The PSA Story

At the heart of evangelical Christianity is a story. The story goes like this. Humans collectively (in Adam) and individually (on our own dime) have fallen–sinned. The sins of the human race offend God or, more precisely, offend God’s justice. And if God is to be God, then God must punish these sins. Punishment means pain—eternal pain, in this case. But God also loves human beings, and so God provides a way to escape this punishment. The way is for someone else to suffer and die in our stead. That someone is Jesus, the Son of God. If, that is, we believe the story.

The name for this story in theology is penal substitutionary atonement (PSA). It’s mostly unbiblical and wrong, and if you press the details of the story, it makes little sense. Nevertheless, it remains at the center of the faith as it is preached in our churches. And it has consequences. The faith that results from PSA is about justification. Not whether I am a good human being—what the Bible calls “righteousness”—but whether I am justified or not before God. If I’m justified, I’m given a pass to eternal bliss in the next life; if I’m not, I’m held eternally responsible for my sins, and in a way for the sins of the whole human race. Given this way of construing the faith, it should not surprise us that the PSA faith tends to be more about believing certain things than about living in certain ways. And that some very bad actors claim to be good Christians.

PSA and Old Testament Sacrifice

This series of posts, under the working title, “Harsh Justice”—I’ll come to the harsh part of the justice later in the series—is aimed at presenting another way of looking at the Christian faith, one that I believe better represents what the Bible teaches. In the post just previous to this one, I presented some contemporary scholarship on the Old Testament sacrificial system, especially the argument found in Andrew Rillera’s Lamb of the Free (2024). 

Advocates for PSA claim that their view is supported by analogy to Old Testament sacrifice. They base this on the idea that in the Old Testament sacrificial animals were slain as substitutes for the persons who offer them. But this turns out not to be the case. Rillera argues, partially on the basis of earlier work by Jacob Milgrom, that Old Testament sacrifice is never substitutionary. There are many kinds of sacrifice, for various purposes, but sacrifices substituting the death of the animal for the life of person bringing the sacrifice are not among them. Rillera works this out in detail in his book. I’ll not return to that discussion in this post. You can access it here.

The Expansive New Testament Theology of the Cross

We have not yet finished with the Old Testament—we have, for example, Isaiah 53 to consider—but in that case and others it is best for our purposes to approach the Old Testament through the New. As with the Old Testament sacrificial system, New Testament reflection on the meaning of the cross of Jesus Christ is varied and complex. Metaphors and analogies, often taken from the Old Testament, are snatched, as it were, on the fly by the biblical writers. Or better, snatched from the preaching of the first church. They are not systematic. There is no New Testament “theory of the atonement.” Theories of the atonement belong to a later age, when the church was trying to settle on ways to understand the cross.

One of the most egregious mistakes of those who claim the PSA story is not just a theological analogy but what really happened is that it is inherently reductionistic. Conservative Christians often criticize atheistic naturalism as reductionistic, what Arthur Peacocke once fetchingly called “nothing buttery,” the view that the universe is “nothing but,” say, physics. But there is also theological reductionism, a theological “nothing buttery.” PSA advocates may allow for New Testament metaphor as enrichment of our understanding of the work of Christ on the cross, but they insist that what really happened is the story told by PSA. Everything else is just illustration. But this is not how the New Testament reads. It’s not reductionistic. It’s expansive in its attempts to capture the divine reality in the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

For us to approach the expansive and varied vision of the New Testament will require more than a single post. Rillera in Lamb of the Free, divides the New Testament material into three parts. He first takes up the gospels and particularly, since he is working on the way the metaphor of sacrifice is used in the New Testament, the Lord’s Supper. Rillera then moves to Hebrews and 1 John. It’s only in those two New Testament books that the authors risk the analogy of the cross of Jesus to the Old Testament purgation (kipper) sacrifices. In a third chapter on the New Testament use of Old Testament sacrificial imagery, he address Isaiah 53 and the letters of Paul. 

I’m thinking to do something of the same, although I’ll approach the material somewhat differently and, of course, much more briefly than Rillera. I’ll begin in the remainder of this post with a story that is seldom told in this context but seems to me to be at the heart of the gospel. In the following post, I hope to address the argument of Paul, especially in the book of Romans. In a third post, I’ll turn to the fascinating material in those two widely disparate but equally challenging pamphlets, 1 John and Hebrews.

The Rich Man’s Question

Often overlooked in the gospel accounts of the meaning of the cross is the story of a rich man who approaches Jesus on the road with a question: “What must I do that I might inherit eternal life?” We don’t pick up on the story because, beginning already with Mark, the gospel writers (or editors) have inserted some sayings of Jesus about how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God right after the story. The focus for interpreters tends to fall on the perils of riches rather than on the question the man asks Jesus. But the question is key.

The idea that the righteous may inherit eternal life goes back to the time of the Maccabean War (roughly 167-64 BCE). The one clear resurrection passage in the Old Testament comes in the Maccabean era book of Daniel. It says that “Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will be awakened, some to eternal life [Hebrew ḥayyê ʿôlām; Greek zōēn aiōnioin] and others to loathing, to eternal shame” (Daniel 12:2; see also 12:13). 

Lying behind this passage from Daniel are the stories of the Maccabean martyrs. These gruesome stories are found in 2 Maccabees 6-7 (2^nd-1^st century BCE). The stories should not be read as history, but as theological reflections on the meaning of martyrdom. At least partially in response to martyrs like these, the idea arose that God would not allow these heroic figures to perish for all time. They would surely be raised up, as Daniel 12:2 has it, to “eternal life.”

A later account of the martyr stories, 4 Maccabees (1^st-2^nd century CE), deepens the theology. A crucial passage notes that the martyrs stiffened Jewish resistance to impositions of the tyrant, Antiochus IV:

These, then, who have been consecrated for the sake of God, are honored, not only with this honor, but also by the fact that because of them our enemies did not rule over our nation, the tyrant was punished, and the homeland purified—they having become, as it were, a ransom for the sin of our nation. And through the blood of those devout ones and their death as an atoning sacrifice [ʿilastērion], divine Providence preserved Israel that previously had been mistreated (4 Maccabees 17:20-22, NRSV; I’ll return to the vocabulary of this passage in a later post).

More can and probably should be said about the theology of this fragment from 4 Maccabees, but that will only distract us from the point. The point is that there was in Jewish circles in the time of Jesus and later the idea that the heroic martyrs of the Maccabean wars had by their heroism earned a life beyond this life. It’s about this, then, that the rich man asked Jesus, “What must I do that I might inherit eternal life?” What heroic thing does God require of me?

Jesus’s answer clearly disappoints the rich man. Jesus says, “Keep the commandments,” and he names several of the Ten Commandments. The man responds that he has never broken any of these commandments. But he knows there must be more. Mark tells us that “then Jesus saw him [as if for the first time] and loved him and said to him, ‘One thing you still lack. Go, sell whatever you have by way of possessions and give them to the poor, and come, follow me’” (Mark 10:21). 

We are told that the man went away sad because he had a lot of stuff. At that point, our focus tends to fall on the “lot of stuff,” and we consider whether we too are distracted by our riches from what really matters. All good, but in the process we miss Mark’s hint here, partly because of those saying about rich people that follow. If we drop down a few more verses we find Jesus announcing for the third time that he is on his way to Jerusalem to be martyred (Mark 10:32-34). The hint is contained at the end of Jesus’s instruction to the rich man. He is not only to sell everything and give it to the poor—that’s his preparation—but to follow Jesus. The word for “follow” is the usual word for discipleship. Follow means to follow Jesus not only to Jerusalem but beyond: to learn and follow the way of Jesus. The heroic life the rich man seeks is right before him in following Jesus

The Heroic Life

As the rest of the New Testament works this out, there are two deaths in this heroic life. The first is the death of Jesus. Jesus is the one who goes before us, who suffers and dies, and who receives what is promised, new life. His resurrection is the vindication of his life and death. 

From this point of view, we live the heroic life through Jesus. His death becomes our death. The rich man need not do something heroic on his own. He need only to belong to Jesus—to follow him.

But there is a second death or deaths. Ours. Not only does the death of Jesus become our death but our death becomes the death of Jesus. The name for this is participation, Greek koinōnia. Paul puts it succinctly in Philippians 3:10-11:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing [koinōnia] of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

To tell the story in this way is to tell it quite differently from the way PSA tells the story. The PSA story is about something that Jesus does for me, quite outside of anything I do. But in this telling of the story, I participate in the death of Jesus, and Jesus participates in my suffering and death. As Paul has it, we die together and rise together. Rillera says of this, “It’s not place taking but place sharing” that Jesus offers us (Lamb of the Free, 439). 

The Sacrament of the Heroic Life

The sacrament of sharing in the death and resurrection of Jesus is the Lord’s Supper. Note the language of the institution of the sacrament as we have it from Paul:

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:23-26)

Rillera notes that the language of the Eucharist touches the Old Testament sacrificial system at two points. One is the Old Testament wellbeing sacrifices: sacrifices that are offered in thanksgiving to God. These sacrifices were communal events as opposed to the so-called “atoning” or, better, kipper sacrifices (see my previous post). If the sacrifice was for the purpose of “purgation” (kipper), the person offering it was not allowed to eat it. But wellbeing sacrifices were community feasts. Like the wellbeing sacrifices, the Eucharist is a shared meal.

A second point at which the Eucharist touches the Old Testament sacrificial system is with the words of Jesus about the cup: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” “New covenant” picks up on Jeremiah’s prophecy of a new covenant written not on stone but on the human heart (31:31-34). The blood picks up on the ceremony at the holy mountain when Moses “dashed sacrificial blood on the altar and on the people, bringing together God and Israel (Exodus 24:3-8). 

In this way in the sacrament, we share in the life of Christ. His blood becomes our blood; his flesh becomes our flesh. And we his: “Those who earth my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” (John 6:56). 

Consequences

In the posts to follow, I’ll have occasion to develop this line of thought further. It’s at the heart of the New Testament. And as I said for PSA, it has consequences. If at the center of the faith is participation—participation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—then the Christian life requires us to take on the life of Christ. As Paul puts it in a memorable passage: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). It’s this life that the rich man in the story resisted because it was a life not of getting but of giving. One must risk everything for this life.

To begin only a little to probe the implications of this faith is to point out the horror that Christianity has become in our time. Christians are now identified in the popular mind with those who believe that compassion for refugees is wrong; that even suggesting, as Jesus did, that a rich man should sell what he has and give it to the poor is something only the “woke” would do; that justice should always be firm, if not harsh. The faith seems to have less and less to do with Jesus and more and more with the politics of anger and greed.

If we are to resist the drift of the church into a faith alien to Jesus, we need to spend time recovering the biblical witness. We must do this together. I hope that these essays might in some small way help in that project.

Clay