Steve Jeffery, Mike Ovey and Andrew Sach have together written an explanation and defence of the doctrine of penal substitution under the title Pierced for our transgressions: rediscovering the glory of penal substitution (IVP, March 2007). Here they explain briefly the background to the controversy, and give a few examples of the kinds of arguments with which they engage in the book.
Doctrinal controversy has plagued the church from the earliest days. Debate raged about the deity of Christ in the fourth century, about justification by faith alone in the 16th, about the credibility of miracles in the first part of the 20th.
In recent years, dissenting voices have been raised against a central aspect of the atonement, namely penal substitution — the doctrine that God gave himself in the person of his Son to suffer instead of us the death, punishment and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty for sin.
