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If we want to be happy Catholics, we need to hold several points in mind when we ask why Jesus was tortured to death.*
- Christ’s suffering and death were, in some sense, punishment.
- Christ was innocent; he had no fault of his own.
- Retributive punishment is just only if there is fault on the part of the person punished.
- God willed, in some sense, Christ’s suffering and death.
- God is just.
But primarily, we want to hold to the theological principle of the hypostatic union.
* (I take it for granted that certain elements within the Jewish religious and political hierarchy 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. Our question here is theological: what is the meaning, if any, behind Jesus’ suffering and death?)What is the hypostatic union? What does it have to do with the atonement?
The hypostatic union is a phrase that describes what and who Jesus is: Jesus is the eternally begotten Son of God who has united humanity to himself by taking on a human way of being, 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 that we recognize that the Son always does what the Father wills; for the persons of the Trinity are one in mind and will.
This brings us to one of the most popular (and most wrong) interpretations of the cross, a theology called penal substitutionary atonement. Let’s break it down.
Atonement: theological term with, unusually, an English origin) -- to redeem, to reconcile, to “make one” (c.f. Matthew 20:28, Colossian 1:19-20, and especially Romans 5:11).
Substitutionary: Christ takes our place in some role or act that we were otherwise supposed to do
Penal: This is a punishment, something that is owed to someone on account of their crimes.
In short, 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 death. But Jesus takes our place, and so the wrath of God falls on Jesus instead of on us. And so 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.- 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 angry, and takes our place as the one to be punished. Now that Jesus has been tortured, 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.)
So what’s the problem? It’s that in this model, God the Father has one way of relating to humans (he’s angry!) while Jesus has another (not angry but compassionate!) But, following the principle of the hypostatic union, the Son only does what the Father wills. 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, the Redeemer. This posits a conflict between God and Jesus that can’t be sustained.
- It’s principally unjust. Justice takes place when the guilty person is punished. Jesus did not sin, and therefore did not deserve punishment. It is not just to torture an innocent person. It doesn’t matter if they want to be tortured -- it’s not just. This leaves us with a God who is somehow “above the rules.”
- A related problem when we try to solve #2 by saying, “God tortures Jesus because he pretends that Jesus is actually us.” In upholding this fiction, we make God’s will a mysterious, supermoral thing that can turn make 2+2=5 and innocent people be guilty, just by willing it. This is not God. The cross then becomes a symbol of an absurd universe.
A Catholic view of the atonement might say this: when Jesus atones or makes satisfaction for our sins, he transforms them into the vehicle of goodness, not by appeasing God’s wrath, but somehow introducing God’s love into the world in a new way.
What Jesus did, God willed; and that what Jesus wanted, God wanted. In other words, God’s love is the motivation, 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 we all 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 does something else here, something of value. He’s an agent, an actor 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, and the disgustingness and hatefulness of sin itself. What Christ’s suffering adds to the suffering of people 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 what they are. They’re a tortured and dead body on the cross.
Why is this good for us?
Death is the punishment for our sins. We’ll all have to pay it, and we do this 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 satisfaction 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. Making satisfaction for us, he wishes us the best possible thing, which is to be in his place of satisfaction, to be Sons, 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 fourth in the mutual ecstasy of the Holy Spirit, the joyful bubbling over of mutual love. So economically (transposed into the created world), the love shared between Father and Son given to us is the giving of his Spirit to those with whom has already identified in love, sinners. And it is this Holy Spirit that lets us be ourselves in our own freedom in that place, the place of satisfaction, that he first occupies in our stead. Which happens especially in baptism, penance, daily dying, final death.
In conclusion, by creating the world as it is, God indirectly willed (or permitted, or didn't stop from arising) the circumstances in which Jesus was tortured to death. But God directly willed that Christ, out of love and obedience, submitted to this opposition, rather than flee or retaliate. God did not punish Jesus on the cross; rather, God willed that the cross would say something new to us.
Christ knew enough in advance to intend to express by the cross his inward detestation and sorrow over every offense against God. Christ knew God, and knew the world God created, but had to learn 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 between God and us something we need: trust in the absolutely radical and free love of God for all that God has made.
Behold, the wood of the cross, on which hung the savior of the world. Come, let us worship!