In a Bible class I attended recently, the discussion centered on Romans 5. Verse 8 is a familiar and often memorized promise about God’s compassion: “But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”
Verse 9, I suspect, is not as well-known and rarely taught to youngsters: “Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.”
Although not surprised by the familiar mention of Jesus’ blood, I was surprised by the reference to God’s wrath.
Deferring a discussion of blood sacrifice until another time, I wish instead to explore God’s wrath. The idea of God as wrathful contrasts drastically from my understanding of God as good, loving and merciful — divine traits I was taught more than seven decades ago when I was a small child being reared in a Christian family.
Robert Sellers
What, then, should I believe about God’s wrath?
The late T.C. Smith, emeritus New Testament professor at Furman University, wrote in the Mercer Dictionary of the Bible: “In the primitive portions of the Old Testament, God is depicted as one who cherished resentment against the wicked and demanded appeasement before his anger was checked.” Yet, beginning with the eighth century prophets and on through the intertestamental period, “the notion of Yahweh as acting on whim and caprice was tempered with love and mercy.”
In the New Testament, Smith sees Paul as the only author who “attempted to clarify the nature of God’s wrath” — which, emphatically, the Apostle did not consider “an emotional quality” but rather the just consequence of wickedness which alienates people from God and places them in danger on the coming “day of wrath.”
Charles H. Talbert, who ended his distinguished career as a scholar at Baylor University, explains in his valuable commentary on Romans that the reference to the wrath of God in Romans 5:9 “is, of course, to the Last Judgment. (But on) the basis of what God has done in and through Christ in the present, Christians can have a hope for their future.”
Like Smith, Talbert understands the wrath of God as a reaction to human sin, citing a related passage in Romans 1:18: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness … of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.”
Both Smith and Talbert present a traditional perspective on the wrath of God. Their explanations for the biblical concept of God’s wrath, especially in Paul’s letter to the Romans, justify divine anger by tying it to God’s judgment of unrepentant sinners.
Sharon Baker
But a more recent examination by a younger and less orthodox scholar than Baptists Smith and Talbert is that of Sharon L. Baker, a professor of theology at Messiah University in Pennsylvania. In two of her books — Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve been Taught about God’s Wrath and Judgment and Executing God: Rethinking Everything You’ve been Taught about Salvation and the Cross — she examines three important topics: Hell, God’s wrath and theories of atonement. She offers critiques of these common Christian concepts.
Here are brief introductions to her thoughts.
Baker’s view of hell
In his review of Razing Hell, Jerry Walls, professor of philosophy trained at Notre Dame University, notes Baker outlines the history of the traditional understanding of hell, beginning with the early church fathers and including Alighieri Dante and Thomas Aquinas from the 13th-century Age of the High Middle Ages and Scholasticism, as well as Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley from the 18th-century Age of the Enlightenment and the Evangelical Revival.
She particularly rejects Edwards, who described “hell’s torrential fires with diabolical flourish.” Baker then explains seven reasons why this customary view of hell is so offensive and problematic:
- It does not solve the problem of evil … but rather makes it worse.
- It is a hopeless view that rules out any prospect for salvation for any who have not accepted Christ in this life.
- The doctrine of eternal hell leaves us with the prospect that God will not be able to abolish all evil, for hell remains as a blight on the world forever.
- The doctrine appears to pit justice against love, and depict God as a punitive father, a sort of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
- The doctrine depicts God as a God of eternal violence, a view that makes it easy to “blame the centuries of war and bloodshed on the Christian concept of God as violent, whose anger destroys nations and punishes the disobedient without mercy.”
- The theory of retributive justice the traditional doctrine of hell assumes is at odds with the biblical picture of restorative justice.
- The notion of eternal punishment for finite temporal sin seems not to fit the crime, and therefore to be unjust.
Rethinking hell, Baker asks what it says about forgiveness and justice. She believes retribution does nothing to change the mind of a punished offender or return the sinner to fellowship with the Creator. Restoration based upon love and forgiveness, however, is more characteristic of the God we see revealed in the person of Jesus.
Baker’s view of God’s wrath
In Executing God, the author discusses what the generally accepted view of divine violence says about God. She writes:
For the most part, we like to think of God as love (1 John 4:8), as compassionate (Psalm 86:15), as patient (2 Peter 3:9), and, as one whose mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23). And most of us know that God calls us to imitate Jesus with the same attitudes and actions (Ephesians 5:1), to love others as God loves us (1 John 4:7), to show mercy (Luke 6:36), to be patient toward those who irritate us (1 Corinthians 13:4-5), and to be at peace with everyone (Romans 12:18). On the other side of the coin, however, many of us like having a (warrior) God, who either fights our battles for us (2 Kings 19:1-37), or who commands us to go and massacre entire communities, (even) women, children and animals included (1 Samuel 15:3).
Despite this stark contrast between the portrait of a loving, patient, merciful and restorative God and a violent, wrathful and retributive God, Baker suggests that “if history serves as an example, it seems that we see God’s violence and use it to justify our own. If the Father of Lights (James 1:17) can flood the entire world to punish humankind and even the animals, or strike Ussah dead for touching the Ark of the Covenant simply to stop it from falling from the cart (2 Samuel 6:6-7), then we feel more justified in acting violently also. “Unfortunately, (then,) we have interpreted the one defining event for the Christian faith, the Cross of Jesus, through the lens of divine violence,” rather than interpreting Jesus’ sacrificial death as the supreme example of selfless love.
Baker’s view of theories of Atonement
Four theories of the atonement, each drawn from metaphorical language and images either found in the New Testament or in the contemporary worlds of the interpreters, have claimed to illuminate the meaning of the Cross for believers across time and place.
Christus Victor or Ransom Theory imagines the redemption that must be paid to rescue sinners from Satan’s domain (Matthew 20:28). While named by Swedish bishop Gustav Aulén in his book in 1930, early church fathers — like Origin of Alexandria, Tertullian and Gregory of Nyssa in the third and fourth centuries — had conceived of a cosmic battle for the souls of humanity between the two forces of good and evil: God and Satan. They believed the devil had stolen humanity from God through the enticement to sin and held us captive in his kingdom of darkness. Accordingly, God sent Jesus to rescue us, surrendering him as the required ransom to free humankind and restore us to the kingdom of light (Colossians 1:13-14).
Satisfaction Theory, put forward by Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury in the late 11th century, rejects the idea that Jesus had to become the ransom to rescue humanity from Satan. Rather, emerging during the Medieval period of European history — when feudal lords lived in castles while poor villagers paid them homage and taxes — the theory of atonement proposed by the Italian monk was based upon the political and economic system of that era. A feudal lord enjoyed dominance over his subjects, who feared retribution should his honor be insulted by egregious or rebellious behavior, in which case considerable tribute had to be paid to appease the lord’s anger. Anselm compared this practice with the debt — the death of Jesus — given to restore the Lord’s honor and save the spiritually guilty vassals and serfs (Romans 3:21-26).
Moral Example Theory of Peter Abelard (1079-1142) responds to the Satisfaction Theory of Anselm by proposing an understanding of atonement more in keeping with the courtly love of Middle Ages Europe. In this explanation, no angry, affronted deity needs to be appeased. Jesus did not die to persuade God not to punish humans. He did not suffer ignominy and torture to change God’s mind, but rather to change our minds. Jesus lived, died and rose again to show us the magnificent depth and breadth of God’s love and to provide an example of who God is and who we must become as imitators of Jesus Christ (John 13:15).
Penal Substitution Theory of the 16th-century Reformer John Calvin departs from the earlier concepts of paying a debt, appeasing a lord or even providing an example by providing a metaphor drawn from the nation states and laws in which judicial power had been transferred from the community to the state. Calvin called God “a stern judge” and “a strict avenger of sin.” Influenced by the “penal” system of judgment and punishment from his own time, he believed the Cross showed that Jesus took the punishment for us (Romans 6:23). Humans can escape God’s wrath because of Jesus’ death on our behalf (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10). This explanation of the atonement has become the dominant theory, such that “penal substitution language haunts our hymns, liturgy, sermons and even our everyday conversations with Christian friends.”
Baker sees problems with each of these variations of the atonement theory, but her greatest criticism is that they acknowledge the radical inconsistency between a loving, forgiving and merciful God and a God who requires a bloody death — even the death of the innocent, sinless Jesus — in order to offer forgiveness.
For “isn’t God powerful enough to forgive sin without an unjust execution? Isn’t God good enough to desire to use divine power to save us without violence?”
What to believe then?
Two incidents in the Gospels demonstrate, indeed, that God is both powerful and good enough to forgive sin without violence and an unjust execution.
The story of the paralyzed man lowered through the roof of a house in Capernaum (Mark 2:1-12) is particularly relevant. With no indication of repentance or request for spiritual restoration from the injured man on the stretcher, Jesus pronounced his sins forgiven and his paralysis healed. Perhaps with irony in his voice, the evangelist relates that some teachers of the law who witnessed this miracle accused Jesus of blasphemy, because “God alone” can forgive sins.
Over the centuries since that encounter in Galilee, millions of Christ followers have believed Jesus was justified in offering forgiveness, for he is indeed divine. This, certainly, was a representative time when the God-in-human-flesh was powerful enough to forgive sin without an unjust execution.
Another incident was when Jesus was tested by Pharisees and religious lawyers who brought to him a woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). She was thrown at the rabbi’s feet by the pious but angry men, who reminded Jesus the Mosaic Law specified a stoning death as punishment.
The teacher, however, shamed the woman’s accusers by reminding them of their own sins. Although she had shown no sign of remorse, nor begged for forgiveness, the woman was loved and respected by Jesus, who assured her he did not condemn her and told her to depart, saved from punishment and encouraged no longer to sin.
This, also, was an archetypal occasion when the one who reveals God to us was good enough to save the sinner without violence.
Each of these atonement theories relies upon the death of Jesus: To ransom captured humanity from the grasp of Satan; to placate God’s offended sense of purity because of human disobedience and sin; to demonstrate the fullness of divine love in the greatest degree of personal sacrifice; or to take the punishment that is rightfully ours to suffer.
All four of these strategies are related, in one way or another, to divine wrath. But how much clearer is the portrait of the loving, forgiving and merciful almighty when we look at the “human face of God” we see in Jesus.
In my opinion, the idea of an eternal hell or of divine forgiveness dependent upon the spilling of blood is inconsistent with the God addressed in Psalm 86:15: “But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” Thus, I believe we must be aware there are serious contradictions between the mercy of Christ and the wrath of God.
Rob Sellers is professor of theology and missions emeritus at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Seminary in Abilene, Texas. He is a past chair of the board of the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago. He and his wife, Janie, served a quarter century as missionary teachers in Indonesia. They have two children and five grandchildren.