A perhaps underemphasized aspect of Christ's atonement

Usually, Christ’s sacrifice of the Cross is thought of as atonement for our sins before God. This leads to old theological question: Why can’t God simply forgive our sins, without the need for any atoning sacrifice? Aquinas’s answer is: God could, but it’s more fitting that the debt be paid. I want to explore a different answer.

Suppose that when you do a wrong to someone, you come to owe it to them to be punished. But now instead of thinking of God as the aggrieved party, think of all the times when we have done wrong to other human beings. Some of them have released or will release us from our debt through forgiveness. But, probably, not everyone. But what, now, if we think of Christ’s sacrifice as atomenent for our sins before the unforgiving. We don’t need to pay to other unforgiving humans the debt of being punished, because Christ has paid it on our behalf.

This neatly answers the question of why God’s can’t simply forgive us our sins: God can simply release us from our debt to God, but it is either impossible or at least significantly unfitting for God to simply release us from our debt to fellow human beings.

Here is a consequence of the story. If we fail to forgive our fellow human beings, that is yet another way in which we become shamefully co-responsible for Christ’s sufferings, since now Christ is atoning for these fellow human beings before us. We should then be ashamed of ourselves, especially given that Christ is also suffering for us.

The story isn’t complete. Christ’s atonement applies not just to my sins against my neighbor, but also to my sins against God alone and my sins against myself. But once we have seen that some atoning sacrifice is needed on our behalf, the idea of a total atoning sacrifice, capable of atoning for everyone’s debts to everyone, including to God, looks even more fitting.

Two sources of discomfort with substitutionary views of atonement

On one family of theories of the atonement, the harsh treatment that justice called for in the light of our sins is imposed on Christ and thereby satisfies retributive justice. Pretty much everybody who thinks about this is at least a little bit uncomfortable with it—some uncomfortable to the point of moral outrage.

It’s useful, I think, to make explicit two primary sources of discomfort:

1. It seems unjust to Christ that he bear the pain that our sins deserve.

2. It seems unjust that we are left unpunished.

And it’s also useful to note that these two sources of discomfort are largely independent of one another.

I think that those who are uncomfortable to the point of moral outrage are likely to focus on (1). But it is not hard to resolve (1) given orthodox Christology and Trinitarianism. The burden imposed on Christ is imposed by the will of the Father. But the will of the Father in orthodox theology is numerically identical with the will of the Son. Thus, the burden is imposed on Christ by his own divine will, which he then obeys in his own human will. It is thus technically a burden coming from Christ’s own will, and a burden coming from one’s own will for the sake of others does not threaten injustice.

While (2) is also a source of discomfort, I think it is less commonly a discomfort that rises to the level of moral outrage. Maybe some people do feel outrage at the idea that a mass murderer could be left unpunished if she repentantly accepted Christ into her life and were baptised. But I think it tends to be a moral fault if one feels much outrage at leniency shown to a repentant malefactor.

I also think (2) is the much harder problem. Note, for instance, that the considerations of consent that dissolve (1) seem to do little to help with (2). Imagine that I was a filthy rich CEO of a corporation that was knowingly dumping effluent that caused the deaths of dozens of people and I was justly sentenced to twenty years imprisonment. It would clearly be a failure of justice if I were permitted to find someone else and pay her a hundred million dollars to go to prison in place—even though there would no doubt be a number of people who would be very eager, of their own free will, to do that for the price.

It would be nice if I could now go on to solve (2). But my main point was to separate out the two sources of discomfort and note their independence.

That said, I did just now have a thought about (2) while talking to a student. Suppose that you do me a very good turn. I say: “How can I ever repay you?” And you say: “Pass it on. Maybe one day you’ll have a chance to do this for someone else. That will be repayment enough.” If I one day pass on the blessing that I’ve received from you, justice has been done to you. The beneficiary of my passing on the blessing rightly substitutes for you. Maybe there is a mirror version of this on the side of punishment?

How not to defend penal substitution

Consider the standard problem for penal substitution views:

• How is it that an innocent person's suffering harsh treatment removes the guilt of this guilty?

This is just a quick remark. Here is how not to solve the problem: Don't invoke God's sovereignty or power to claim that God can transfer guilt and punishment at will. For if God can transfer guilt and punishment at will, then God could transfer the guilt and punishment to a tree. But wouldn't it be better that a tree should be harshly punished for eternity (say, constantly have its bark ripped off as it grows back) than that Christ suffer?

Emotional perception

On Friday I was feeling somewhat poorly and in the interests of public health (not that I minded!) I opted out of participation in the PhD graduation dinner and Saturday's commencement. Sunday I felt somewhat worse, and today rather worse (nothing serious, just the usual "flu-like" symptoms, and both of our big kids had such in the preceding two weeks). But there is one piece of relief: It is good to have been right about the fact that I was getting sick.

It is not particularly bad to have suffered physically and similarly it is not particularly good to have enjoyed physical pleasure. But it is bad (or at least it feels bad--which is evidence for its being bad!) to have been wrong and similarly it is good to have been right. The value here isn't the value of being recognized by others as having been right or wrong. Nor is it the value of oneself presently recognizing oneself as right or wrong. For one hopes (though perhaps not simpliciter, if the prospect is particularly nasty) that one be right and that one not be wrong, not just that one recognize oneself or be recognized as right or wrong. The recognition is just the icing or mould on the top of a good or bad cake.

Eternalists have a difficulty with the fact that it doesn't seem bad to have suffered physically (bracketing any present suffering from painful memories, of course), even though past suffering is just as real as present suffering. Presentists have a difficulty with the fact that it seems to be bad to have been wrong and to be good to have been right.

I think eternalists can make a better go of it, though. Feelings like the pleasure of having been right or the pain of having been wrong are a kind of perception of normative features of the world. But not all truth is equally perceived. I am now visually aware that I have two hands, and properly so. But were I now visually aware that you have a head, my visual system would be malfunctioning. For although, dear reader, you do have a head, your head is not presently within my field of view. It is thus a part of the correct functioning of my visual apparatus that I be presently aware of my hands but not your head, even though all three parts (my two hands and your one head) are equally real.

Likewise, then, some goods and bads are appropriately within my emotional field of view--e.g., my having been right about getting sick--and some goods and bads are not appropriately within my emotional field of view--e.g., the unpleasantness of the last time I had a cavity filled. These goods and bads may be equally real (assuming that pain itself really is bad--there is room for discussion here, but it is at least extrinsically bad), but it could be (I am not sure about the first one, actually) that my having been right is appropriately within my emotional field of view while my having suffered (not at all severely--he really is an excellent dentist) at a past dental visit is not.

But we sometimes mistake absence of perception for perception of absence, like an infant who cries that the parent has left the room or the adult who sees no objection to an action and all too hastily concludes the action is permissible. Not emotionally seeing the past pain as bad--i.e., a not being pained by the past pain--is mistaken by us for seeing the past pain as not being bad.

The eternalist should thus say that the past physical pains and pleasures are bad or good, in the same way that present ones are, but we do not see their badness or goodness. Thus, the eternalist attributes to the agent a misinterpretation of absence of perception. The presentist, however, should say that having been right or wrong is not presently good or bad (though maybe it was good or bad), but we misperceive it as such. The eternalist thus attributes more correctness to our emotional perception, while attributing a well-known generalized cognitive error in explaining what went wrong. The presentist has to say our emotional perception is just wrong. I prefer the eternalist explanation.

A similar issue comes up for Christ's suffering on the cross. With a number of theologians, I take the center of our Savior's suffering not to be the horrific suffering of nails ripping through his flesh, but his deep emotional awareness of the horribleness of the totality of our sins (perhaps with the help of the hypostatic union or beatific vision bringing the particularities of all of humankind's sins to him). But this leads to a query: Why did Christ only have this awareness on the cross? We do not see him constantly and equally weighed down by this suffering earlier in life? Was he failing to have a correct emotional awareness? But now we can say: Not at all. It is the salient goods or bads that are within the field of view of correct emotional perception. And it is on the cross, at the high point of the sacrifice for our salvation from these sins (the high point: for all his life was such a sacrifice), that this became fully salient, in such a way that this perfect man--who is also true God--emotionally bore the full weight of our sin.

Note, too, that this is a story about Christ's sufferings that is difficult for the presentist to give. For it is difficult for the presentist to explain why earlier and later, and hence then-unreal, sins were bad at the time of Christ's crucifixion. Perhaps the presentist has to say that Christ's suffering came from an erroneous emotional perception of past and future sins as then-bad?

Redemption in Christ from individual and cosmic sin

There is a danger in seeing Christ's work of redemption as solely focused on one's individual sins. But at the same time the lived experience of Christians is precisely an experience of redemption from individual sins that block union with God and neighbor: "How can I ever be friends with Him, or with him, or with her, or with them, after I did that to Him, or to him, or to her, or to them?" In the context of one's individual repentance, a focus on the sin of the world and the deeply rooted social dimensions of sin, may be a distraction or even an excuse. "It's not my sin, but our sin." And it is not far from our sin to nobody's sin. Adam shifted the blame for his sin onto Eve, and Eve onto the serpent. It would have been no better if they shifted it onto the world.

None of this denies that there are structures of sin that are of cosmic importance, and that the means by which the individual sinner is redeemed is through-and-through ecclesial. But we must also not overestimate the importance of cosmic sin. For there is nothing worse in the world than mortal sins, and it is only individuals who commit those, and thereby separate themselves from God and one another. Moreover, to the true lover, the beloved is a cosmos. And God loves each of us.

Why did God become man?

One way to put the question of the theory of the atonement might seem be to ask with Anselm: "Why did God become man?"

I do not think that that is the right way, though. For God is omnirational. This means that whenever he acts, he is moved by all the unexcluded good reasons for the action. But almost any good that is achieved by a morally permissible action will provide God with an unexcluded good reason for that action. Very high up among the goods achieved by God through the Incarnation is ensuring that we can be forgiven with justice. But there are many other goods achieved by the Incarnation: Aquinas lists nine other great goods. And besides the great goods, there are far lesser but nonetheless genuine goods, such as cooperating with Joseph in the making of tables. Plausibly, there are many goods in between the really great ones and the far lesser ones, such as providing Israel with a king, bringing the nations to Israel in worship, and healing certain lepers through a face-to-face interaction.

One might try to run some kind of a distinction between the goods wrought in the Incarnation, so as to delineate the goods that are the proper subject of a theory of the atonement or the proper answers to "Why did God become man?" Let's try a few such distinctions.

First, there is a distinction between those goods that could be achieved without God becoming man and those goods that can only be achieved by God becoming man. But this won't draw the distinguishing line in the right place. First, pace Anselm, it is far from clear that we couldn't be forgiven with justice simply by divine fiat. Certainly, Aquinas thought we could. It would be fitting for the penalty to be paid by Christ on our behalf, but it would not be unjust for God simply to release us. Second, some of the goods lower down on the list require the Incarnation. Thus, the good of God's cooperating with Joseph in carpentry (this cooperation makes me think of Enoch walking with God, but in the case of Joseph there is a greater literalness) requires an Incarnation. (God can, by his omnipotent power, create tables ex nihilo, but such creation is not carpentry.) Likewise, there is a value to God healing the lepers through a face-to-face interaction of a sort that can only be had by means of the Incarnation.

Second, perhaps we could distinguish between reasons that are such that if they were present on their own, God would still have decided on the Incarnation, and reasons that were only contributory. Thus, while omnirationality implies that God became man in part in order to work with Joseph, surely if no other goods were realized by the Incarnation than God's engaging in carpentry with Joseph, then there would be no Incarnation. But why think that? God could have done it. Maybe it would be an unlikely scenario, but surely a possible one. Why accept the counterfactual of free will that had God had working with Joseph as the only reason to be Incarnate then he wouldn't have done it? Such a counterfactual seems meaningless (or trivially false) to me, and even Molinists need not extend their view to counterfactuals of divine freedom.

Third, perhaps we can distinguish reasons such that were they absent, the Incarnation would not have occurred. But again we get into dubious counterfactuals about divine decisions. Take one of the "big" reasons for the Incarnation. I see no reason to accept the counterfactual that had that reason been absent, there would have been no Incarnation. God might still have become incarnate for the other reasons.

There is, of course, a distinction as to the weight of the reasons. The "big" reasons are much better reasons. But this distinction is one of degree.

So it seems to me that the answer to the question of why God became man is simply a list. Aquinas gives ten items to put on the list. There are many more. We can prioritize the items on the list, of course. But each of the items on the list will be a reason that God was acting in the light of, since God acts in the light of all the unexcluded good reasons in favor of his action.

This does not imply that there is no such thing as a theory of the atonement, just that the question "Why did God become man?" doesn't delineate the theory precisely enough.

Penal substitution theories of the atonement

According to the penal substitution theory of the atonement, Christ's sufferings satisfy justice in place of our being punished. That is, basically, the theory as found in Anselm's Cur Deus Homo.

Some contemporary Christians, mainly Protestant, add the claim that Christ was punished by the Father, and his punishment substitutes for our punishment. We can call the resulting theory punishment by punishment substitution (PBPS). PBPS isn't Anselm's theory, and as Mark Murphy has pointed out it may even be incoherent, since a part of punishing is the showing of disapproval at the person being punished, while God cannot show disapproval at an innocent person.

The Heidelberg Catechism explicitly only says that Christ satisfies for us. But it says in the answer to Question 14 that no mere creature can satisfy for us because "God will not punish any other creature for the sin which man has committed", which may implicate that satisfaction involves being punished. Still, it does not say that it does so in the case of Christ.

In any case, it seems to me that the biblical theory is not that the punishment of Christ substitutes for our punishment, but that the sacrifice of Christ substitutes for our punishment. Old Testament sacrifices for our sins were not punishments of the animals, except in the extended sense of the word as when we speak of "the punishing heat of Texas summer." It is central to the idea of sacrifice in the Old Testament that it is the best that is sacrificed. To sacrifice something is to treat it as the best that is available. But when someone is being punished, then he is far from being treated as the best—he is being treated as one of the worst. Thus, the biblical picture of Christ as sacrificed is in serious tension with PBPS.

That the sacrifice of Christ substitutes for our punishment isn't yet a theory of the atonement. To make it a theory of the atonement one would have to say how it does so.

Christ has risen!

Indeed he is risen!

Here is an interesting question.  Why is Easter the greatest liturgical celebration of the year for Christians rather than Good Friday?  One might, after all, imagine someone reasoning thus: "On Good Friday we celebrate Christ's bearing our sins, and this payment of the penalty for our sin is what frees us from the debt that we cannot pay.  So the Good News is in fact the events of Good Friday, and the Easter event's main role for us is merely evidential--it is evidence of our future resurrection."  But that is not how the Church thinks.

I think there are at least three responses to this reasoning.

1. The evidential and symbolic is of great existential importance to our lives, and to celebrate the event central to the evidence of Christ's prophetic (and hence divine, given that he said things that in an Old Testament context are claims of divinity) status as the central liturgical event of the year is very appropriate.

2. This is very speculative.  One might ask: When did Christ's payment of the penalty come to a completion?  Was it when he died on Good Friday?  Or was it only after the descent into sheol?  If the latter, then the resurrection marks the completion of Christ's payment, and thus the celebration of Christ's bearing of the penalty for our sins fits well with Easter.  On the other hand, I do not think the Tradition sees Christ's descent into sheol as a part of his sufferings.  For instance, in the Odes of Solomon, the descent is present triumphantly.

3. Imagine that Christ's penalty was paid, and resurrection for us was won, but Christ did not rise again, either because he remained a disembodied soul or because the Incarnation terminated.  Then we wouldn't we have nearly as good evidence of our resurrection, as point 1 says.  But also, there would no longer be bodily communion with Christ.  Think of it from the point of view of the Apostles.  There was their friend who died.  If they rose but he did not, they might be able to commune with him spiritually, but never again in an embodied way.  The resurrection makes bodily communion with Christ possible.  This bodily communion takes place in two ways.  First, in the Eucharist.  And thus one reason for the centrality of the Easter event is that if Christ were not risen, we could not receive his present human flesh and blood.  Easter, thus, grounds the Eucharist.  Second, eventually in heaven through human fellowship.  The Easter event, works not only our individual resurrection, but our corporate resurrection as the Church, including centrally Jesus, the head.

Let us rejoice with the Apostles and Mary that he whom they loved above all creatures is risen!

Desiderata for a theory of atonement

My previous post on atonement implicitly identified one constraint ("must") and one desideratum ("should") for a theory of atonement:

1. The theory must be able to apply in cases where the person saved lacks personal sin.
2. The theory should not require explicit beliefs on the part of the person saved.

There is another desideratum that I think is important but somewhat vague:

3. At least one of the facts that Jesus Christ actually lived among us, died on the cross and rose again should in every case be central to the mechanism of salvation.

This condition rules out theories on which the mechanism of atonement is that we are transformed by the example of Jesus Christ (this will be a subset of what my previous post calls "epistemic theories"). For in those theories, the central part of the mechanism of atonement is not that Jesus Christ actually lived, died and rose again, but that we believe that Jesus Christ actually lived, died and rose again. The reason Jesus Christ had to actually live, die and rise again is not for the mechanism of salvation to work, but only because God is not a deceiver and so God could not teach us that Jesus Christ lived, died and rose again unless this was actually true. But the soteriologically important thing on such theories is the belief that this happened, not that this happened. And hence such theories are unsatisfactory.

Epistemic theories of the atonement

Every orthodox Christian agrees that:

1. Salvation occurs at least in part because of Christ's death on the cross.

The "at least in part" is because Christ's earlier life and subsequent resurrection no doubt play a role. It is also uncontroversial that this has something to do with atonement and sin, but there are many theories here. Epistemic theories say:

2. The explanatory connection between Christ's death on the cross and the salvation of an individual always involves the individual's epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.

For instance, it may be that Christ's death expresses to the sinner the weight of the sinner's sin and seeing the free acceptance of the penalty transforms the sinner. Epistemic theories as I defined them need not hold that the epistemic encounter is the whole story. Someone could, for instance, hold that there are two essential components to atonement, one of them an epistemic component and the other a penal substitution component. Such a theorist would count as an epistemic theorist.

But there is a plausible argument against this:

3. Nobody is saved except because of Christ's death on the cross.
4. Some are saved who have no epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.
5. Hence, the explanatory connection between Christ's death on the cross and salvation does not always involve an epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.

And so, it seems, epistemic theories of atonement are false.

I think (3) is a central part of Christian orthodoxy, assuming that by "nobody" we mean no human beings other than Christ (contextually restricted quantifiers!). One way to see this is to consider the debate over Mary's Immaculate Conception. The doctrine says that Mary was conceived without original sin. Probably the deepest theological objection to the doctrine has centered on arguments that the doctrine is incompatible with (3). If rejecting (3) were an option for a Christian, the defenders of the doctrine would have had ample motivation to reject (3). But they didn't—instead, they offered theories that attempted to reconcile (3) with the Immaculate Conception. It is not my point to evaluate the arguments for or against the Immaculate Conception (though of course I do accept the Immaculate Conception) but simply to note that both sides admitted that (3) is non-negotiable.

Now, it may seem that (4) directly contradicts the epistemic view (2), and hence begs the question. That's not quite right. Claim (2) is that whenever there is an explanatory connection between Christ's sacrifice and salvation, that connection is at least in part epistemically mediated. As far as that goes, this is compatible with the possibility, denied by (3), that some are saved without any such explanatory connection.

Why accept (4)? Because of the following three classes of persons:

• Jews and gentiles who were saved prior to the time of Christ.
• Those who are saved without ever hearing about Christ's death.
• Those (e.g., at least baptized infants) who are saved despite dying prior to having developed an ability to have an epistemic encounter with Christ's crucifixion.

In each of these types of cases, it certainly seems that we have (4).

I want to consider now one kind of reply. We could modify (2) by restricting the quantifiers. For instance, we could apply (2) only to those who have achieved the age of reason and positing that all who die prior to the age of reason are saved, thereby ruling out the third class of cases as offering an argument for (4). This would be an unacceptable variant of Pelagianism. The person who died in infancy would be saved not by Christ, but by natural causes—namely, the causes of death. If some who die in infancy are saved—and certainly at least those baptized people who die in infancy are saved—even they had better be saved only by Christ.

Or we could, if we were willing to bite the bullet on the case of infants in some way, restrict the quantifiers in (2) not to apply to those who died prior to Christ's death, thereby ruling out the first class of examples as offering an argument for (4). I think this, too, is a kind of Pelagianism. Moreover, consider the weirdness of supposing that an Inuit who died at 2:59 pm on Good Friday could be saved not by the cross, while an Inuit who died two minutes later needed to be saved by the cross.

Another move one might make would be to deny that, at least since the time of Christ's death, anyone is saved without ever hearing the Gospel. This is a hard-line response to my argument. For sociological reasons, I suspect this response to my argument is not going to be that popular. I suspect that most of the people who take a hard-line on those who die without hearing about Christ's death take some substitutionary sacrifice theory of the atonement. This is not because there is a good logical connection between these two views—indeed, substitutionary sacrifice theories of the atonement appear to me to be our best bet for explaining how one can be saved without expressly hearing the Gospel—but simply because the kind of tough-mindedness that inclines one to a hard-line on salvation outside the apparent boundaries of the Church is apt to incline one to a substitutionary sacrifice theory.

A different response is that a transformative epistemic encounter with the crucifixion occurs after death for those who are saved despite having died without hearing about Christ's death. Such a view would not only be committed to post-death purgation—i.e., to purgatory. That is not a problem. But it would, further, require the thesis that baptized infants who die prior to hearing about Christ's sacrifice go to purgatory, if only for an instant, and that view simply seems wrong. For one, it downplays the effects of baptism.

One might, however, suppose a miraculous epistemic encounter prior to death. God can miraculously make it possible for an infant, or even embryo, to understand the central doctrines of Christianity, whether explicitly or more vaguely. That this view posits a miracle is no objection. Salvation always involves a miracle. I do not know how plausible this way out will be for particular epistemic theorists. But I think in the end this is the only satisfactory account available to them.

So, unless one wants to posit a miraculous raising of intellectual abilities—and I do not reject this option—epistemic theories of atonement should be rejected.

But I don't think the substitutionary sacrifice theorist is off the hook either. For the above argument gives us a necessary condition for a theory of atonement: it must explain the connection between Christ's sacrifice and the salvation of an infant. If the theory is that Christ is paying the penalty for the individual's sin, then that theory will not be sufficient to account for the salvation of infants who have never committed any sins.

There are two separate issues here, I think. One is the issue of overcoming personal sin. That issue does not come up for the infant, as far as we know (I am inclined to some epistemic caution on this point). The other is the issue of attaining salvation. Many Catholic theologians have said that lack of personal sin is insufficient for salvation. A supernatural love is necessary and sufficient for salvation, a love that can only come from grace. Atonement is not only atonement for sin. It is, as its corny but apparently genuine "at-one-ment" etymology indicates, a matter of uniting us with God. While sin keeps us from union with God, union with God is not constituted by the absence of sin. It requires something more than absence of sin. And for fallen humanity, even in the case of non-sinful members such as infants, this "something" more must be held to come from the Cross. A puzzle or maybe even mystery, then, is how it is that the "something else", the supernatural agapê, comes from Christ's sacrifice. I am inclined to think that a crucial component here is that by our membership in the Body of Christ, Christ's sacrifice is our sacrifice, and the agapê of his sacrifice is our agapê.

Atonement

According to substitutionary views of the atonement, Christ suffered a suffering that was due to us for our sins. Substitutionary views come in two varieties: (1) penal substitution views hold that Christ's suffering was a punishment of Christ for our sins; (2) non-penal substitution views hold that Christ was not punished but that nonetheless somehow his suffering was a substitute for our suffering. Penal substitution views are, arguably, incoherent: y can only punish x for what y believes x to have done; anything else is an imposition of suffering, just or unjust, but not a penalty. It is difficult to figure out exactly how a non-penal substitution views would work, but there has been some recent work on this (Adam Pelser had some interesting ideas in a paper he presented at a recent SCP meeting, and I have recently read some good in-progress work from someone else).

In this post, I want to discuss how one can respond to a criticism (not an original one) that would apply equally to penal and non-penal substitutionary views. The criticism is that according to Christian doctrine, Christ's suffering redeemed us from eternal damnation. In other words, Christ's suffering must have been a sufficient substitute for eternal damnation. But while dying on the cross is very painful, people have suffered worse, and it seems likely that on orthodox views of hell as involving eternal physical pain, dying on the cross, even when one adds severe flogging beforehand, is not a sufficient substitute for an eternity in hell. And even if one adds the psychological suffering of being abandoned by most of one's friends, and maybe even bereft of God, to feel that suffering for less than twenty-four hours is not a sufficient substitute for an eternity of psychological suffering in hell—for, after all, orthodoxy holds that hell involves non-physical suffering as well. This is the "Insufficiency Criticism" (IC)—Christ didn't suffer enough for his suffering to substitute for our punishment.

One answer to this is to allow that the total suffering in hell is only finite, and that Christ's suffering during his passion might in fact have matched the greatest degree of deserved suffering in hell. But while it is possible for eternal suffering to be finite, it still seems likely, given what the Christian tradition has said about hell, that the suffering is very, very great in total, this is probably not the best response.

In response to the IC, I want to offer first a partial theory as to one aspect of Christ's spiritual suffering on the cross. According to Aristotle, the virtuous person enjoys doing virtuous activity. A virtuous person's emotions correctly track the truth of the matter: the virtuous person feels good about virtue and bad about vice. Now, I want to say something odd: if a perfectly virtuous person were to engage in a gravely vicious activity, she would find such engagement more spiritually painful than just about anything else that could happen. Of course, this is a per impossibile counterfactual. But I can justify it by pointing to three genuine possibilities. First, suppose that a presently virtuous person contemplates a past grave evil that she did and which evil has not yet been mended. This contemplation gives her great pain. Second, suppose that a presently virtuous person contemplates the fact that some presently virtuous people go on to become quite wicked over the years, and hence that she herself might do so. To the extent that she takes this thought emotionally seriously, she is deeply pained by the possibility of future vicious action. Third, recall that Aristotle says that a virtuous person enjoys the virtuous deeds of a friend, in a friendship of the best sort, as if they were her own, because the friend is another self. Now Aristotle thought one could only be a friend, in the best sense, of a virtuous person. Be that as it may, what he says about friendship can be said about love more generally, and it is possible to love a vicious person. And if a virtuous person loves a vicious, then the deeds of the vicious beloved can give the lover the kind of pain that they should give the beloved. These three cases should make clear the magnitude of spiritual pain it would be appropriate to feel at an evil action while one were committing it. After all, what would we not give not to be someone who had committed a murder, say?

Now, let us suppose that on the cross Christ, being not only a perfectly virtuous man but also God, is aware of all the evils ever done, fully understands the evil in its interpersonal and theological significance, and yet loves the evildoers. This makes it possible for him to feel the spiritual pain at the evil which the evildoer did not fully feel while doing the deed, a spiritual pain of immense magnitude. The offense was against the infinite God. Christ on the cross, on this theory, experiences that offense in its immense magnitude, and this suffering, though concentrated in time, is a sufficient substitution.

A difficulty with this theory is that one wonders why this substitutionary suffering had to be on the cross. After all, wouldn't Christ have felt the same spiritual pain earlier in his life, say while sipping wine at the end of a hard week's work and reflecting on the magnitude of evil? This theory does not do justice to the importance of the cross.

But I think we can bring the cross back to it. For Aristotle is not actually right in thinking that the virtuous person's emotions always correctly track reality. Emotions come and go. No matter how virtuous a person is, if she has been deprived of sleep for too many hours, whether by torturers or by parenthood, she will not have much in the way of appropriate emotions. She will, if she remains virtuous, act rightly, but may feel simply numb. A virtuous person's emotions correctly track reality only in circumstances which are appropriate for this tracking of reality. A virtuous person knows that parenting is a good, but she does not feel the warm glow of it except in appropriate observing conditions, typically ones incompatible with sleep deprivation, just as an art expert may not recognize the fake Rembrandt except in good light.

Now, Christ on the cross was, we might say, in ideal observing conditions in respect of evil. His emotions were genuinely human ones. Suffering has much to teach us experientially, which we may have already known theoretically. On the cross, as the perfectly innocent divine victim, he could humanly experience the fullness of the evils of the world, evils that he already divinely knew, and that he even theoretically already knew as a human being. Moreover, even if his physical pain did not have the same magnitude that the pain of someone being tortured to death over the period of a month might have had, the physical pain he did suffer was of sufficient magnitude to fuel an empathy that would humanly enable him to be spiritually pained at that victim's pain of being tortured over a month—or even at the physical pains of eternity in hell. He suffered, then, not just his own sufferings on the cross, but these sufferings of his own made it possible for him to suffer with the victims of all the past and future crimes he knew of, as well as to suffer, even more profoundly, with the perpetrators of these.

I do not think this exhausts what happened on the cross. In fact, I am very much unsatisfied with what I wrote. I don't even want to say that the theory I offer is true. But the availability of theories like this one shows that the IC should not be as persuasive as it initially seems.