The Day the Revolution Began, by N.T. Wright. A Closer Look at Penal Substitutionary Atonement

I finally got around to reading Tom Wright’s The Day the Revolution Began. N.T. Wright is perhaps the most well known New Testament scholar living on the planet, having written over 80 books, ranging from spiritually-encouraging popular level books aimed at “soccer moms” and “weekend grill masters,” to commentaries, to other serious academic works of theology.

As noted in my previous review of Wright’s work, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, N.T. Wright is a provocative writer who makes you think. Wright is one of those few scholars whose writings engage in conversations across a wide spectrum of theological perspectives, from conservative evangelical to progressive and critical voices. Whether you like Wright or not, this former Anglican bishop might be having more reach as a Christian intellectual author than any other  English writer over the last one hundred years, aside from C.S. Lewis. As a result, Wright has found himself in controversy because of his various views, from different corners of the reading public. As some would say, he is either N.T. Wright or N.T. “Wrong.”

The Day the Revolution Began provides a good example. Not too long after Wright published his book ten years ago (2016), evangelical Christian philosopher William Lane Craig came out with an alarming review, claiming that Wright had backed off from the classic evangelical formulation of the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. I even wrote a Veracity blog post in 2018 about the controversy.

Was William Lane Craig right about N.T. Wright becoming N.T. “Wrong?” So, I took up reading The Day the Revolution Began: : Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion to find out.

The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion, by N.T. Wright, explores the meaning of Christ’s death.

The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’ Crucifixion

I had not read the book back in 2018, so I did not have much to say back then, other than thinking that I needed to put Wright’s book on my “to-be-read” list.  This past summer it finally percolated up to the top of my list, as I have been doing a good bit of research on the topic of the death of Christ, and its meaning for people today. I am glad I finally dove into The Day the Revolution Began, as on the whole, Wright is an engaging writer and a profoundly helpful theologian, despite a few misgivings along the way. As with any book by any author, there are plusses and minuses. ^[1]

If one could try to boil down Wright’s overarching thesis to one idea, it would be that for too long, too many Christians have had a deficient view of the afterlife, as the goal of salvation. Is Christianity really  about “going to heaven when you die?”  For Wright, the popular mindset is that Christian salvation is about having some kind of conversion experience that takes us out of this world, into a more “spiritual” realm. Unwittingly, too many Christians have snuck in the ancient heresy of “Gnosticism” into their theology, envisioning salvation as an escape from the material world God has created. ^[2]

In response to this, Wright argues that the church needs to recover this idea of having hope for the “new heavens” and the “new earth.” Instead of expressing a desire for some disembodied existence, the New Testament teaches of the Christian hope in having a very real and concrete, future bodily existence, free from the corruptive penalty, power, and presence of sin.

What does all mean for the Christian who wants to know what the afterlife looks like for a believer?  Wright explains it as a three-stage process: bodily death, intermediate state, and bodily resurrection.

A lot of Christians get a misleading picture about what Jesus tells his disciples in John 14:1-7, that in his Father’s house are “many rooms,” where Jesus is going to prepare a place for them. In recent centuries, many have envisioned permanent heavenly mansions, based on the Latin Vulgate’s translation of verse 2, mansiones, which was carried over into the 1611 King James Version of the Bible.

But Wright takes a close look at the Greek word mone, often translated as “room”, “dwelling place” or, traditionally, “mansion”. Wright argues that in the ancient world the word commonly referred not to a permanent home, but to somewhere you stopped and rested during a journey. In other words, the idea of “going to heaven when you die,” in common understanding, is actually more like a rest-stop, or a brief night’s stay, on the way towards the final destination. ^[3]

Jesus experienced a bodily resurrection, and the New Testament promises that those who believe in Jesus will also share in that bodily resurrection, as that final destination. Whatever one thinks about “heaven” immediately after bodily death, this intermediate state is more like a temporary rest-stop on the way to that final destination. You can forget about the Hollywood-inspired picture of those with God in the afterlife wearing wings, dressed in white, floating up on the clouds, and playing harps, where everyone is bored. Instead, the New Testament hope is about heaven coming to earth. One can think of the Lord’s Prayer to give us a better picture of that hope: “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

This makes me think of what Joshua Ryan Butler wrote about in The Skeletons in God’s Closet, where Butler convincingly argues that the New Testament is not concerned about pairing together heaven and hell as polar opposites.  Rather, the New Testament repeatedly shows that heaven and earth are out of joint with one another, a condition which gives a more accurate picture of what “hell” is. God’s salvation mission to rescue humanity is more about bringing about the reconciliation of heaven and earth.

Alongside that future hope which Wright writes about is the calling the God gives believers to live out, bit by bit, that hope in the here and now, as God is about introducing his Kingdom into this world to transform it more towards what that  “new heavens” and “new earth” will look like. The “now” and “not-yet” reality of the Christian hope is a fully material existence, with the end goal of having sin and the corruption it causes completely wiped out. As Wright put it, when Christ died and then rose again, it was the “Day the Revolution Began,” beginning a new era with a new story about humanity and reality.

Part of that story is all about rethinking how we as believers should be thinking about the atoning work of Christ. Why would the violent death of a Palestinian Jewish carpenter 2,000 years ago at the hands of the Roman Empire government have much meaning for someone living today in the 21st century? Answering that question is the agenda which Wright has for The Day the Revolution Began.

N.T. Wright and his array of bookshelves, loose papers, and tilted lampshades. My wife would not approve of Wright’s untidy library.

The Meaning of the Death of Christ in Church History

Wright lays down the groundwork by rehearsing some of the history as to how Christians have thought about the meaning of the death of Christ, particularly when Protestant Reformation came along in the 16th century. Key Protestant Reformers, like Martin Luther and John Calvin, emphasized this notion of penal substitutionary atonement. In this doctrine, which the Reformers sought to ground in the teaching of the Bible, Jesus through his death takes away the penalty of sin from human individuals, dying a substitutionary death so that we might be reconciled to God.

The historical context for this focus on penal substitutionary atonement, in articulating the meaning of the death of Christ, was the spiritual anxiety experienced by millions of Western Europeans at the end of the medieval era in the 16th century.  Thomas Cranmer, a Reformer and the author of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, sought to answer this anxiety with a prayer to be uttered in weekly worship services all throughout mid-16th century England :

Almighty God, who of thy tender mercy toward mankind didst give thy Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who made there, by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.

For Cranmer, the spiritual comfort a Christian can have is grounded in both the love of God and the death of Jesus (Wright, Kindle location 562). All of the pieces that make up the concept of penal substitutionary atonement are there: the tender mercy of God, the giving of Jesus the Son to humankind, the death of the Son on the cross which makes payment for our sins, Jesus as the “full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice“, and the satisfaction for sins of all of humanity.  Cranmer’s prayer does not go farther than that to connect all of these ideas together. But it was a response to the spiritual anxiety felt by many when certain teachings developed over centuries and promulgated by the bishop of Rome across Western Europe sought to bind the conscience of everyday Christians.

As an Augustinian monk with a deeply troubled conscience, Martin Luther was bothered by the concept of purgatory, and particularly the sale of indulgences, which fueled the propagation of the medieval purgatory system. The medieval church in the West taught that very few would be declared as “saints,” going on directly to experience heavenly bliss. Instead, the vast majority of Christians would need to experience a purging of any remaining sin, after they die.

This purgatory experience could be shortened or lessened by indulgences offered by the medieval church. But those indulgences would typically be obtained by monetary gifts from those who have not yet died, on behalf of those who had already died, as the latter suffered through the fires of purgation. Martin Luther was incensed by this whole theology, viewing this sale of indulgences as nothing but a money grab, stealing the wealth of the people and placing that in the hands of a corrupt church institution.

Roman Catholic theology has since Vatican II overhauled the doctrine of purgatory, and the indulgences which go along with it. Today, purgatory and the indulgences which go along with it is less about “reducing one’s time in purgatory” and is more about healing and spiritual purification.

But the basic framework of the purgatory system in the 16th century, which had left Luther depressed and anxiety ridden, still raises the kind of questions which haunted Luther centuries ago: Have I adequately dealt with sin in my life so that God would approve of me? What if I missed something so serious that it might separate me from God for all eternity? How long would I need to suffer in the intermediate state to make up for less serious sins before I could finally enter God’s heaven?

The Meaning of the Death of Christ During the Reformation

It was Luther’s  careful reading of the Book of Romans that finally set him free and gave him joy.  For in purgatory, it was as though the management of sin in one’s life was a never ending endeavor, carried on even after death into the intermediate state, where sin and its consequences were in continual need of maintenance.

In contrast, the death of Christ on the cross was the finished work of Christ.  Now there was no more need of any additional payment to try to make up for sins, as the sale of indulgences sought to do. Because of the punishment Jesus suffered in our place on the cross, according to the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, where Jesus died in our place, there was no more need to suffer any more punishment, even in the intermediate state for our sins.

According to Romans 6:7, bodily death itself brings about the immediate end to the process of sanctification, “where death pays all debts” (Wright, Kindle location 758). At the point of bodily death, the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit in the believer has put to “death the deeds of the body” (Romans 8:13 ; Wright, Kindle location 758).  The wrath of God was “quenched by God’s love through the death of Jesus” (Wright, Kindle location 783).

The Reformers also pushed back on the concept of the sacrifice in the medieval Mass, whereby it was thought that the sacrifice of Jesus was re-enacted every time the Mass was celebrated. In contrast, the Reformers appealed to Romans 6:10, to say that when Jesus died, he died to sin once for all. There is now no more need to somehow re-crucify Jesus over and over again (Wright, Kindle location 809).

One might be tempted to read Colossians 1:24 to say that our experience of divine punishment is not yet over. In that difficult text, Paul is describing his own sufferings as “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.” Yet, when Jesus says “it is finished” while hanging on a cross, as John records the last words of Christ in his Gospel, the Reformers conclude that Jesus really meant that. It is done and over! Freedom at last!

However, Wright observes that some within that Reformation tradition have taken this idea of penal substitution in wrong directions. Some evangelical Gospel presentations leave us thinking that because Jesus died in our place, taking the penalty of sin away from us, that this must be true because “someone has to die” as a demonstration of God’s retributive justice. In this case, the victim of this divine retribution turned out to be Jesus, the very Son of God (Wright, Kindle location 962).

Wright notes a level of discomfort here. For if “someone has to die,” implying that God had to kill somebody, why would anyone think this is really “good news?”  For if this is really what “God’s wrath” is all about; that is, that God has some kind of need to punish someone, what kind of God is this?

Someone Must Die?? : Evangelistic Presentations That Can Go Sideways

Wright makes a good point here: I recall one evangelistic talk I heard years ago when I was involved in ministry to lost or otherwise disinterested high school kids. The topic was the cross of Christ. The speaker talked about God the Father having a loaded gun, and that because of human sin, God the Father had to shoot someone in order to demonstrate his justice. A wrong was done and that wrong needed to be punished.  The speaker concluded: In the trajectory path of the loaded gun Jesus stepped in, persuading God the Father to shoot God’s one and only Son, instead of us. We who believe in Jesus are saved from that bullet, because Jesus took the bullet for us.

A lot of high school kids heard that message that night and their lives were changed. I had heard a number of gospel presentations over the years, but this time something in the back of my mind still left me uneasy. Something about it did not seem right, but I was not able to put my finger on it as to why. It was not until the next day when someone else who heard that gospel presentation walked away with the same sense of uneasiness, and he told me about it in a way that I had not carefully thought about before.

This is what my friend said: For if God is truly sovereign, why cannot God simply forgive someone without some supposed legal or existential requirement hanging over God to kill someone? Does God the Father somehow require “his pound of flesh,” as a lot of critics of Christianity are sometimes led to believe?^[4]

Charles Grandison Finney, the piercing 19th century famed evangelist, who pioneered what would be come the modern “altar call.”  Finney understood the meaning of Christ’s death along the lines of Hugo Grotius’ governmental theory of atonement, a popular preaching message which dominated during the Second Great Awakening in early 19th century America.

Attempts to Revise the Reformation Understanding of the Death of Christ

The 17th century Dutch scholar, Hugo Grotius, sought to resolve this dilemma with his governmental theory of atonement. According to Hugo Grotius, God was never bound by some kind of superior law, to which he had to submit. Instead, God set up the whole atoning work of Christ as simply a demonstration that God is indeed a God of justice. The death of Christ serves to display God as the great moral governor of the universe to the audience of humanity.

God was never bound to kill anyone for the sake of justice. God was perfectly sovereign and could do anything God wants. For if God was not perfectly sovereign, even over justice, God would no longer be God. However, for Grotius, it was important for us as humans to see that God is a just God, and so the death of Christ serves that purpose of displaying God’s character of justice.

In contrast to a peculiar 16th century view of penal substitution, which sees God as a judge bound by certain strict rules of retributive justice, Grotius’ governmental theory sees God as above any and all law, and therefore God can relax the rules of divine justice as God pleases. Yet as a good governor, God can not allow human creatures to sin without impunity, for if God were to do so that would encourage humans to continue in their sin. In the case of Christ’s death, Jesus dies as a kind of token punishment, not a real one as though God needed to punish anyone. While God freely forgives sinners with no strings attached, God nevertheless approves of Christ’s demonstration as sufficient in showing that God upholds the divine law.

Solutions like Hugo Grotius’ governmental theory of atonement became popular with the preaching of Charles Finney, during the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century America, with its camp meetings, revivals, and the “anxious bench,” the forerunner to modern “altar calls.”  In Finney’s mind, this appropriation of Grotius’ theory helped to uphold God’s ultimate sovereignty with a balancing act between God’s justice and God’s love for humanity.

Roughly at the same time in 19th century Scotland, another response to rather crude views of penal substitution came from the pen of John McLeod Campbell, a pastor who was dismissed from his post due to charges of heresy. John McLeod Campbell objected to certain penal understandings of the atonement, which emphasized the Son enduring punishment for the sins of humanity at the hands of the Father. Instead, Campbell subscribed to the idea that Jesus offered the perfect vicarious response to the Father on behalf of humanity, a concept he called “vicarious repentance.”

Christ took upon himself humanity’s sin, without actually sinning himself. Yet Christ offers to the Father a perfect confession, sorrow for sin, repentance, and loving obedience, a series of actions which sinful humanity could never adequately perform. What Jesus does here is substitutionary, as Christ responds to the penalty of sin on our behalf. Humanity ought to have performed these acts, but due to the enslaving power of sin, humanity could not do so. Therefore, Christ does what he does for our benefit in our place. Interestingly, C.S. Lewis adopts a variation of Campbell’s “perfect penitence” in his classic work, Mere Christianity. ^[5]

C.S. Lewis, the Oxford don who gave us his famous set of BBC radio addresses, Mere Christianity, adopted the “perfect penitence” view of the meaning of Christ’s death, articulated by the 19th century Scottish Presbyterian pastor/theologian John McLeod Campbell, who was dismissed from his teaching post at his church for disagreeing with the Westminster Standards, according to a controversial heresy trial in the Church of Scotland.

Wright’s Thesis Revising the Reformation View of the Death of Christ

But in N.T. Wright’s estimation, neither the tendency towards distorted versions of penal substitutionary atonement, nor reactionary responses to it, like Hugo Grotius’ governmental theory, or Campbell’s vicarious repentance, get at the root of the problem. Instead, Wright encourages readers to look back to the thinking of the early church and the world of Second Temple Judaism which predates the whole obsession over God’s wrath which overtook Western medieval thought. For N.T. Wright, the problem with all too common ways of thinking about the atonement, all of which have the jolt of the Reformation back in their rear view mirror, is that they build that theology with the wrong narrative to frame it.

Wright’s contention is that while all of that theology combatting “works righteousness,” the great foe of Martin Luther, was all well and good, it simply missed the main points which the New Testament is trying to convey.  In one of his chapters on Paul’s letter to the Romans, Wright uses this analogy to get the idea across:

“[It is as] though a child, having longed to visit the zoo in order to see the elephants, were to arrive on a day when the elephant house was closed for repair and, desperate to avoid disappointment, somehow convinced herself that the rhinoceroses was a strange kind of elephant after all. Conversely, ideas that the letter is in fact expounding, but that have no place in the dogmatic framework are simply ignored. A rhinoceros is worth looking at for its own sake” (Wright, Kindle location 4543).

In the early church, there was greater emphasis on the idea of Christus Victor, that through the death of Christ and his subsequent resurrection, Jesus had victory over sin, death, and the very powers of evil, including the devil himself.  Colossians 2:15 summarizes this concept well, in reference to the death of Christ:

“[Jesus Christ] disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him” (ESV).

For Wright, those earliest Christians better understood the historical context for learning the meaning of Christ’s death. First, Roman crucifixion was one of the most painful and humiliating ways to inflict punishment upon someone. In Christianity, the early church turned the meaning of the crucifixion on its head, that which was meant to humiliate became the means by which Jesus was glorified.

To borrow from Wright’s own analogy, the theme of Christus Victor is like the rhinoceros in the zoo.  An over-emphasis on penal substitution as the only explanation of Christ’s death is like the elephant house in the zoo, which was closed for repair. Too often, readers of the New Testament have the elephant of penal substitution in mind when they encounter a rhinoceros like “Christus Victor” in the text of Scripture.

Then there is the language of the Jewish sacrificial system and practices like Passover, which the earliest Christians inherited from the Old Testament.  The New Testament gave the early church all of these themes. Theologians from that era of the early church worked to explain what this all meant.

Yet there was no dogmatic conclusion which settled the debate over the meaning of the Jesus’ crucifixion during the early church era. None of great creeds during the era of the early church articulated any particular theory as to why and how Jesus’ death “took away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). To say that “Jesus died for our sins” seemed sufficient enough, without diving into the mechanics of how all of that worked.

Wright’s Answer to the Post-Reformation “Works Contract”

Unfortunately, along the way, certain elements of thinking over the centuries got the church off track, in Wright’s view, obscuring what the earliest Christians knew about the cross. There was a tendency in certain forms of Puritan thinking to emphasize a “covenant of works,” what Wright calls a “works contract.”  Instead of a “works contract,” the Bible for Wright speaks about a sense of vocation, a calling for genuine humans to take upon the task of “image-bearing,” “reflecting the Creator’s wise stewardship into the world and reflecting the praises of all creation back to its maker” (Wright, Kindle location 1424). Creation itself “is understood as a kind of Temple, a heaven-and-earth duality, where humans function as the ‘image-bearers’ in the cosmic Temple, part of earth yet reflecting the life and love of heaven.” These “image-bearers” are to be a “royal priesthood,” a “kingdom of priests”  (Wright, Kindle location 1424-1429).

While some have thought that “sin” was what preoccupied Paul in the Book of Romans, this is not Paul’s focus, according to Wright. Rather, the fundamental human problem is “idolatry.”  Yes, of course, there is a “sin” problem, but at the root of the “sin” problem is “idolatry” (Wright, Kindle location 1579). Wright is therefore inclined to view Christian “faith” in terms of being loyal to the covenant which the God of the Bible has instituted. Israel’s problem, which has become everyone’s problem, is that Israel had not been faithful in worshipping Yahweh, and had been turning aside to follow other gods.

God’s purposes in terms of what our human vocation is about building God’s family (Wright, Kindle location 1924ff) and announcing God’s covenant that God is about the forgiveness of sins (Wright, Kindle location 2017ff). Along with that, God is about bringing together the theme of the Exodus, with its emphasis of freedom from slavery, and the theme of the return from the Babylonian exile, with its emphasis on the forgiveness of sins (Wright, chapter 7).

The theme of the Suffering Servant, centered around the crucial passage in Isaiah 53, became an important bridge within the world of Second Temple Judaism, linking themes of the Exodus and the return from the Babylonian exile together.  Wright makes a convincing case for how the Exodus, with its Passover sacrificial ritual;  the return from the Babylonian exile, with its hope for restoration, as echoed in the Book of Daniel; and interestingly, the pagan notion of dying a “noble death” on behalf of others, were themes taken up by Jews during the Maccabean period, particularly through the various Books of the Maccabees found in the “Apocrypha”. However, Wright is quick to point out one big difference between the pagan “noble death” idea and what Jewish writers during the Maccabean period had in mind: While the Greco-Romans typically had a concept of appeasing an angry deity in view, the Jews did not.

Even more dramatically, all of these themes are drawn together in such a way as to show that not only will Israel find restoration and the forgiveness of sins, the other peoples of the world will find that as well. It is this blending together of these various themes which frame the proper narrative for how to understand the New Testament theology explaining the meaning of the death of Christ, according to Wright.

Jesus in the Lamb of God, who took away the sins of the world, by his death as a “Suffering Servant.”  What does the New Testament have to say about this? N.T. Wright has some definite ideas.

Diving Into New Testament Texts About the Meaning of Christ’s Death

The second half of the book dives more deeply into how particular texts build a frame for the narrative, which helps us to develop a more robust view of what the death of Jesus on the cross really means. Wright contends that the story of Passover is central to how Jesus sought to explain the meaning of his death, when he gathered the disciples together for the Last Supper. It is through the narrative of the Passover by which Jesus frames the concept of atonement which differs from the pagan way of thinking about atonement (Wright,  Kindle location 3248).

Though all four Gospels and Paul in 1 Corinthians 11 discuss the Lord’s Supper, each account offers slightly different perspectives which complement the others. For example, with one notable exception, which scholars debate, Luke never gives any explicit reasoning for why Christ died, either in his Gospel or in Acts, other than to suggest that the death of Christ was a wrongful death. This has led various scholars to say that Luke has no theology of atonement, an argument which Wright rejects.  Instead, Wright contends that Luke weaves his understanding of the death of Christ into his larger narrative without resorting to explicit statements. ^[6]

When the thief on the cross asks Jesus to remember him when Christ comes into his Kingdom, Jesus responds with the hope of entering “paradise” (Luke 23:43). In typical Wright fashion, he reminds the reader that this “paradise” is not about “going to heaven when you die.” Instead, Jesus’ statement reiterates the theme found throughout Luke and Acts, that “the ultimate destination of God’s people is the resurrection” (Wright, Kindle location 3720). ^[7]

In Mark 10:35-45, there is a debate instigated by James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who want to know who will sit by Jesus’ right hand, and which to his left, suggesting that the two disciples were jockeying for position. Jesus deflates the ambitions of the two by saying that the two are clueless, and do not understand the vocation of suffering they must undergo as disciples of his. Instead, those two positions are granted to others (Mark 10:40). For Wright, those two others are the thieves on either side of Jesus’ cross, who undergo suffering (Wright, Kindle location 3839).  ^[8]

This provides the context for Jesus saying that he gives his life as a “ransom for many.”  The self-giving love of Jesus is what God uses to overcome the powers of darkness, enabling the “forgiveness of sins” in the process. It is this act of self-giving love which serves as an invitation for believers to share in that same kind of vocation of self-giving love for others (Wright, Kindle location 3852, 3888).^[9]

The second half of The Day the Revolution Began includes extended exegesis of certain key New Testament texts, mainly found in the letters of Paul. Wright finds the theme of the Passover and the Exodus, as expressing God’s victory over the powers of sin and death, woven throughout Paul’s writings. Among other places, Wright looks to the Corinthian correspondence (Wright, Kindle location 4207) and Philippians (Wright, Kindle location 4349), and two full chapters on the Book of Romans.

The “deep-dive” chapters on Romans really deserve a separate blog post to consider, which I will save for another time. What follows below are some critical reflections regarding Wright’s book.

N.T. Wright: Some Love Him…. Some Not So Much

What I have given here is only a rough and partial outline of The Day the Revolution Began. There are a lot of plusses in Wright’s book. I always get a lot from reading N.T. Wright, and The Day the Revolution Began is no exception. That being said, there are those who normally would like Wright’s work, but who come across as somewhat disappointed with this book. Some even really hate it. Some have preferred taking a more cautious approach to Wright’s topic. ^[10]

A good bit of the ‘N.T. Wright is N.T. “Wrong”‘ reaction is a bit over the top, but his critics do have some valid points to make. As is often said about N.T. Wright, he is often right in what he affirms, but often wrong in what he denies. Or at best, one could say that sometimes N.T. Wright sounds a bit fuzzy when it comes to certain fundamental Protestant doctrines. At the very least, Wright at times frames his prose in such a way as to promote some false dichotomies.  What makes this all the more ironic in The Day the Revolution Began is that in a book which aims to critique certain caricatures of penal substitutionary atonement, Wright sometimes makes certain caricatures of his own in relating to positions which he opposes.

For example, Wright has a negative take regarding the popular worship song “In Christ Alone,” written by Stuart Townend and Keith Getty.  This is probably one of the most popular worship songs sung in evangelical churches today. I have probably sung it hundreds of times over the past 25 years. The second verse of the song goes like this: ^[11]

In Christ alone who took on flesh;
fullness of God in helpless babe.
This gift of love and righteousness
scorned by the ones He came to save;
’til on that cross as Jesus died
the wrath of God was satisfied;
for ev’ry sin on Him was laid;
here in the death of Christ I live.

Wright is not a fan of the second to the last line: “the wrath of God was satisfied.” In his interpretation of this line, Wright says: “This makes it sound like hunger that is satisfied by a good meal” (Wright, Kindle location 900). Wright continues his critique summarizing what he finds to be the message of the song:

a.    All humans sinned, causing God to be angry and to want to kill them, to burn them forever in “hell.”
b.    Jesus somehow got in the way and took the punishment instead (it helped, it seems, that he was innocent—oh, and that he was God’s own son too).
c.    We are in the clear after all, heading for “heaven” instead (provided, of course, we believe it).

While I can not say for sure exactly what Townend and Getty had in mind for “the wrath of God was satisfied,” Wright’s characterization of the message of “In Christ Alone” is not the most generous way to interpret that song.  While one could take the offensive line in the crudest of ways possible, there are other ways to think about it. To say that “the wrath of God was satisfied” could easily be interpreted as saying that what Jesus did brings about the reconciliation of fallen humanity to God. God is therefore “satisfied” with the eventual outcome of Christ’s death, without specifying all of the details in this one short line of the song. What could be more pleasing to God than for God to save the ones he created?

The “wrath of God” might be best understood as the final judgment against rebellious humanity, but that the death of Christ allows believers in the Messiah to have that coming wrath of God averted from them, on that final day of reckoning. 1 Thessalonians 1:10 is quite explicit about this: it is Jesus who “delivers us from the wrath to come.”

One need not conclude from “In Christ Alone” that God the Father was somehow satisfied with “killing Jesus,” at the moment of Christ’s death, as though God the Father is some kind of angry deity who could only be appeased by seeing someone die. In other words, the ambiguity of the lyric does not require the worshipper to take in the negative meaning which Wright ascribes to it.

What is the meaning of the crucifixion of Jesus?  N.T. Wright offers his analysis in The Day the Revolution Began

Does Wright Obfuscate What He Means?

Part of the fuzziness of Wright’s stand on certain fundamental doctrines is due to his idiosyncratic readings of certain texts. Wright’s belief that the death of Christ carries with it a sense of vocation for believers, a calling to take up our own cross for the sake of advancing the Kingdom is indeed right and extremely helpful. His way of tying Christian vocation to the cross is something that is not always heard from Christian pulpits. But when Wright uses that sense of vocation to overthrow a classic reading of 2 Corinthians 5:21, my ears perk up with puzzled curiosity. Classically, 2 Corinthians 5:21 emphasizes the “great exchange” whereby the Son who had no sin, took upon himself to be a sin offering on behalf of sinful humanity, so that we as rebellious yet forgiven humans can become the righteousness of God.

Wright, on the other hand, believes that this verse is more about Paul’s self-understanding of his own vocation as an apostle, a vocation he shared with his colleagues. For Wright, 2 Corinthians 5:21 is saying that because Paul and his colleagues were motivated by the cross of Christ to live out their specific vocation, we as believers today should live out our own vocation today in service of the crucified and risen Christ.  Just as Christ suffered death on the cross, so it would be expected that Paul and his preaching colleagues would suffer as well, as servants of God’s message of reconciliation living out their vocation. This is all very much a necessary lesson for believers, but we can get this sense of calling from other texts as well.  For if we follow Wright’s idiosyncratic and more narrow reading of 2 Corinthians 5:21, then we lose one of the primary texts which offers comfort for those looking to Christ for their salvation from sin.^[12]

One other curiosity I noted was Wright’s translation of Colossians 2:14, “He [God] blotted out the handwriting that was against us, opposing us with its legal demands. He took it right out of the way, by nailing it to the cross.”  This is in contrast with something like the ESV rendering of the same: “by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.”  Wright never explains why he eliminates the language about “debt” which most other translations have (Wright, Kindle locations, 4413, 4436). ^[13]

N.T. Wright on Penal Substitutionary Atonement:  “PSA-Lite”

What is so ironic about the framing of Wright’s argument in The Day the Revolution Began is that while he piles on against certain (mis)understandings of penal substitution, in the end Wright actually comes out affirming his own kind of affirmation of penal substitutionary atonement; or “PSA,” for those who like abbreviations. Some call Wright’s view “PSA-Lite.”

However, Wright’s conclusion in The Day the Revolution Began is not as clearly explicit as some might like. At least, Wright’s affirmation of penal substitutionary atonement is not as direct as it could have been.  While Wright does use the language of “substitution” at certain points (Wright, Kindle location 3652ff), the “penal” aspect is somewhat obscure in places. ^[14]

Rather, Wright’s conclusion is more implied by his rhetoric, which may explain the apprehension experienced by some readers of the book. Apparently, Wright must have felt some of the sting of reviewers, like William Lane Craig, who concluded that Wright had backed away from affirming penal substitutionary atonement, prompting Wright to later clarify his beliefs. I am not the only reviewer of Wright’s book to notice this tendency in Wright’s writings.   ^[15]

In 2023, Wright released another book, Into the Heart of Romans, which I have only just started to read. This is where Wright affirms quite directly  that Paul does teach a kind of penal substitutionary atonement (Wright, Into the Heart of Romans, pp. 56-60).  Therefore, contrary to what William Lane Craig feared, it can be stated now that N. T. Wright does indeed affirm at least some version of penal substitutionary atonement. To miss this is to fail to read N. T. Wright accurately, though it may take a re-read in places to pick up on this.

So what does N.T. Wright believe about penal substitutionary atonement? Wright’s “go-to” passage on penal substitution is Romans 8:1-4, whereby Paul states that God condemns sin in the flesh, through the incarnate work and crucifixion of Jesus, language which is thoroughly “penal” (verse 3).  This passage as well carries with it a sense of “substitution,” whereby Christ does something for us,  accomplishing  that which we could not do for ourselves. Yet Wright points out that God is not condemning Jesus, but rather that God is condemning sin.  Specifically, God condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus. In the work on the cross, God is taking out his wrath on sin through Christ’s full obedience in fulfilling his divine vocation by ultimately dying for the sake of others. ^[16]

Nevertheless, even in The Day the Revolution Began itself, Wright is careful to refute the arguments of those who find the Christian view of Jesus’ atoning work to be appalling. One passage sticks out for me:

“[The] suggestion that “sin” does not make God angry (a frequent idea in modern thought as a reaction against the caricatures of an ill-tempered deity) needs to be treated with disdain. When God looks at sin, what he sees is what a violin maker would see if the player were to use his lovely creation as a tennis racquet.”

In other words, to think that N.T. Wright is somehow coming across as being “soft on sin,” as some of his critics have suggested, is to read the book incorrectly. ^[17]

In his efforts to try to dislodge this notion of “going to heaven when you die” as the final goal of salvation, thus minimizing the New Testament’s teaching on the new heavens and new earth, Wright might come across as pouring water on the fire of some favorite passages of the New Testament in affirming penal substitutionary atonement. But once a reader sticks with Wright’s whole argument throughout the book, the narrative which Wright is trying to lay out for the reader begins to make more sense.

Wright and the “Curse of the Law”

Wright’s treatment of Galatians 3:13, at first glance, made me question a lot of traditional ways of understanding this verse. Wright is emphatic in saying that “Galatians is not about ‘salvation.‘” (Wright, Kindle location 4107). Early in the book, Wright quotes his own translation of the verse and comments on it (Wright, Kindle location 1527ff):  ^[18]

“The Messiah redeemed us from the curse of the law,” writes Paul, “by becoming a curse on our behalf.” This is not a statement of an abstract works-based atonement theology, though it is often snatched out of context and made to play that role…..

[Paul] does not go on—as such sermons regularly have—to say, “The Messiah became a curse for us so that we might be freed from sin and go to heaven,” or anything like it. He says in v. 14 that the Messiah bore the curse of the law, “so that the blessing of Abraham could flow through to the nations in King Jesus—and so that we might receive the promise of the spirit, through faith.”

Wright does have a point to make, in that the context of Galatians 3:13-14 indicates that Christ’s becoming a curse for us on our behalf is explicitly about making a way possible for the Gentiles to become members of God’s covenant family. Verse 14 follows with the exact reason why Paul mentions that Christ became the “curse of the law.” See it here in the ESV translation:

“… so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith” (ESV)

Paul is urging his Gentile Christian readers not to take up specifically Jewish practices associated with the Law of Moses, like undergoing circumcision. For once a Gentile Christian tries to become Jewish, by adopting all of those traditional Jewish identity markers, they also inherit the curses associated with the Law of Moses. As Deuteronomy 27:26 states, “Cursed is anyone who does not uphold the words of this law by carrying them out” (NIV).

There is nothing in the Galatians passage which explicitly ties this “curse of the law” with God’s plan of salvation more generally.  Rather, to make circumcision are requirement for a Gentile believer in Jesus is to preach “another gospel” (Galatians 1:6-9), thus undermining the very message which Paul himself was required by God to preach. ^[19]

While Wright does not dismiss the idea of Christ becoming a curse for us having implications for our salvation from sin, the emphasis in this part of his book is not about affirming substitutionary atonement. Unfortunately, this might mislead readers, who were expecting a greater emphasis on the forgiveness of sins in his analysis of Galatians 3:

“Once again, the biblical view of what was achieved through Jesus’s death has to do with the restoration of the human vocation, of Israel’s vocation, of the larger divine purpose for the world” (Wright, Kindle location 1539).

So, what happened to the plan and promise of salvation from sin here in Galatians? If one were to stop reading The Day the Revolution Began at this point, I could understand the suspicion of Wright’s critics. Yet later in Wright’s book, he does argue for something that sounds more like penal substitutionary atonement’s emphasis on the forgiveness of sins in his treatment of Galatians, and how that ties into the rest of the New Testament. Wright quotes his own translation from the end of Luke’s Gospel and comments (Wright, Kindle location 2622ff): ^[20]

“This is what is written,” he said. “The Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and in his name repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, must be announced to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are the witnesses for all this. Now look: I’m sending upon you what my father has promised. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” (24:44–49)

“Forgiveness of sins,” in other words, is to be seen both as the summary of the redemptive blessings promised to Israel and as the key blessing that will enable non-Jews to be welcomed into the one family. (my emphasis)

The “and” here is key: The forgiveness of Israel’s sins makes it possible for the Gentiles to be included, without requiring Gentile believers in Jesus to become Jewish.  It is not an either/or here, but rather a both/and.

The idea of Jesus becoming “a curse for us,” since according to Deuteronomy 21:23, anyone who dies upon a tree is cursed by God, serves a dual purpose. First, Jesus’ becoming “a curse for us” gives God’s original covenant people, the Old Testament Jews, forgiveness for their sins, for they were a people who disobeyed God so thoroughly that they were exiled from the land that God gave them. Even though God did make a way for them to return to the land of Israel, in many ways, the Israelites were still living in a form of exile, under Roman rule, and not experiencing the blessings that God had intended for them, which were short circuited due to their continued disobedience. For them, the death of Christ made a way for them to be reconciled to God. ^[21]

But that is only part one of the story.  Part two is that this same message of the forgiveness of sins is now extended to the Gentile, for those who believe in Christ as the promised Messiah. Why? Because Israel’s purpose was ultimately to be a blessing to the Gentiles. However, the “curse of the law” indicated that Israel would fail in that mission, precisely because she was not able to fulfill the requirements of God’s covenant with her. So, not only does the death of Christ forgive Israel of her sins, the death of Christ also makes it possible for Gentiles to become full members of God’s covenant family, without the need to take upon themselves the full requirements of the Law of Moses, with all of its demands.^[22]

Furthermore, it should be noted that Christ must have done these things, to be crucified on the cross and then resurrected, in order to accomplish this work of the forgiveness of sins.  In other words, “Jesus had to die in our place for our sins,” but not in the way often explained by crude versions of penal substitutionary theory. Here Wright brings into fuller focus God’s purposes for the cross of Christ, framed within this larger narrative of God’s story of redemption through the long history of Israel (Wright, Kindle location 4090ff).^{[23]  [24]}

A Summary Reflection of the Thesis of The Day the Revolution Began

As I concluded in my review of Will Hess’ Crushing the Serpent, this may sound like N.T. Wright is ultimately articulating a kind of “PSA Lite” view of the atoning work of Christ on the cross, a view I largely share as well. So be it. As I have hoped to show in this review of N.T. Wright’s The Day the Revolution Began, this understanding of the meaning of Christ’s death resonates fully with the message of the New Testament.

Much of the debate over penal substitution comes down to a couple of questions: What are the consequences of sin, and how does penal substitutionary atonement provide a remedy for those consequences?

Are the consequences of sin, namely “death,” primarily a legal indictment by God against humanity, whereby God provides a legal solution to remove the need for punishment of humanity? Or is the problem of sin mainly organic in nature, in that “death” is the final course in the “banquet of consequences” brought about by sin? Wright helpfully offers the distinction this way:

“The distinction between the ticket you will get if you are caught driving too fast and the crash that will happen if you drive too fast around a sharp bend on a wet road. The ticket is arbitrary, an imposition with no organic link to the offense. The crash is intrinsic, the direct consequence of the behavior” (Wright, Kindle location 1622).

For Wright, in penal substitution, the emphasis is more on preventing the crash and less on the resolving the legal dilemma of the ticket. But might there be a better way to put all of this together?

Perhaps a better way to summarize all of this would be something along these lines: Jesus had to die for our sins, but not in the way that certain caricatures of penal substitutionary atonement might imply. Jesus did not have to die as God’s Son so that God the Father could take all of God’s wrath out on Jesus, as some hapless victim, a “punching bag” for expressing God’s anger .  Instead,  there is a far grander story of what is happening with the cross of Christ.

Rather, Jesus had to die in order to conquer death, along with conquering the sin problem that results in death. Through the cross, Christ had victory over sin, death, and all evil powers that are opposed to God. Jesus needed to be resurrected to show us the promise that believers in Christ will also experience resurrection, both believing Jew and Gentile alike.  But the crucifixion had to take place in order for the resurrection to happen.  In the process, sin was condemned at the cross, and God’s wrath was poured out on sin itself, as the Father and the Son, in concert together, worked to punish sin. It was at the cross whereby Jesus stands in as our substitute, dying a death in our place so that we would not have to experience spiritual death.

It is in this sense that both a Christus Victor view of the cross and a penal substitutionary view of the cross actually dovetail together and find harmony. This type of theological framing was probably what N.T. Wright had in mind in The Day the Revolution Began. Wright’s framing depends less on particular prooftexts and more on broad themes interwoven into the New Testament, which are not easily identified by Christians unfamiliar with the history of Second Temple Judaism. In other words, Wright is heavily dependent on themes like exile and restoration which are more implicit in the New Testament, as opposed to be explicit.

Applying Wright’s Insights In Our Day-to-Day World

Wright’s conclusion in The Day the Revolution is a challenging one, even if controversial at certain points. Wright wants to encourage Christians not to get hyper-focused on thinking that the cross is just about “going to heaven when you die.”  Rather, while the cross does indeed offer believers a future hope, it is a future hope that we are to live out in the here and now as well.  The future we are promised is full bodily resurrection with a “new heavens” and “new earth,” so we should strive to make those Kingdom values relevant for today.  Furthermore, just as Christ suffered for our sake, so are we to give our lives in the service of others, being the hands and feet of Christ in the very world we now live.

Some readers might think Wright is getting too “social justice” minded here at the end of the book. However, while some might question certain specific proposals made by Wright as to what embodying that “new heavens” and “new earth” in the here and now should look like, the larger ethic Wright is embracing is part of what it means to truly follow Jesus.

Despite my reservations noted in this review, I find The Day the Revolution Began to be very worthwhile reading. Wright is always engaging to read, and it was in reading this book that I was able to work out with greater clarity what I believe is the meaning of Jesus’ death.

I would classify The Day the Revolution Began as a popular level book, with a caveat: There are some elements that edge towards the more academic side, yet what Wright writes is not overly technical. I would not have written a book about the meaning of the death of Christ in the same way Wright did, but the main contours of his theology on this issue remain quite sound. I make frequent use of Wright’s The New Testament for Everyone, a passage by passage exploration of the entire New Testament in my personal devotional time, which leaves me challenged every time.

I hope to offer more reviews of Wright’s work in future Veracity blog posts, particularly in how Wright maps out the Book of Romans, a topic where Wright dedicates several chapters in The Day the Revolution Began. So even where I find myself unconvinced by certain readings favored by N.T. Wright, I am nevertheless grateful for a scholar like N.T. Wright who has had such a far-reaching impact in the church and on the world.

Notes