It seems Pierced for Our Transgressions (a book I plan on reading) has stirred the NT Wright pot. You can read some very interesting discussion on the dialogue at Justin Taylor’s site. But is there anything more important than understanding why Jesus died on the cross?

The battle is really about penal substitution, was Jesus punished for our sins in our place? As much as NT Wright wants to argue that Steve Chalke has not denied penal substitution, I can’t see how Chalke hasn’t. NT simply doesn’t want to call A, A. He wants to call A non-A. Here is what NT says about Chalke:

Imagine my puzzlement, then, when I heard that a great storm had broken out because ‘Steve Chalke has denied substitutionary atonement’.

And yet, here is what Steve Chalke says about his book:

So it is that, as New Testament scholars Joel Green and Mark Baker explain in their book Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, ‘Penal substitution… is unbiblical not just because it distorts or leaves out biblical concepts but also because of its attempt at having one image or model serve as an all-encompassing theory, the only correct and needed explanation of the atonement.’

But, if penal substitution does not do justice to the story of our salvation through Christ, what other options are open to us? For me, the most empowering and motivating understanding of the atonement is that which most closely resembles the thinking of the Early Church. As they struggled to make sense of Jesus death and resurrection, the Early Church leaders (notably Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa and Origen) wrote about the cross in terms of a ransom. Of course, Jesus said himself that he came ‘to give his life as a ransom for many.’ (Mark 10:45). But to whom was this ransom paid? The Early Church was adamant that it was not to God. As Origen put it: ‘To whom did he give his life as a ransom for many? Assuredly not to God, could it then be to the Evil One? For he was holding fast until the ransom should be given him, even the life of Jesus; being deceived with the idea that he could have dominion over it, and not seeing that he could not bear the torture in retaining it.’

Read the rest of Chalke’s article and you’ll find that NT Wright refuses to believe Chalke denies penal substitution.

Mark Lauterbach has a great point on this whole subject, when he says:

It seems that the very design of God in the sacrifice of Christ is to run counter to all the sensibilities of humanity in sin. And that begins with its means — crucifixion. I am continuing to reflect on what it means to follow one who would have been treated with nothing but scorn by his contemporaries — why should I expect the message of the cross to be appealing apart from God’s Spirit at work?

If I want a message that is appealing and less offensive to modern man, I will end up with the “Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man” and a limp-wristed Jesus whose spoke sweet words of inspiration to disheartened but well intended people. But we preach Christ crucified, dying in our place, satisfying the holy character of God by his sacrifice.