Introduction
There has been much discussion online recently of Philip Goff’s apparent conversion to Christianity. This was somewhat hyped up by Cameron Bertuzzi, who interviewed Goff in a sort of religious version of a ‘gender reveal’ video. In that video, Goff explained his views informally, and a few days later he published a blog about summarising it as well. In both of these, Goff explained that he still dislikes the penal theory of substitution, but has come see a different view of the atonement as much more plausible. That theory is the ‘participatory theory of the atonement’ (PTA). In his blog post, he cites a paper, by Greg Restall and Tim Bayne, called (no surprise) ‘A Participatory Theory of the Atonement‘.
In this post, I am going to take a look at that paper, and outline some lines of criticism against the view. The paper is made up of two parts. In part one the authors advance several lines of criticism against the standard theories of the atonement (penal substitution, exemplary, and merit). In part two, they argue that the PTA avoids these difficulties. I’ll stick to their positive case for the PTA in what follows.
The PTA
Restall and Bayne begin by distinguishing between three different accounts of sin; deontic, relationally and ontologically. According to the deontic account, sin is “a failure to
fulfil our moral obligations”. According to the relational account, sin is a broken relationship; “our relationship with God and each other is not what it ought to be”. And according to the ontological view, sin is “a feature or element of human nature”, “something from which we suffer” and a kind of “sickness” (p. 2).
The PTA takes its inspiration from certain passages of Paul, such as:
For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
(Galatians 19-20)
Restall & Bayne quote New Testament scholar Mary Hooker, who says:
The sin of Adam was reversed and the possibility of restoration opened up when Christ lived and died in obedience and was raised from life to death. Those who are ‘baptized’ into him are able to share his death to sin (Rom. 6: 4-11) and his status of righteousness before God (2 Cor. 5: 21).
(Hooker, 2000, p. 522)
Clearly, the idea is that believers can be ‘transformed’ in some sense. She goes on:
To do this, however, Christians must share in his death and Resurrection, dying to the realm of flesh and rising to life in the Spirit. Thus Paul speaks of being crucified with Christ in order that Christ may live in him (Gal. 2: 19-20). The process of death and resurrection is symbolized by baptism (Rom. 6: 3-4). By baptism ‘into Christ’, believers are united ‘with him’, so that they now live ‘in him’.
(ibid)
By participating in baptism, believers can be transformed, so that ‘Christ may live in him’. Restall & Bayne go on to develop the thought like this:
Christ’s death is not presented as something we must emulate, nor is it presented as persuading God to forgive us, as constituting restitution for our debts, as punishment for our misdeeds.
(Restall & Bayne, p. 15)
According to the PTA, the atonement isn’t about being forgiven by God etc. This is because the PTA presupposes an ontological account of sin, according to which sin is a kind of sickness. They say that “we are quite literally born again in the sense that we are literally new creatures” (ibid). They say that:
…our change of identity liberates us from sin: since we are no longer bound by (or under the sway of ) sin, we are free to participate in a restored relationship with God.
(Restall & Bayne, p. 16)
Key to the PTA then are the ideas that Christ died in order to instigate the rites of baptism and the Eucharist, and that future Christians participating these rituals transforms Christians into “literally new creatures”, ones that are cured of the human ‘pathology’ or ‘sickness’ that they were afflicted with previously.
Objections
The first objection we shall consider is raised by Restall and Bayne in the paper. They are keen to stress how the PTA does not presuppose a ‘deontic’ model of sin. Jesus’ death on the cross (and our participation in rituals) is not an action which itself resets the moral ledger. Rather, it instigates the rituals of baptism and the Eucharist, the participation of which can transform us so that we do not suffer from the sickness of sin. However, there is still the lingering feeling that something important about sin is being ignored here. They pose this thought as some questions:
“…isn’t there some sense in which sin is a deontic problem? How does the participatory model deal with sin as a problem of moral culpability?”
(p. 16).
The problem is like this. Suppose I do something morally wrong, like murdering someone. I am now morally culpable because of my past action. But how does participating in a ritual change that? If it doesn’t, then how does that fit with the central Christian idea that Jesus died for our sins? It seems like the PTA is in danger of changing the focus of the atonement so far away from traditional deontic notions that it is no longer a plausible candidate.
Although Restall and Bayne say they are not entirely sure how best to answer such questions, they do pose an interesting idea as a response:
The moral debt we owe to God (if such there be) is not punished or forgiven, nor is satisfaction or reparation made for it. Instead, it is dealt with by changing the identity of the sinner: strictly speaking, the person who is in the wrong before God no longer exists.
(p. 16)
So person A might commit a murder, but then go and get baptised, and literally become a new creature. This new creature, person B, is not identical to person A, and so they do not inherit the culpability of person A.
So here are a few issues with this proposal. Firstly, a change of identity sounds like the sort of thing that would be a sharp boundary chance. But if so, when does that actually take place? The moment of baptism? If so, then what role does the Eucharist play? The mechanics are obscure, to say the least.
Secondly, it’s not clear that it fits with our experience. No doubt, many people who undergo baptism feel like they have gone through an experience which changes them forever. However, undoubtedly there are others who do not have this experience. Hitler was baptised as a child, for example. Perhaps he was ‘liberated from sin’ temporarily, but if anything happened, it didn’t last that long. Clearly then, the PTA has to introduce something ad hoc to deal with these sorts of cases. Maybe they have to sincerely want to be saved, or something, for the transformation to take place. It feels to me that this sort of move is ad hoc, as it is introduced merely to fit with the data that wasn’t otherwise predicted by the theory.
Thirdly, the transformation from one person into a new one doesn’t sound plausible. Consider how Restall and Bayne motivate the thought; they distinguish between numerical identity and ‘moral identity’. Numerical identity involves things like the causal theory, or the memory theory, etc. As they note: “The question these accounts attempt to answer is this: what, fundamentally, are we?” (p. 19). In contrast to this we have moral identity: “One’s moral identity is one’s identity as a moral agent, as an entity that is responsible for its actions” (ibid). We are a new ‘moral agent’ after the transformation of the baptism. And this new agent is not responsible for the sins of the old one.
Restall and Bayne ask us to consider “actions performed while asleep, or under the influence of a drug, or in a fugue state, and so on” (ibid). If you sleepwalk downstairs and punch your father in the face, is it really you who is responsible for it?
In some sense these are things that one has done – and some feeling of [causal?] responsibility for them might be appropriate. … But at the same time we might want to distance ourselves from such actions in a certain way, and such distancing seems defensible. Such actions are not a part of one’s real self: they are not expressive of one’s identity as a moral agent.
(p. 19)
But such talk seems metaphorical at best. It isn’t literally a second agent who sleepwalked downstairs last night. Rather, it really was you. The simple reason you weren’t necessarily responsible for what you did is that you weren’t conscious at the time; you were asleep. We can adopt the language of ‘moral identity’ if we want, but it seems clear that it is a metaphor, and in actual fact just one agent is present, with the difference between which actions they are culpable for and those they are not having to do with standard features like being in possession of their faculties, being conscious, etc.
The talk of becoming “literally new creatures” surely needs something more robust than this metaphor of ‘moral identity’. After all, we can understand the difference between me being awake and sleepwalking, and how that bears on questions of culpability. But in the pre-/post-baptism case, which side is supposed to be the sleepwalker? The obvious thought is that it would be the pre-baptism person (they are sleepwalking through life, only to be awakened by the baptism, etc). But even if their judgement was clouded by the pathology of sin, we nonetheless hold people in that state straightforwardly morally accountable; sinners can be morally culpable, unlike sleepwalkers. But if not that way round, then are post-baptism agents supposed to be like the sleepwalkers? That also doesn’t seem right. If so the analogy should be that if you punch your father in the face while awake, are you still morally responsible while sleepwalking the next day? But the point is just that sleepwalkers are not morally responsible for anything they do, because they are no conscious at the time. But this isn’t analogous to people who have had baptisms. You can have a baptism and then go on to do something that you are morally culpable for. Surely, Hitler was morally responsible for things.
So if person A commits a murder, and then undergoes a baptism, it seems unintelligible how this can make any relevant difference to their culpability. Whatever else it might mean, it isn’t going to indicate a difference between someone having full possession of their faculties and someone who is not. In fact, it just seems like it has no moral relevance whatsoever.
Consider how flimsy the case is for being a new creature entirely. You will retain all your past memories. You will be causally continuous with your pre-baptism self. Legal judgements will remain the same (you don’t get let out of prison just for getting baptised). It certainly seems to me that whatever justification there was for holding you morally culpable remain. Yet, in the eyes of God you are (somehow) now not blameworthy for past sins that you committed. Why? Because you participated in a ritual. The whole thing is utterly bizarre.
Conclusion
My view of the PTA then is that it is basically just “metaphorical at best, and unintelligible at worst” (p. 18). Even if you think that sincerely participating in rituals makes an ontological difference to people, it is wildly implausible to suppose that doing so makes any relevant impact on whether you are morally culpable for past actions. You might feel like your life has changed for the better, but even if that’s true, you are not literally a new creature.
UseOfReason 