What Can Postliberals and Evangelicals Learn from Each Other? Merciful Substitution in George Hunsinger's Philippians and Historic Reformed Theology

Abstract

This article brings George Hunsinger's treatment of substitutionary atonement in his Philippians into dialogue with John Owen and B. B. Warfield as representatives of historic Reformed theology. The aim of the article is to reassert the primacy of expiation over propitiation in evangelical theology by considering Hunsinger's proposal to replace the term “penal substitution” with what he calls a “merciful substitution.” He accepts the notion of propitiation when it is defined as the removal of God's wrath predicated upon the removal of sin (expiation), but rejects the distorted understanding of propitiation according to which God is a God of wrath first and only subsequently a God of mercy. For Hunsinger, expiatory sacrifice is the means provided by God's mercy so as to reconcile us to God. Similarly, for Owen and Warfield, expiation is accomplished by Christ's substitutionary sacrifice in which the believer's sin and guilt are translated to him through mystical and federal union. While it is unlikely that evangelicals would make “merciful substitution” a normative expression of the atonement, Hunsinger's caveats against the excessively forensic and nominalistic connotations of the term “penal substitution” are worth the consideration of evangelicals who share his passion for the dogmatic norma normata that regulates our understandings of the biblical texts.