Bill, your book on the Atonement, Atonement, and the Death of Christ from Baylor University

Press, has become one of the players in our current controversy concerning the meaning

and nature of Christ's death on the cross. You've done interviews, including one with Shaw McDowell,

in response to a book by Andrew Rilera called Lamb of the Free,

that challenges the penal substitutionary atonement.

But let's revisit the subject for the Reasonable Faith podcast,

and in case there's someone who is

unfamiliar with the penal substitutionary atonement, we often call it the PSA, please to find it

for us again.

Okay, penal substitutionary atonement is the doctrine that Christ endured the suffering that we deserved as the punishment for our sins,

thereby freeing us from our liability to punishment.

Well, let's look at one of the responses to your interview with Sean and see what some of the objections are.

This one is from Max Botner. He's associate professor of biblical studies at Jessup University, which is in California.

You know, this is a big topic, Bill, so we only have time to look at some of Dr. Botner's objections. I'm sure that there's

going to be a lot more responses and they'll begin to double and triple and there will be a lot of

response to this. But this will hopefully give you a chance to elaborate on some of the points

you've been making. So here's the first excerpt.

Most criticisms of penal substitutionary atonement focus on the first aspect, the penal aspect.

They want to deny that punitive aspect of the doctrine that Christ was punished for our sins.

The argument is usually that an innocent person cannot be punished for the sin of another.

But that plays almost no role in Riera's book.

It almost never comes up.

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