Penal Substitution

I bought In My Place Condemned He Stood at Na*. I was unaware that there was much controversy in many Christian circles on the subject of penal substitution. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't sure if I'd ever heard those words before (though I must have at some point). As Dr. Packer began explaining what penal substitution was, I was horrified. How can anyone not believe this? How can you be a Christian and NOT believe this??? As I was reading In My Place Condemned He Stood I came across this...

But in this century a number of scholars...have revived the view of the sixteenth-century Unitarian Socinus, a view that had already been picked up in the late 1800s by Albrecht Ritschl, a founder of German liberalism, to the effect that there is in God no such thing as anger occasioned by human sin, and consequently no need or possibility of propitiation. Dodd has labored to prove that the propitiation word group in the New Testament does not carry the sense of appeasing God's anger but only denotes the putting away of sin, and there expiation is a better rendering...

I am the furthest thing from a scholar. Dr. Packer stretches my thinking skills. I am not gifted in writing (as anyone that reads this blog would heartily agree with). And I don't want to appear to criticize men that are my seniors and much smarter than I am. Not my intention. But, I am appalled (though I do live in a sinful world, so I shouldn't be surprised) that anyone could even entertain such thoughts. If God is not angered by sin, than why did Jesus have to die for it? Why was there a need for atonement? If God's wrath is not to be reckoned with, than why worry about it? How can you have justice and not holy anger? How can He be offended by our offense and yet not pour out wrath (our just punishment) for it? God's just anger is what make the gospel so beautiful. Forgiveness instead of wrath. How can you be grateful for salvation if you haven't been saved from His holy and just anger? It kinda takes the pizazz (if you will) out of the gospel...