David Heddle commented on my earlier post, PSA: An Unbalanced and Ineffective View of the Atonement, in his post Penal Substitutionary Atonement: its not about Justice. I haven’t had time to respond until now, and I will only respond to a few points. One of the things I have noticed about debates on the atonement is that they tend to cover wide swathes of material, and bring on board large numbers of assumptions. It’s pretty much impossible to avoid.
First let me note a couple of quotes to which I want to respond briefly and then get to the actually topic.
Heddle says: “The scriptural support for PSA is impressive.” He then proceeds to cite Isaiah 53:5 and Romans 3:23-25. Of course both sides claim support from scripture–that’s required–but it seems to me that proponents of PSA find every verse that has both the words “redemption” (or salvation, or something similar) and the word “for” in them, and claim that they support substitutionary atonement as understood in a courtroom setting.
That importation is certainly wrong in Isaiah 53, which quite clearly has the concept of substitution, but lacks the courtroom metaphor and doesn’t deal with someone being adjudged in one way or another. It is not good practice to interpret the substitution of Isaiah 53, in which the servant suffers for a group of people, without looking at the servant passages in general. In this case, we have a small group of people suffering as a result of the actions of the whole nation. There is substitution and representation, but there is no imputation or impartation going on. The more I study “clear” texts supporting penal substitution, the less clearly they support penal substitution. In particular, few can properly be read in a courtroom setting.