The Gospel is Pregnant with the Doctrine of Atonement

If there is no Cross there is no atonement, and if there is no atonement there is no gospel. I think we can debate the finer points, but without the satisfaction of God's wrath (i.e. the penal substitutionary model) I don't see any hope whatsoever for the whole lot of us.

A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross. ~Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Kingdom of God in America", p.193