Cosmic Child Abuse?

As a college student I was a religion major. My favorite professor, Jerry Soneson was a brilliant educator, tirelessly working to help his students succeed. Along with this he was a staunch agnostic and loved to assault the naive and simplistic Christian assumptions of his impressionable young college students. For sure this time in my life served to solidfy my beliefs as they were challenged in new ways.

One of Dr. Soneson's primary objections to the historic, orthodox gospel was that to him it was "cosmic child abuse". He broke it down to me like this: What sense does it make for God to be (his words) pissed off at his people, but then instead of punish them he goes and kicks around his Son to somehow pacify his fury. Isn't this classic misplaced aggression? Where is the justice in this? Where is the love in this? It was utterly nonsensical to him. Unfortunately, at the time I did not have a good response to his objection.

In my current reading of John Stott's, The Cross of Christ, this long, (but well worth the read) quote served to help me formulate a response his objection.

We begin by showing that God must 'satisfy himself', responding to the realities of human rebellion in a way that is perfectly consonant with his character. This internal necessity is our fixed starting-point. In consequence, it would be impossible for us sinner to remain eternally the sole object of his holy love, since he cannot both punish and pardon us at the same time. Hence the second necessity, namely substitution. The only way for God's holy love to be satisfied is for his holiness to be directed in judgment upon his appointed substitute, in order that his love may be directed towards us in forgiveness. The substitute bears the penalty, that we sinner may receive that pardon. Who then is the substitute? Certainly not Christ, if he is seen as a third party. Any notion of penal substitution in which three independent actors play a role - the guilty party, the punitive judge and the innocent victim - is to be repudiated with the utmost vehemence. It would not only be unjust in itself but would also reflect a defective Christology. For Christ is not an independent third person, but the eternal Son of the Father, who is one with the Father in his essential being.

What we see, then, in the drama of the cross is not three actors but two, ourselves on the one hand and God on the other. Not God as he is in himself (the Father), but God nevertheless, God made-man-in-Christ (the Son).

...For in giving his Son he was giving himself. This being so, it is the Judge himself who in holy love assumed the role of the innocent victim, for in and through the person of his Son he himself bore the penalty which he himself inflicted. As Dale put it, 'the mysterious unity of the Father and the Son rendered it possible for God at once to endure and to inflict penal suffering'. There is neither harsh injustice nor unprincipled love nor Christological heresy in that; there is only unfathomable mercy. For in order to save us in such a way as to satisfy himself, God through Christ substituted himself for us. Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice. The cross was an act simultaneously of punishment and amnesty, severity and grace, justice and mercy.

Seen thus, the objections to a substitutionary atonement evaporate. There is nothing even remotely immoral here, since the substitute for the law-breakers is none other than the divine Lawmaker himself.