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

Problems with the Simple Foreknowledge View

Some have proposed a model of divine foreknowledge which allows them to avoid the dilemma of affirming either that God creates people for the purpose of sending them to hell (Calvinism) or that he creates them without certain knowledge of their fate (open theism). In this alternative view God knows that certain individuals will be…

Topics:

What Does Spiritual Warfare Have To Do with the Cross?

Last week, we covered a few posts on the nature of the Atonement and the Christus Victor view. The following continues this theme, specifically looking the motif of spiritual warfare and how it relates to Christ’s work on the cross. This is an adaptation from Greg’s article in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views. …

Oh Constantine

Once upon a time there was a Roman Emperor named Constantine who used the enemy-loving Jesus to kill his enemies. What does this have to do with us? Find out:

How to Produce the Fruit of the Spirit

When the New Testament tells us to be loving, joyful, peaceful, kind and so on, it is not giving us a new set of behaviors that we are to strive to accomplish. Striving to attain them means nothing if they are sought as ethical ideals or to meet a set of religious rules. They have…

The “Christus Victor” View of the Atonement

God accomplished many things by having his Son become incarnate and die on Calvary. Through Christ God revealed the definitive truth about himself (Rom 5:8, cf. Jn 14:7-10); reconciled all things, including humans, to himself (2 Cor 5:18-19; Col 1:20-22), forgave us our sins (Ac 13:38; Eph 1:7); healed us from our sin-diseased nature (1…

A Brief Theology of the Trinity

“The economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity, and the immanent Trinity is the economic Trinity.” This is the maxim introduced by the Catholic theologian Karl Rahner that should shape our discussion of the Trinity. It is simply a short-hand way of saying that since the way God is toward us in Christ truly reveals God,…

Topics: