Why Did Christ Have to Die?
Dr. Craig gives a virtual lecture on the necessity of Christ's atoning death. Special thanks to Apologia Sweden.
I'm grateful for the invitation to speak with you today about the question, “Why did Christ have to die?”
Central to the Gospel is the proclamation that, in Paul's words, “Christ died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3). But many today have wondered: Why did Christ have to die? Couldn't God have just forgiven people's sins and invited them to receive his forgiveness? Isn't a person more magnanimous if he freely forgives without demanding payment in return? Shouldn't an all-loving God be like that? Why this needless, torturous, bloody death on Christ's part? Why not just forgive?
Well, it might surprise you to learn that traditionally Christian theologians have disagreed on the necessity of Christ's incarnation and passion as a means of our salvation, and I'm not talking about modern liberal theologians. I'm talking about some of the greatest classical theologians of the church. For example, the church fathers were divided on this question. Church fathers such as Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, and others held that Christ's incarnation and death were the necessary means of God's atoning for our sins and achieving our redemption. By contrast, St. Augustine said flatly, “they are fools who say that the wisdom of God could not otherwise free men than by taking human nature and being born of a woman, and suffering all that he did at the hands of sinners.”[1] An omnipotent God could have freed man from Satan's power by a snap of his fingers. Augustine never seemed to consider whether Christ's death might have been required in order to satisfy the demands of God's inherent justice.
Medieval theologians similarly disagreed on the necessity of Christ's incarnation and atoning death. On the one hand, St. Anselm of Canterbury argued that the salvation of mankind is about much more than just defeating Satan. It is about making satisfaction to divine justice for man's sins, and that necessitated the incarnation and passion of Christ. St. Anselm asks, “whether it would be proper for God to put away sins by compassion alone, without any payment of the honor taken from him?”[2] Anslelm responds negatively, “Truly such compassion on the part of God is wholly contrary to Divine justice, which allows nothing but punishment as the recompense for sin.”[3] Accordingly, God, out of his great love, sent Christ to give his life as a necessary payment to satisfy the demands of God's justice. By contrast, Thomas Aquinas reverted to the view of church fathers like Augustine that God's sending Christ to die for our sins was not necessary for our salvation but rather was God's contingent choice of the most appropriate means of achieving our salvation. God could have simply waived justice's demands and had good reasons not to.
Similarly, among Protestant theologians of the Reformation era, although Luther and Calvin held that Christ's incarnation and death were necessary preconditions of our salvation, the Dutch theologian Hugo Grotius (like Aquinas) argued that God's choice of Christ's incarnation and passion as the means of our redemption was a contingent, though well-motivated, choice on God's part.
Accordingly, we need to distinguish between necessitarian and non-necessitarian views of Christ's atoning death. Necessitarians hold that Christ's atoning death was a necessary condition of God's forgiving our sins. Without Christ's incarnation and death, God's forgiveness of sins would not have been possible. By contrast, non-necessitarians hold that Christ's death was not a necessary condition of God's forgiveness. God could have chosen simply to forgive our sins without Christ's incarnation and death, but non-necessitarians, like Aquinas and Grotius, emphasized that God had good reasons for his contingent choice of Christ's atoning death as the means of our redemption. For example, God's choosing to redeem us by means of Christ's death on the cross displays as nothing else could both God's hatred of sin and his love of sinners. On the one hand, Christ's paying the terrible penalty for sin that we deserved shows vividly God's wrath upon sin and so alerts sinners to the danger of their remaining in a state of alienation from God. By exacting so high a price of salvation at Christ's hand, God demonstrates the incalculable cost that was paid for our salvation and thus warns the sinner not to ignore the value of the offer of salvation and to persist in his alienated state. On the other hand, Christ's voluntarily embracing suffering and death for us demonstrates God's love of sinners as he substitutes himself for them in bearing the punishment for sin that they deserve. Since Christ is himself God we see in the cross the extent to which God will go to win sinners back to himself. If God were simply to forgive sinners without the satisfaction of divine justice, his offer of forgiveness might take on the appearance of cheap grace that could easily be ignored. Christ's dying for our sins enables God, through self-sacrifice, to convincingly display the depth of his love for and desire for reconciliation with fallen humanity.
There can be no doubt, I think, about the impact of the graphic display of God's wrath and mercy in Christ's passion. The moral influence of Christ's self-sacrificial death on the cross upon mankind has been truly inestimable. Repeatedly represented figuratively in literature and graphically in art, the death of Christ has even more than his teaching, more than his character, made Jesus of Nazareth an arresting and captivating person for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people and has inspired countless people to bear with courage and faith terrible pain and even death. Indeed, it's not at all implausible that only in a world which includes such an atoning death would the optimal number of people come freely to love and know God and so find eternal life. Thus, as Gregory of Nyssa saw, the atoning death of Christ manifests not only God's holiness and love, but also God's wisdom.
In summary then, for non-necessitarians Jesus’ death was not an absolutely necessary condition of our salvation, but God freely chose this means at enormous cost to himself as the most appropriate way of achieving our salvation. In contrast, necessitarians argue that Christ's atoning death was indeed necessary for our salvation.
Absolutely crucial here is the insight that God is not like a private person involved in a personal dispute. Such a private person can magnanimously forgive wrongs done to him without prejudice to the concerns of justice. But God is not like a private person; rather, he is the judge and ruler of the universe responsible for the moral government of the world. Moreover, the Bible portrays God as administering retributive justice toward evildoers. According to a retributive theory of justice, the state is justified in punishing wrongdoers because those who are guilty deserve punishment. In the Bible, divine justice is, in some significant measure, retributive, for God punishes the wicked after death when any possibility of deterrence or reformation has passed. They are punished because it is their just desert. The biblical view is that the wicked deserve punishment. So Paul says, “those who do such things deserve to die” (Romans 1:32). The author of Hebrews asks, “How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God, . . . and outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay.’ And again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’” (Hebrews 10:29-30).
Indeed, it is plausible, I think, that retributive justice belongs essentially to God. It's hard to think of a divine attribute that is more central and prominent in the biblical picture of God than his holiness or justice. Abraham asked, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right” (Genesis 18:25)? And Paul demands, “Is there injustice on God's part? By no means” (Romans 9:14)! It would have been inconceivable to the biblical authors that God might act unjustly. But then God faces what legal theorists call the dilemma of the merciful judge. Although a judge has a certain latitude when it comes to sentencing a convicted criminal, the judge is not free simply to ignore the demands of justice and let the wrongdoer go scot-free for the judge does not act as a private person. If a judge does not give an offender the penalty he deserves then the judge acts unjustly. Thus a judge in his official capacity cannot exercise real mercy. His choice is between being just or being unjust. God in his capacity as judge acts in conformity with the strict demands of justice so that we sinners find ourselves rightly condemned before his bar.
The official remission of punishment can be justified only through a pardon by the executive power in a state. For example, in certain countries the president or the king has the power to pardon criminals convicted by the court. Since God is both ruler and judge, he is, as ruler, in the rather odd position of being able to undo his own verdict as judge, not that he reverses the judge's determination of guilt for as judge God is infallible in his determination of justice. God as ruler does not contradict what he as judge has determined. The guilty verdict stands. But as ruler, God can pardon us so that whereas we were once guilty we are now declared innocent before him. But now God as ruler faces a similar dilemma to the dilemma of the merciful judge – what we might call the dilemma of the merciful executive. If the executive power of a state gives a criminal a pardon in order to rectify some miscarriage of justice then the pardon is not an act of grace given out of mercy but is an expression of justice. But if the pardon is given out of mercy then the executive violates the principles of retributive justice and so acts unjustly. Now, clearly God cannot pardon sinners in order to rectify some miscarriage of justice since his judicial condemnation of sinners is perfectly just. If he pardons, it must be out of mercy, and this is exactly what the Bible affirms. “So it depends, not upon man's will or exertion, but upon God's mercy” (Romans 9:16). But if God pardons sinners out of mercy, the demands of justice are not satisfied. So how can God be perfectly just?
Legal theorists who have written on the problem of executive pardons answered that the interests of justice can be overridden by other more weightier moral considerations. This happens all the time in our justice system. A familiar example is when the state waives the demands of justice by offering a criminal a plea bargain in order to convict other criminals of even worse crimes. These theorists therefore challenge the assumption that, in the words of one legal scholar, “The legitimate exercise of mercy must always be consistent with the demands of justice.” Another legal scholar opines, “The fact that mercy counsels unjust acts on occasion does not imply that it is a vice. It only reflects the unfortunate fact that mercy and justice can conflict.” But that is precisely the problem for the Christian theist. God's justice and mercy are both essential to him and so neither can be compromised. So how is this conflict to be resolved?
We seem to have backed into an argument for the conviction of St. Anselm and the Reformers that the satisfaction of divine justice is a necessary condition of salvation. Our inquiry suggests the following argument in support of the necessitarian perspective.
- Necessarily (Retributive justice is essential to God).
- Necessarily (If retributive justice is essential to God then God justly punishes every sin).
- Necessarily (If God justly punishes every sin then divine justice is satisfied).
- Therefore, necessarily (Divine justice is satisfied).
- Therefore, necessarily (If some human beings are saved, divine justice is satisfied).
Let me say a word about each of the premises.
In support of premise (1), we've seen that the centrality and prominence of divine retributive justice in the biblical scheme supports its being essential to God.
The support for premise (2) lies in the absence of any apparent justification for pardons of sheer mercy on God's part. It is difficult to see what could justify waiving the demands of the retributive justice essential to God's nature.
In premise (3), I say “justly punishes” in order to ensure the truth of 3 since only proportionate punishment of the sins committed will satisfy the demands of retributive justice.
Now, from the three premises, step (4) follows. Divine justice is satisfied so long as no sin goes unpunished. This will be the case whether there are no human beings and hence no sin, or whether there are, in fact, sinners.
Step (5), in turn, follows since unnecessary truth follows from any proposition. It also follows by contra-position that if divine justice is not satisfied then no human beings are saved. Indeed, that it is impossible that any human beings are saved.
If this is right then God's pardoning us for our sins demands the satisfaction of divine justice. This is exactly what the atonement theories of St. Anselm and the Reformers offer. On the Reformer's view, Christ, as our substitute and representative, bears the punishment due for every sin so that the demands of divine retributive justice are fully met. Since the demands of divine justice are thus satisfied, God can in turn offer us a pardon of our sins which we may then either accept or refuse. God's pardon is thus predicated on Christ's satisfying for us the demands of divine retributive justice. On the other hand, God's provision of Christ as our penal substitute is an active expression of God's mercy and grace giving us what we did not deserve. The whole scheme is motivated by and justified by God's grace. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). This atoning arrangement is a gift of God to us, not based on human merit. In this way, God's pardon of us, while consistent with divine justice, is a pardon grounded affirmatively in mercy.
In conclusion, while both non-necessitarian and necessitarian views of the atonement can explain why God sent his Son to die in order to win our salvation, I think that the necessitarian perspective captures more adequately the interplay of divine justice and love.