Reconciling Tradition follow-up: The atonement and appeasement models in Christianity (again)

I recently ran across (was not looking for or expecting to find) some sources related to my recent series critiquing and  exploring some of the concepts often considered traditional and essential to modern Western Christianity, especially the more fundamentalist or legalistic varieties. Whether you are a student of theology, a practicing Christian, or someone curious about what people believe, these sources may be of interest to you. In my series I really hammered atonement and appeasement models for understanding the death of Jesus, particularly how they are understood and employed.  But I kept suggesting these and other concepts I was criticizing were not as central and essential to Christianity as some think, either historically or globally. So if you want to go further into how that is or what other perspectives sound, give the following sources a whirl.

First up is an essay that helped me find some of these other sites and which echoes my own problems with how many people, especially many outspoken Christians, present such ideas and how through that others come to have a truly horrific view of God and the sacrifice Jesus represents in the Gospels. It comes from the blog of a friend, Joe Hinman, who uses the nom de plume "Metacrock". From there, other sources open up, such as this one describing the varied views of the early church:

The dominant Christian understanding of the atonement is the ‘penal substitution’ theory, which states that Christ was punished by an angry God as a substitute for those he came to save. However, the ‘representative’ or ‘participatory’ understanding of the atonement was the first to be held, originating with Clement of Rome (fl. 96).[1] [2] [3]

This interpretation understands Christ as the representation of how Christians should live, making salvation dependent on participation in the life of Christ.[4] The atonement changes the attitude of the sinner towards God, but no penalty is inflicted, no substitution made.

Early beliefs on the atonement often contain a range of elements. For example, Ignatius described Christ’s sacrifice as an example,[5] yet included other themes in his exposition of the subject.