Penal Substitution and Divine Forgiveness

Authors

Daniel Thweatt, Bethel University

Document Type

Paper

Abstract

According to Keith Ward, “One must...reject those crude accounts of Christian doctrine which...say that Christ has been justly punished in our place so that he has taken away our guilt and enabled God to forgive us. Almost everything is ethically wrong about these accounts.” This statement is just one instance of a commonly occurring dismissal of the penal substitution theory of the atonement. For various reasons, many today find the theory morally (and theologically and exegetically) untenable. Some, such as Gregory Boyd and Eleonore Stump, formulate moral objections to penal substitution based on beliefs about the concept of forgiveness. In this paper it will be argued that Boyd and Stump’s objections to the moral plausibility of the penal substitution theory of the atonement that involve the concept of forgiveness are unsuccessful. In so doing, a brief outline of the penal substitution theory will be given, some relevant starting assumptions will be discussed, Boyd and Stump’s objections will be explained, the concept of forgiveness will be explored and analyzed, and a response will be made to Boyd and Stump utilizing the previously developed construal of forgiveness.

Date Accepted/Awarded

3-2015

Award/Distinction

Library Research Prize Honorable Mention

First Advisor/Reader

Reasoner, Paul

Recommended Citation

Thweatt, Daniel, "Penal Substitution and Divine Forgiveness" (2015). Library Research Prize Student Works. 20.
https://spark.bethel.edu/library-research-prize-work/20

Terms of Use and License Information

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.