PSA REVISITED

I spent my allotted blogging time this evening answering a question on Facebook, so I figured I would paste my comment here as tonight's post.

I was asked by an acquaintance on Facebook, "What don't you like about Penal Substitutionary Atonement?"

(For the uninitiated, PSA is the idea that God punished Jesus on the cross for our sins, pouring out His righteous wrath on the Son which we sinners rightly deserved. It is one of several theories about how the Atonement works, but I think it should be eliminated from our theology.)

Here was my response:

Well, first, I don't see PSA taught explicitly in Scripture - unless I'm missing some key passage. [Proponents of PSA always go for Isaiah 53, but you have to make a lot of assumptions to find the doctrine there.]

On the other side, there are Scriptures which are hard to square with PSA - like Ezekiel 18, especially verse 20.

[20 The soul who sins is the one who will die. A son will not bear the iniquity of his father, and a father will not bear the iniquity of his son. The righteousness of the righteous man will fall upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked man will fall upon him.]

And then, on a philosophical level, PSA divides the Trinity. Even in your comments above you spoke of "God punishing His Son". Is Jesus not God? On some level, isn't PSA just God inflicting punishment on Himself? Not trying to be disrespectful, but that's the definition of masochism.

I hear "God the Father needs to exercise justice because it is an essential part of His nature." Is justice NOT an essential part of the Son's nature? Are they not of the same nature?

And finally, the idea that God pours out his wrath on Jesus in order to be able to forgive humans makes a mess of the concept of forgiveness.

If I say, "You owe me $1,000. Pay up." And you say, "I don't have it. Please forgive me." EITHER I forgive you and I am out $1,000. OR I get my $1,000 forcefully from an innocent 3rd party and I'm just happy to get my money back. But if I get my money from an innocent 3rd party, it would be ridiculous for me to then come back to you and say, "Your debt is forgiven." That's not "forgiveness" at that point.