The Victim and the Rebel or Why We Need Christus Victor and Penal Substitution
http://lawrencegarcia.org/the-victim-the-rebel-or-why-we-need-christus-victor-penal-substitution/ No comments yet Categories: The Atonement Failure to appreciate the paradoxical (and unapologetically so) nature of Scripture and the all-too-human-tendency to band-wagon and carry things to their “necessary” logical conclusions (let’s call this “rationalization”) lead to unbalanced doctrinal and theological systems. Perhaps nowhere is this sort of thing more apparent than the setting of Christus Victor (that in Jesus’ death God destroys the power of evil, sin, and death over humans and the creation) against Penal Substitution (where God in Christ suffers the punishment for sin and rebellion); or as some tend to put it a “loving” and a “forgiving” God vis-à-vis a God “who needs to punish in order to forgive.” Now, the rejection of Penal Substitution (in whatever form) is usually accompanied by the claim that it is a late articulation by Anslem who basically art...