@PeterTurner Yes. Atonement means bringing God and humans into harmony with one another. Penal substitution is one particular theory of how that takes place.

@GratefulDisciple I am not an expert on Catholic atonement theory. My general understanding is that Anselm's idea was that God's honor was injured, and Christ satisfied God's requirement to be honored. And that Thomistic theory is that it is God's justice was violated, and Christ satisfied God's justice. Meanwhile, Protestant penal substitution theory holds that God's wrath needed to be satisfied by suitable punishment being meted out to pay the penalty for human sin.

At any rate, the core idea of all three variants of satisfaction theory is that God sustained injury due to human sin, and that injury had to be put right by Christ's righteous life and his undeserved death on the Cross.

@GratefulDisciple @PeterTurner Aside from the aspersions it casts upon God's character, my main problem with satisfaction theory is that it violates this statement of Paul:

> in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. (2 Corinthians 5:19)

Under satisfaction theory, God must be reconciled to us through having his honor/justice/wrath satisfied. Without that, God turns his back on us and consigns us to hell. But Paul is clear that in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not reconciling himself to the world. Satisfaction theory has it exactly backwards. We must be reconciled to God, not God to us and our sin.

God does not turn his back on us. We turn our back on God.

We are the ones who must repent, turn, and be healed. God does not need any healing. God has not sustained any injuries to his honor, justice, or love that would require healing. We are the ones who have sustained injury that needs to be healed, not God.

So atonement must involve turning us toward God, not turning God toward us.

@PeterTurner So if atonement means bringing God and humans into harmony with one another, as I said just above, then what it really means is bringing humans into harmony with God, not bringing God into harmony with humans. God is already perfect, infinite love, wisdom, and power. God does not change, so that God would have to be reconciled to us. We are the ones who change, and who have turned our backs on God. We are the ones who must be changed and thereby reconciled to God.

We are the ones who, like sheep, have gone astray.

So whatever atonement is, it must involve, not a change in God's attitude toward us, as satisfaction theory holds, but a change in our attitude toward God.

Rather than going into what atonement and redemption actually are here, which would involve another long monologue, I'll refer you to one of my articles that takes it up in brief form, and puts it in context of the nature of God and the Incarnation:

Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? What about that Holy Spirit?

On our part, what is required for Christians to receive the benefits of the atonement and redemption Christ accomplished for us is that we believe in Jesus as divine ("the Son of God"), repent from our sins, and live a good life according to God's commandments--especially according to Jesus' teachings in the Gospels. If we do not do this, then we have been redeemed, but not saved, because we have not accepted God's salvation.

I should add that we should also recognize that our ability to do these things comes from God, not from ourselves, in accordance with Jesus' teaching that he is the vine, we are the branches, and without him we can do nothing.

@LeeWoofenden Definitely not an injury. God cannot be harmed, or changed in other ways, by humans.

@curiousdannii yeah, I'm not sure why all that stuff can't be said without assuming that God was injured (in the human sense) in the process. The Old Testament applies all sorts of human emotions to God that would superficially be seen as a reaction to an injury. Our attempts at injuring God through sin are just as feeble as our attempts at building a tower to overtake Him at Babel, but both needed to be dealt with.

@LeeWoofenden curiously enough, if you accepted the Biblical doctrine of purgatory, you could write this article in a dramatically different manner and achieve the same result.

Religion, according to Aquinas, is a subvirtue of justice. Paying God what is due Him. (worship, praise, adoration, and good works - which St. James says is "true religion").

> Objection 3. Further, God's justice required that Christ should satisfy by the Passion in order that man might be delivered from sin. But Christ cannot let His justice pass; for it is written (2 Timothy 2:13): "If we believe not, He continueth faithful, He cannot deny Himself." But He would deny Himself were He to deny His justice, since He is justice itself. It seems impossible, then, for man to be delivered otherwise than by Christ's Passion.

> Reply to Objection 3. Even this justice depends on the Divine will, requiring satisfaction for sin from the human race. But if He had willed to free man from sin without any satisfaction, He would not have acted against justice. For a judge, while preserving justice, cannot pardon fault without penalty, if he must visit fault committed against another—for instance, against another man, or against the State, or any Prince in higher authority.

> But God has no one higher than Himself, for He is the sovereign and common good of the whole universe. Consequently, if He forgive sin, which has the formality of fault in that it is committed against Himself, He wrongs no one: just as anyone else, overlooking a personal trespass, without satisfaction, acts mercifully and not unjustly. And so David exclaimed when he sought mercy: "To Thee only have I sinned" (Psalm 50:6), as if to say: "Thou canst pardon me without injustice."

@LeeWoofenden from what I've read recently, the big disconnect between this idea you have and the Catholic notion is that we belong to Christ, being one body, being adopted sons and daughters, being partakers in divine nature, doing penance to make up what is lacking in Christ's sacrifice (seriously - what is lacking).

So, this is what I think it means: instead of placing distance between ourselves and God - sanctifying grace (the gift freely given by our Baptism) allows us consider Christ's sacrifice as our own, albeit undeserved, sacrifice.

@DavidStratton Hey David, nice to see you around - sorry I didn't respond earlier. Yeah, the site it going into its second infancy, we're asking all the same questions, but without the same debates over vision and mission.

Here are my 7 rules for asking question at a Q&A: qohelethsgym.blogspot.com/2023/12/…

@LukeHill Thank you for sharing; awesome summary. Thankfully, the Q&A at the Thomistic Institute lectures I have listened to (some have undergrad audience) are 90% good questions that helped me understand the topic better. PLUS the speakers were able to turn the Qs into even better questions and pertinent to the topic. A good speaker should also be bold in rejecting a question with a short, polite response.

@LeeWoofenden I'm sure Protestants & Catholics agree with you here, also here, here, here, and here.

But despite some misuse in the field (which I acknowledge) I don't think you characterize the correct-use or even the theories themselves either. If I were to prove my point, I should quote from some academic books so it's not me vs. you, but them vs. you. I'm just too preoccupied with other topics right now.

Starting from your statements I quoted above, and from our side (not God's side) I like how @PeterTurner puts it in this comment block above. We start with our responsibility to do justly toward God, "just" here meaning our asymmetric position as creatures: worship & honor God as creator and law-giver.

Not because a tyrant demands it, but because it is good for us, just like it's good for children to honor and obey their parents. The Psalms (esp. Ps 119) are replete with the wisdom that to walk in the right path will lead to happiness; thus obeying God's laws will help us flourish in life.

But then, our sinful nature curved our proper deference to God towards ourselves leading us to frustration. And we are too embarrassed and ashamed and proudful to accept the helping hand that God extends from beyond our universe through the physical hand of Jesus.

THIS is the proper context for satisfaction through Christ's suffering: that the deficiencies that we incur that makes us afraid and shameful toward God is rectified through Christ. If we feel we are lacking in honoring God, then after we repent we can lift our face because Christ makes up what's lacking. If we feel guilty after sinning against God, then after we repent we don't have to punish ourselves because Christ makes up for it.

Thus, proper interpretation does not mean God punishing Jesus, but that WHEN we feel lacking in those areas God does NOT let that to be a barrier. The gift is there for the taking. That is why it is extremely important that Jesus IS the incarnation of God. God himself (in the flesh) extends his hand along with the gift of Jesus's passion so as long as we are united with Jesus those deficiencies are no longer a barrier.

My own personal position tracks closely with Dr. Eleonore Stump's book mentioned above and this 10 minute video gives a very very brief introduction on why she doesn't like the Anselmian family of theories, which she asserted in the very beginning that are not an article of faith.

@Laurel I just did.

Interesting site and seems to attract programmers (such as this question) like many of our visitors here as well.