5. Objection: Christ Did Not Suffer What All Men Should Suffer.
namely, eternal hell-punishments; thus the concept of vicarious punishment falls away. Also Luthardt, as we have already seen, lacks the courage to stand up for the biblical-church doctrine. He thinks that Christ's satisfaction is not to be understood "in the sense of mutual reckoning". Luthardt also shakes Frank, who even describes it as an "aberration" "if one let Christ endure the punishment that the fallen man would have had to endure as unredeemed".!°° In contrast to this, it must be said that Scripture clearly teaches that Christ
IV, 2, 24 ff.) gives too much effort for a merciful judgement of human reason about the vicarious satisfaction. Therefore the criticism of Nitzsch - Horst Stephan (Ev. Dogm. 1912, p. 587 ff.) is not entirely unjustified.
suffered exactly the punishment which should befall men because of their sins. People are under the curse of God because of their sins, according to Gal. 3:10: "Cursed is every one that continueth not" etc. And this curse did not affect part but all of Christ, when Scripture continues to say: "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us", v.13. Against the vicarious satisfaction there is also no objection that Christ's suffering was only temporary, whereas people are to suffer eternally. In describing the value of Christ's suffering, Scripture deliberately emphasizes that Christ's suffering was the suffering of the Son of God, John 1:7: "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin"; Acts 20:28: God's "own blood". The doctrine of the "orthodox theologians" that the temporary suffering of Christ, as the suffering of the Son of God, was worth as much as the eternal suffering of all human beings, is not a dogmatic construction, but scriptural doctrine.!°°) In Christ's Passion, therefore, there are really "corresponding punishments". The "reckoning" is quite accurate, even "arithmetically" accurate, if one accepts God's judgement, as it is convenient to do. It is the theologians, loaded with their own wisdom and measuring divine things by their own yardstick, who object to the adequate character of Christ's satisfaction.