So my point is that when a ‘penal substitutionary reading’ of the atonement is offered that does not situate itself alongside these other readings, what we are left with is a view of God and God’s relation to the world in which God is a subject of ‘the law’. I would argue that the law is GOD’S law, and as such, it is the law of his love – so that his wrath is not to be contrasted with or opposed to his love; rather, it is the expression of his love.

So in your post, you rightly critique Olsen’s anticipation of the response to his argument for the necessity of ‘subjective appropriation’ and the necessity of not only passive but also active judgment. You then point out that “in Scripture, the acceptability of Christ’s substitutionary death rests with God, not with us, and the person (Christ) serving as the substitute was appointed out of love by the Judge himself to be the representative of those for whom he is the substitute (e.g., Rom. 5:12-21).” And then you conclude: “penal substitutionary atonement without either particular redemption or universal salvation does involve a double punishment on the part of God and therefore does raise significant questions about the righteousness (and wisdom) of God.”

I think your conclusion perfectly illustrates my point that the legal on its own leads to ‘significant questions about’ the character of God. What is missing i believe is embedding the legal into a fuller understanding of Christ’s incarnation in which his whole life obedience and relationship with the Father is our offering of atonement, and through union with him, we share in that. From this reading, union with Christ can be viewed as both ontologically objective (Christ united himself to our humanity for us) and as such legally and culticly satisfying, yet all this without suppressing the necessity of the ‘subjective appropriation’ by the individual (through which by the Spirit we are subjectively united to Christ). This is what i mean by ‘personal’ – that our personal response to God matters.

T.F. Torrance (see his Mediation of Christ) is very helpful on this matter of refusing to let one ‘theory’ of atonement take the centre away from the incarnate Christ himself.

Thanks for your comments. I’m responding late here, but I do agree that it would be a seriously liability for any reading of the atonement to eradicate its personal character. I just don’t see how the penal substitutionary reading actually would do that. First, it doesn’t necessarily exclude any other vital dimensions of the atonement. Second, it is itself a personal reading of the atonement with one of the persons of the Godhead taking on flesh and representing other human persons, bearing their guilt to reconcile (personal, again) them to God. In other words, I think one would be hard-pressed to argue successfully that legal is the opposite of personal.