I like this piece on Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA), by Michael F. Bird.
I too get a cringy feeling from some of the language around this topic, when it gets to talking about God pouring out his wrath on Jesus. Bird's piece is useful to me, because it kind of helps to differentiate the baby from the bathwater, if you know what I mean.
Bird's piece returns PSA to its rightful place in the mosaic. Does it sometimes feel like it has been taken from that rightful place and magnified, even made to be the center, the main thing, in the great mosaic of Biblical theology?
Sometimes it's even made to seem like the Gospel itself. While the cross is certainly a central element of the Gospel, that doesn't make PSA the Gospel. The lineaments of the Gospel and of PSA are not the same.
This is a theme I'm probably going to come back to from time to time. Bird's point that PSA is not a feature element of any of the early-church preaching found in Acts is telling, I think. The Gospel is much bigger than PSA, and if we seem to highlight atonement we often thereby seem to demote the life of Jesus, hiss resurrection, and his current ministry, along with the grand purpose of our trinitarian God that arches over all of this. Instead we get, believe in PSA and you'll go to heaven!
Btw, I'm currently reading and enjoying Bird's commentary on Romans. Recommended.
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