The Epistle to Diognetus  In chapters 7 and 8, when the Epistle of Diognetus explains the character of God and God’s attitude towards us, the author says:

“as seeking to persuade, not to compel us; for violence has no place in the character of God… He was always of such a character, and still is, and will ever be, kind and good, and free from wrath, and true, and the only one who is [absolutely] good” (chapters 7, 8)

Traditionally, penal substitution and penal satisfaction depend on understanding God’s wrath as equal and opposite to His love. It is certainly remarkable that the Epistle says God is “free from wrath,” and only “kind and good.” This means that God’s motivation in the atonement cannot be to “propitiate” His own “wrath” or “retributive justice.” For such a motivation would entail “violence,” which the Epistle rules out. The word “propitiate” does not occur in the Epistle. The word “wrath” appears only here, and is ruled out as a motivation of God.

Furthermore, the Augustinian tradition as formulated by the Protestant Reformers do, in fact, understand Christ as coming to “compel us,” not simply to persuade. That is because the Augustinian tradition denies the divine energies, posits a fairly radical separation between “nature” and “grace,” and also denies that human free will is a partnership (synergia) with God to walk in the “likeness” of God — that is, to shape and perfect in love our human nature and desires. Augustine posited that God must act unilaterally upon us (monergia). In such a framework, if God did not enact violence upon Christ, motivated by wrath, and compel us to believe, God would not “save” anyone from His own wrath.

The author of the Epistle to Diognetus, however, does not share that later Augustinian framework. The stated divine motivation lends itself quite easily to the restorative justice envisioned by the Jewish law, in Exodus 21:18 - 19 and 22:1 - 14, where offenders participate in the restoration of the harm and damage they caused. In this case, Jesus as the supreme Hebrew judge will demand people's participation in the healing of the damage they have caused -- to their own human nature. That was and is his motivation (e.g. Deuteronomy 10:16). He can do this while being “kind and good” and “free from wrath,” because God calls for participation in His own kindness and goodness and love. There is no spectating with God, which is why the author in ch.10 says we must become “imitators of God.” Then, in ch.12, the author says, like Isaiah 58, that God wants each of us to be a fruitful garden, and we must receive good things -- virtues of the Word by the Spirit -- into ourselves, and not vices or lies. But for people who resist and refuse Jesus, that very call to participate will be the torment. This is why the Epistle to Diognetus teaches Medical, not Penal, Substitutionary Atonement. It is rooted in the author’s understanding of the character and motivations of God.

Chapter 9 contains this explanation for Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as saving:

“As long then as the former time endured, He permitted us to be borne along by unruly impulses, being drawn away by the desire of pleasure and various lusts. This was not that He at all delighted in our sins, but that He simply endured them; nor that He approved the time of working iniquity which then was, but that He sought to form a mind conscious of righteousness, so that being convinced in that time of our unworthiness of attaining life through our own works, it should now, through the kindness of God, be vouchsafed to us; and having made it manifest that in ourselves we were unable to enter into the kingdom of God, we might through the power of God be made able. But when our wickedness had reached its height, and it had been clearly shown that its reward, punishment and death, was impending over us; and when the time had come which God had before appointed for manifesting His own kindness and power, how the one love of God, through exceeding regard for men, did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember our iniquity against us, but showed great long-suffering, and bore with us, He Himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for those who are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! That the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors! Having therefore convinced us in the former time that our nature was unable to attain to life, and having now revealed the Saviour who is able to save even those things which it was [formerly] impossible to save, by both these facts He desired to lead us to trust in His kindness, to esteem Him our Nourisher, Father, Teacher, Counsellor, Healer, our Wisdom, Light, Honour, Glory, Power, and Life, so that we should not be anxious concerning clothing and food.”

Brian Arnold, Penal Substitution in the Early Church (The Gospel Coalition, April 13, 2021) argues that this was penal substitution and penal satisfaction as in the teachings of the traditional Protestant Reformers like Calvin. He says:

“this paragraph is the single best description of penal substitution in the first few centuries, and quite possibly in the history of the church

At first blush, and in isolation, it could sound that way. The author of the Epistle to Diognetus also says that “what is truly death is reserved for those who shall be condemned to the eternal fire” (ch.10). However, these are still medical understandings of human nature, human sinfulness as a deviation from God’s intended journey of human being-becoming, Jesus’ work of atonement and salvation as requiring our participation, and God’s fire being God’s ongoing demand to participate in His restoration of our human nature in Jesus. That is the only way to be consistent with God’s character and motivations as stated in chapter 7 and 8.

Let us also look more carefully at chapter 9. The Epistle presents the penalty of the fall as the condition of being mortal, and subject to death. Mortality and death were the penalty of Adam and Eve’s fall into the corruption of sin. The traditional patristic understanding of mortality is that God exiled us from the tree of life so that we would not immediately immortalize human evil by eating from the tree while in a corrupted state. This is in keeping with the stated motivations of God: “free from wrath” and “only kind and good.” The disordered desires and moral wickedness eventually becoming an indicator and further result of that mortality. Thus, like Romans 1:21 - 32 and Ephesians 4:17 - 19, the problem’s first symptom is that we were:

“borne along by unruly impulses, being drawn away by the desire of pleasure and various lusts.”

How might those disordered desires be re-ordered correctly? How might mortality and death be undone, that we might be invested with true life? The author of the Epistle understands biblical Israel’s role as a medical focus group partnering with God to diagnose human nature, and hope for the cure. He says,

“He sought to form a mind conscious of righteousness, so that being convinced in that time of our unworthiness of attaining life through our own works, it should now, through the kindness of God, be vouchsafed to us.”

Israel needed to understand human righteousness in an approximate sense, and also by failing to attain it. This meant trying to press the divine life into human nature, and trying to dispel the corruption of sin from it. But Israel was not able to do that fully (Romans 8:3). Thus the author says:

“Having therefore convinced us in the former time that our nature was unable to attain to life.”

That is, the question of salvation is about human nature and the right ordering of desires. How can human nature be saved? That is, how can we be invested with the correct desires and the divine life of God? And from what are we saved? From God’s wrath or retributive justice? No, for the Epistle to Diognetus has already ruled that out.

Jesus saved us by saving human nature from mortality, death, and disordered desires. He did so by becoming our ransom. That is:

He Himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for those who are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! That the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors! Having therefore convinced us in the former time that our nature was unable to attain to life, and having now revealed the Saviour who is able to save even those things which it was [formerly] impossible to save…

The author’s language is that of Isaiah. “The burden of our iniquities” is to struggle with the corruption of sin in our fallen human nature. “Ransom” refers to what Jesus had to do in order to enter our life, including our mortality and death, in order to give us his life on the other side. Isaiah understood the atonement as a medical substitution, as providing an opportunity for us to share in the healing of human nature, to become righteous, incorruptible, immortal as God intended from the garden of Eden. We have discussed the use of the Greek Septuagint Text (LXX) by the early Christians in tandem with the Masoretic Text (MT) expression, seeking to explain both textual variants as rooted in Isaiah’s understanding of the Jewish sacrificial system. See here for all our blog posts exegeting Isaiah 53. The exchange is that the Son shared in our fallen human nature, that we might share in his healed human nature.

The Protestant Reformers interpreted language like “covering our sins” and “wickedness be hid” as supporting a legal, forensic definition of “justification” and the view of the legal imputation of “righteousness.” In other words, in that legal paradigm, God the Father views us through Jesus as a type of lens, but without actually changing who we are, as related to what these terms indicate.

However, in Scripture, “justification” stands in relation to the Sinai covenant, to stand on the other side of the exile, and to be restored (Deuteronomy 30). To be justified therefore means to have a “circumcised heart” as Moses said (Deuteronomy 30:6; Romans 2:28 - 29; Colossians 2:11). It indicates an ontological reality. There is a primary and secondary reference. The primary reference is to Jesus: he healed human nature; he “circumcised his heart” (Deuteronomy 10:16). As such, Jesus is the justified one because he is the resurrected one (Romans 4:25), as Ezekiel related the inner purification with resurrection (Ezekiel 36 - 37). The secondary references are to us: Our justification is based on our participation in his resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:17).

Also, “righteousness” is also not simply about God viewing us through Jesus as a type of lens (legal imputation), but refers primarily to Jesus’ success at fulfilling the Sinai covenant, with reference to his human nature (Romans 8:3; 10:4). It refers secondarily to our ontological participation in Jesus by the Spirit (2 Corinthians 5:21; Romans 8:4). That is, we are ontologically being healed and transformed into “righteousness.”

Moreover, In Scripture, “covering” also carries the meaning of “containing.” As Noah’s ark “contained” Noah and his family and the life of the creation, since the Hebrew word for the “pitch” which sealed the ark was the Hebrew “kippur” for “covering/atonement.” And, in Scripture, “hiddenness” also carries the meaning of “being within.” As the apostle Paul said, “Your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). The “external, legal” idioms are really referring to the ontological-medical effects of our “union with Christ” in a participatory, restorative justice framework.

Brian Arnold might be viewed sympathetically for interpreting the Epistle to Diognetus, chapter 9 as teaching Penal Substitution. But he is still mistaken. He really should have examined chapters 7 and 8 more carefully, and foregrounded his understanding of the character of God by what it says. The Epistle teaches Medical Substitution.