Thoughts on Penal Substitutionary Atonement

To understand why Jesus was tortured to death,* and how it connects to our faith as Catholics, we start from a couple of important assumptions:

1. Christians historically used the word "punishment" to describe Christ's suffering and death.
2. Christ was innocent; he had no fault of his own.
3. Retributive punishment is just -- that is, good and fair -- only if there is fault on the part of the person punished.
4. Scripture suggests that, in some sense, we can say that God willed Christ’s suffering and death.
5. God is just.
6. But primarily, we want to hold to the theological principle of the hypostatic union.

What is the Hypostatic Union? What Does It Have to Do with the Atonement?

The hypostatic union refers to the belief that Jesus is both fully God and fully human at the same time. Jesus is the eternally begotten Son of God who united humanity to himself by taking on a human nature, specifically a body and rational soul. In Jesus, God acts in a human way; and in Jesus, a human does human things with divine significance. This means that when we talk about what Jesus does, we are talking about what God has from eternity willed to do. It also means the Son always does what the Father wills, because the three divine persons of the Trinity are unified in mind and will.

This brings us to one of the most popular (and most problematic) interpretations of the cross, a theological argument called penal substitutionary atonement. Let’s break it down.

Atonement is a theological term of English origin, meaning to redeem, reconcile, or “make one” (see Matthew 20:28, Colossians 1:19-20, and especially Romans 5:11).
Substitutionary means that Christ takes our place in some role or action that we were supposed to fulfill.
Penal refers to punishment, something owed to someone because of their crimes.
Putting it all together, penal substitutionary atonement says: Because we have sinned, we need to be punished. This is because God is just, and justice must be done if we want to be in God’s good graces. Our just punishment is horrible torture and death. But Jesus takes our place, so the wrath of God falls on him instead of us. Now, we are no longer guilty in God’s eyes because Jesus has died in our place as a substitute.

What’s the Problem with This Theory?

There are a couple of problems with this view.
1. Who are the principal actors? God (the Father), humanity, and Jesus. In this drama, God the Father is angry and needs to pour out his wrath because of our sins. Jesus is not as angry as the Father, and he agrees to be punished instead of us. Now that Jesus has been tortured and murdered, God is no longer angry, and we’re free to go to Heaven. (Usually Jesus only substitutes for those who believe in him, not for unbelievers. God is still angry at them.)
2. The problem: In this model, God the Father has one way of relating to humans (he’s angry!) while Jesus has another (merciful, not angry). However, following the principle of the hypostatic union, the Son only does what the Father wants the Son to do, not because he's obeying orders, but because they share one mind and heart. The love of the Father and Son for humanity is the same love, even if Jesus expresses it in a human way. Jesus loves us with the love of God, the Creator, and Redeemer. Saying that the Father and Jesus have different attitudes toward humanity creates a conflict between God and Jesus that can’t be sustained.
3. It’s principally unjust. Maybe we want to say that justice requires that the guilty person is punished. Jesus did not sin, so he did not deserve punishment. It is not just to torture an innocent person, regardless of whether or not they want to be tortured. This leaves us with a God who is somehow “above the rules,” able to torture an innocent person without looking like a monster. Would God do this?

A related problem happens if we say, “God tortures Jesus, or has other people torture Jesus according to his divine plan, because God is pretending that Jesus, who is innocent, is all of sinful humanity instead.” By upholding this fiction, we make God’s will a mysterious, amoral thing that can make 2+2=5 and innocent people guilty, just by willing it. This is not who God is. The cross, in this case, becomes a symbol of an absurd universe. 

So, How Do We Fix This?

A more Catholic view of atonement emphasizes that when Jesus atones for our sins, he transforms them into a source of goodness, not by appeasing God’s wrath, but by introducing God’s love into the world in a new way.
What Jesus did, God willed; and what Jesus wanted, God wanted. In other words, God’s love is the motivation and the cause of our redemption, not its result. It’s only correct to say that Jesus was punished for our sins if we mean that he suffered unjustly the punishment that sinners justly deserve. It’s incorrect to say that God punished Jesus for our sins, because Jesus voluntarily, out of God’s own love, chose to accept the death that the world set up for him.
Whatever Jesus is doing, he is doing it as himself—that is, as the incarnate Son of God—and whatever he is doing, he desires to communicate it to us. But there’s more. Jesus also plays an active role in this drama. He makes the cross mean something. In a human way, he makes his torture and death mean his absolute detestation and hatred of sin's power over humanity, showing the disgustingness and hatefulness of sin itself. What Christ’s suffering adds to the suffering of those who repent of their own sins is an “expression of utmost detestation for all sins and utmost sorrow over every offense against God.” We do this as penitents for our own sins, but Jesus does it for all sins, everywhere. He shows us what human ignorance and lust for power creates: a tortured and dead body on the cross.

Why Is This Good for Us?

Maybe death is a punishment for our sins. We all must pay it, and we do so to restore the order that was lost, to make up for harms done, and to protect the world to some extent.
But death can also be our willing offering for our sins—a life offered in love and obedience to the Father.
Because Jesus is God the Son, Jesus loves the Father with a human love and loves us with a divine love. Offering his life to God on our behalf, he wants the best possible thing for us too, which is to be what he is. To be sons and daughters, loving God above all things as he does, with the same filial, Trinitarian love. Jesus’ death is both his and his Father’s love for us because of their love for one another.
But the love between Father and Son is not all—it pours forth in the mutual ecstasy of the Holy Spirit, the joyful bubbling over of mutual love. So, the love shared between Father and Son given to us is the same as the gift of the Holy Spirit to those with whom they have already identified in love—sinners. And it is the Holy Spirit that allows us to be ourselves in our own freedom in that place of offering that Jesus first occupies in our stead. This happens especially in baptism, penance, daily dying, and final death.

In Conclusion

By creating the world as it is, God allows the world to create the circumstances that led to Jesus’ suffering and death. Jesus submitted to this suffering, out of love and desiring to testify to God's trustworthiness in the face of human cruelty.
God did not punish Jesus on the cross; rather, given that humans conspired to crucify Jesus, God willed that the cross might convey something new to us. Christ knew in advance that through his cross, he would express his inward detestation and sorrow over every human sin and failure. Christ knew God, and knew the world God created, and therefore learned how to express it in a human way.
The love of Christ for his Father was the human love of a divine person for a divine person, and his death was a divine person’s communication both to a divine person and to human persons. In this way, the cross is a mediation of our salvation, because it communicates to us something we need: trust in the absolutely radical and free love of God for all creation.

Behold the wood of the cross, on which hung the savior of the world. Come, let us worship!

*(I take it for granted that certain elements within the religious and political hierarchy in Judea had what they thought were good reasons for getting rid of Jesus, and that the Roman government did what the Roman government had always done -- maintain the pax romana with brutal efficiency. Our question here is theological: what is the meaning, if any, behind Jesus’ suffering and death?)