8. Reformation and Post-Reformation Theories

The theological revolution wrought by the Protestant Reformers brought to full bloom the theory of the atonement that has come to be known as penal substitution. Though anticipated by the Church Fathers and approximated by Aquinas, the theory found its full expression and defense in the work of the Reformers and their scholastic progeny.

More than that, our sins themselves having been imputed to Christ, our sin is expiated by Christ’s substitutionary death. Although the imputation of our sin to Christ is purely forensic, Martin Luther could speak of it in very colorful terms:

Moreover, just as our sins are imputed to Christ, his righteousness is imputed to us through faith in him. Luther writes, “Believe in Christ and your sins will be pardoned. His righteousness will become your righteousness, and your sins will become His sins.”

Similarly, John Calvin, to motivate a deeper appreciation of what Christ has done on our behalf, strikingly summarizes both the calamity from which Christ has delivered us and the means by which he does so:

We find here the affirmation of expiation of sins and propitiation of God’s wrath through Christ’s satisfaction of divine justice by means of substitutionary punishment. The efficacy of penal substitution depends upon the imputation of our sin and guilt to Christ: “Our acquittal is in this—that the guilt which made us liable to punishment was transferred to the head of the Son of God (Is. liii.12). . . . [A]s he was to wash away the pollution of sins, they were transferred to him by imputation” (Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.16.5, 6). Our sins imputed to him, Christ satisfies divine justice by bearing the punishment for those sins.

Penal substitution is thus intimately connected with the Reformers’ forensic view of justification. Justification is understood as a legal act of God whereby we are declared not guilty and even righteous before Him. Justification is not the infusion of Christ’s righteousness into us, making us suddenly virtuous people. Such sanctification will be the result only of a lifelong process of moral transformation. But in virtue of our union with Christ, believers are legally declared righteous by God. Indeed, one of the chief advantages of a penal substitutionary theory of the atonement is that no other atonement theory connects so well with the NT doctrine of forensic justification.

While Socinus’ own atonement theory is today of only historical interest, his attack on penal substitution remains remarkably contemporary. Even critics who evince no firsthand acquaintance with Socinus’ work bear the unmistakable imprint of his influence, and their criticisms pale by comparison. Indeed, I should say that Socinus’ critique of penal substitution remains today unsurpassed in terms of its depth and breadth. In part 2 of his treatise he deals extensively with the alleged exegetical basis for satisfaction and penal substitution theories. Then in part 3, which will be the focus of our interest, he presents philosophical objections to such theories. He argues that it was neither necessary nor even possible for Christ to make satisfaction for our sins to divine justice. We shall consider his principal arguments only.

Socinus assails the contention that satisfaction of divine justice is a necessary condition of the remission of sins (On Jesus Christ Our Savior 3.1). He asserts that we must not think of God as a Judge “who acts according to an external legal authority and who may not deviate from the letter of the law.” Rather, God should be considered a “Lord and Ruler” (dominus et princeps), whose will alone is “the law in everything and is the absolutely perfect standard.” Anselm would, of course, have agreed but insisted that justice is essential to God’s nature. Socinus, however, replies that punitive justice (or vengeance) is not an essential property of God any more than is His mercy. If punitive justice were an attribute of God, then God could under no circumstances forgive sins; likewise, were mercy a divine attribute, God could under no circumstances punish sins. Rather what is essential to God is His uprightness (rectitudo) or fairness (aequitas). But whether He punishes sin is up to His free will. Similarly, mercy (misericordia) is an essential property of God only in the sense that God is loving. But whether God chooses to pardon sinners is up to His free will. Drawing on the analogy of the creditor and the debtor, Socinus says, “God is our creditor and we are His debtors by virtue of our sins. But every creditor has the absolute right to forgive the debtor his debt—either in whole or in part—without receiving satisfaction.”

It is worthwhile to pause at this point to compare Socinus’ view of the satisfaction of divine justice with Aquinas’ view. Both reject the Anselmian position that God’s justice necessitates His punishing sin. For both Aquinas and Socinus, God is no less just if He chooses to forgive rather than punish sin. Moreover, it is noteworthy that both agree that God has, in fact, chosen to punish rather than remit the sins of the impenitent. For Socinus only those who place their faith and trust in God are forgiven of their sins. God’s severity and vengeance are visited upon those who are unrepentant. Where Aquinas and Socinus differ is not with respect to the particularity of God’s freely exercising His forgiveness but with respect to how that forgiveness is achieved. For Aquinas, as for Anselm and the Reformers, God satisfies the demands of retributive justice through Christ; but for Aquinas He does so contingently. By contrast, Socinus thinks that God’s contingent choice to forgive sinners is independent of justice’s demands. God gratuitously extends to repentant sinners forgiveness of their sins and reserves His punitive justice for the unrepentant. Just as Socinus opposed Anselm’s view that satisfaction of divine justice is necessary, he would be equally opposed to Aquinas’ view that God through Christ contingently satisfies divine justice.

So, in the next chapter, Socinus proceeds to argue that satisfaction is actually logically incompatible with the remission of sins, which would rule out the Thomistic as well as the Anselmian doctrine (On Jesus Christ Our Savior 3.2). Remission, by definition, entails that the creditor forgo satisfaction of the debt and that the debtor is forgiven of his obligation. Hence it is logically incoherent to affirm that a creditor has both forgiven the debtor and accepted satisfaction of the debt. If the advocate of satisfaction answers that satisfaction of the debt can be made by one person and remission be given to another, Socinus will reply that because satisfaction has been made, nothing is remitted to the debtor. “There is no need for remission—indeed, remission is an impossibility—where the debt no longer exists.” So it is an impossibility that a debt be both satisfied and remitted at the same time.

Socinus then presses an objection against the morality of penal substitution: a bodily punishment like eternal death cannot be endured by anyone other than the sinner himself (On Jesus Christ Our Savior 3.3). Admittedly, monetary penalties can be assumed legally by another person, since one person’s money is just as effective as another’s. But to release the guilty and to punish the innocent in their place “is not only completely opposed to any standard of justice: it is worse than inhuman and savage.” If God wanted to punish our sins, then to demand the penalties from someone other than us would be contrary to justice properly so-called, namely, to uprightness and fairness, which are essential to His nature. Socinus later acknowledges that there are circumstances in which an innocent person can be afflicted without being wronged. For example, the innocent person could be under the authority of another who wishes to afflict him in order to achieve a higher purpose. “But,” Socinus insists, “such affliction should not at all be regarded as penalty or punishment” (3.10).

In the case of Christ, from Socinus’ Unitarian perspective, God did “not take violent action against himself: he harmed an innocent man instead” (On Jesus Christ Our Savior 3.3). Moreover, this innocent man was not “associated with the guilty in such a way that the guilty can be said to have undergone those penalties.” Christ had “no other connection” with other human beings “except that this person, like them, is a human being.” This remark raises the question whether Socinus’ objections to the morality of substitutionary punishment would fail if Christ were taken to represent sinners in some way. As Socinus sees it, the provision of Christ (that is, handing him over to death) “should be called an act of sheer cruelty and violence rather than generosity” (3.2).

Socinus later asserts that it is “ridiculous and wicked” to claim that the sins of others could be imputed to an innocent person (On Jesus Christ Our Savior 3.10). He concedes that the sins of others can be imputed to someone, but only if (1) that person is connected to those persons in such a way that he should appear to partake of their transgressions solely because of that connection and (2) that person has also sinned and imitated the wickedness of the others. He thinks neither condition is met in Christ’s case.

Finally, Socinus argues that even if Christ’s rendering satisfaction for our sins were possible, he did not in fact do so (On Jesus Christ Our Savior 3.4). For the penalty each of us faces is eternal death, but Christ did not literally endure this. If the penal substitution theorist says that the dignity of Christ’s divine person makes his sufferings of higher value, Socinus will reply that he “would regard as unjust a law that avenges the same crime more lightly on an eminent person than it does on a common one.” If it be said that God reckons the light punishments of Christ as equivalent to the punishments due us, Socinus will respond that if that were true, then Christ need not have suffered such bitter tortures and so horrible a death. “God could have made full satisfaction to his justice by exacting some extremely light penalty from Christ.”

The only basis on which one could legitimately ascribe infinite value to Christ’s sufferings, Socinus grants, would be that Christ is eternal God. But the divine nature is impassible, so that Christ could not have suffered in any way. Moreover, even if Christ could have suffered in his divine person, his sufferings were transitory and therefore not of infinite value. Again, even if Christ’s sufferings were of infinite value, they would have sufficed to satisfy the debt of one person alone, for we each face infinite sufferings for our sins. If one rejoins that Christ’s suffering encompasses all of these infinities of punishment, then any suffering at all on his part should have sufficed to satisfy God’s justice. Instead, He chose to inflict a horrible and accursed death on him.

There is much more in Socinus’ wide-ranging and incisive work, but the foregoing objections to penal substitutionary theories are the most important. Socinus’ broadside against penal substitution elicited a flood of responses from Protestant thinkers in defense of their theory. Among the many who sought to defend the theory, the Swiss Reformed theologian Francis Turretin stands out as one of the most important.

The foundations of Turretin’s atonement doctrine are laid in his treatment of divine justice (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 3.19). In contrast to Socinus, Turretin holds that punitive justice is essential to God. There are two principal virtues of God: justice and goodness. While goodness “is that by which he is conceived as the supreme good and the giver of all good,” justice is “that by which God is in himself holy and just and has the constant will of giving to each his due.” Although “justice” can be used as a universal term comprising all God’s virtues, justice in a particular sense “gives to each his due and is occupied with the distribution of rewards and punishments and is called distributive justice.” Distributive justice may be either punitive (inflicting punishment) or premiative (bestowing rewards). God’s right to punish may be said to be either supreme and rigorous (called accurate right) or to be tempered by a certain moderation. The former is exercised when God imposes punishment not only on sin but also on the very person of the sinner. The latter is exercised when God grants a moderation in the imposition of punishment either in time (by delaying it) or in person (by transferring it) or in degree (by mitigating it). Justice demands necessarily that all sin should be punished but does not equally demand that it should be punished in the very person sinning or at a certain time and in a certain degree.

Turretin takes cognizance of Socinus’ claim that punitive justice is merely the result of God’s free will. Turretin acknowledges a diversity of opinion among Christian theologians with respect to whether God must exercise punitive justice and, hence, a diversity of views concerning the necessity of satisfaction with respect to the remission of sins. But the common opinion among the orthodox, and one he shares, is that “God neither has willed, nor could have willed to forgive sins, without a satisfaction made to his justice” (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 10.14). In support of his view that God must exercise punitive justice, Turretin offers four arguments: (1) Scripture teaches that God detests sin and is a just Judge; (2) conscience and the consent of nations testify to the necessity of punishment for evil; (3) if sins could be expiated merely by God’s will, then it is not true that it is impossible that the blood of goats and bulls should take away sin; and (4) apart from the necessity of satisfaction no lawful reason could be devised for God’s subjecting His Son to such an accursed and cruel death (cf. 14.10). So on Turretin’s view, retributive justice, broadly conceived, is essential to God, but its exercise requires the determination of God’s free will as to the time, the degree, and the persons upon whom it is inflicted.

It is also worth noting that Turretin holds to a sort of Divine Command Theory of ethics, according to which God is not bound by some external natural law. Rather, natural law is founded on God, the supreme lawgiver. The natural law is not arbitrary because God’s commands are founded on the very holiness and wisdom of God Himself (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 11.1).

Turning to the doctrine of the atonement, Turretin explains that sin may be regarded as either (1) a debt which we owe to divine justice or (2) a mutual enmity between us and God or (3) a crime for which we deserve everlasting death before God, the supreme ruler and judge of the world (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 14.10). Satisfaction for sin must therefore involve (1) payment of the debt, (2) appeasement of divine wrath, and (3) expiation of our guilt. This multifaceted character of satisfaction is important because the right to punish is not the private right of a creditor, though sins are sometimes compared to debts, for sins are also crimes that cannot remain unpunished without prejudice to the laws (1.19). In the case of pecuniary debt, the creditor, upon receiving satisfaction, is not said to act with indulgence because he is paid exactly what was due to him. But in a penal or criminal debt, the act of a judge is required if the guilty person is to be freed without strict enforcement of the law. This judicial act is known as relaxation. In such a case the very thing that is owed is not paid (namely, the criminal’s undergoing punishment), but in the judge’s forbearance something else is allowed.

So with respect to our sin, God can be regarded as (1) the creditor or as (2) the offended party or as (3) the judge. The “capital error” of Socinus is neglecting the last role. God “has the claims not only of a creditor or Lord (which he can assert or remit at pleasure), but also the right of government and of punishment (which is natural and indispensable).” So “God can relax his right, but not absolutely. He can do it only in so far as his justice will allow (to wit, he cannot act unjustly).” In God’s role as judge a certain forbearance can be admitted, either in relation to the time by the delay of punishment or in relation to the degree by mitigation of the punishment or in relation to persons by a substitution. As the supreme judge, God can exempt sinners from the due punishment and transfer it to a substitute. In the satisfaction rendered by Christ, there is a relaxation of the law in God’s admission and acceptance of a substitute. Christ thus plays a threefold role as well: (1) a surety who can pay the debt for us, (2) a mediator who takes away enmity and reconciles us to God, and (3) a priest and victim who substitutes himself in our place for a penal satisfaction.

Under what conditions can such a substitution of the innocent for the guilty be lawfully made? Necessary conditions include (1) a common nature of sinner and substitute so that sin may be punished in the same nature that is guilty, (2) the free consent of the substitute’s will, (3) the substitute’s having power over his own life so that he may rightfully determine what is done with it, (4) the substitute’s having power to bear all the punishment due to us and take it away as much from himself as from us, and (5) the substitute’s sinlessness so that he need not offer satisfaction for himself. These conditions are jointly sufficient for penal substitution. Since Christ fulfilled all these conditions, it was not unjust for Christ to substitute himself for us. “For thus no injury is done to anyone,” not to Christ himself, or to God, or to the sinner, or to the law, or to the government of the universe.

Against Socinus’ arguments that Christ’s sufferings did not in fact satisfy the demands of divine justice, Turretin maintains that while Christ’s punishment was not infinite as to duration, still it was equivalent as to value on account of the infinite dignity of the person suffering (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 14.11). Christ not only suffered a violent and bitter death but was forsaken by God the Father by His withdrawing from him the beatific vision and by suspending the joy and comfort and sense and fruition of full felicity. The law required no less to answer to the demands of justice. Although a death of infinite value was due for every individual sinner, the dignity of an infinite person swallows up and absorbs all the infinities of punishment due to us. We cannot doubt the infinite value of Christ’s satisfaction, for although his human nature was finite, the satisfaction is infinite, since it is relative to the person, who is the efficient cause and to whom the obedience and suffering are to be attributed (14.12).

On Turretin’s view Christ did not merely suffer the punishment due us for our sins. Our sins themselves were imputed to Christ (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 14.13). In turn Christ’s righteousness was imputed to us. Justification consists in the imputation of righteousness, not merely a righteousness of innocence but a righteousness of perseverance. The remission of sins brings the righteousness of innocence by taking away the guilt of sins, but it does not therefore bring with it the righteousness of perseverance. That righteousness is won by the lifelong obedience of Christ, whereby he completely fulfilled the law. In the same way that the sins we committed in violation of the law are imputed to Christ, so the righteous actions by which he completely fulfilled the law for us are imputed to us. By the righteousness of Christ, Turretin does not mean the essential righteousness of God (16.3). That righteousness, he believes, could not be communicated to us without our becoming God also. The righteousness of Christ imputed to us is the obedience of his life and the suffering of his death by which he answered the demands of the law. This is called the righteousness of God because it belongs to a divine person and so is of infinite value. By this righteousness is understood the entire obedience of Christ—of his life as well as of his death, active as well as passive.

Turretin emphasizes that such imputation is a purely forensic notion and does not involve either an infusion of sin into Christ or an infusion of Christ’s righteousness into us (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 14.16). While agreeing that by the grace of Christ inherent righteousness is infused into us, Turretin insists that it plays no role in justification: “For the righteousness of Christ alone imputed to us is the foundation and meritorious cause upon which our absolutary sentence rests, so that for no other reason does God bestow the pardon of sin and the right to life than on account of the most perfect righteousness of Christ imputed to us and apprehended by faith” (16.1). Similarly, Christ was made sin for us, not inherently or subjectively (since he knew no sin), but imputatively because God imputed to him our sins (16.3).

The word “impute,” explains Turretin, properly means “to hold him who has not done a thing as if he had done it,” whereas “not to impute” means “to hold him who has done a thing as if he had not done it” (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 16.3). Socinus in part 4.1 of On Jesus Christ Our Savior had inveighed against the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to believers as a sort of sham righteousness that substituted for genuine holiness of life. But Turretin distinguishes between “imputed” and “fictitious.” For imputation is no less real in its own order (judicial and forensic) than infusion is in a moral or physical order. Someone legally declared debt-free, for example, is really delivered from his creditor.

One of Socinus’ complaints against penal substitution, it will be remembered, is that Christ has no connection with us so as to be punishable for our sins. Relevant to this criticism is an intriguing but underdeveloped aspect of Turretin’s atonement theory, namely, our union with Christ. He states, “The curse and punishment of sin which he received upon himself in our stead secures to us blessing and righteousness with God in virtue of that most strict union between us and him by which, as our sins are imputed to him, so in turn his obedience and righteousness are imputed to us” (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 16.3). This relation is not one of simple substitution; there is a union here that is the basis of the imputation of our sins to Christ and his righteousness to us. According to Turretin, so long as Christ is outside of us and we are out of Christ we can receive no benefit from his righteousness. But God has united us with Christ by means of a twofold bond, one natural (namely, communion of nature by the incarnation), the other mystical (namely, the communion of grace by Christ’s mediation), in virtue of which our sins might be imputed to Christ and his righteousness imputed to us. It is evident that imputation depends upon our union with Christ. “Having been made by God a surety for us and given to us for a head, he can communicate to us his righteousness and all of his benefits.” Our union with Christ is the “cause and foundation” of our sharing in all his benefits, including justification (remission of sins and adoption as sons) (16.6).

Unfortunately, Turretin has almost nothing to say by way of explanation of what this union actually is or how it comes to be. But he thinks of it as a historical event. Prior to a person’s birth, his sins cannot be said to have been remitted because nonentities have no properties and, hence, no sin and guilt to be remitted (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 16.5). Such a person is not yet in union with Christ and so not yet justified. Justification, though eternally decreed, takes place in this life in the moment of God’s effectual calling, by which the sinner is transferred from a state of sin to a state of grace and is united to Christ, his head, by faith. “For hence it is that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to him by God, by whose merit apprehended by faith he is absolved from his sins and obtains a right to life” (16.9). Faith is thus “the instrumental cause of our justification” (16.7) and by implication of our union with Christ. Hence, believers have “immediate and absolute union” with Christ (18.25).

In virtue of our union with Christ, his righteousness is imputed to us (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 16.4). The imputation of his righteousness brings two benefits: the remission of sins and the bestowal of a right to life (in which two benefits the whole of justification is comprised). In Turretin’s view, the imputation of righteousness is explanatorily prior to the remission of sins. If we wish to philosophize correctly, he advises, we must not say that God first remits our sins and afterward imputes Christ’s righteousness to us; rather, God first imputes Christ’s righteousness and afterward on account of that imputed righteousness remits our sins. Turretin explains that a satisfaction must necessarily intervene in order that remission may be granted by God without detriment to His justice and that it may be the foundation of the absolving sentence.

Thus, Turretin’s atonement theory has a peculiar explanatory structure: first, we are through faith united with Christ as our head by nature and by his mediatorial office; next, in virtue of our union with Christ, his righteousness is imputed to us; finally, in virtue of his imputed righteousness, our sins are remitted, since God’s justice has been satisfied by Christ’s vicarious suffering and death, and we are given the right to life, adoption as sons.

The final atonement theory we shall survey is the governmental theory usually associated with Hugo Grotius, a famous international jurist who published a treatise in response to Socinus on the doctrine of the atonement entitled A Defense of the Catholic Faith concerning the Satisfaction of Christ, against Faustus Socinus (1617). Just as Aquinas defended a non-necessitarian version of the satisfaction theory, so Grotius is a defender of a non-necessitarian penal substitutionary theory.

Unfortunately, Grotius’ theory is today widely misrepresented in the secondary literature. He is even accused of capitulating to Socinus and betraying the Reformers’ theory of penal substitution, offering in its place a quite different theory, yclept the governmental theory. According to this theory, as typically presented, God is to be conceived as the sovereign Ruler of the world. As such, it lies entirely within His discretion to remit sins without satisfaction. God has not chosen to punish Christ substitutionally for our sins. Rather, God chose to inflict terrible suffering on him as an example to us of what sin deserves, so that we shall be motivated to live holy lives before God. God’s freely choosing to thus afflict Christ is done for the sake of the moral governance of the world. On this view Grotius’ theory is a combination of the moral influence theory with a consequentialist view of punishment for the sake of deterrence.

By contrast, Grotius expressly presents his treatise as a defense of penal substitution:

After a fairly impressive exegesis of the biblical text in both Greek and Hebrew, Grotius concludes that Christ’s death was, indeed, a punishment:

Grotius conceives of divine justice as retributive and of Christ’s death as a punishment for our sins.

God’s purpose in Christ’s death was twofold: first, to demonstrate divine retributive justice with respect to sin, which had so long been postponed, and, second, to exempt us from punishment by remission of our sins. Grotius ridicules Socinus’ moral influence theory, according to which the death of Christ is meant to persuade us to exercise faith in hope of eternal life: “What is more widely removed from the truth, than that the death of a perfectly innocent man, so bloody, should of itself have power to persuade us that the greatest joys are prepared by God for those who live holily?” (Defense 1.52).

Grotius concedes to Socinus that we should not think of God as a judge placed under the law, for such a judge could not liberate the guilty from punishment (Defense 2.3). But neither should we think of God as Socinus often does, as an offended party in a personal dispute. For such a private person has no right to punish another or even to demand punishment of another. Certainly, God is offended by sin, but He does not act as merely the offended party in punishing it. Rather, God should be considered to act as a Ruler. “For to inflict punishment, or to liberate from punishment . . . is the exclusive prerogative of the ruler as such, as it is of the father in a family, of the king in a state, and of God in the universe” (2.1).

Grotius contrasts a creditor governed by private law with a ruler who administers public law:

Grotius thinks it would be unjust in a ruler, even in God, to let certain sins go unpunished, such as sins of the unrepentant, and so it is inconsistent with the justice of God that He should remit all punishment whatsoever.

Grotius appeals to the notion of relaxation to explain God’s act of punishing Christ in the place of sinners: “The act of God with which we are dealing will be the punishment of one in order to obtain the impunity of another. . . . [T]he act itself will be a means of indulgence or of moderation of this law, an indulgence which today we call ‘dispensation’; it may be defined as an act of a superior by which the obligation imposed by a law remaining in force is removed with regard to certain persons or things” (Defense 3.2). Although some laws are not relaxable because their opposite involves immutable wickedness, all positive laws are relaxable. Grotius thus combines a view of justice as retributive with the possibility of relaxation of the law by an authority.

So on Grotius’ view retributive justice permits but does not require punishment. God had a very weighty reason for relaxing the law so as not to punish us but Christ in our stead, namely, had He not done so, the entire human race would have been destroyed.

As with Augustine, imputation seems to play no role in Grotius’theory. Christ’s bearing our sin is interpreted to mean that Christ bore the punishment for our sin. Justification is taken to be a declaration of innocence rather than to include the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us. On Grotius’ view Christ was thus completely innocent, both personally and even legally. God chose to punish him for our sins so that our debt of punishment might be remitted and we be liberated.

Grotius next takes up three objections to substitutionary atonement. First is the objection that it was unjust to punish Christ in our place (Defense 4). Socinus acknowledges that it was not unjust that God should afflict Christ with suffering, but he denies that such suffering could effect anything to obtain our pardon. Grotius maintains to the contrary that it was neither unjust nor contrary to the nature of punishment that someone should be punished for another’s sins. With respect to the nature of punishment, Grotius makes the astute observation that “innocence does not prevent punishment any more than it does affliction” (4.7)—a person might be punished though innocent. As to the justice of God’s punishing an innocent person, Grotius maintains that scriptural prohibitions against punishing children for the sins of their fathers is, in part, a positive law imposed by God upon humanity, but God Himself “is not bound, as he never imposed it upon himself, and cannot, in fact, be bound by any law” (4.6).

Socinus claims that there ought to be some connection between the guilty party and the person who is punished in his place. Grotius agrees but points out that Christ was designated by God Himself as the head of the body of which we are members (Defense 4.8). God has the right to afflict Christ, and Christ has freely assented to the same, and so nothing prevents God’s ordaining that that affliction be the punishment for the sins of others connected to him.

The second objection concerns whether God had sufficient reason to punish Christ in our place (Defense 5). Socinus errs in thinking that the reason for Christ’s substitutionary death must show that his death was necessary. Appealing to the Church Fathers, Grotius argues that God had good reasons for not remitting our sins without punishing Christ, though He might have done so. God was unwilling to pass over so many and such heinous sins without testifying by some act how greatly displeased He is with sin. The act most suitable for this is punishment. Moreover, to neglect to punish sin altogether leads to a lower estimation of sin, whereas the best means of preventing sin is the fear of punishment. Not only so, but in Christ’s voluntary self-sacrifice God declares in a marked way His great love for us. Thus, God in His most perfect wisdom chose that way of redemption by means of which He could manifest both His hatred of sin and His love of mankind (5.7).

The third objection concerns whether God did in fact punish Christ in our place (Defense 6). Here Grotius responds to Socinus’ allegation that satisfaction for sins and remission of those same sins are logically incompatible. Grotius distinguishes between the strict performance of a debt or punishment and satisfaction for the same. If a debt or punishment is discharged by the performance of the very thing required, then there is no remission granted by the creditor or ruler. But when anything other than what one is obligated to perform is done instead, then “it is necessary that some act of the creditor or the ruler be added, which act is properly and usually called remission.” This substitution for strict performance, when accepted by the creditor or ruler, has “a special name in law, viz. satisfaction, which is sometimes contrasted with performance in the stricter sense of the word” (6.11). In civil law the discharge of a debt without any sort of performance is called “acceptilation.” “But with regard to punishment it has no proper name . . . but is commonly called grace, pardon, indulgence or abolition” (6.13).

In the case of the remission of sins, it is remission with antecedent satisfaction. Socinus errs in thinking that these two notions are in conflict, for all satisfaction is allowed on the condition that there is opportunity for remission by the creditor or ruler. The creditor or ruler may accept or reject the substitute for strict performance, and if he does accept it, it is deemed satisfactory. Socinus’ claim that “by satisfaction a debt is altogether and immediately extinguished . . . is not true, unless satisfaction, contrary to legal usage, is taken to refer to the performance by the debtor of the very thing which was due” (Defense 6.16). But when someone else performs instead of the debtor and something else is performed instead of what was due, then the creditor or ruler must act to accept the substitute.

Grotius makes the interesting observation that the virtue God exhibits in remitting sins is not liberality but clemency (Defense 6.25). God pardons sins as rulers pardon crimes (6.3). God’s beneficence was shown to us in that “when God was moved with great hatred against sin, and could refuse to spare us altogether . . . , yet, in order to spare us, he accepted a performance such as he was not bound to accept, but, he also devised it himself, of his own accord. . . . So, the clemency of God is not overthrown by the performance of the punishment, since the acceptance of such a performance, and much rather the devising of it, sprang from clemency alone” (6.26).

Grotius’ rich treatise, from which we have but sampled, remains essential reading for any atonement theorist today. Unfortunately Grotius’ so-called governmental theory has been widely misunderstood. It is true that he thought that God as Ruler could remit sins without satisfaction while preserving His essential justice and holiness. But against Socinus, Grotius thinks that God had powerful reasons, namely, setting an example for us, for a merely partial relaxation of the law, so that another might satisfy divine justice by bearing the punishment we deserved. As the supreme Ruler He had the right to do this. “There is, therefore, no injustice in this, that God, who has the highest power with regard to all things not in themselves unjust and who is himself not subject to any law, wanted to use the sufferings and death of Christ in order to set a serious example against the immense guilt of us all, with whom Christ was very closely connected by his nature, reign and suretyship” (Defense 4.23).

I trust that our all too superficial survey has given us some accurate understanding of traditional atonement theories along with considerable food for thought. Unfortunately, the traditional thinkers whom we have discussed have been misrepresented and even pilloried in the secondary literature. Such caricatures not only do a disservice to contemporary theology, which may as a result miss the insights that traditional thinkers have to offer, but also impugn the reputations of godly men like Anselm who deserve our respect and admiration.

Although Grotius, Turretin, and many others wrote able replies to Socinus’ work, Socinus was in step with the skepticism of the coming European Enlightenment concerning traditional Christian doctrines. The erosion of belief in traditional atonement theories was the result. Nowhere is this more poignantly illustrated than in the life of Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of modern theology. As a theology student at the University of Halle, which by the late eighteenth century had become infected with German rationalism, the young Schleiermacher wrote to his father, a Reformed chaplain, to announce his abandonment of the orthodox faith:

With the Enlightenment came a proliferation of atonement theories, as theologians abandoned the traditional approaches. Not only would it be impossible to survey here the bewildering variety of atonement theories characteristic of modernity, but our interest lies in building upon the foundation of traditional atonement theories in line with biblical parameters. The challenge we face is to articulate and defend an account of the atonement that will do justice to the biblical data we have surveyed in a philosophically coherent and plausible way.