It seems like the implications are always where the controversy starts. If propitiation is the sum total of being saved then is that implying that repentance and faith are unnecessary? And then someone will chime in and say no, repentance and faith are all that is necessary and God forgives based on simple faith and repentance and then quote verses that seem to indicate that this is true (at least on our part). And from those "implications" they begin to chip away at the atonement as being central to our salvation because after all, God only and always forgives those who ask for it period. Therefore the atonement must be to illustrate something, either an attitude of God towards us , our sin, or how we should love and obey, rather than actually accomplish something.
Then others say no, God is propitiated towards all men now and can be just and still justify sinners, but only those who come to him in faith, both in the atoning work of Christ and also his divinity and Lordship. And then others say yes but the implications of the timeline show that the one's who are to repent and believe are known before they are even born and since it makes no sense for those who have their sins propitiated to still be lost then the implication would be that the ones who have their sins propitiated are the same ones who eventually repent and believe and since there are no exceptions to this they must comprise a group we will call "the elect". And for this to really occur with any degree of precision there must be a high degree of determinism in operation on God's part.
And then others say that if that is true then the interactions between God and men recorded in scripture, as well as the warnings, must by implication of the above be fake in that the actions and responses of men are already determined to every degree. Then others point out that no, the interactions mentioned above indicate that God has created us "in time" and somehow, what is occurring is that our truly free actions fit in with God's sovereign plan both for our salvation and for world events. And then we can move on to the implications of whether it's possible even for a totally free will to exist with precise determinism by God and indeed, even if this determinism is true, does it not imply that if God looks ahead and "sees" the future somehow, is he not modifying his own plans based on foreseen contingent actions by men and therefore is not really determining the future since he is acting by implication, in response to men's actions?
And of course, back to propitiation, does the word itself not imply that it could remove the wrath of God without directly putting our sins on Jesus instead of us (even though scripture clearly states that Jesus bore our sins in his own body on the cross) which even the most skeptical person in the world has to admit implies "substitution" and even if they won't accept that implication, still must admit the scripture it there. And then of course we come back to the question of whether if Jesus really bore the sins of someone and all that implies, does God now helplessly wait for his sovereign response to God - even after Jesus went through all that without first consulting the same sovereign individual?
