We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Penal Substitution View of Atonement: Did God the Father Just Need to Vent?

Penal Substitution View of Atonement: Did God the Father Just Need to Vent?

In this video blog, Greg outlines the penal substitution view of atonement which says that the Father poured out his wrath on Jesus instead of us so that we could be forgiven. This view is very common and you might even be nodding your head in agreement with that description. However, this view creates some pretty serious problems when it’s examined more closely. Today, Greg will explore some of those problems, and then he’ll present the Christus Victor view in a video blog on Thursday. Stay tuned!

Related Reading

Response to the September 11th attacks

Was God Punishing Us? Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11th, many people have asked the question, “Why did God allow this to happen?” In response, some Christian leaders have suggested that God was punishing our country for reaching an all-time low in moral behavior. As one well-known…

The Cross and the Witness of Violent Portraits of God

In my previous post I noted that the prevalent contemporary evangelical assumption that the only legitimate meaning of a passage of Scripture is the one the author intended is a rather recent, and very secular, innovation in Church history. It was birthed in the post-Enlightenment era (17th -18th centuries) when secular minded scholars began to…

What the Cross Tells Us About God

Whether we’re talking about our relationship with God or with other people, the quality of the relationship can never go beyond the level of trust the relating parties have in each other’s character. We cannot be rightly related to God, therefore, except insofar as we embrace a trustworthy picture of him. To the extent that…

God Became a Zygote

Has the Christmas story become so familiar that you’ve lost any sense of how spectacular it is? The great creator of the universe became a microscopic zygote. The all-powerful being who spoke the stars into existence came in a very small and vulnerable way. He crossed an infinite distance to become one of us. You can watch…

A Coming Storm

There is a storm beginning to brew on the horizon. It is a debate among Evangelicals about the violent depictions of God, stirred up largely by Eric Seibert’s Disturbing Divine Behavior. Here is a post that sounds “the clarion call.” The debate is presently around two options. Option #1:  Traditionalists argue we must simply embrace…

Sermon Clip: Twisted Scripture-Hebrews 9

Why must there be the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sins? Our Twisted Scripture series continues this week as Greg explores Hebrews 9:18-22. This scripture passage is commonly used to support the penal substitutionary atonement theory in which our guilt was transferred to Christ and He was punished on the cross on our…