1. Substiutianary Atonement is not, at present a useful model of the atonement for me. Calvin's penal substutionary atonement seems to me outright heretical because it impugns the justice of the Father- in that a just God would not allow an innocent victim to take the punishment due to a guilty party. I do not know enough about Anslem's formulation of substutionary atonement to say if I have the same theological problem with his formulations.

2. Christ the Victor makes much more sense to me- Luther, Dante, and most of the Mothers and Fathers saw the atonement as Christ descending into 'hell' to set free sinners and win victory over Death and the Enimey. In this view Jesus' death does not appease God's wrath, for God's love is stronger then God's wrath always. However, through our sins we had been enslaved to Sin, Death, and the Devil, and Christ took on our form, apart from sin to free us from this- to loose our chains. This is why I prefer the Apostle's Creed to the Nicene.

3. It follows from this that the work of loosing chains is how we best imitate Christ.

Penal Subsitutionary Atonement and Christ the Victor atonement have something in common - they both posit the atonement for our sins of a Christ who is both Human and God at the same time. There is, however, a third vision of the Atonement, that of Peter Abelard, who posited that Jesus died to show us the vision of radical self-denial that we should endeavor to live by. In this view of the atonement Jesus dies for our sins not to appease the justice of the father or to destroy the dominion Death and the Devil have over humanity, but to show us how to live a sinless life. I dislike this third position, which seems to be that of John Shelby Spong and many other modern liberals just as much as I dislike penal substitution. My dislike is rooted in two issues:

1. Following the example of Christ perfectly is impossible- we have all sinned, we all know it. Therefore Christ must have to be God to have lived a sinless life, and He would not ask of us something that is impossible.

2. Seeing Christ's death as an example of love in the face of hate but nothing more obliviates the necessity of the resurrection (some forms of PSA also do this) - if Jesus had not risen from the grave, he would have been just one of many victims of Roman cruelty. Risen, he shows that the power and love of God is greater then any human cruelty.