Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
166innoc ent in the eyes of God, emerged from the bac kground of an understanding of
law that had c hanged sinc e Anslem’s time. In t he medieval world, law was an
expression of t he will of t he ruler, and transgression was an act of personal
disobedienc e and dishonour for whic h either punishment or satisfac tion was
required. But the concept of an objective justice, set over ruled and ruler alike, had
been developing in Europe sinc e the Renaissanc e. Law was now thought to have its
own eternal validity, requiring a punishment from wrongdoing whic h c ould not be
set aside even by the ruler. It was t his new princ iple t hat t he Reformers applied
and extended in their doc trine that Christ took our plac e in bearing the inexorable
penalty for human sin – a powerful imagery that has long gripped the Christian
imaginat ion:
He died that we might be forgiven,
He died to make us good,
That we might go at last to heaven
Saved by his precious blood.There was no other good enough
T o pay t he pric e of sin;
He only c ould unloc k the gate
Of heaven and let us in.It is hardly nec essary t oday t o c rit ic ize t his penal-substitutionary c onc eption, so
t ot ally implausible has it bec ome for most of us. The idea that guilt can be remove
from a wrongdoer by someone else being punished instead is morally grotesque.
And if we put it in what might at first sight seem a more favourable light by
suggesting that God punished Godself, in the person of God the Son, in order to be
able just ly t o forgive sinners, we are st ill dealing wit h t he religious absurdit y of a
moral law whic h God c an and must satisfy by punishing the innoc ent in plac e of the
guilt y. As Anselm pointed out long ago, through his interloc utor in Cur Deus
Homo?, ‘it is a strange think if God delight s in, or require, t he blood of t he
innoc ent, that he neither c hooses, nor is able, to spare the guilty without the
sac rific e of the innoc ent’ (Anselm 1962, 200; Book I, c hapter 10).
Ric hard Swinburne, in his Responsibilit y and At onement, has rec ently made an
impressive attempt to retrieve a transactional conception. His understanding of
salvat ion c an be summarize d as follows:
(1) Guilt in relat ion t o God is t he great barrier t o salvat ion, i.e. t o rec eiving
God’s gift of et ernal life. (This is assumed throughout Swinburne’s disc ussion.)
(2) In the c ase of wrong doing by one human being to another, rec onc iliation
requires four things: repentanc e, apology, whatever reparation (i.e. undoing of the
harm done) is possible, and penanc e, i.e. some addit ional ac t – suc h as the giving
of a c ost ly gift – whic h is not part of the reparation but is an expression of the
reality of one’s regret and sorrow at having done the wrong (Chapter 5).
(3) God is a personal being – though absolutely unique in nature – with whom
we exist in the same kind of moral relationship as to our fellow human beings, and
t he same general c ondit ions for rec onc iliat ion apply. (This is assumed throughout
Part II, though not explicitly stated.)