Archive for the ‘The Distinction Between Equivalency and Identity’ Category
Thomas Manton (1620-1677) on Christ Suffering the Tantundem, Not the Idem of the Law’s Punishment
Manton:
2. It carries a full respect to the punishment appointed for sin. Certain we are that he ‘ bore the curse of the law,’ Gal. iii. 13. Now the curse of the law, actively taken, is nothing but the sentence of the law, or rather of God the judge, condemning the transgressors of it to such punishment as the law appointed; passively taken, it is the punish ment itself. And the final and great curse is that described, Mat. xxv. 41. To be banished from the presence of the Lord, and cast into extreme torment. There is a double punishment–paena damni et sensus, the loss and the pain. The loss consists in our separation from God, from the comfortable happy fruition of him in glory: ‘depart, ye cursed.’ The pain in eternal torments is set forth by the worm and by the fire, Mark ix. 44. Now Christ being our surety, Heb. vii. 22, and giving himself ‘a ransom for all,’ 1 Tim. ii.6 antilutron, the word implies a substitution or surrogation of one person in the room of another; he was to suffer what we were to suffer; if not the idem, every way the same, yet the tantundem, that which was sufficient to Christ’s ends, that which was to carry a full resemblance with our punishment. It is one part of the punishment of sin to be forsaken of God, and many say the punishment of loss is greatest; he was there fore to suffer so much of it as his holy person was capable of; some thing that answers to the paena damni in his desertion, and to the paena sensus in his agonies and pains: Isa. liii. 4, ‘ Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows.’
It is true the accidentals of punishment Christ suffered not. As [1.] To the place, he was not in hell. It was not necessary that Christ should descend into the hell of the damned. One that is bound as a surety for another needs not go into prison provided that he pay the debt. All that justice requires is, that he satisfy the debt. In deed, if he doth not, nor cannot satisfy the debt, he must to prison. So here the justice of God must be satisfied, the holiness of God and hatred to sin sufficiently demonstrated, but Christ need not to go into the place of torments.