There are many, many Lutherans who embrace the Lutheran view of salvation without subscribing to Penal Substitution. I'm one of them.
The Lutheran doctrine of Justification does not require Penal Substitution. One doesn't need to subscribe to Satisfaction Theory broadly to uphold the Doctrine of Justification. I subscribe to the Lutheran doctrine of Justification as well as Christus Victor theory. I don't see a conflict.
-CryptoLutheran
To me the "Lutheran view" of soteriology is too unsystematic to really be taken seriously, that's why the Reformed are the best known to have the 'intellectual' theologians. The Cristus Victor theory basically overlooks the entire notion of Atonement and cannot address Biblical terms like propitiation.
We have tried to point out that someone was indeed punished, and for us ("It pleased the LORD to bruise Him" and "He was bruised for our iniquities") but you want to believe that this is neither punishment nor vicarious. I think we're stuck here.
The hang-up is strictly Biblical. The Atonement I'm describing is explicitly the Biblical model. Never ever is atonement in Scripture described in terms of transferring a punishment. That's a tradition of men, plain and simple, that's being projected onto the text.
That's why I go back to the fact I've examined the Scriptural term "atonement" where as most people (including Reformed theologians) have not. This is precisely why you don't see Protestants appealing to examples like Moses, Aaron, and Phinehas, all of whom made atonement (turning away God's wrath), and were clearly
types of Christ.
The Reformed dilemma comes out the most when we examine the Crucifixion accounts in the Gospels. All those accounts show is Jesus being tortured and physically put to death on a Cross by wicked men. The Reformed must say (and have) that the physical sufferings Jesus endured were nothing compared to the 'invisible' pains that God the Father was inflicting on Jesus in the mean time. So the physical sufferings of Jesus were essentially incidental, since the real suffering was spiritual, invisibly taking place when all eyes were on the nails and blood. And that's why, in sheer desperation, the Reformed scholars cling with all their might to "My God, why have you abandoned me" since they're desperately grasping at whatever straws they can to support a claim that's clearly absent from a plain reading of the crucifixion accounts.
Applying human logic to divine revelation. . .is the key to limited apprehension of God's truth.
It's not complicated.
Christ's atonement paid the penalty that is due at the Final Judgment on the sin of those who believe in him.
You're contradicting yourself. You start of denigrating "human logic" and then you go onto apply a human definition of "atonement" to Christ's work.
Give me ONE plain example in the Bible where the term "atonement" is used and the situation is clearly that of a punishment being transferred.
If you cannot, then your definition of "atonement" is of fallible human origin and must be rejected.
The penal substitutionary theory of the atonement is not God's revealed truth, it is just a theory.
It's more than a theory though, it's at the heart of (at least) the Reformed view of salvation. And it's certainly not a theory when it directly and indirectly undermines other Christian dogmas (e.g. "the ancient fellowship between Father and Son was broken").
The Father and the Son are not at odds. They have the same concept of justice, and the same love for the people they saved. The Father did not hate the Son: "The Father loves Me because I lay down my life" (Jn 10:17). I want to add that the cross did not make God loving. Love is the reason for the cross: "For God so loved the world." There are about a half dozen places in the NT where love is given as the reason for the atonement.
That's fine. The problem is that's incompatible with PSub. What you just said is directly at odds with the Protestant theologians I quoted at the start of this thread.
It was the Father's will that the cup of suffering would not pass from Jesus (Matt. 26:39) and Jesus said, "as You will." Think about that. The Father willed the Son to suffer. This isn't kindness. Making someone suffer, this is treating someone like an enemy. Obviously, Jesus wasn't being hurt by the Father for His own sins. It was for ours.
This reveals a serious error of Protestant theology as a whole, because Protestant theology cannot explain human (especially Christian) suffering. The logic is, suffering must mean God is mad at me. And when the Christian believes Jesus took that punishment, then God shouldn't be mad at them, and so they freak out when suffering hits them.
So you have two options here, either abandon you claim that "making someone suffer means treating someone like an enemy," and thus abandon your overall argument that Jesus suffering entails the Father treating Him like an enemy, or else maintain that and leave unexplained the sufferings of Job and Christians.
In fact, I'll up the ante here by showing you a plain example how Reformed scholars have failed you when they point to the "cup" that Jesus must drink. Look at Mark 10:
37 And they said to him, Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory. 38 Jesus said to them, You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized? 39 And they said to him, We are able. And Jesus said to them, The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized, 40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.
If this is the "cup of God's wrath," then this verse becomes unintelligible. It means Jesus will drink the wrath and the apostles will drink the wrath, completely contradicting PSub. Rather, what this "cup" is is simply the cup of persecution and suffering, which God is granting to bring about some good. And just as if was the Father's will that the cup would not pass from Jesus, so to it was the Father's will that the cup would not pass from the Apostles (who were martyred for the Gospel).
