The doctrine of penal substitution claims that it was good (or required) for God to punish in response to human sin, and that Christ received this punishment in our stead. I argue that this doctrine’s central factual claim—that Christ was punished by God—is mistaken. In order to punish someone, one must at least believe the recipient is responsible for an offense. But God surely did not believe the innocent Christ was responsible for an offense, let alone the offense of human (...) sin. So, the central factual claim is mistaken. In the final section, I show that this critique of penal substitution does not apply to the closely-related Anselmian satisfaction theory. (shrink)

Punishing someone for a crime before they have committed it is widely considered morally abhorrent. But there is little agreement on what exactly is supposed to be wrong with it. In this paper, I critically evaluate several objections to the permissibility of prepunishment, making points along the way about the connections between time, knowledge, desert, deterrence and duty. I conclude that, although the conditions under which it could permissibly be administered are unlikely ever to arise in practice, nevertheless in principle, (...) nothing is wrong with prepunishment after all. (shrink)

Whenever a litigant needs to prove that a certain result was caused in a specific way, what could be more compelling than citing the infinitesimal probability of that result emanating from an alternative natural cause? Contrary to this intuitive position, in the present article, I argue that the contention that a result was due to a certain cause should remain unaffected by statistical evidence of the extremely low probability of an alternative cause. The only scenario in which the low probability (...) of a natural cause would be relevant to the case at hand is if it were contrasted with another piece of statistical evidence: the frequency of the criminal activity among people who are similar to the accused. However, by connecting the use of probabilistic generalisations in legal fact-finding to the issue of free will, I hold that, in Criminal Law, contrasting frequencies in this manner is objectionable—as a matter of principle—regardless of how reliable the statistical analysis is. Consequently, if the low probability of a natural cause is probative only if contrasted with another piece of statistical evidence that is objectionable, then neither piece of evidence should be admitted in criminal trials. (shrink)

David Lewis David Lewis is an American philosopher and one of the last generalists, in the sense that he was one of the last philosophers who contributed to the great majority of sub-fields of the discipline. He made central contributions in metaphysics, the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, and probabilistic and practical … Continue reading David Lewis →.

The author contextualizes the Problem of Evil in Open Theism system, listing its main theses, primarily the logic-of- love-defense (and free-will-defense) connected to Trinitarian speculation. After evaluating the discussion in Analytic Philosophy of Religion, the focus is on the personal mystery of evil, claiming that, because of mystery and vagueness, the Problem of Evil is undecidable. Recalling other schools of thought (Pareyson: ontology of freedom; Moltmann: Dialectical theology; Kenotic theology; Original Sin hermeneutics), the author tries to grasp their common insights. (...) One of them is the evident explanatory failure of theodicies, expressed in the antinomian statements ‘God is not innocent’. The author follows these insights, developing the concept of Eternal Immolation (Bulgakov), arguing that, without a proper understanding of its mystery (what is, and what is not), theistic theodicy could remain compromised. ‘Eternal Immolation’ is considered consequent – or already present – in recent speculations, it stands or falls when we accept that these reveal some unresolved points in Christian doctrine. Hence, ‘Eternal Immolation’ becomes a coordinating-concept, able to bring together their assumptions: several kinds of kenosis, the ontology of freedom with a logic-of-love defense, strongly linked to a libertarian human freedom, and the acknowledgement of the unresolved mystery of evil. (shrink)

According to the Felix Culpa Theodicy, worlds containing atonement and incarnation are of such great value that God is justified in actualizing such a world, despite all of the moral evil that has accompanied it. Focusing upon Alvin Plantinga’s articulation of this theodicy, I argue against FCT on the basis of normative ethical considerations. On the one hand, the deontic status of at least some actions depends upon the consequences of those actions. On the other hand, the existence of atonement (...) depends upon the deontic status of at least one action. Under certain circumstances, this two-way dependence yields a contradiction if atonement has the kind of value conferred upon it by FCT. I conclude by discussing some implications for Molinism and evidential arguments from moral evil. (shrink)

Analytic theology is often seen as an outgrowth of analytic philosophy of religion. It isn’t fully clear, however, whether it differs from analytic philosophy of religion in some important way. Is analytic theology really just a sub-field of analytic philosophy of religion, or can it be distinguished from the latter in virtue of fundamental differences at the level of subject matter or metholodology? These are pressing questions for the burgeoning field of analytic theology. The aim of this article, then, will (...) be to map out several forms that analytic theology might (and in some cases actually does) take before examining the extent to which each can be thought to be distinct from analytic philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In this paper I develop and defend a new theory of the Atonement - the Communal Substitution Theory. According to the Communal Substitution Theory, by dying on the cross Jesus either takes on the punishment for, or offers satisfaction for, the sins of the human community. Individual humans have sinned, but human communities have sinned as well. Jesus dies for the communal sins. As a result, human communities are forgiven and reconciled to God, and through the event of communal forgiveness, (...) individual human sins can be forgiven as well. Moving the focal point of atonement to communal sins has various advantages: well-known objections to satisfaction and penal theories are avoided, and many of the advantages of other theories of the atonement are organically integrated into the communal substitution theory. (shrink)

Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion is an annual volume offering a regular snapshot of state-of-the-art work in this longstanding area of philosophy that has seen an explosive growth of interest over the past half century. Under the guidance of a distinguished editorial board, it publishes exemplary papers in any area of philosophy of religion.

The penal substitution account of the Atonement fails for conceptual reasons: punishment is expressive action, condemning the party punished, and so is not transferable from a guilty to an innocent party. But there is a relative to the penal substitution view, the vicarious punishment account, that is neither conceptually nor morally objectionable. On this view, the guilty person’s punishment consists in the suffering of an innocent to whom he or she bears a special relationship. Sinful humanity is punished through the (...) inglorious death of Jesus Christ; ill-desert is thus requited, and an obstacle to unity with God is overcome. (shrink)

How does Jesus’s death atone for human sin? Traditional answers to this question face a challenge: explain how Jesus’s death plays an important and distinctive role in atoning for human sin without employing problematic philosophical or moral assumptions. I present a new answer that meets the challenge. In the context of the Jewish sacrificial background, the blood of a pure victim can communicate the washing away of sins. Jesus’s death atones because through it his blood, and then his resurrection, can (...) communicate the washing away of sins and thus that God has accepted his work of atonement. (shrink)

Penal substitution in a theological context is the doctrine that God inflicted upon Christ the suffering which we deserved as the punishment for our sins, as a result of which we no longer deserve punishment. Ever since the time of Faustus Socinus, the doctrine has faced formidable, and some would say insuperable, philosophical challenges. Critics of penal substitution frequently assert that God’s punishing Christ in our place would be an injustice on God’s part. For it is an axiom of retributive (...) justice that it is unjust to punish an innocent person. But Christ was an innocent person. Since God is perfectly just, He cannot therefore have punished Christ. Virtually every premiss in this argument is challengeable. Not all penal substitution theories affirm that Christ was punished for our sins. The argument makes unwarranted assumptions about the ontological foundations of moral duty independent of God’s commands. It presupposes without warrant that God is by nature an unqualified negative retributivist. It overlooks the possibility that the prima facie demands of negative retributive justice might be overridden in Christ’s case by weightier moral considerations. And it takes it for granted that Christ was legally innocent, which is denied by the classic doctrine of imputation. It thus fails to show any injustice in God’s punishing Christ in our place. (shrink)

Jonathan Edwards′ New England theology has a great deal more to say that is of contemporary doctrinal interest than it is often credited with, particularly as it relates to the doctrine of atonement. This article explores several anomalous claims made be this 18th and 19th century tradition, and in this way, challenges the recent and growing consensus that Edwards espoused the penal substitution model and his successors a moral government model. I argue that of all that is yet to be (...) considered about their doctrine of atonement, we ought to begin with those claims made about the nature and demands of divine justice. (shrink)

In this paper, we suggest that those asking contemporary moral questions involving the punishment of groups, such as the justice of requiring corporations to make recompense for past wrongs or whether one race ought to make reparation payments to another, would find it fruitful to consider an older response to the question of moral substitution. We argue that Anselm of Canterbury’s theory of substitutionary atonement offers some surprising insights into the conditions under which one moral agent making recompense for another’s (...) wrong is morally permissible. Anselm’s consideration of the problem may yield new insights for contemporary theories addressing moral substitution. (shrink)

The poster boy for my paper is the King's Messenger in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. Recall that since the White Queen lives backwards, her memory works forwards. She pities Alice who can only remember things after they happen. Alice asks which things the Queen remembers best: `Oh, things that happened the week after next,' the Queen replied in a careless tone. `For instance, . . . there's the King's Messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial (...) doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all.' (Chapter V) Is the King's Messenger being treated unjustly? Why not prepunish people for their future crimes? True, it is generally easier to have knowledge about past crimes than future crimes. But is unpredictability the only problem with prepunishment? (shrink)