The move that is close to the penal theory yet somewhat similar is the idea that the issue isn’t breaking the law but rather impugning the stature of the king. So the worst crimes really aren’t crimes because of hurting people but because of how it affects the power of the throne. That’s what Jeff is getting at over at NCT with his Foucaultean view of justice and punishment.

To my eyes there are several problems with this not the least tying it textually to Mormon scriptures. (You’ll note Jeff ties it more to cultural views at the time scriptures were written – although his examples actually are all from medieval and early modern Europe I believe) However the problem with the penal theory apply here as well. Is God’s prestige really in trouble? If he has to repair it, exactly how does killing Christ rather than the sinners do this? It doesn’t make much sense.

Within the Reform tradition in creedal Christianity this isn’t an issue due to how they see natural law and God being a necessary being.

Within Mormonism it seems to be a much bigger problem due to our view of this life as a trial largely created by God for functional reasons. Even those who see there being essential laws independent of God have the problem explaining what they are and why they take the form they do. Often when pursuing the idea of essential laws God is subject to we end up not with a penal theory but a repair theory of atonement. It’s just hard to make the penal theory work in an LDS setting.

It’s interesting that the emphasis in 2 Ne 2 is that the judgement is made possible by the atonement. So 2 Ne 2 is more complex than usually read. “because of the intercession for all, all men come unto God.” That is it’s literally the atonement that brings us back to the presence so judgement is even possible. “to be judged of him…wherefor the ends of the law” (Christ if we follow Rom 10:4) “punishment…in opposition to that of the happiness” “to answer the ends of the atonement.”

For Lehi, the atonement makes possible a kind of dualistic choice where we choose either God or Satan. It’s not this legalistic judgment based upon a list of commands. (Although one often does find a reading of Abraham 3 that comes closer to that theology)

Interestingly that seems somewhat at odds with Gethsemane and pushes Jesus’ suffering back to the cross if it’s there that he experiences with full withdrawal of the Father. On the other hand versus 18 ties it to Gethsemane. It’s an odd text that I think we’ve not grappled well with.

Well, since the penal substitution idea as we know it today didn’t really get developed until the middle ages, it might make even more sense, given our belief in the apostasy, to rethink it and look to more ancient models of the atonement.

It is important that in our teaching we make use of the language of holy writ. Alma said, “I … do command you in the language of him who hath commanded me” (Alma 5:61).

The words and the way they are used in the Book of Mormon by the Lord should become our source of understanding and should be used by us in teaching gospel principles.

That said a big problem with everyone using scriptural language is figuring out if we mean the same thing by it. When we try to make distinctions between how we understand similar terms we’re almost forced to use other terms for clarity. Balancing these two moves can be difficult. Adopting a lot of the language of traditional debates can be helpful here, if only to distinguish our understanding from our Protestant and Catholic friends. That said an other problem with using the language of academic debate in these matters is that often our positions are subtly different from the positions the academic terms represent. This gets us into the same problem we have when we share scriptural language but mean different things by it.

This (correct) observation is presented as if it describes a deficiency in Mormonism, or a lack of development that ideally should be remedied. Maybe. But consider another way of thinking about this.

As Christianity spread beyond Israel into Greece, Rome, and other places, the Good News naturally needed to be translated into Greek, Roman, and other languages. This was a blessed achievement, but it was not an advance, exactly; it was simply a necessity. Greek and Latin were not superior to Hebrew and Aramaic; but they were the languages many of the new converts and potential converts understood. Similarly, as Christianity spread to classes who thought in the terms, categories, and questions of a “philosophical language”– of Hellenistic philosophy– the Good News needed to be “translated” into that “language”: this was a blessed achievement secured over centuries. Once again, the translation was not an absolute advance, exactly, and neither was it necessarily a degradation (as Mormons among others have often supposed); it was simply a necessity. If you want to speak to people, you need to speak in a language they know, in categories and terms they understand; and you need to speak to questions that are real ones for them.

By modern times and today, as it happens, not many people speak Latin. Likewise, not many people think in the terms, categories, and questions of Hellenistic philosophies. So there is no compelling need to translate the Good News into “philosophic language,” just as there is no compelling need to translate it into Latin (though there may be no harm in trying to do so, for those few who are genuinely interested). The omission to do this sort of translation is not a deficiency; it is merely a result of the fact that these are not the terms and categories in which the Good News needs to be presented today.

On this view, there is no need to be continually castigating others for ostensibly corrupting the Gospel by seeking ways to present it in a “philosophical language,” or mocking formulations of the Gospel that sound like gibberish (as speech in a foreign language typically does to those who don’t know the language). But neither is there any reason for embarrassment because of our own omission to develop a more “philosophical” theology (or, if you think that “philosophical theology” is a redundancy, for our omission to develop a “theology”).

Surely ancient Christianity was not well served by its changes in religious language.

Edwin Hatch noted (In “The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church”):

It is impossible for any one, whether he be a student of history or no, to fail to notice a difference of both
form and content between the Sermon on the Mount and the Nicene Creed. The Sermon on the Mount is the promulgation of a new law of conduct; it assumes beliefs rather than formulates them; the theological conceptions which underlie it belong to the ethical rather than the speculative side of theology; metaphysics are wholly absent. The Nicene Creed is a statement partly of historical facts and partly of dogmatic inferences; the metaphysical terms which it contains would probably have been unintelligible to the first disciples; ethics have no place in it. The one belongs to a world of Syrian peasants, the other to a world of Greek philosophers. The contrast is patent. If any one thinks that it is sufficiently explained by saying that the one is a sermon and the other a creed, it must be pointed out in reply that the question why an ethical sermon stood in the forefront of the teaching of Jesus Christ, and a metaphysical creed in the forefront of the Christianity of the fourth century, is a problem which claims investigation.

That makes sense. I just want to tie the calvinistic measure of choseness to mormon folk practices like large families and patriarchy. It just strikes me that some of the interest if Christology is trying to sweep the peculiar aspects of mormon theology and history under the rug to make peace with changing modern moral notions of what religion is for. I understand the urge but think it doesn’t solve much in the long run. Much of modernity is a demographic and religious dead end as Elder Oaks has pointed out.

So there’s lots of reasons to worry about Mormonism importing ideas from other types of Christianity. (New Earth Creationism being the example I like to point to) It just seems the ones you picked were a bit odd.

To me Christology is an important topic. At least for people who find theology interesting. (I recognize most don’t) I think Mormonism precisely because of our theology of God and our rejection of creation ex nihilo are in a better position than traditional Christianity. Yet most of the main atonement theories have proponents in the history of Mormonism and even ways of reading Mormon scripture. So it’s worth looking at the arguments regarding these theories if only because they help getting down to the premises upon which they rest. Often we can then judge those premises in terms of other aspects of Mormon theology.