Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By Martin Weber
BACKGROUND
the sacrifice of Jesus was “not only sufficient but a superabundant satisfaction for the sins of the
human race.”2
The concept of superabundant merits has roots in the patristic era with Tertullian. Church
historian Gustaf Aulen documents his third century exhortation on satisfaction and merit, which
climaxes: “How absurd it is ... to leave the penance unperformed, and yet expect forgiveness of
sins! What is it but to fail to pay the price?”3
“Paying the price” to expiate sin has been fundamental to the Satisfaction model for the
past millennium. And when the Protestant Reformers confronted Roman Catholic concepts of
meritorious human works such as penance and purgatory, they left intact the basic Latin concept
of merits.4 The revolutionary distinction from Rome’s soteriology was where sinners get their
merits–whether within their own spiritual attainments by means of God’s created or imparted
grace within, or in the external, “alien” righteousness of Christ’s complete and meritorious
atonement.5 But the basic Latin concept of merits remained, as evidenced in the typical language
commonly heard from evangelical pulpits today: “Christ paid the price of our salvation,” and
“we trust in His merits not our own.”
The Subjective model
The Subjective model in its various forms has had various labels, most notably the
“Moral Influence Theory.”6 Its central issues are that the gospel must be rational, truth can bear
investigation, and God can be trusted. God calls us to be friends more than servants, expressing
love in action. This model regards God’s law in terms of communal relations and focuses on His
love and grace rather than rules of conduct. Sin involves distorted views of God rather than a
judicial violation of His law that incurs divine penalties.
In what sense is Jesus our savior? It was not to pay the price of sin but to heal the rift sin
caused between Creator and the created. Specifically, Christ saves us by revealing the love of the
heavenly Father, influencing us to return to the same loving and life-giving relationship with
God that Adam squandered. Also, Jesus came to show us a better way to relate to each other,
loving one another as He has loved us instead of participating in sin’s alienation and dysfunction.
To that end, the cross was the ultimate demonstration of the love that heals us from the sin
problem, both with God and one another.
The Subjective model has millennium-deep roots in the French scholar Peter Abelard,
2
McGraff, Reader, 185-186.
3
Gustaf Aulen, Christus Victor (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 81.
4
Aulen makes a strong case that Martin Luther himself emphasized the Christus Victor “classic” ransom
view of Irenaeus and other patristic theologians rather than (or at least more than) the Latin merit system
of fellow Reformers and their successors, who constructed Protestant Orthodoxy.
5
Stanley Grenz notes another Protestant modification to the Satisfaction theory: whereas Anselm focused
on Christ’s sacrifice restoring God’s honor, John Calvin viewed the cross in law court imagery as penal
substitution for expiating divine wrath. Stanley J. Grenz, Created for Community (Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker, 1998), 141.
6
A label regarded as pejorative by many adherents of the Subjective view and thus not used in this study.
3
who reacted against the legal views of his medieval contemporary Anslem. Abelard’s non-legal
concept of salvation journeyed into classic liberalism as a result of the Enlightenment, led by
theologians such as Friedrich Schleiermacher. Twentieth century proponents include scholars
such as C. H. Dodd, for whom “the idea of an angry (wrathful) God is a concept which breaks
down as the rational element in religion advances.”7 Abelard himself argues against the legal
model (diminishing but not abandoning the notion of merits). He regards all expiatory language
in Scripture as metaphorical:
Our redemption through the suffering of Christ is that deeper love within us
which not only frees us from slavery to sin, but also secures for us the true liberty
of the children of God, in order that we might do all things out of love rather than
out of fear—love for him who has shown us such grace that no greater can be
found.8
With that background, we are equipped to assess the respective strengths of the two
theories: Abelard magnified the life-changing power of God’s love—a remarkable emphasis,
considering that his ecclesiological and societal culture produced the Crusades. Anselm called
the medieval church to remember that solving the sin problem involves more than interaction
with mystical sacraments, rites, and relics; faith must find its foundation in Christ’s atoning
sacrifice, which alone can bring honor to God.
Despite their strengths, both theories suffer serious weaknesses. Anselm’s theory shows
evidence of medieval superstition in its soteriology of honor-motivated wrath.9 Abelard avoids
this but comes short of explaining Christ’s death on the cross. As Douglas John Hall asserts:
“The [Anselmian] theory is impossibly interwoven with medieval feudal and even superstitious
practices”10 Meanwhile, “as the sentimentalization of Abelardian atonement theology in the
hands of the liberals demonstrates all too plainly, it is not an adequate expression of the
7
C. H. Dodd, The Epistle to the Romans (London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1959), 60. In George Knight,
My Gripe with God (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 1990), 41.
8
Peter Abelard, Expositio in Epistolam ad Romanos, 2; in J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, 178.832C-D;
836A-B, in McGrath, 184.
9
There is a place for wrath motivated by love. God is “a jealous God” (Exo. 34:14), like a protective
husband who comes home to find his wife being assaulted. Will he not rise up in rage to deliver his
beloved? So will God react against sin because of its dysfunction, disease and death.
One day Jesus met a handicapped man planted as a trap by Christ’s enemies to induce Him to
heal on the Sabbath. Christ “looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their
hearts” (Mark 3:5). Anger here is orge: wrath that is real, active and powerful, but much different from
ours. Outraged as Jesus was, His divine wrath was mixed with grief. This organic wrath of a loving God
is completely different from the Satisfaction model’s quantified wrath that seeks divine honor.
As the representative of fallen humanity, Jesus on the cross came under unmitigated divine wrath
so that “having now been justified [placed in a righteous relationship with God] by His blood, we shall be
saved from wrath through Him” (Rom. 5:9).
.
10
Douglas John Hall, Professing the Faith (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993), 501.
4
significance of the cross. Beyond that, it lacks the concreteness of participation in the human
condition, which belongs to the concept of representation.”11
In summary so far: the Satisfaction model asserts that Christ’s death paid a price which
appeases wrath and restores God’s honor, while the Subjective model regards Jesus primarily as
a demonstration of God’s love to influence human behavior.
11
Hall, 468.
12
The Representational model coordinates with a version of Seventh-day Adventism known as Messianic
Adventism. According to its founder, John W. Webster: “Salvation is the gift of Gods’ love, whereby
God remains faithful to God’s own original gracious purpose, restoring the broken covenant with
humanity (and the earth) by making their lost cause his own in Jesus Christ, who as reconciling God and
reconciled Man in one, is both the once-for-all accomplishment of at-one-ment, and (by means of the
Holy Spirit) is the witness and guarantor of its final fulfillment in the consummation when ‘God with us’
is as truly ‘Us with God.’” (J. W. Webster, Salvation/Incarnation—The Second Mode of the Adventus Dei
(Unpublished class handout, August 2000), 1.
13
George Knight, A Pharisee's Guide to Perfect Holiness (Boise, ID: Pacific Press, 1992), 101.
5
reclaiming us from alienation caused by sin and recreating us through a renewed connection with
the Life giver. The Representational model welcomes all these remedial elements of the gospel
but grounds itself in God’s eternal purpose for creation rather than in the sin problem.
To summarize this preparatory background: The Subjective model objects that a loving
God requires payment to forgive sin. Furthermore, to whom would Jesus pay that price–to the
Father? To the devil? Or to nobody at all, but for the sake of principle, specifically legal justice?
But how could God be bound by His own law and still be sovereign God?14
Such questions confront the Satisfaction model. Answers have been slow in coming over
the last millennium. Satisfactionists have been better at raising their own questions: If Christ’s
death is not a satisfaction for sin, why did He need to die? If only as an example, then in what
sense is He our savior? Is it only through teaching us and revealing His loving Father? But He
already accomplished that before He died. Nevertheless, suppose we do need Christ’s death for
the supreme revelation of God—then what about those who lived in Old Testament times? Why
didn’t God send Jesus instead of Noah? If somehow the antedeluvians could have been saved
without the death of Jesus, why do we suddenly need Christ’s revelation?
I do not presume in this brief paper to resolve all these questions that have endured for
the last millennium. This study is limited to a critique of the three models in their ability to fulfill
what I consider to be the basic challenge of the gospel: in negative terms, the alienation from
God and from one another that is the essence of sin and the cause of death on every level–
physical, emotional, relational and spiritual death–ultimately eternal loss. In positive terms, the
challenge of the gospel is the reconciliation with God and one another, thus restoring the original
purpose of our creation.
To evaluate the models, both in their positive and negative outcomes, I propose the
following testing elements:
1) Christology–our representational Savior,
2) Soteriology–the representational gospel,
3) Ecclesiology–the representational church.
Specifically, we want to see what our three models can contribute in these three areas.
BODY
14
I believe that adequate and even persuasive answers exist for these questions, but they are not within the
scope of this study.
15
James I Packer, an untitled lecture at Tyndall House. In McGrath, Reader, 205.
6
16
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics: the Doctrine of Reconciliation, Vol. iv, Part 1 (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1956), 254.
17
Jack Sequeira, Beyond Belief (Boise, ID: Pacific Press, 1993), 34.
18
Irenaeus, adversus haereses, V.i.1, in Sources Chretiennes, vol. 153, ed. A. Rousseau, L. Doutreleau,
and C. Mercier (Paris: Cerf, 1979), 18.19-20.20. In McGrath, 176. Unfortunately, Iranaeus in the second
century was not sufficiently clear about how Christ ransomed humanity from the devil; from this
ambiguity Origen and other patricians taught that God overcame Satan with deception, hiding deity
within humanity. Thus ransom soteriology became unnecessarily problematic. (See Grenz, Community,
138.) The Representational model suggested here incorporates the Christus Victor concept without the
fanciful and dubious notions that undermined it during the millennium preceding Anslem and Abelard.
7
based upon the representational performance of Jesus Christ.19 The book of Galatians recounts
how God the Father established a covenant with Abraham that was conditional upon the
performance of his seed and our representative, Jesus Christ (see Gal. 3:16).
In this soteriological scenario, the testator or benefactor is God the Father, and His sole
heir is Abraham. Jesus came to earth as the seed of Abraham to fulfill the obligations of the
salvation covenant. Humanity at large as a family was included into this covenant through God's
acceptance of us in Christ. Through the faithful performance of our representative, Jesus Christ,
we become in Him the seed of Abraham and thus are adopted as children of God in the body of
Christ. The covenant established with Abraham was ratified at Calvary, but for us today to
benefit from it we must identify ourselves with it through faith in "the blessing of Abraham"
(Gal. 3:7-9). By accepting our position in Christ, the seed of Abraham, we are included in the
covenant blessings made possible by His life and death. We have nothing of our own to
contribute. If we tried to qualify ourselves by our own fulfillment of the law, we would
disqualify ourselves from the covenant and bring a curse upon our souls (see Gal. 3:10-13). And
so we trust in Christ's perfect performance, not our own, in fulfilling the salvation covenant. As
our victorious covenant-keeping representative, He died our death and now lives our life. We
don’t copy His example, we allow Him through His Spirit to live out His life within us. Our
achievement of personal righteousness is never an issue. Jesus, the “captain of [our] salvation,”
(Heb. 2:10), has defeated the devil, thus securing eternal life for all who are willing to take their
place on His team.
In summary, the Subjective model regards the covenant as a Representational metaphor
with no significance in Christ’s accomplishments, and the Satisfaction model regards Christ’s
performance as the seed of Abraham primarily as a legal, substitutionary function. The
Representational model regards both the familial and the formal aspects of the covenant as a
significant teaching tool of how God accepts us “in Christ,” our victorious representative in the
salvation covenant. Faith accepts God’s gift of a covenant-keeping new Adam in exchange for
the counterfeits of the first Adam, thus activating the atonement and participating in every
blessing of the covenant–with all the attendant privileges and responsibilities.
These responsibilities in the gospel have profound corporate implications regarding the
church, to which we now turn our attention.
19
For the fidei commissum concept as an illustration of the salvation covenant, I am entirely indebted to
Greer M. Taylor, "The Function of Pistis Christos in Galatians," Journal of Biblical Literature, vol.
LXXXV, part I, 58ff.
9
appearance, pedigree, reputation, ability or accomplishment. Being also unceasing and proactive,
koinonia reaches beyond the circle of the saved, inviting individual unbelievers everywhere to
accept Jesus as their representative and share the communal banquet of salvation.
Such is the ecclesiological task of the church. Let us see how our three soteriological
models fulfill this responsibility.
The Satisfaction model offers little in terms of fostering koinonia. With its emphasis on
individual guilt before God, the Christian life to some extent reflects a golf tournament, with
participants in apparent relationship as they progress around the course, but there is no real
community. Each one keeps careful record of his or her own “righteousness.” The focus is on
individual spiritual attainments in denial of communal righteousness in Christ.20 This diminishes
if not destroys koinonia and breeds both spiritual pride and discouragement, depending upon
whether one compares his or her “righteousness” to someone lower or higher on the Satisfaction
model’s totem pole of personal sanctification. There may be the call to live unselfishly, but the
model comes short of actually nurturing a sense of responsibility to the community. Hall notes
this tendency of some to avoid Christian responsibility:
The Subjective model also comes up short in its ecclesiological task of building
community. It focuses on one’s relationship with God but offers no specific doctrinal construct
for koinonia. Yes, there are admonitions to reflect the graciousness of God to one another,
perhaps more in terms of random acts of kindness than in the spirit of a purposeful communal
fellowship within the salvation covenant. The Subjective model sets one free from personal guilt
to become a friend of God. On a personal level this is wonderful, but in the larger view, so
what? How does the concept of individualized friendship with God translate into communal
praxis? Beyond ad hoc niceness among one’s acquaintances, for the most part there is no
specific, strategic need for koinonia.
One notable exception to this individualism is a “radical” movement within the
Subjective model that reflects many goals of Latin American liberation theology.22 It summons
the guilt-relieved friends of God out of their personal comfort zone onto the highways and
byways of their communities to effect social change, serving the needs of the poor and working
to overcome institutionalized oppression. The strength of the Subjective model’s radical wing
20
Another analogy is that of a laundromat, where customers might mingle and chat, but their goal is to
achieve spotlessness in their own laundry before closing time. Any koinonia that happens is unrelated to
the basic task of accomplishing the individual pursuit of cleanliness.
21
Hall, 525.
22
See Charles Scriven, “God’s Justice Yes; Penal Substitution, No,” Spectrum, October 1993, 35ff.
10
highlights a weakness of its mainstream, which for the most part offers no comparative clarion
call to social commitment and community.
In contrast to its soteriological counterparts, the Representational model at its core
involves communal responsibility and koinonia. Notes Douglas John Hall: “The inner logic of
representation can provide precisely what is required by way of a nonreligious linguistic vehicle
for the necessary theological interface of Christology with ecclesiology .. without an artificial
shift of metaphor.”23 This model reflects the biblical mandate of the priesthood of all believers
(1 Pet. 2:9) as a reflection of Jesus, our representative High Priest. The church, being the body
of Christ, must therefore adopt His priestly vocation. “What is meant is that the disciple
community is a representational community: it stands before God in behalf of the world, …
being brought to live the representative life of Jesus Christ in the world.”24
Although it is true that as individuals we must by faith activate our justification in Christ
for it to be effective personally, there are immediate and profound communal imperatives. We
are saved not as individualistic free-lancers, but we automatically join the community of the
corporate body of Christ. There is no option otherwise. Our life-long vacation from legalism
involves a vocation of service both within the church and the secular community. “The moment
of this grace is also the moment of our initiation into the discipleship it assumes. To be given the
gift of representation—to be there ‘with’ and ‘for’ others—and not to use this gift is the essence
of disobedience. The work of the community that is liberated from self-preoccupation is to be
occupied with the representation of others.”25
We see, then, that the Representational model closes the door against “cheap grace” and
opens the door to koinonia as the other models cannot. Thus it alone meets the theological task of
the church.
CONCLUSION
As noted, this brief study of the representational aspects and implications of the three
soteriological models leaves many questions for further research, particularly regarding the legal
issues of justification, sanctification, law, and wrath.26 I trust the point is made that eternal life
involves more than a heart that never stops pumping blood. It is “life more abundantly” (John
10:10), as Jesus promised His disciples. It is the “recapitulation” envisioned by Irenaeus, the
goal of the gospel in restoring imago Dei of our original creation (Gen. 1:27). It is also the
restoration of that koinonia granted Adam and Eve, a reflection of the unity and community of
the very triune Godhead. This life also envisions a fruitful and purposeful existence in harmony
with God’s commission to “be fruitful and multiply” while tending and keeping the paradise
originally provided and soon to be restored (Gen 2:15; 1:28).
23
Hall, 522-523.
24
Hall, 522-523.
25
Hall, 525-526.
26
Since God is love, it is certain that divine wrath—whatever it encompasses—must involve a loving
reaction against sin for its inevitable outcome of alienation, dysfunction, and death. See Richard Rice,
Reign of God (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1997), 197.
11
Eternal life encompasses all of this and everything else that is ours as joint heirs together
in Christ, secure in His covenant of grace. Sealed in the Spirit, we have eternal life proleptically.
We joyfully and expectantly await “the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished
death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:10).
12
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics: the Doctrine of Reconciliation, CD IV/1. Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1956.
Grenz, Stanley J. Created for Community. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998.
Hall, Douglas John. Professing the Faith. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1993.
Knight, George. My Gripe with God. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 1990.
McGrath, Alister. The Christian Theology Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1995.
Packer, James I. “What did the Cross Achieve? The Logic of Penal Substitution.” Tyndale
Bulletin, 25 (1974).
Rice, Richard. Reign of God. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1997.
Robinson, H. Wheeler. Redemption and Revelation in the Actuality of History. London: Nisbet,
1942.
Scriven, Charles. “God’s Justice Yes; Penal Substitution, No.” Spectrum, October 1993.
Taylor, Greer M. "The Function of Pistis Christos in Galatians." Journal of Biblical Literature,
Vol. LXXXV.