Holy Bodies and the Sacrifice of the Self: Divine Wrath, Discipline, and the Cross in the Reformations

Abstract

Penal substitution emerged out of two streams in Lutheran and Reformed theology: doctrines of extrinsic divine action in forensic justification and predestination, and a discourse of punishment underlying the persecution of heretics and discipline of believers. Behind both lies the specter of divine hiddenness and wrath. Lax morals and widespread dissent drove Luther and Melanchthon to call for persecution of Anabaptists and for the cura religionis, the state oversight of the church. In the Reformed tradition, the disciplinary experiments of Martin Bucer influenced John Calvin to develop the consistory, a comprehensive program of pastoral surveillance. Extrinsicism in doctrines of justification and predestination led to subjective emphases in spirituality to show evidence of one’s salvation. Christ dies on the cross as a substitutionary punishment of divine wrath, but the Puritans also develop affective exercises of undergoing divine wrath for sin in the believer. The more Christ is punished for human sin, the more believers take that punishment into their own interiority.