Christianity - A Journey from Facts to Fiction — Page 26
26 Christianity – A Journey from Facts to Fiction merely because an innocent person has volunteered himself to take the punishment instead? The moment God does so, He violates the very fundamental principles of justice. A sinful person must suffer for his sins. In short, a multitude of complex human problems would arise if the punishment is transferred to someone else. It is argued by Christian theologians that such a transfer of pun- ishment does not violate any principle of justice, because of the voluntary acceptance by the innocent person of the other person’s punishment. What would you say in the case of a debtor, they ask, who is overloaded with debts beyond his capacity to pay and some God-fearing philanthropist decides to relieve him of his burden by paying his entire debt on his behalf? Our answer is that indeed we would loudly applaud such an act of immense generos- ity, kindness and sacrifice. But what would be the reaction of the person who confronts us with such a question, if the debt payable runs into trillions of pounds sterling and there steps forward a philanthropist who takes out a penny from his pocket, demanding that all that is due to the debtor should be cancelled out against that kindly penny offered as a substitute for that debt. What we have in the case of Jesus Christ as offering himself to be punished, for the sins of all humanity, is far more grotesquely disproportion- ate. Again, it is not only one debtor or all the debtors of one single generation, but we are talking about billions of born and unborn defaulters extending up to doomsday. But that is not all. To conceive of crime through the example of a debtor owing money to someone else represents the most naive definition of sin that I have ever come across. This scenario