Penal-Substitutionary Atonement -- it was once so Anglican!

When you get to my age, the initials PSA take on a new significance, but it seems the same is true theologically. Where once 'classical evangelicals' preached that Jesus bore the punishment for our sins on the cross, now it seems the evangelical constituency is not so sure.

As to the rest of the Protestant churches, they gave this one up a long while ago, didn't they? The presenting issue is the increasingly-notorious line in the song 'In Christ Alone', by Stuart Townsend and Keith Getty, 'Till on that cross as Jesus died, The wrath of God was satisfied', but it has been under pressure for years even amongst evangelicals.

Recently I put my toe in the waters of a lengthy debate on the subject with a tutor at my old theological college, St John's Nottingham, who is convinced that not only is the concept of 'satisfaction' wrong but that there was no 'punishment' of Jesus, adding that the disputed phrase in the Townsend-Getty song is nowhere found in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, to which Anglican clergy must assent.

And that is true, but it is in the Homilies, which the Thirty-Nine Articles commend as containing "godly and wholesome Doctrine". So here are some quotes from the Articles on the subject of Christ's death, God's wrath and the punishment for our sins.

My interlocutor replied that this only showed what some people once believed -- which is also the attitude to the Articles I find outside evangelical Anglican circles. But as I say to them on the latter subject, it happens to be what some of us still believe. The homilies quoted are principally Of the salvation of all mankind and Of the Passion: for Good-Friday, parts One and Two.

God sent his only son our Saviour Christ into this world ... and by shedding of his most precious blood, to make a sacrifice and satisfaction, or (as it may be called) amends to his Father for our sins, to assuage his wrath and indignation conceived against us ...

... whereas all the world was not able of themselves to pay any part towards their ransom, it pleased our heavenly Father of his infinite mercy, without any our desert or deserving, to prepare for us the most precious jewels of Christ’s body and blood, whereby our ransom might be fully paid, the law fulfilled, and his justice fully satisfied.

[God] hath given his own natural Son ... to be incarnated, and to take our mortal nature upon him, with the infirmities of the same, and in the same nature to suffer most shameful and painful death for our offences, to the intent to justify us, and to restore us to life everlasting: so making us also his dear children ...

And yet, I say, did Christ put himself between GOD'S deserved wrath, and our sin, and rent that obligation wherein we were in danger to GOD, and paid our debt (Colossians 2.14).

Let us know for a certainty, that if the most dearly beloved Son of GOD was thus punished and stricken for the sin which he had not done himself: how much more ought we sore to be stricken for our daily and manifold sins which we commit against GOD,

For if GOD (saith Saint Paul) hath not spared his own Son from pain and punishment, but delivered him for us all unto the death: how should he not give us all other things with him (Romans 8.32)?

... even then did Christ the Son of God, by the appointment of his Father, come down from heaven, to be wounded for our sakes, to be reputed with the wicked, to be condemned unto death, to take upon him the reward of our sins, and to give his Body to be broken on the Crosse for our offences.

Was not this a manifest token of God's great wrath and displeasure towards sin, that he could be pacified by no other means, but only by the sweet and precious blood of his dear Son?

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