Wishy Washy Wrathy Wrathy Atonement Atoney

I’m a Presbyterian Church guy, but I’m of the A kind, not the USA kind (follow me?).

Sometimes I look at the PCUSA and think about how great life would be if we PCA folks (there you go slow poke) could be more like them. However, there are times when I look at the PCUSA and thank God for predestining me to the PCA. This week, I felt the latter.

The PCUSA recently made the news for cutting Keith and Kristyn Getty’s, and Stuart Townend’s (cue joke about how many Reformed songwriters does it take to screw in a lightbulb) “In Christ Alone” from their new hymnal. Why? Because “In Christ Alone” includes the lyric,

On that cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.

The PCUSA does not (as some would lead us to believe) necessarily object to the idea of God’s wrath, but instead it objects to the idea that God’s wrath was satisfied by Christ’s death on the cross (also known as the Satisfaction theory of Atonement).

First off, let’s deal with some of the more conservative criticisms of the PCUSA. The PCUSA is not necessarily being wishy washy and shrinking away from a wrathful God. Instead, they are shrinking away from a depiction of God as a divine child abuser- a legitimate concern that we all need to be cognizant of. So conservatives, let’s stop with the macho man criticism of “liberal theology.”

But now, why should the PCUSA be willing to accept the Substitutionary atonement view (and specifically Penal substitution)? On the surface, the penal substitutionary view of the cross might actually seem like divine child abuse. C.S. Lewis said this much himself in Mere Christianity. But when the doctrine of the trinity and the incarnation are taken into consideration, any worries of divine child abuse can go out the window (Lewis also hinted towards this). Jesus is not the son of God in the same way as any boy is the son of their father. Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity who willingly submits to the will of the Father not out of fear but out of love. At the same time, according to Incarnational theology Jesus is God in the flesh. Jesus is not God’s whipping boy. Jesus is God Himself.

In light of these realities, how then can we look at the relationship between the cross and the wrath of God? God is not bitterly taking out His anger on His own Son, abusing Jesus much like a petulant drunk father who has nowhere else to take out his anger. Instead, God is taking the punishment that humans deserve on Himself. He is eating the debt that we owe and offering us the free gift of forgiveness. This is not a picture of a scary, angry God, but of a loving God who would sooner suffer immense pain and difficulty than see His creation fall. The God of love that the PCUSA is trying to portray cannot exist without Substitutionary atonement, for His love is not costly without His self-substitution on the cross.

Before I finish up this short lecture to the PCUSA I just want to issue a warning to the PCUSA and other denominations. Is it really a good idea, in an age when hymn writers produce songs that teach us to worship God like we worshipped our middle school crush or who take perfectly good songs and give them really lame choruses, to ostracize hymn writers like the Getty’s and Townend who actually write theologically robust and musically enjoyable songs? God save us from Now That’s What I Call Music hymns!

I leave you with a quote from Reinhold Niebuhr, because he essentially said what I took an entire blog post to say in one succinct paragraph (sorry you had to read to the end for the spark notes version).

A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.

Tags: Keith Kristyn Getty In Christ Alone Wrath PCUSA