This is an article about penal substitutionary atonement, or PSA. I’d like to attempt the herculean feat of discussing PSA without slander, rancor, or resort to a straw man. I leave it to you, dear reader, to judge whether I succeed.
Speaking of impossible tasks, I’m also going to avoid adjudicating the merits and demerits of PSA itself. I’ll discuss arguments for and against it, but I’m not going to tell you where you should land. Rather, I’m mostly going to talk about how we talk about PSA. Scholars call this “second-order discourse.” Normies call it “meta.” Either way, my concern is not the doctrine per se, but rather the way Christians discuss it with one another—or perhaps I should say, the ways we fail to do so.
With me so far? Good. Let’s get started.
Read Full Article »