Featured Isaiah 53 doesn't support penal substitution

The sacrifice dies so that the offerer can be brought from a state of death to a state of life.

But the sacrifice does NOT suffer the wrath of God in place of the offerer as a substitute. Furthermore, God’s motives for carrying out His wrath or restraining His wrath are different. In the Bible, God’s motive for exercising wrath is to purify and protect His good creation, not simply to carry out a legal duty to punish, or defend His honor. His goal is to “destroy those who destroy the earth (Rev 11:18)” in order to protect the earth and its inhabitants. God’s reason for withholding wrath from the offerer is not that He has exhausted His wrath on a substitute, but that the corruption His wrath would eliminate has been purified, and so His wrath is no longer necessary. The offerer’s avoidance of wrath is secondary to the offerer’s transition from a state of corruption to purification, and by analogy, from a state of death to a state of resurrection.

Furthermore, all of the people who lived during the time of the OT sacrificial system are dead. They physically died. They suffered that punishment for sin. Neither the OT sacrifices, nor even the death of Christ, saved them from that fate. So not sure what you are arguing.

Again the function of Jesus' death is to bring people from a state of death to a state of life. Read Ephesians 2:1-10. The problem is death in sin. The solution is resurrection in Christ.

Sinners are already dead in sin. Jesus cannot die in place of people who are already dead. He can die with them. So that we can die with him - which is EXACTLY WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS. "I have been co-crucified with Christ." "We have been baptized with Christ into his death." I just don't see why people are having such a hard time with this. It is not complex.

 

no one is espousing this who anyone on here, Calvinist or non Calvinist, would recognize as a reliable source.

Augustine is not a reliable source?
Gregory of Nyssa is not a reliable source?
John Chrysostom is not a reliable source?
Anselm is not a reliable source?
Thomas Aquinas is not a reliable source?
Martin Luther is not a reliable source?
CS Lewis is not a reliable source?
NT Wright is not a reliable source?

All of these theologians have described the atoning work of Christ and the atonement mechanism in the terms I have set forth.

Other prominent Bible Scholars today who have serious criticisms of penal substitution are Tom McCall at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Tim Mackie with the Bible Project.

I would not trust anyone who did not find the above reliable.

 

Anselm did not teach penal substitution. Even the writers of Pierced for our Transgressions don't include him in their historical survey, and they are overall eager to claim pretty much every theologian supported penal substitution, even when they didn't (like Augustine).

When someone says Anselm taught penal substitution or something "close", that is a good indication they don't understand Anselm, or penal substitution, or neither.

As William Lane Craig clarifies, “On Anselm’s view Christ does not die in our place or pay the penalty for our sins; rather, he offers a compensation to God on our behalf. When Anselm affirms that Christ “allowed himself to be slain for the sake of justice” one must keep in mind that the demands of justice can be satisfied by either punishment or compensation. Christ offers compensation.” According to Anselm’s model, Jesus does not go to the cross to pay humanity’s debt of punishment; only sinners in hell pay what could be called a “debt of punishment” to restore God’s damaged honor.

In Anselm’s salvation narrative, sin primarily damages not humanity or creation, but God’s honor. To repair the damaged honor, the sinner must either make compensation through obedience (pay a debt of obedience), or be punished. Given that the worth of God’s honor is of infinite value, the compensation made must be of infinite value, or the punishment must be of infinite magnitude, i.e. eternal punishment in hell. Jesus’ death on the cross makes infinite compensation to God for humanity’s sins; the compensation is infinite because Jesus is God, and it is on behalf of humanity because Jesus is a human being.

Consider Bob: in committing a crime Bob has damaged the honor of the state, and to repair the damaged honor he can either pay $100,000 or go to jail. Jesus pays Bob’s debt of $100,000, but Jesus does not go to jail in Bob's place. What you need for penal substitution is for Jesus to go to jail instead of Bob so that Bob does not have to. But this is not in Anselm's model.

Though Anselm does not affirm penal substitution and I think Anselm’s atonement formulation is for the most part correct, I think the manner in which he talks about sin primarily damaging God’s honor is problematic. I think that a focus on sin as damage to God’s honor distracts from sin being fundamentally self-destructive and self-dishonoring towards humanity. When we ignore that sin is self-destructive and only emphasize that sin deserves punishment, we become prone to think that sin itself is actually a path to happiness that God happens to dislike and therefore punishes. Sin is not properly recognized as a violation of God's Created Order or violation of the natural law, necessarily resulting in self-destruction, it is just the pursuit of real happiness in a way that God has declared He dislikes and so He punishes it. Additionally, Anselm’s view makes God into a victim of our sin apart from the cross. But the truth is that the only way that God becomes a victim of humanity’s sin is through the cross.

On the honor of God:

Consider this illustration: Let’s say a father takes his 5 year old son to the community swimming pool. He tells his son, “Don’t run by the pool, or you will slip and hurt yourself.” His son disobeys and runs by the pool, slips, and hurts himself. Is the father’s honor damaged? Of course not. Exactly what he said would happen, did happen. The father is the offended party, but the son is the injured party. The offense was to the damage of the offender. The father does not come across as foolish, the son does. Everyone watching this scenario thinks, “That’s why you listen to your Dad.”

The same dynamic is at play in the Garden with Adam and Eve. God says, “Don’t eat from the tree, or you’ll die.” Adam and Eve eat from the tree and they die, before God even enters the scene. God is not made to look like a fool—Adam and Eve are. The moral of the story is, “That’s why you should listen to God.”

To return to the image of the fountain of living waters from Jeremiah 2:13, the glory of a fountain is to satisfy and sustain those in the desert. When someone refuses to drink from it and dies of thirst, the glory of the fountain is not damaged, but demonstrated. Similarly, the glory of a brick wall is its strength. The glory of the brick wall will be demonstrated whether or not someone leans against the brick wall for support, or punches the brick wall and breaks his arm. Finally, when sinners reject God’s laws and thereby destroy themselves, the glory of God is not damaged, but demonstrated. And so, it is not God or His honor that are damaged by sin, but sinners that are damaged by sin. In the case of sin against God, the offense is to the destruction and dishonor of the offender.

Furthermore, when considering sins such as suicide or self-harm, how does God reclaim what is owed to him by punishment? “Someone damages God’s honor by harming themselves, and God reclaims his honor by harming that person through punishment.” That’s nonsense. Again, the self-destructiveness of sin causes a redundancy problem for that theory of punishment.

 

The biblical text, in many places, says clearly that Christ died for our sins.

Yes! It says that Jesus died FOR us, and it also says Jesus dies WITH us. But if I go to the grocery store WITH my wife and FOR my wife, that excludes that I went to the grocery store INSTEAD of my wife.

If Jesus dies WITH us and FOR us, that excludes him dying INSTEAD of us.

That would clearly include those you're arguing are already dead.

Yes. Jesus dies WITH them and FOR them. He does not die INSTEAD of them. Impossible, since they are already dead.

So, biblically, at root, the atonement is Christ dying to pay for the sins of those dead in sin so that they may be forgiven and raised to newness of life as a new creation. But the payment of "sin" is the prerequisite to all of the other stuff.

Yes! Agree with everything here. But this is not penal substitution. It meets none of the necessary conditions of penal substitution. Do you even know what penal substitution actually is? I would go back to the original post and make sure you know what penal substitution is before claiming to defend it. Because what you have written here ain't it.

To your other points about the sacrificial system - just as Jesus' physical death is a forerunner to our own physical death, so also the death of the sacrificial animal is a forerunner of the eventual physical death of the offerer. Of course, the sacrificial animal does not actually take away sins, it is a symbol of Christ. But neither the death of the sacrificial animal, nor the death of Christ, saved anyone ultimately from physical death. It may have saved them from a certain instance of exile or execution, but not ultimately.