Penal Substitution: A Response To Recent Criticisms -- By: Garry J. Williams

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 50:1 (Mar 2007)
Article: Penal Substitution: A Response To Recent Criticisms
Author: Garry J. Williams


Penal Substitution: A Response To Recent Criticisms

Garry J. Williams

Garry Williams teaches at Oak Hill Theological College, Chase Side, Southgate, London, N14 4PS.

I. Contemporary Criticisms Of Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Relationships within the Evangelical Alliance in the United Kingdom have been disturbed recently by the publication of a work entitled The Lost Message of Jesus by Steve Chalke and Alan Mann, in which the authors strongly criticize the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement.1 The book, which may be known to readers in the United States since it is now available on both sides of the Atlantic, only touched briefly on this subject. Nevertheless, the issue became the focus of controversy, especially when Chalke published a further article criticizing penal substitution in Christianity, a popular British magazine.2 In order to address this debate, the Evangelical Alliance organized a symposium in London in July 2005 and invited a number of theologians and practitioners to speak on the subject of penal substitutionary atonement. Chalke would not claim to be an academic theologian, and to ensure a more substantial series of papers a number of academics were invited to speak at the symposium. Here the American connection became stronger, since the leading speaker opposing penal substitutionary atonement was Professor Joel Green of Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky. As a proponent of penal substitutionary atonement who had already written a brief article replying to Chalke, I was invited to give a paper at the symposium. Knowing that Green would be speaking at the start of the symposium and would be the doctrine’s most significant critic, I tailored my paper to engage with some of the arguments which Green had already published on the subject as well as the criticisms levelled by Chalke.3 This article is based on my paper at the symposium and may be of interest to a wider readership given that the debate is not limited to British soil.4

The criticisms of penal substitutionary atonement which have arisen even within this recent debate are legion, and in works on the subject they often come like machine gun fire. I focus here on four main charges, reducible to the three categories of God, the individual, and doctrinal isolationism. The first charge is that penal substitution entails a mistaken doctrine of God, principally in that it ascribes retributive justice to him. The second, also a charge relating to the doctrine of God, is th...

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