So it’s wrong on the basis of a misunderstanding? Penal substitution isn’t in an either/or relationship with the view that Jesus was a perfect sacrifice. It hinges on it.
Sorry, not obvious at all. Some say for the slightest sin, death is deserved. Others take the common sense view, that gossip or stealing gum balls doesn’t deserve crucifixion (but its still more than enough to cover it).
Im going to try to answer your question as I understand it.A person incarcerated does his time ,he’s freed.According to the law he’s atoned for his crime.On a religious basis he hasnt necessarily atoned for his crime.Easterners are saying its heretical for the Church to say he’s atoned.I dont believe the Church says he’s atoned.
yes, I don’t know how essential that is to the theory, but I suppose a that is generally how it is often articulated.
The wages of sin is death, thus it can’t be the case that one merely puts in the time and gets out.
Doesn’t the sacrifice of the Cross actually turn this on its head some what? I mean rather than an angry God looking down on sinful man, doesn’t the Cross show us angry man shouting at crucified God?
I can’t say I know what you mean. Angry men DID shout at the crucified God.
In that narrative, there is still undeniably a substitution in place of Isaac.
I did do some work on this a few years ago, I remember that the recently beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman held ideas close to this, I also remember the awesome book The Lord by Guardini looks at the Sacrifice of the Cross in this way. You have peaked my interest enough for me to pull my notes out when I get home from the office!
Penal substitution does not involve sacrifice for atonement of sins. It involves a juridical declaration that Jesus is guilty for your sins. There is a difference.
I’m not talking about earthly death. “Saved” Christians do suffer earthly death even though Jesus died for their sins. Earthly death is a consequence of sin of a temporal nature, not its direct penalty for the sinner.
Penal substitution does not involve sacrifice for atonement of sins. It involves a juridical declaration that Jesus is guilty for your sins and suffers the punishment you deserve in your place. There is a difference.
I’m not talking about earthly death. “Saved” Christians do suffer earthly death even though Jesus died for their sins. If Jesus suffered everything that sinners deserve so they wouldn’t suffer that punishment, why does your church have funerals? Earthly death is a temporal consequence of sin, not its direct penalty for the sinner.
I’m really not confident that this is accurate.
Nor am I confident that this is accurate either. I have never heard of Jesus as being described as guilty in relation to this.
For one thing, I’m not confident at all in the belief of hell as eternal conscious torment as the most faithful interpretation of scripture and I find it to lead to a moral skepticism to think that just any sin deserves this. That leads us back to the biblical statement “the wages of sin is death”.
If we experience the wages, because of what Jesus did, they will nevertheless be reversed.
So I’ve been told. But I really don’t know that that is true. AFter all, Jesus said “My God my God, why have you forsaken me?” That may not work with the way people conceive the trinity. But the problem with that is that we do not fully comprehend the trinity. We don’t fully understand what is only partially revealed to us, but still ultimately very mysterious (Same applies to the atonement).
No, it isn’t. If your sin doesn’t merit hell, then seeing as you are going to die whether you are a Christian or not, then Jesus didn’t save you from anything.
If Jesus is not God then the Person who died for your sins was just another nice guy. Plenty of nice guys have been unfairly killed and their death didn’t atone for the sins of anyone. This is why the Trinity is the baseline determinant for whether one is a Christian. If you reject the Trinity you reject Christianity and I beg you not to do that.
That doesn’t follow in the slightest. You need to examine the variety of alternatives to an eternal hell.
I never suggested that nor implied it.
I didn’t do that either. I am a trinitarian and it means much to me. I don’t agree that rejecting the trinity is the same as rejecting Christianity. If the church took several centuries to figure it (as far as they did, mystery that it still remains) surely there is room for grace here.
I understand that and it is still the possibility that the trinity suffered a separation at this point is still a reasonable interpretation.
but of course.
Penal substitution advocates generally hold that this was a mutual decision in the trinity (perhaps before creation, be a certainty or a contingency). God didn’t have to sacrifice himself. He could have just destroyed humans after the first sin.
But furthermore, you are suggesting something at odds with a Messianic prophecy from Isaiah 53:10:
here again, Penal substitution works with both views, with a Dynamic living God, or a geomorphic frozen static god of the philosophers. Of course with the idea that the trinity was severed, this does play a role in how the substitution was punished in our place. Nevertheless, penal substitution was first articulated by John Calvin who believed in God’s absolute immutability.
I have been meaning to study up on it, and I am taking a Christology course on it right now. If you want, you can PM me and give me your email - I can contact you at a later date when I have more to share with you. 
It was not catholic. Is the catholic church a more theologically free bigger tent today? I’m interested to see if fighting fat will get back to us on his observations.
I know some of them do. I don’t know that this is true of all of them.
Why people leave the faith is an important consideration… yet hardly a reliable guide for faith.
To find criticisms may only suggest that this is a limited view. I prefer the pluralistic approach that notes that scripture uses many concepts to explain the atonement, that (like the vast majority of our normal everyday harmless concepts) it is but one metaphor to enlighten an event that is still not fully understood (and very likely still debated even in the catholic church… Anselm after all took issue with previous understandings and formed the predecessor to penal substitution).
More specifically, a self voluntary divine sacrifice from our fully human fully divine Christ.
here is good enough.