Problems with Penal Substitution Atonement Theories

According to Christian teaching, Christ in some way atones for sins, in particular his death plays a central role in atoning for sins.  But what does this mean?    Is it that Christ atones for everyone's sins by his death?  Just a few?  How does this work?

Various proposals have been offered to explain in what way Christ atones for sins: Ransom theories, penal substitution theories, satisfaction theories, moral exemplar theories, Christus Victor theories, and so on.  I will not rehearse them all here, I will just note that I have never seen a satisfactory explanation.  Nonetheless, I do think that some theories are better than others and that perhaps each theory has a kernel of truth worth preserving and incorporating into a better model.  Unfortunately, I do not currently have that model.  What I shall do here is lay out some of the problems with the penal substitution theory which is quite popular in the religious orbs I circle.   If any of the readers can offer rejoinders, perhaps I will better be able to work out what (if any) kernels of truth survive the objections to penal substitution theories.

So what is the penal substitution theory of atonement?  It is the theory which says atonement occurs in virtue of Jesus being a perfect substitute for our deserved punishment.  We have sinned and deserve punishment.  God's justice and wrath demands that someone be punished for our sins.  But God is not only just but loving and prefers a substitute for our punishment.  Of course not just any old person can be punished for the sake of all our sins.  But a man who is also fully divine could be such a person.  So the Father offers his Son on behalf of us to receive our punishment.

That's the basic view but details will vary depending on who is presenting his own particular version.  But before I lay out the objections, I also want to be very clear about something else: What I list below are problems with a theory of atonement , not problems with individual Bible passages which are appealed to for the theory.  For instance, the Bible talks about Christ being a sacrifice and Christ being sin.  It also talks about humans being ransomed and Jesus conquering sin and the Devil.  The question for the theorist is, in part, to try to figure out when figurative speech is being used and when it is not.  It won't do simply to pick out a verse and use that verse as your theory!  A verse isn't a theory.  A theory tries to account for all the data, and a Christian atonement theory tries to give in literal language an explanation for how it is that Christ's work atones for sins.  (As far as the "data" is concerned I am trying include all of it: Scripture, tradition, reasoning from the nature of God and natural law, experience, etc.)

And now five problems...