One problem is Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA). PSA, which many US evangelicals is ‘the gospel’ is a problematic doctrine on numerous grounds. Fundamentally, there exists no single, clear biblical pericope that explicitly supports it. The attempts to construct a scriptural basis rely on prooftexting—the practice of isolating verses from their context—and require torturous exegesis dependent on external interpretive frameworks.
The doctrine also misrepresents the Old Testament sacrificial system it often cites for support. The Levitical sacrifices were primarily about purification and restoring communion with God, not a penal transaction. Furthermore, no sacrificial victim had sins literally transferred to it; even the famous Azazel scapegoat, upon which the sins of the people were symbolically placed, was not sacrificed but released into the wilderness.
Theologically, PSA presents several critical shortcomings. It functionally excludes the agency of the Holy Spirit in the work of atonement and fails to explain how Christ’s death enables reconciliation between human beings. Its framework is built upon a presupposed Ancient Near Eastern legal system of exact penal substitution that never existed historically as the doctrine describes.
The model rests on a crucial semantic shift, interpreting Christ dying for us (in our benefit) as dying instead of us, without sufficient justification for this forensic interpretation. Historically, PSA is particular to specific theological, historical, and geographical contexts, primarily the Reformed tradition of the Anglo-American world, thus failing the Vincentian Canon of being believed “everywhere, always, by all.” Attempts to locate a full-fledged PSA prior to the Magisterial Reformation rely on decontextualized prooftexting of Church Fathers and Medieval sources; even key Reformers like John Calvin and Martin Luther combined penal concepts with participatory or Christus Victor models of atonement. Other Reformation theologians held complex, multifaceted views of atonement and did not reduce it solely to a forensic legal case.
Consequently, declarations that equate PSA with the gospel itself—such as the Cambridge Declaration—lack representativeness of wider Christianity and are arguably heretical in elevating a human doctrinal construct to the status of the core gospel message.
A potential legitimate place for PSA could be as a theologoumenon—a theological opinion useful for sermon illustration, hymnody, or devotional literature. In this view, it could serve as an inspirational model or metaphor for some believers, not as a binding theological reality.
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