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Critics, past and present, usually raise four main objections to substitutionary Atonement.

1. Not Enough? Many current mainline Christians—such as William Placher, "Christ Takes our Place" (Interpretation, Jan. 1999), and Peter Schmiechen, Saving Power (Eerdmans, 2005)—say penal substitution is, at best, inadequate. They say the true focus of Atonement doctrine lies beyond achieving forgiveness.

For example, Stephen Finlan represents the stream of Christian thought following Abelard and Schleiermacher that stresses the Incarnation rather than any particular understanding of the Atonement. In his dissertation, The Backgrounds and Content of Paul's Cultic Atonement Metaphors (Brill, 2004), and in his book Problems with Atonement (Liturgical Press, 2005), he sees the whole framework of "satisfaction" as medieval, coming to us not from Paul, but from Anselm. Finlan acknowledges that "sacrifice" and "scapegoat" are images rooted in the Old Testament, images which Paul and the writer of Hebrews use, but he says only later theologizing led Christians to theorize about the Atonement. In the end, Finlan concludes that Christians should realize that the Atonement is secondary to the Incarnation. He argues that we should think about Atonement as theosis, as growing in God-like spirituality and conduct, thus sharing in the life of God.

The Eastern Orthodox have long accepted theosis as the main result of Christ's death. Reflecting on 2 Corinthians 3:18, Ephesians 4:13, 2 Peter 1:4, and other passages, many have suggested that God's work in us through Christ is best understood not by language of penalty, payment, ransom, and satisfaction, but by language of love, inclusion, growth, and deification. Seen this way, the church becomes an extension of the incarnation of God in Christ, and biblical images of the church as the body of Christ take on a more realistic hue.

2. Irrelevant? Other critics, concerned with clearly communicating the gospel, charge that substitution does not make sense to modern cultures, does not mesh with most of what is in the Gospels, and glorifies unforgiving, abusive behavior. Joel Green and Mark Baker, in Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (InterVarsity Press, 2000), say, "We believe that the popular fascination with and commitment to penal substitutionary Atonement has had ill effects in the life of the church in the United States and has little to offer the global church and mission by way of understanding or embodying the message of Jesus Christ." Such critics argue that modern cultures, which are far removed from religions that offer blood sacrifices, find substitutionary theory irrelevant and distasteful.

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May 2006, Vol. 50, No. 5