“Penal Substitution Revisited”

What is noticeable, however, is how Packer uses massive terms that don’t seem to allow for any supplementation of the penal sufferings of Christ for our justification.

An evangelical theologian, dying, cabled a colleague: ‘I am so thankful for the active obedience (righteousness) of Christ. No hope without it.’ As I grow old, I want to tell everyone who will listen: ‘I am so thankful for the penal substitutionary death of Christ. No hope without it.’ That is where I come from now as I attempt this brief vindication of the best part of the best news that the world has ever heard.

Is he not inviting a comparison here?

Both Testaments, then, confirm that judicial retribution from God awaits those whose sins are not covered by a substitutionary sacrifice: in the Old Testament, the sacrifice of an animal; in the New Testament, the sacrifice of Christ. He, the holy Son of God in sinless human flesh, has endured what Calvin called ‘the pains of a condemned and lost person’ so that we, trusting him as our Saviour and Lord, might receive pardon for the past and a new life in him and with him for the present and future.

And this:

Christ’s death for me is my sole ground of hope before God. ‘If he fulfilled not justice, I must; if he underwent not wrath, I must to eternity’ (John Owen).

The sole ground?  What about the 33 years of lawkeeping which is accounted as ours?

And this is the point I’ve made before.  The active obedience of Christ is being presented in a way that undermines the passive obedience.  If Packer had qualified or toned down his defense of penal substitution, that would have been tragic.  Yet if he had tried to make sure we all understood the great need of the imputation of the active obedience of Christ, that is exactly what he would have been forced to do: tone down the importance of penal substitution.

I should mention that I am not completely satisfied with Packer’s conclusion.

In recent years, great strides in biblical theology and contemporary canonical exegesis have brought new precision to our grasp of the Bible’s overall story of how God’s plan to bless Israel, and through Israel the world, came to its climax in and through Christ. But I do not see how it can be denied that each New Testament book, whatever other job it may be doing, has in view, one way or another, Luther’s primary question: ‘How may a weak, perverse and guilty sinner find a gracious God?’; nor can it be denied that real Christianity only really starts when that discovery is made. And to the extent that modern developments, by filling our horizon with the great meta-narrative, distract us from pursuing Luther’s question in personal terms, they hinder as well as help in our appreciation of the gospel.

First, let me say that Packer seems to want to make sure that he leaves room for a comprehensive understanding of Scripture.  He affirms that the “great strides” will “help in our appreciaiton of the Gospel,” and he only addresses how Christianity “really starts” rather than where it should go.

That being said, I still don’t find his statement all that plausible.  It would be one thing to say that no new strides should be abused to prevent people from repenting and believing in Jesus.  But to say that each NT book has Luther’s question in view is silly.  Why only the NT books?  Why shouldn’t every book address this question?  Is this paragraph not itself evidence that even a great teacher like Packer unthinkingly assumes Marcionite categories?

And what about each chapter?  Each verse?  Each word?  This sort of exhortation does not put a person who hears it in a responsible position to understand the Bible as a whole.

I would suggest that perverse and guilty sinners are in no position to tell God what sort of book he needs to write.  Packer would agree but I think his agreement should lead him to be more careful in how he demands we all read the Bible.  If God gave us a great meta-narrative, then lets receive it with thanks and not cast suspicions upon it.  Any truth can be abused, so I am not going to disagree with the possibility that Packer’s warning might apply to somewhere to someone.  But as a global coment addressing the times we live in, it is exactly wrong.  If any truth is being widely abused right now, it is the doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone that has become a de jure and de facto “license to kill” in Reformed circles, justifying all manner of fratricide and false accusation.  Great medicine for the wrong disease can be fatal.

And, by the way, Luther’s question was a distinctly medieval Roman Catholic question. Luther’s answer was better than “Mary” or “relics,” but what it answered was firmly grounded in the world of monasteries, and pilgrimages, and payments to get the souls of relatives out of purgatory.   The idea that we must make such a question arising in such circumstances into some sort of architectonic principle is not self-evident.

Luther’s answer razed to the ground a host of tyrannizing powers who kept God’s people under lock and key.  Let’s honor Luther by gladly giving them freedom to learn God’s Word and glorify him rather than using the answer, however unintentionally, to erect more such powers that keep us from God’s word.

I may be being too critical of J. I. Packer.  I certainly cannot think of a book off-hand that does not lend itself to presenting Jesus as the all-sufficient Savior and Lord to sinners.  But I can’t help thinking that this sort of “directed conclusion” lends itself to more polarization rather than helping the Church through her present agonies.