Ken Pulliam What is the central element of the Christian faith? It is the cross. What is the sign of Christianity? No, it's not the fish; it is the cross. What do you see perched on top of church steeples? What do you see around the necks of Christians? It is the cross. The cross, and what Christians believe was accomplished there, is the most basic and fundamental of all Christian doctrines. Many Christian apologists focus on the resurrection. However, without the cross, the resurrection is meaningless. Christianity is basically the idea that Jesus died for sinners. What does that mean? How does that work? Christians have for millennia debated and disputed this central point. They agree that in some way the death of Jesus makes it possible for sinners to be forgiven, but they cannot agree on why that is true. Unlike the doctrine of the Trinity or the Person of Christ, there has never been a consensus among Christians as to what the cross means and how it saves. Throughout the history of the church there have been a number of different theories of the atonement, but the dominant view today in evangelical Christianity is the Penal Substitutionary Theory (PST).1 This view states that God's holiness demands that sin be punished.
