One thing that won't surprise anyone who knows about these things: John Piper basically equates a penal substitutionary understanding of the atonement with the gospel. I am unwilling to do that. I don't disparage that theory of the atonement (see my recent endorsement on the back of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Stott's The Cross of Christ), but I believe the birth/death/resurrection of Jesus Christ to be the pivot point of cosmic history. Thus, I do not think that one theory interpreting that event to be sufficient. Every theory of the atonement is 1) human, and 2) bound to a context. The penal substitution -- while there are seeds of it in Pauline writings -- is tied to the development of the Western legal mind. Nor am I willing to condemn the billions of faithful Christians who have lived and died in the past two millennia with alternate understandings of the atonement (here see Gustav Aulen, Christus Victor).
In other words, PSA is one theory of the atonement. Beneficial, but not exclusive. Not even first among equals.
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Derek, God didn't take His wrath out on some other being, He took it out on Himself. Can't you see that? Jesus and God are ONE!
Derek,
If penal substitution was as crass as you make out anyone with half a brain would reject it. Surely you've got to ask if you have really understood it, and its relationship to the doctrine of God, if you think that it can be successfully dismissed like that.
Besides which whether it is taught in the Bible or not (which Tony admits it is) is irrelevant to your position. It could be on every page, but you'd still reject it given your analogy.
I'm glad to have come across this blog. I too have explored what the Bible has to say on Penal Substitution, and I believe it comes well short of teachings such a doctrine. I'm finishing up a debate on this very issue with a Reformed apologist:
http://catholicdefense.googlepages.com/psdebate
Derek, your comment is only valid if you reject the doctrine of the Trinity.
Lee is right, and so is John Piper. This battle has been going on since the Reformation. The latest strategy (which actually dates back to the 19th century) is to make penal substitution simply one "theory" among several.
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