Kim Fabricius posts Ten Propositions on Penal Substitution. I am reminded by several of Kim’s points of Capon’s argument in Fingerprints (I think), which traces the historical changes in theories of the atonement. A key figure is Anselm, who puts forth the “satisfaction” theory (see Kim’s No. 4). Five hundred years later, this theory takes on a different shape in Calvin’s theology, a shape whose contours we recognize mostly clearly today in the Reformed theory of the atonement. Point No. 5 (et al) proposes some guardrails that I think are essential if we are to retain this doctrine. These guardrails are robust Trinitarian theology on the one side and robust Incarnational theology on the other. Something that occasionally bothers me about the way the atonement is often spoken of in Reformed circles is the way it tends to reduce the Incarnation to something God has to do to forgive sinners, as if it were on the divine to-do list or operating procedures, and forgiveness and salvation occur only when God ticks off the right boxes in order. “OK, time to become man. Check.” It does seem that some theories of the atonement (ransom might be here, too) tend to obscure and even lose the magnitude and grandeur of salvation as a cosmic re-creation. Recapitulation, however, is the image favored by the earliest theorists on the atonement: Paul, the author of Hebrews, John 1, the ECFs.