Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Christ, part 18.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

We've completed our survey of the biblical data concerning Christ's atonement, as well as a brief synopsis of certain

great figures in the history of the church with respect to their thinking on the atonement.

And today we want to now reflect on this doctrine and explore what options are open to a biblically faithful

atonement theorist. I want to reiterate what I said earlier that any atonement theory,

however appealing or attractive it might appear to you, which does not do justice to the biblical

data, just is not an acceptable atonement theory.

Now, while I'm not going to defend a specific atonement theory, I do think that any adequate

theory of the atonement must incorporate the following elements.

And the first and foremost of these is penal substitution.

An essential and I think central element of any biblically adequate atonement theory is penal substitution. Penal substitution in a theological

context can be defined as the doctrine that God inflicted upon Christ the suffering which we

deserved as the punishment for our sins, as a result of which we no longer

deserve suffering. It is the doctrine that God inflicted upon Christ, the suffering that we deserved

as the punishment for our sins, as a result of which we no longer deserve punishment.

Now notice that that explication leaves open the question of whether God punished Christ for our sins.

Some defenders of penal substitution recoil at the idea that God punished his beloved son.

But notice that the explication that I've given allows that Christ was not punished,

but that rather he endured the suffering which would have been our punishment,

had it been inflicted on us. So God did not technically punish Christ for our sins, but he afflicted

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