Among the many and varied ways of drawing out the salvific (or saving) significance of Jesus’s death, in recent decades, perhaps the most well-known in the US is penal substitutionary atonement. This is especially true among more conservative Christ-followers, especially those of the Reformed variety, despite the range of biblical, theological, ethical, and historical questions raised against it. (Penal substitutionary atonement is less pervasive among Wesleyans and Anabaptists, for example, as well as in the Eastern Church and the Roman Catholic Church.)
Twenty-five years ago, Mark Baker and I raised our own questions about penal substitutionary atonement in the first edition of our book, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament and Contemporary Contexts (2000). That book helped to spark renewed conversation about the nature of the atonement and how it might be expressed today, both in the West and globally. A second edition was published in 2011 (see below), where we responded to criticisms by clarifying and expanding our argument.
After two notes of orientation (a definition and a word on atonement “orthodoxy”), I want to sketch some of the questions we raised, and add to them. (This will result in a three- (or four-?)part subseries on penal substitutionary atonement.) I hope you will be alert to the distinction Mark and I sometimes make between carefully worded explanations among some theologians and biblical scholars, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the way versions of penal substitutionary atonement can be and sometimes are represented more popularly. Along the way, I will also have recommendations for further reading.
The essay will continue after this book recommendation. [Note: As an Amazon Associate, I may earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase. This doesn’t affect the price you pay and helps support this website.]
Mark D. Baker and Joel B. Green, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament and Contemporary Contexts, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2011). ISBN 9780830839315. 288 pp.
Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (2nd ed.) insists that penal substitutionary atonement has been wrongly treated as the biblical view, not least because Scripture and the tradition present a wide range of atonement metaphors. The book examines how different cultures throughout history and today have understood the cross using various models—for example, Christus Victor, moral influence, honor-shame, healing—suited to their contexts. Baker and Green advocate for what Green has elsewhere called a “kaleidoscopic” approach, one that embraces diverse biblical images of atonement rather than privileging one.1 And they encourage creativity and reflection for communicating the atoning significance of Jesus’s death in the service of the church’s mission today.
What Is Penal Substitutionary Atonement?
First, an attempt at definition: Penal substitutionary atonement holds that Jesus died in the place of sinners (hence: substitutionary) as punishment for their sins in order to assuage God’s wrath (hence: penal), to satisfy his justice, and to secure forgiveness of sins (hence: atonement).2 Charles Hodge (1797–1878) provided the classic Reformed definition: Jesus bore the penalty for human sin in the place of sinners, satisfying God’s justice and averting his wrath; hence, God punished Jesus instead of us, thus maintaining divine justice while providing salvation. More recently, John Stott (1921–2011) declared that God himself bore the penalty of our sins in the person of his Son, and claimed that Jesus, acting as both judge and judged, endured the judgment we deserved so that God’s holy love could satisfy both his justice and mercy. Similarly, J. I. Packer (1926–2020): Jesus, by his suffering and death, paid the penalty demanded by the broken law of God, his death being accepted by God as a substitute for the death that sinners deserved.3
In gatherings of Christ-followers, this way of articulating the atonement finds expression in the well-known lyrics of the second stanza of “In Christ Alone” (Keith Getty and Stuart Townend):
…
This gift of love and righteousness
scorned by the ones He came to save;
‘til on that cross as Jesus died
the wrath of God was satisfied;
for ev’ry sin on Him was laid;
here in the death of Christ I live.
A Stipulation regarding Orthodoxy and the Atonement
Second, a stipulation: None of the church’s early, ecumenical creeds—the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene, or the Athanasian—has anything to say concerning how Jesus’s death is salvific. The Apostles’ Creed observes that Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried”; accordingly, it affirms the place of this historical event in God’s purpose, but it is silent about how this is so. The Nicene Creed declares: “For our sake [Jesus] was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried,” thereby affirming that Jesus’s execution was, in some way, for our benefit; in what way it thus served is not specified, however. Similarly, the Athanasian Creed states that “[Jesus] suffered for our salvation,” but does not elaborate on how his suffering achieved its salvific purpose.
I draw attention to this lacuna in these creeds not to disparage them but, rather, to celebrate. These ecumenically affirmed faith statements are uncommitted regarding the nature of the atonement. From this, I draw what I take to be a self-evident corollary, namely, that one can inhabit the land of classical Christian orthodoxy without embracing any particular metaphor or model or image or theory of the atonement. Put differently, debates regarding the appropriateness of penal substitutionary atonement as an exposition of the saving message of the cross of Christ comprise an intramural conversation among Christ-followers.
Of course, some theological and ecclesial traditions within the capacious, historical, and global family of Christ-followers do distinguish themselves vis-a-vis penal substititutionary atonement, or something very nearly like it. For example, the Canons of Dort (from the 1618–19 synod of Reformed folk) declares in its Second Main Point of Doctrine that God is supremely just, that this justice require temporal and eternal punishment, that human beings cannot satisfy or deliver themselves from God’s wrath, but God’s Son provides satisfaction for us. By way of contrast, the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles of Faith, adapted by John Wesley for the methodist movement, claim no less and no more than that “we are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings.”
To this important observation, let me add two more. On the one hand, as has been demonstrated repeatedly, the New Testament itself is home to multiple and varied presentations of the atonement.4 On the other hand, as historical-theological study has repeatedly shown, the church throughout history has never spoken with one voice when seeking to articulate the soteriological (or saving) significance of Jesus’s death.5
Accordingly, I am working from the assumption that God’s character and the church’s faith and identity are not in the dock when we engage these important questions about the nature of the atonement. This allows a certain freedom of inquiry, just as it urges hospitality toward people and Christ-following communities who hold views other than one’s own.
The essay continues after this book recommendation.
Scot McKnight, A Community Called Atonement, Living Theology (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007). ISBN 9780687645541. 177 pp.
For McKnight, the atonement is fundamentally about forming a reconciled community, the church. He thus critiques Western Christianity’s hyperindividualism and insists the church itself embodies and demonstrates the reality of the atonement. McKnight advocates the metaphor of a “golf bag”: Like different clubs, different atonement theories are useful for different theological situations. He stresses that any adequate atonement theology must address how Christ’s work creates a new people characterized by reconciliation, justice, and peace, making the church central to understanding salvation.
Does Jesus’s Death Assuage God’s Wrath?
To varying degrees, proponents of penal substitutionary atonement argue that Jesus’s death appeases the wrath of God directed against sinners by presenting Jesus as the object of God’s wrath on their behalf. This often takes place within a wider argument based on the sacrificial nature of Jesus’s death. Referring to Rom 3:25, for example, Packer has written that “it is the sacrificial death (‘blood’) of Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Son, that quenches divine anger against sinners, just because Christ’s death was a vicarious enduring of the penalty that was our due.” Similarly, Derek Tidball interprets Romans 3:21–26 with reference to God’s “personal anger at evil leading to his punishment of those who commit it.”6 Both seem to be interpreting the term ἱλαστήριον (hilastērion) as a reference to propitiation (since, otherwise, it isn’t clear how divine wrath would be found in this text). Generally, the term refers to the means by which the goodwill of a god is recovered, but how best to understand it is unclear. Here are some translation options:
Authorized (King James) Version: “propitiation”
Common English Bible: “the place of sacrifice where mercy is found”
New English Translation: “the mercy seat”
New International Version: “a sacrifice of atonement”
New Living Translation: “the sacrifice for sin”
New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition: “a sacrifice of atonement”
The question is: What stands in the way of right relations with God? Those who hold to penal substitutionary atonement typically claim that our text urges that Paul needed to show how God’s anger against sinful humans was addressed. In this view, Christ’s “sacrifice of atonement” was Christ’s taking upon himself the penalty due the human race on account of their sin.
Some of Paul’s first-century readers may have understood Paul’s language in just this way. Among the Romans, the gods were like everyday companions. City administration was organized in part to maintain good relations with the gods. Sacrifices were offered in recognition of the supremacy of the gods and in exchange for their favors. It was not uncommon to attempt to appease deities through daily and/or periodic obeisance, worship, and sacrifice. We can imagine, then, that some gentile believers might have pictured Jesus’s death in this way.
This would be a strange way to portray Israel’s God, however.7 Unlike the portrait of the ancient gods we find in Greek and Roman literature, Israel’s Scriptures depict a God whose anger is neither whimsical nor irrational. Far from capricious, God’s wrath is kindled by idolatry and injustice. God’s wrath is typically a response to Israel’s idolatry—as in the account of the golden calf, where the Lord says to Moses: “I’ve been watching these people, and I’ve seen how stubborn they are. Now leave me alone! Let my fury burn and devour them. Then I’ll make a great nation out of you” (Exod 32:9–10). After Moses’s mediation, however, God “changed his mind about the terrible things he said he would do to his people” (32:14).
The essay will continue after these book recommendations.
Stephen H. Travis, Christ and the Judgement of God: The Limits of Divine Retribution in New Testament Thought, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009). ISBN 9780801047886. 400 pp.
[Note: Be sure to read the 2nd edition!] Travis—a British Methodist perhaps best known in the US for his earlier book, I Believe in the Second Coming of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982)—argues that the idea of God punishing Jesus is biblically and theologically problematic. Instead, Christ identified with sinful humanity and bore sin’s consequences—death and God-forsakenness—rather than receiving punishment from the Father. The author emphasizes solidarity over substitutionary punishment, suggesting Christ entered into judgment alongside us rather than in our place.
Kevin Kinghorn and Stephen Travis, But What about God’s Wrath? The Compelling Love Story of Divine Anger (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2019). ISBN 9780830852291. 168 pp.
For anyone grappling with the concept of God’s wrath, this is a welcome and compelling treatment. Two scholars in the Wesleyan tradition—Kinghorn, a philosopher (a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary), and Travis, a (retired) New Testament scholar—seamlessly integrate their respective contributions, contending that love is God’s only essential attribute, with justice, holiness, and wrath being derivative of love. They present God’s wrath as a last resort to wake people from self-deception about their sin and need for salvation, maintaining that divine wrath is always motivated by concern for human flourishing.
In Israel’s Scriptures, God’s wrath can also be motivated by opposition from foreign peoples against God’s people. As a consequence, we find accounts of God in the guise of the divine warrior acting on behalf of his chosen (e.g., Exod 15:6–8).
Even so, God’s “personality,” so to speak, is not one quickly or impulsively given to anger or retribution. Instead, we repeatedly read that God is “slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (e.g., Exod 34:6 NRSVue; Num 14:18). God’s wrath is relationally based, not retributively motivated. It seeks to restore and protect God’s people. God might avert his wrath in response to repentance, prayer, or mediation, but even this is a result of God’s own gracious volition.8
Moreover, and crucially, never do we read in Israel’s Scriptures that Israel’s sacrificial system served as a means of averting or assuaging God’s wrath. Again, we cannot overemphasize the importance of our not confusing the wrath of Yahweh with the vindictive, begrudging, and capricious attitudes and actions of the Greek and Roman gods, to whom sacrifices were offered in order both to placate the deities and to solicit their favor. In the Old Testament, the antidote to God’s wrath is not developed in sacrificial terms. We find no exposition of the ritual act of sacrifice as “satisfaction” or “penalty.” John Goldingay observes, “The problem of sin in Leviticus is not that sin involves infidelity or disloyalty which makes God angry but that sin pollutes, stains, and spoils, and thus makes people repulsive…. Sacrifice does not relate to anger.”9
In short, it is unlikely that Jesus’s atoning sacrifice in Rom 3 assuages divine wrath. Rather than our turning to Greco-Roman notions of sacrifice, we turn instead to patterns of sacrifice in the Scriptures. Among these, the most important for our purposes is the purification offering (e.g., Lev 4:1–6:7; 6:24–7:10; see Lev 16), the focus of which is the cleansing effect of sin. These sacrifices had to do with expiation (the means by which God frees and cleanses people from the onus and blemish of sin) rather than propitiation (a means of averting God’s wrath).
Sin has resulted in an estranged relationship between the sinner and God, and it is this separation that must be addressed. This broken relationship is resolved through sacrifice. How is this so? Basic to this legislation is the opposition of life and death, with death a great evil to be avoided, and with everything related to death rendering people unclean. In the end, sin pollutes, stains, and spoils; sacrifice wipes away sin and its effects.
Next: More Questions about Penal Substitutionary Atonement
Joel B. Green, “A Kaleidoscopic View,” in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, ed. James Beilby and Paul R. Reddy (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 157–85. Unless otherwise noted, all scriptural citations follow the Common English Bible.
I have adapted this definition from Kelly D. Liebengood, “Review of Andrew R. Rillera, Lamb of the Free: Recovering the Varied Sacrificial Understandings of Jesus’s Death,” Bulletin of Biblical Research 35, no. 1 (2025): 128–30 (128).
Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1872–73) (cf. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1938]; John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986); J. I. Packer, “What Did the Cross Achieve?” Tyndale Bulletin 25 (1974): 3–45.
E.g., James Denney, The Death of Christ: Its Place and Interpretation in the New Testament, 3rd ed. (New York: Armstrong, 1903); John Driver, Understanding the Atonement for the Mission of the Church (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1986), 71-209; Morna D. Hooker, Not Ashamed of the Gospel: New Testament Interpretations of that Death of Christ (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994); Vincent Taylor, The Atonement in New Testament Teaching, 2nd ed. (London: Epworth, 1940).
E.g., Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement (London: SPCK, 1931); Herman-Emiel Mertens, Not the Cross, but the Crucified: An Essay in Soteriology, Louvain Theological and Pastoral Monographs 11 (Louvain: Peeters; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992), 63–84.
J. I. Packer, “Anger,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 381–83 (382); Derek Tidball, The Message of the Cross: Wisdom Unsearchable, Love Indestructible (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 2001), 184–99.
See, e.g., John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology, vol. 2, Israel’s Faith (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 135–70; Terence E. Fretheim, “Theological Reflections on the Wrath of God in the Old Testament,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 24 (2002): 1–26.
See Mark J. Boda, A Severe Mercy: Sin and Its Remedy in the Old Testament, Siphrut: Literature and Theology of the Hebrew Scriptures 1 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2009).
John Goldingay, “Your Iniquities Have Made a Separation between You and God,” in Atonement Today: A Symposium at St. John’s College, Nottingham, ed. John Goldingay (London: SPCK, 1995), 39–53 (italics added). More recently, see his essay, “The Torah and Atonement,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 18, no. 2 (2024): 149–70.
I've done quite a bit of reading on Leviticus and atonement over the past couple of years (Milgrom, Moffitt, Rillera, and tons of podcasts/YouTube videos). Appreciate this series, and the book recommendations.
That’s a deep and thoughtful article and I appreciate how it invites believers to think carefully about what Christ’s death truly means. The atonement is such a profound mystery—no single explanation can capture the full beauty of what Jesus accomplished on the cross. While some focus on penal substitution, others emphasize victory over sin and death, reconciliation, or cleansing from sin, and Scripture gives us glimpses of all these truths. The important thing is that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). Ultimately, the cross reveals both the justice and the mercy of God meeting in perfect harmony. Romans 5:8 reminds us, but God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. Whatever view one holds, the heart of it all is God’s incredible love reaching down to save us and restore us to Himself.