Did God the Father punish Jesus on the cross?
Some Christians say, “Yes.” For example, the late Reformed theologian R.C. Sproul, in his 1985 book The Holiness of God, writes, “[Jesus] was the only innocent man ever to be punished by God” (emphasis added).
Sproul isn’t the only one. In their book Pierced for Our Trangressions, Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach write, “The Lord Jesus Christ died for us . . . suffering the wrath of his own Father in our place.”
This view has come to be known as penal substitution. “Penal” captures the active punishment that God the Father inflicts on Christ. “Substitution” captures the idea that Christ takes our place.
Now, as seen from the quotes above, a key to penal substitution is that God the Father is the active agent who inflicts the punishment on Jesus. This is consistent with the nature of punishment.
As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, when we sin, there are three orders that we disturb: the order of reason, the order of human law, and the order of divine law. Consequently, every sinner incurs a threefold punishment: “one inflicted by himself [we would call this penance],” “another inflicted by man,” and “a third inflicted by God” (Summa Theologiae I-II:87:1). It’s the third infliction, the infliction by God, that penal substitution affirms Jesus fell under.
I argue that it’s this active agency of God the Father in the alleged punishment of Jesus that’s problematic.
Consider that the “punishment” Christ supposedly endures is his death, which wasn’t a direct effect of God the Father’s agency—like in the case of God killing the innocent firstborn of the Egyptians—but rather was inflicted by the Roman soldiers. St. Thomas Aquinas makes this point in his Summa Theologiae. He writes,
A thing may cause an effect in two ways: in the first instance by acting directly so as to produce the effect; and in this manner Christ’s persecutors slew him because they inflicted on him what was a sufficient cause of death, and with the intention of slaying him, and the effect followed, since death resulted from that cause (III:47:1).
So Christ’s persecutors were a direct cause of Jesus’ death. The Father was not. Aquinas affirms that the Father “delivered up Christ to the Passion,” but that deliverance was merely a permission of Christ’s executors to execute him. He writes, “God the Father did deliver up Christ to the Passion . . . by not shielding him from the Passion” (ST III:47:3). Just as a side note, Aquinas doesn’t think this is cruel of the Father, because the Father moved Christ’s human will to suffer for us (see ST III:47:3 ad 1).
Now, as Aquinas points out, the act of slaying Jesus was an injustice—i.e., a sin—on the part of the participating Jews and Jesus’ executioners (Summa Theologiae III:47:6 ad 3; Summa Contra Gentiles 4.55). And I think it’s safe to say that most Christians would agree with Aquinas on this point.
With these relevant points in place, we’re now able to begin seeing the problem with the idea that God the Father is the active agent of punishment in Jesus’ death. According to the penal substitution theory, the punishment that the Father inflicts is Jesus’ death. With Aquinas, we can say that Jesus’ death was inflicted by his executioners. It follows, therefore, that the Father was the direct cause of Jesus’ enemies inflicting death upon him.
But the act of slaying Jesus was an injustice—a sin. Therefore, according to penal substitution, the Father was the direct cause of the injustice or sin committed by Jesus’ executioners.
This idea would immediately repulse most Christians, since most intuitively would reject the idea that God can cause someone to sin. And they’d be in good company with Aquinas, who writes, concerning the Jews, at least, “[The Father] did not will the unjust action of the Jews.” He applies the same reasoning to the Roman soldiers.
The Council of Trent also rejected the idea that God can cause someone to sin. In fact, the Council anathematized the idea:
If anyone says that it is not in man’s power to make his ways evil, but that the works that are evil God worketh as well as those that are good, not permissibly only, but properly and of himself, in such wise that the treason of Judas is no less his own proper work than the vocation of Paul; let him be anathema (Decree on Justification, Canon VI).
Since penal substitution logically entails God the Father causing Jesus’ executioners to sin, which most would accept to be absurd, the “penal substitution” theory should be rejected. For someone of this mindset, there would be no need to go farther.
However, for someone like John Calvin, the idea that God directly causes someone to sin is not out of bounds. Calvin is famous for teaching that God doesn’t just permit moral evil, but positively directs sinners to sin. Of “wicked” and “obstinate” men, he writes,
[God] bends them to execute his judgments, just as if they carried their orders engraven on their minds. And hence it appears that they are impelled by the sure appointment of God (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk. 1, Ch. 18, sec. 3).
Notice that for Calvin, sinners sin not merely because God allows them to do so (his permissive will). Rather, he “impels” or “bends” (forces) them to sin.
So for someone who follows Calvin on this, more work must be done to defend our critique of penal substitution. We must explain why it’s not possible for God to directly cause someone to sin.
We could appeal to Scripture. The Psalmist states in Psalm 5:4, “You are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not sojourn with you.” If God the Father were to directly cause someone to sin, even if it were for some further perceived good, his will would be terminating in that sin, and thus “delighting” in it, which is contrary to divine revelation.
There’s also a philosophical reason why God can’t cause someone to sin. Consider that if God were to move us to sin, he would be turning us away from him, away from our ultimate end or goal—“for,” as Aquinas states, “man sins through wandering away from [God] who is his last end” (Summa Contra Gentiles 3.162). In other words, God would be directly moving us not to love him, and if so, he would fail to will the divine goodness more than any other good, which is impossible for the infinite and perfect God. Aquinas confirms this in his Summa Theologiae:
Now God wills no good more than he wills his own goodness; yet he wills one good more than another. Hence he in no way wills the evil of sin, which is the privation of right order towards the divine good (I:19:9).
As to why it’s impossible, consider that this failure on the part of God would be due either to a lack of knowledge that he is the supreme good or a failure in due attraction to himself as the supreme good.
But God can’t possibly fail in knowledge that he’s the supreme good because he’s omniscient. Nor can he fail to be attracted to himself as the highest good, for that would entail a desire for some good outside the order of reason, which is impossible, because he’s perfectly good.
In fact, God can’t fail in any sense. Failure necessarily entails unactualized potential. But God is traditionally understood to be pure actuality, or pure existence itself, the very notion of which excludes the idea of unactualized potential. Therefore, God can’t fail, lest he cease being God.
Since God moving us to sin entails a failure on God’s part, and on the classical view God can’t fail, it follows that on the classical view God can’t move us to sin.
Now, someone may just reject the classical notion of God to keep the idea that God moves us to sin. But then there’s not much value in a deity who’s finite and subject to defect. Such a move would undermine the same sovereignty of God that one tries to uphold with penal substitution.
So in the end, an advocate of penal substitution comes to a fork in the road: either give up penal substitution as an adequate explanation of the nature of Christ’s death on the cross or give up God’s absolute perfection. I’m going with the former option!