The Necessity Problem
Penal

What Did the Cross Achieve?

J.I. Packer, 1973

PSA as the central atonement theory.

The problem it faces

General resistance to the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement.

The move it makes

Packer's paper essentially doubled down on the importance of penal substitutionary atonement by claiming that it is the best possible model we have. While supporting the Puritans, he simultaneously critiques the rationalism of the Puritans, claiming that they left no room for mystery, and shouldn't have thought about it too deeply. He also rejected the common caricature of PSA as being "cosmic child abuse".

The new problem it opens

Packer abandons reason. By arguing that the Puritans were overly rationalistic in their claims, his conclusion is not that they started with poor premises, but rather that they should have left the mechanisms open to mystery.

My notes

To me this is a concession. Anselm, Calvin, Owen, Baxter, and many theologians before them had spent centuries trying to smuggle retributive justice into Christianity without providing a satisfying logic. The model was apparently illogical. Faced with a model that resists attempts to apply logic, one can either reject the model or reject the logic. Packer takes a note from Ramsay and suggests the latter.

Packer's solution (which he draws from Ramsay) is to claim that the model has it's limits, but is still the best model out there. To me, it's essentially throwing up his hands and saying it's a mystery. I find this explanation unsatisfactory.

More than this, this also marks a point at which Packer is now playing on different rules than those who created the doctrine. From Packer's perspective, Owen and others were misled by their attempts to use logical positivism to prove the point. The trouble with this is that the entirety of the model was built using similar methods of classical logic. Responses were framed as correctives to previous statements, often based in logic. By claiming that the models are merely tools used for disclosure and not blueprints is denying the foundation upon which they were built.

One other problem that I have with this argument is that Packer likely wouldn't hold the same level of latitude towards other atonement models. Indeed, in the very same year he wrote this paper, he criticizes C.H. Dodd for trying to reduce propitiation to "expiation", which is effectively an attack on another model.

Where this sits

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