Recent Controversies
Most recently controversy has arisen over the strict doctrine of penal substitution in which Socinus's argument about the justice of God has been raised: namely, whether it constitutes "cosmic child abuse." Proponents of penal substitution reject Socinus's charge out of hand because he also rejects the trinity, in which there is substantial unity between the God the Father and God the Son and which, in their view, breaks the analogy.
The debate has largely been conducted in evangelical circles, though the dismissal of the doctrine of penal substitution on moral grounds by the Anglo-Catholic Dean of St Albans, Jeffrey John, in a broadcast talk during Holy Week 2007 has drawn fire in his direction.
In his book Mere Christianity C. S. Lewis mentions that before becoming a Christian, the doctrine of penal substitution had seemed extremely unethical to him, and that while he had since found it to be less so, he nonetheless indicated a preference for a position closer to that of Athanasius, in which Christ's death is seen as enabling us to die to sin by our participation, and not as a satisfaction or payment to justice as such. He also stated, however, that in his view no explanation of the atonement is as relevant as the fact of the atonement. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in his fantasy fiction series, The Chronicles of Narnia, depicts the king Aslan surrendering himself to Jadis the White Witch as a substitute for the life of Edmund Pevensie, which appears to illustrate a ransom or Christus Victor approach to the atonement.
George MacDonald, a universalist Christian theologian who was a great influence on Lewis, wrote against the idea that God was unable or unwilling to forgive humans without a substitutionary punishment in his Unspoken Sermons, and stated that he found the idea to be completely unjust.
Read more about this topic: Penal Substitution