Theories of Atonement — Penal Substitution

Did Jesus pay Satan a hefty ransom for humanity’s redemption? Is the devil a spiritual ransomware terrorist who hijacks humanity, forcing us into calamitous situations from which we have no control?

Was Jesus a scapegoat? A victim of a Jewish lynch mob?

Whenever we read the word atonement in a hymnal or discuss it around Easter, we have a shared understanding of the term. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines atonement in four ways:

1. Reparation for offense or injury.

2. The reconciliation of God and humankind through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ

3. Christian science: exemplifying of human ones with God

4. Obsolete: reconciliation

The beautiful nature of the atonement is in its ramification, namely, that we have the luxury of being reconciled to God. This pleasure affords us a bridge on which to connect with God. Almost as if there initially lay a chasm, a void of hopelessness between us and the Divine, and Christ’s efficacious work on the cross not only built this bridge of reconciliation but also carried us across it.

Atonement is a great thing. It’s a marvelous thing.

But which theory about Christ’s work on the cross is the right one?

Stephen D. Morrison lists seven of the most well-known theories surrounding the atonement and I will quote his explanations of each one.

He states the seven theories are: the moral influence theory, the ransom theory, Christus Victor theory, the satisfaction theory, the penal substitution theory, the governmental theory, and the scapegoat theory.

The Penal Substitution Theory

Point 1

“Penal Substitutionary Atonement is a development of the Reformation. The Reformers, Specifically Calvin and Luther, took Anselm’s Satisfaction theory and modified it slightly. They added a more legal (or forensic) framework into this notion of the cross as satisfaction.”

Point 2

“The result is that within Penal Substitution, Jesus Christ dies to satisfy God’s wrath against human sin. Jesus is punished (penal) in the place of sinners (substitution) in order to satisfy the justice of God and the legal demand of God to punish sin. In the light of Jesus’ death, God can now forgive the sinner because Jesus Christ has been punished in the place of the sinner, in this way meeting the retributive requirements of God’s justice.”

Point 3

“This theory of the Atonement contrasts with Anselm’s Satisfaction Theory in that God is not satisfied with a debt of justice being paid by Jesus, but that God is satisfied with punishing Jesus in the place of mankind. […] This theory of the Atonement is perhaps the most dominant today, especially among the Reformed, and the evangelical.”

Thoughts on the Penal Substitution Theory

Stephen is correct that this theory is the most dominant one among evangelicals because I was introduced to it as a kid while in the Assemblies of God, Bethlehem Ministry, Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Although I was raised in a Pentecostal denomination it does not mean I was outside of the evangelical understanding of scripture and the Bebbington Quadrilateral understanding of the evangelical world.

Our intellectual framework was protestant from the start with high regard for Luther’s work. We disdained Calvin’s theories about salvation but respected him as a Christian scholar. So it’s fair to say that our understanding of the doctrine of atonement was protestant in one sense and Ransom Theory in a Pentecostal sense.

God’s wrath was not just a star in the midnight sky we discussed from time to time. God’s wrath was the very space in between each star, present in almost every single service, with altar calls made after every sermon and a zeal for souls to be won for Christ. Rejecters were made aware that to turn away from Christ meant that they were willing to receive the full weight of God’s anger in the afterlife — if he didn’t punish during the same service and alter call.

Trembling adherents flooded the aisles on their way to the pulpit in hopes of mending their relationships with God because they wanted to receive Jesus’ sacrifice and also accept His selfless act on the cross, videlicet, taking on God the Father’s mighty wrath in our stead.

God’s wrath is not anti-biblical. It is a very important aspect of God’s nature because His Holiness requires the righting of wrongs and the only consequence for cosmic treason, namely, sin, is death.

“For all people are mine to judge-both parents and children alike. And this is my rule: The person who sins is the one who will die.” Said God to the exiled in Babylon prophet, Ezekiel, concerning the consequence of sin.

“In which also we all conversed in time past, in the desires of our flesh, fulfilling the will of the flesh and of our thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” Said Paul to the church in Ephesus.

This view is not entirely antithetical to biblical doctrine concerning atonement. I do believe, however, that if the sole focus and purpose of the cross are perceived as God’s wrath being dished out on Christ and nothing else, it fails to fully comprehend the love and justifying aspect of the atonement.

“Him, who knew no sin, he hath made sin for us, that we might be made the justice of God in him.” Paul reminds us again in his second epistle to the church in Corinth.

Christ was willing to receive the punishment that was meant for us. It is biblically evident that the ultimate price to be paid for sin was paid for in blood by none other than the Son of God. No one else could have borne that wrath, died, and resurrected from the dead but Jesus, the Perfect One.

But again, if our only understanding of the atonement is one of wrath and punishment, this myopic view of the cross can distort our theology, our soteriology, and even how we act toward believers and non-believers when they sin.

Our conduct toward sinners is then not one of love and correction, of restoration and fellowship. No. Our response toward sinners then becomes focused on wrath and unless they demonstrate an outward display of repentance we will chide them for being worthy of God’s mighty destructive wrath. We will promote altar calls and calls for repentance in perpetuity, not because we hope people truly repent and turn to God, but because it makes our egos blossom at the sight that dozens — if not hundreds, bow their knees at our behest every week.

A hyper and unhealthy focus on God’s wrath has deformed many theologians whose focus was skewed by this fanaticism, namely, the slave-owning white American theologian, Jonathan Edwards. Here is a snippet from his most famous sermon-turned-to-book called, hear it, without filter, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

“That the reason why they are not fallen [into hell] already and do not fall now is only that God’s appointed time is not come. For it is said, that when that due time, or appointed time comes, their foot shall slide. Then they shall be left to fall, as they are inclined by their own weight. God will not hold them up in these slippery places any longer, but will let them go; and then, at that very instant, they shall fall into destruction; as he that stands on such slippery declining ground, on the edge of a pit, he cannot stand alone, when he is let go he immediately falls and is lost.”

And again, he states:

“The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.”

The author develops a near sadistic obsession with God’s wrath and views God as a restrained Rage Crazed Deity whose bloodlust is staved off by nothing other than his mere pleasure. The images produced by Edwards are gothic, grim, bleak, and haunting. The God displaced in this story and his other sermons serve only to direct people into heaven by fear and trepidation, not by love and sacrifice.

“[the Devil]… stands waiting for them, like greedy hungry lions that see their prey, and expect to have it…” Said Edwards.

It is as if Edwards’s formation of God, hell, damnation, and eternity were formed more so by medieval folklore than scripture. And it shows. It reminds me of the varied times ministers and church mothers and aunties made us believe the devil was behind every door, nook, and cranny, waiting to devour us or entice us to sin — as if the devil had the time and omnipresence to do so.

But this fear-mongering tactic is used to this day as an attempt to convince the biblically illiterate that a vengeful God is out there salivating at the chance to send them to hell.

“​​Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.’” God reminds prophet Ezekiel.

As if God were not a Shepherd, a Prince of Peace, a Father, and Friend, and Brother, and a Creator who sent His Son into the world to save it.

Wrath is evident within scripture (read Isaiah and Revelations). That’s a fact. But any of God’s attributes taken out of context diminishes and distorts our understanding of God and His goal in the atonement.

Might I add, Jonathan Edwards was sadistically impassioned with this theory of God’s wrath concerning the atonement and the afterlife, but his care for his black slaves was absent. If only he turned his bloodlust writing into abolitionist sentiments, his legacy would be saved the fire of time. And his writings would contribute more invective for the slave trade than for unsuspecting and ignorant parishioners who trembled at Edwards’s homiletic theatrics about God, hell fire, and the devil.

But I digress.

Luther and Calvin both lived in a time of war, plague, starvation, and religious feudalism, where tyrants and kings warred for the right to rule their subjects with the power of God. Their times helped form their theologies, in some ways for the better, namely, the Protestant Reformation, and in other times, for the worse, namely, Calvin’s monergism and later, his five tenets of Calvinism. Life in Europe looked bleak then, as society was primed for a revolution that would steer civilization away from religious monarchs and toward religious freedoms or no religions at all. These newer ideas would spawn the later stages of the Renaissance and later yet call for democratic societies through revolutionary wars. But Calvin and Luther had not yet seen these revelations and lived under the threat of death, persecution, and torture. Their religious minds were formed by their culture and their teachings were so emphatic for their time that they spread like wildfire in a society that had little to no hope left for temporal relief and restitution.

I believe that the Penal Substitutionary theory holds some water within a healthy and contextual reading of scripture but the distortion of it, namely, the obsession with God’s wrath in Reformed church circles, is a doctrinal aberration that needs rediscovery and reformation.

Here is a quote from one of my favorite books to date, written by Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers. Note, Pastor Ortlund is part of the Reformed tradition.

“‘Slow to anger.’ The Hebrew phrase is literally ‘long of nostrils.’ Picture an angry bull, pawing the ground, breathing loudly, nostrils flared. That would be, so to speak, ‘short-nosed.’ But the Lord is long-nosed. He doesn’t have his finger on the trigger. It takes much accumulated provoking to draw out his ire. Unlike us, who are often emotional dams ready to break, God can put up with a lot. This is why the Old Testament speaks of God being ‘provoked to anger’ by his people dozens of times (especially in Deuteronomy; 1–2 Kings; and Jeremiah). But not once are we told that God is ‘provoked to love’ or ‘provoked to mercy.’ His anger requires provocation; his mercy is pent up, ready to gush forth. We tend to think: divine anger is pent up, spring-loaded; divine mercy is slow to build. It’s just the opposite. Divine mercy is ready to burst forth at the slightest prick.”

Jonathan Edwards’s corpse is throwing a dead man’s temper tantrum in the grave at the sound of these biblically sound words.

Featured Image Alicia Quan.

Originally published at http://olivettheory.com on November 4, 2021.