Here's his conclusion after looking at the evidence from Wright's own writings:
- sin is an impersonal evil force, not personal rebellion against God;
- sin has bad consequences, but does not elicit God's punitive wrath against the sinner; and
- the cross is to be understood as some version of the Christus Victor theory in which Christ defeats evil by letting it do its worst to him, not as a penal satisfaction of divine justice.
Update: Andrew Cowan, who has been reading Wright carefully for years, writes: "I think that these claims are hard to justify in light of Wright's comments on Romans 1:18-32 and 3:21-26 in his NIB commentary where he seems to affirm what Irons claims he denies." See Andrew's full comment. Andrew concludes:
I think that Irons' concern about Wright's statements in popular books is a good instinct. Wright is not always as clear in every context about penal sustitutionary atonement as I would like for him to be. Nevertheless, I don't think that the claim that he is using traditional terms with untraditional definitions is accurate. His work in the Romans commentary (and other places that I don't have time to track down) seems to indicate otherwise, and these statements need to be taken into account.
