If you push back on penal substitutionary atonement in any evangelical conversation, here is what happens. Someone reaches for a verse. They say, “But what about Isaiah 53? What about Romans 3? What about 2 Corinthians 5:21?” The verses get quoted as if quoting them ends the discussion. They do not end the discussion. They open it. Because every single one of these verses, when you read it in the language it was given in, says something different from what your pastor told you it said.
This week’s essay walks five verses, one at a time. For each verse: the verse quoted the way you have heard it, the PSA claim stated plainly, and what the original language actually says.
Isaiah 53:4-6. The Hebrew preposition for “wounded for our transgressions” is min, which is causal, not substitutionary. Hebrew has a substitutionary preposition available (tachat, used in Genesis 22:13 when the ram is offered in place of Isaac), and Isaiah does not use it.
Romans 3:25. The Greek word translated “propitia…
