest, who presented the blood at the altar, and then burned a portion of the carcase on the altar as a sacrifice and disposed of the rest by burning elsewhere. (Lev 4:1-12) The symbolism is clear. The man lays his hands on the head of the beast, and thus symbolically transfers his sins to the beast. It is then deemed, by what we call a legal fiction, to be the guilty party, and is put to death, suffering the just penalty for sin. By this means the Israelites were taught both that sin deserves death and that God in His mercy will provide a substitute.
At first, sacrifice LOOKS like straightforward penal substitution. A man has done wrong; he brings a beast to the door of the Tabernacle, lays his hand on the head of the beast, and then it is killed; and so the man is let off from his own death sentence. But on second glance, things are less straightforward. The hand-on-head bit is mentioned in connection with the fellowship-offering (Leviticus 3:2), where no sin is involved, and in connection with the trespass-offering (Lev 4:4), where the fault is one committed unwittingly, but not in connection with the deliberate sins mentioned in Lev 6:6 or Lev 19:20-22. (In fact, as a general rule, the sacrificial system makes no provision for a deliberately willed breach of the Divine Law -- see Numbers 15:28-31.) I therefore conclude that understanding the hand-on-head gesture as a transfer of sins to that the beast can be executed as a criminal -- deemed, by a convenient legal fiction, to be guilty -- is a complete mistake. How then are we to understand it? What is going on? My understanding is that the man is not forfeiting his life by proxy, but rather giving a gift as an expression of love. In ordinary human love, one often gives a gift as a means of saying, "I want to give myself to you." By giving a life, one here says, "I want to give my life to you." The gesture of hand-on-head does not represent transfer of guilt, but rather (1) indicates ownership: "This is my beast you see here, and (2) makes the beast a symbol of the owner, so that saying, "This beast is yours," is also saying, "I am yours." On this view, guilt and punishment are not the point -- dedication is.
BROWN: When Aaron and his sons are consecrated to the priesthood, (Ex 29) they lay their hands on the head of a bull, which is sacrificed as a sin offering. Then the procedure is repeated with a ram. Then they lay their hands on a second ram, which is killed, and its blood daubed and sprinkled on the prospective priests and their garments. And this is done as a sin offering. Clearly the intent is to offer blood to cleanse them from their sins.
GREEN: But another sin offering is made for the altar, and blood is daubed on the altar in like fashion to consecrate it. Since no one supposes that the altar has sinned, I can only conclude that the translation "sin offering" does not quite convey the original intent, and that the point is not to cleanse the priests and the altar from sin, but to set them aside in a special way for the service of the LORD. Sacrificial blood is a symbol, throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, not of death, but of life, of energy, of cleansing. When the pagans kill an animal they eat it blood and all, or even make a point of drinking the blood, so as to acquire the properties of the animal, to join in the life of the animal in a kind of mystic union. But the devout monotheist pours out the blood of the animal on the ground, returning its life to God, and eats the animal "at the LORD's table", as a meal in covenantal union with the LORD.
BROWN: Let it be granted, for the sake of argument, that a study of the Old Testament is not in itself sufficient to make clear the doctrine of Substitutionary Atonement. As Christians, we have the sacred Scriptures of the New Testament to guide us in interpreting the Old Testament, and we know that what is latent in the Old is patent in the New. Let us therefore turn to that book of the New Testament which, far more than all the others, devotes itself to explaining the significance of the Hebrew system of sacrifice. I urge you in this context to read the Epistle to the Hebrews, and in particular chapters 9 and 10.
But when Christ appeared as a high priest... he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkilng of defiled persons with the blood of goats... sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. (9:11-14) Indeed, under the law almost everything is purged with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin. ... Christ has entered... into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf... He has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. (9:22-26) And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.... For by a single offering he has perfected for all tiime those who are sanctified.... (10:11-14) Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.... (10:19-22)
I do not see how it is possible to read these passages and understand anything by them other than this: (1) that sin must be paid for by the shedding of blood; and (2) that the shedding of the blood of bulls and goats in the Old Testament did not suffice to take away sins, but pointed forward to the One Sacrificial Victim whose blood was sufficient to take away sins.
GREEN: But when you say that we are freed from our sins by the blood of Christ, you simply stating what all theories of the Atonement, without exception, affirm. I repeat once again, that you have been accustomed to thinking of Penal Substitution as THE doctrine of the Atonement, so that you slide over without noticing it from "this passage teaches the Atonement" to "this passage teaches Penal Substitution" without noticing that you have done so.
BROWN: The Christian Scriptures speak of Christ as the Passover lamb. The identification is repeated and emphatic. John the Baptist, beholding Jesus shortly before the Passover, says of him: "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!" (John 1:29). The imagery is continued and expanded in the Book of Revelation (especially Rev. 5-7; 14:1-5; 19:6-9; 21:22-22:5). The Apostle Paul says: "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." (I Corinthians 5:7) Christ was crucified at the very hour when the Passover lambs were being sacrificed. The Passover lamb was roasted whole on a spit consisting of two crossed pieces of wood, one along the length of its body and the other attached to its spread forelimbs. How can you deny that this teaches that Jesus Christ was a Sacrifice offered to God as a Perfect Offering for the sins of the World?
GREEN: I can't, and I don't. He died to give us life everlasting. That fact is plainly taught in the Scriptures. But your theory of how this works is not.