9. Penal Substitution: Its Coherence

We come at length to reflect philosophically upon issues raised by atonement theories. We want to explore what options are open to a biblically faithful atonement theorist. Essential to any biblically adequate theory of the atonement, it seems to me, is penal substitution. No atonement theory that neglects penal substitution can hope to account adequately for the biblical data we have surveyed, particularly Isaiah 53 and its NT employment. Moreover, penal substitution, if true, could not be a merely tangential, minor facet of an adequate atonement theory, for it is foundational, as we shall see, to so many other aspects of the atonement, such as satisfaction of divine justice, redemption from sin, and the moral influence of Christ’s example. So a biblically adequate atonement theory must include penal substitution at its center.

Penal substitution in a theological context may be defined as the doctrine that God inflicted upon Christ the suffering that we deserved as the punishment for our sins, as a result of which we no longer deserve punishment. Notice that this explication leaves open the question whether Christ was punished for our sins. Some defenders of penal substitution recoil at the thought that God punished His beloved Son for our sins. For example, John Stott advises, “We must never make Christ the object of God’s punishment.” Even in their ringing defense of penal substitution, Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach do not define penal substitution in such a way as to imply that Christ was punished in our place. Rather, they offer the more subtle explication: “The doctrine of penal substitution states that God gave himself in the person of his Son to suffer instead of us the death, punishment, and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty for sin.” If we take the definite description “the punishment due to fallen humanity” referentially, it refers to the withdrawal of God’s fellowship and blessing. This Christ suffered on the cross instead of us. Indeed, for many of these theorists, God did not even inflict on Christ the harsh treatment that we deserved; rather, Christ voluntarily took upon himself the suffering that we deserved as the punishment for our sins.

On such an understanding, Christ bore the suffering that, had it been inflicted upon us, would have been our just desert and, hence, punishment. In other words, Christ was not punished but he endured the suffering that would have been our punishment had it been inflicted on us. We should not exclude by definition such accounts as being penal substitutionary theories, since Christ on such accounts suffers as our substitute and bears what would have been our punishment, thereby freeing us from punishment. Accordingly, penal substitution in a theological context ought to be understood as the doctrine that Christ endured the suffering that we deserved as the punishment for our sins, as a result of which we no longer deserve punishment. This explication leaves open the question of whether God punished Christ for our sins.

The doctrine of penal substitution, ever since the time of Socinus, has faced formidable, and some would say insuperable, philosophical challenges. A discussion of such challenges takes us into lively contemporary debates over issues in the philosophy of law, the subdiscipline of philosophy where questions about the theory of punishment are most thoroughly treated. Unfortunately, most theologians, and in fact most Christian philosophers, have little familiarity with these debates. The doctrine of penal substitution is usually dismissed by its critics in a single paragraph, even a single sentence, to the effect that it would be unjust of God to punish an innocent person for others’ sins, end of discussion. More deserves to be said.

A cautionary word is, however, in order at this point. The punishment that is discussed by legal theorists and philosophers of law is almost invariably legal punishment in the context of criminal law. Even when discussing penalties that are mandated by civil law rather than criminal law, the framework is still legal. One is discussing punishment as administered by the state as part of a system of justice. While analogous to divine justice, human systems of justice will also have features that are significantly disanalogous to divine justice. To give an obvious example, the state may be forced not to administer punishment as a result of lack of prison space, due to overcrowding and lack of resources. God is evidently not so hampered. Still, legal theorists and philosophers of law have for several centuries poured an enormous amount of thought into the theory of punishment, and so, given the widespread presence of forensic and judicial motifs in the biblical texts pertinent to the atonement, we may expect to learn a great deal from them.

A theory of punishment should treat both the definition of punishment and the justification of punishment, aspects of the theory of punishment that legal philosophers have teased apart only in recent decades. A definition of punishment will enable us to determine whether some act counts as punishment, while a justification of punishment will help us to determine whether a punitive act is permitted or even required, depending on one’s theory. Both aspects of the theory of punishment are relevant to the doctrine of penal substitution. In this chapter we shall consider challenges to the coherence of penal substitution, especially challenges arising from the definition of punishment.

What is punishment? Punishment involves, first, harsh treatment, as is obvious from typical cases of punishment. Theorists prefer the term “harsh treatment” to “suffering” because the latter is subjective and, hence, person relative—the masochist might enjoy being treated harshly and so would not be “punished”! Harsh treatment is not sufficient for punishment, however. As Socinus recognized, God may inflict suffering on some person without its being punishment. So what transforms harsh treatment into punishment? This where the debate begins.

No consensus in fact exists concerning the conditions sufficient for punishment. But consider Alec Walen’s characterization of some of the necessary conditions of punishment in a standard philosophical encyclopedia:

Most theorists would also want to require that the hardship or loss be imposed by a recognized authority, so as to distinguish punishment from personal vengeance or vigilantism.

Walen’s characterization is a version of what is called an expressivist theory of punishment, made popular by legal philosopher Joel Feinberg, according to which the harsh treatment imposed must express condemnation or censure in order to count as punishment. Some critics of penal substitution such as Mark Murphy have claimed that given an expressivist theory of punishment, it is conceptually impossible that God punish Christ for our sins. Murphy sets the familiar moral objections to penal substitution to the side in order to argue that “the problem is not that penal substitution is immoral, but that it is conceptually defective.” For God could not condemn or censure Christ, since he did no wrong. The point is not that it would be immoral for God to punish Christ for others’ wrongs, but that any such harsh treatment inflicted on him by God for those wrongs would not count as punishment because it would not express condemnation or censure. A necessary condition of punishment is that “punishment expresses condemnation of the wrongdoer, of the wrongdoer as performer of the wrong.”

If this necessary condition of punishment is correctly formulated, Murphy concludes, then punishment expresses condemnation of the person punished. If that is right, then one cannot punish a person whom one does not take to be worthy of condemnation. And one cannot regard a person as worthy of condemnation unless he has actually done the act for which he is condemned. “Punishing presupposes that the object of punishment has failed in particular respects. . . . If (non-defective) punishment is essentially condemning of the agent who failed to live up to the standard the violation of which justifies the punishment, then penal substitution is unintelligible. We know that attempts to justify it will founder not for moral reasons but for prior conceptual reasons.” Murphy concludes flatly, “The classic penal substitution view of the Atonement is incoherent.”

The crucial premises of this argument seem to be the following:

It seems to me that there are a number of ways in which the proponent of penal substitution might plausibly respond to Murphy’s coherence objection.

Seen in this light, Murphy is employing what the eminent legal theorist H. L. A. Hart famously called “a definitional stop” to short-circuit debate. Anthony Quinton had previously argued that for harsh treatment to be punishment, the person afflicted with harsh treatment had to deserve that treatment. The problem with Quinton’s definition was that it made it logically impossible to punish the innocent. Yet it is indisputable that innocent people are often found guilty and subjected to harsh treatment for crimes they did not commit. Quinton was forced to say that such persons, though sentenced and treated harshly, were not really punished, technically speaking. Hart’s complaint was that ruling out their treatment as punishment by mere definition was just a semantic maneuver that masked important questions about punishment. Murphy employs a similar definitional stop regarding substitutionary punishment. Historically, substitutionary punishment, like punishment of the innocent, apparently does take place. Debate over the justifiability of penal substitution should not be brought to a halt by a definitional stop.

Murphy rejects the comparison with Quinton, claiming that his objection is not that substitutionary punishment is logically impossible but that it is conceptually incoherent. For the person who is punishing the substitute is committed to holding that the substitute is innocent but worthy of condemnation. I take this to mean that the punisher must regard the substitute as both worthy of condemnation and not worthy of condemnation, which he cannot do. Whether this aporia involves a logical impossibility or a conceptual incoherence, it seems to me that the maneuver is still the same: one has just put a definitional stop to substitutionary punishment by defining “punishment” in such a way that the harsh treatment authoritatively inflicted for the violation of a norm on a substitute will not count as punishment. If we simply replace the term “punishment” with “penalty” with respect to God’s harsh treatment of Christ, then the alleged incoherence vanishes.

David Lewis responds to the definitional stop as an attempt to short-circuit debate over penal substitution by acquiescing to the expressivist’s definition of “punishment” but insisting, “I trust that the reader will understand: I mean that the volunteer undergoes something that would have constituted punishment if it had happened instead to the guilty offender.” Discussion of the justice of such treatment may then proceed. Lewis’ counterfactual characterization is, in fact, in accord with penal substitution as we have defined it.

Murphy does not consider the possibility that the penal substitution theorist might reasonably reject an expressivist theory of punishment. Though popular, it is not as though the theory has overwhelming arguments in support. Murphy lists two virtues of Feinberg’s theory: (1) It carves the cases properly. In contrast to criminal cases, sports penalties and tort awards do not typically involve expression of condemnation. Only in criminal cases are defendants found guilty. (2) It makes intelligible the fact that crimes have guilty mind (mens rea) conditions as essential elements. In criminal law one is not found guilty simply for wrongdoing (actus reus) if one performed the act unknowingly or without a blameworthy volitional state (e.g., intentionally, recklessly, or negligently) and so lacked a mens rea. It also explains the defense strategies of showing that the accused had some excuse or justification for the wrongdoing and so is not to blame.

Consider, first, Murphy’s claim that the expressivist theory carves the cases properly. This is, in fact, not true. One of the problems with the theory is that the line between punishments and mere penalties in the law does not coincide with the line between condemnatory and non-condemnatory harsh treatment.

Penalties plausibly often express society’s “resentment” and “stern judgment of disapproval” for the wrong done. This seems undeniable in cases involving torts such as assault and battery, defamation, fraud, and wrongful death. Arthur Ripstein explains that tort law articulates certain norms of acceptable conduct, and if the plaintiff is to recover damages from the defendant, he must show that the defendant has violated those norms. “The entire proceeding is structured by questions of whether defendant behaved unacceptably towards plaintiff, and whether plaintiff’s injury is appropriately related to defendant’s mistreatment of her. The structure of a tort action thus expresses the way in which it answers questions about whose problem it is when things go wrong by considering the ways in which people treat each other.” The judgment of the unacceptability of the defendant’s conduct may often be so severe as to express condemnation. Indeed, some torts are also crimes, in which case the act for which compensatory damages are awarded is also the object of condemnation in a criminal verdict. And even for torts that are not crimes, sometimes the damages awarded are actually punitive damages, which exceed the aims of merely corrective justice. Very large awards, in particular, plausibly often express society’s strong disapproval of the wrong done to the plaintiff. Even in sports, penalties imposed for fouls like unsportsmanlike conduct and taunting seem to carry censure with them. While these infractions are not crimes, since they are not violations of criminal law, still the penalties imposed for such infractions plausibly express condemnation.

By the same token, there are crimes that are punishable, even though such punishments do not seem to express condemnation. For example, crimes involving so-called mala prohibita are punishable, even though such punishments may not express resentment or stern disapproval, such as punishment for violation of U.S. federal laws against marijuana possession. Moreover, there are, in the criminal law, cases of so-called strict liability in which crimes are committed without fault and yet are punishable. Murphy acknowledges these, but insists that “these are unusual, severe outliers in the criminal law.” These cases are, in fact, far from unusual, there being many thousands of statutory offenses involving elements of strict liability, including crimes like possession of narcotics or firearms and the selling of mislabeled foods or of prescription drugs without a prescription. Punishments for crimes of strict liability often seem to involve no condemnation of the person involved and yet are still punishments in our criminal justice system.

Crimes of strict liability also go to undermine Murphy’s second alleged virtue of the expressivist theory, for no mens rea of any sort is required for conviction. Mere wrongdoing suffices, and the law permits no excuses or justification. Indeed, David Ormerod and Karl Laird point out that “where an offence is held to be one of strict liability, not only is it unnecessary for the prosecution to tender evidence of mens rea as to the matter of strict liability . . . , they must not adduce evidence of D’s mens rea as to that aspect of the offence,” lest D be found to be at fault. Consider, for example, the case of Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain v. Storkwain Ltd. (1986) 2 All ER 635. A certain pharmacist D sold some prescription drugs on the basis of what, unbeknownst to him at the time, turned out to be a forged prescription. He was convicted of violating the Medicines Act of 1968, which prohibits the retail sale of certain drugs without a prescription by an appropriate medical practitioner. This was a strict liability offense, which involved no mens rea. Ormerod and Laird report, “There was no finding that D acted dishonestly, improperly or even negligently in acting on that prescription and providing X with the medicines.” Summarizing a number of similar cases, they reflect, “In each of these cases D was not even negligent. He intended the conduct element of offence—to sell medicine or meat or liquor or to possess tobacco—but he was blamelessly unaware of the crucial circumstance element in the actus reus—that the tobacco was adulterated, that the meat was contaminated, that the person was drunk, etc. In each case he was criminally liable despite not having been at fault in relation to this material element of the offence.”

Thus, it is simply not true, as Murphy claims, that the line between condemnatory and non-condemnatory harsh treatment coincides with the line between punishments and mere penalties in the law.

In fact, penal substitution in a secular context furnishes itself a powerful counterexample to the claim that punishment inherently expresses an attitude of condemnation toward the person punished. As Hugo Grotius documents, the punishment of a substitute was well understood and widely accepted in the ancient world. Not only so, but those who voluntarily stepped forward to die as a substitute for someone else were universally admired as paradigms of nobility. We moderns may regard such a practice as immoral and ourselves as more enlightened for renouncing it, but it would be an example of cultural imperialism to claim that these ancient societies did not really endorse and even practice substitutionary punishment. To think that because it was unjust, it was not punishment is to confuse the definition of punishment with the justification of punishment, an error made by theorists who similarly held that punishment of the innocent is not really punishment. Just as most theorists today recognize that it is coherent to punish the innocent, so we should acknowledge the coherence of punishing a substitute.

An expressivist theory of punishment is thus by no means incumbent upon the penal substitution theorist. In fact, Leo Zaibert considers Feinberg’s expressivist theory to be actually dangerous for a democratic society because what are clearly punitive measures can be rationalized by the state as mere penalties. Zaibert warns, “Pragmatically speaking, the most problematic aspect of Feinberg’s view is that it opens up the possibility for the State to inflict painful treatment upon its citizens, a treatment which is ‘much worse than punishment,’ but for which the citizens have fewer defenses than they would if they had been ‘merely’ punished. ‘Even floggings and imposed fastings,’ Feinberg continues, ‘do not constitute punishments, then, where social conventions are such that they do not express public censure.’” The U.S. Supreme Court, Zaibert notes, has had considerable difficulty in interpreting the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment because it is unclear what actions count as punishment. One notorious example is the court’s decision in Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960) that deportation is merely an administrative matter and not punishment, despite the fact that deportation in that (and other cases) seems to be punitive. “The widespread standard account makes it easy for the state to abuse its punitive power by masquerading punitive measures as if they were not really punitive, labeling certain governmental acts as merely administrative, as if this label would deus ex machina obscure the fact that some such acts are clearly punitive.”

A defender of penal substitution could avoid the coherence objection, then, by denying Murphy’s claim that the expressive function of punishment is part of the definition of punishment.

In fact, it needs to be asked whether critics of the coherence of penal substitution have not fundamentally misunderstood expressivism with regard to punishment. Expressivism holds that there is a certain stigma attached to punishment, in the absence of which the harsh treatment is not punishment. It is no part of expressivism that the censure expressed by punishment target a particular person. Expressivist theories of punishment, as typically formulated, are perfectly consistent with penal substitution—which is just as it should be, given the attitudes of those in societies endorsing or practicing penal substitution. Hence, (2) is undercut.

Unsurprisingly, however, critics of penal substitution are unlikely to be sympathetic to the doctrine of imputation. But reservations about that doctrine are even more rarely unfolded than the standard moral objection to penal substitution. Murphy cursorily dismisses the doctrine of imputation with the observation that we have no experience of the transfer either of moral responsibility for actions or of guilt in isolation from actions from one person to another. We shall take up that issue in the next chapter when we discuss the justification of penal substitution. For now we note merely in passing that given the doctrine of the imputation of our sin to Christ, the objection to the coherence of penal substitution is a self-confessed failure.

Murphy’s challenge to the coherence of penal substitution arose from considerations pertinent to the definition of punishment. Eleonore Stump, however, challenges the theological coherence of penal substitution. She charges that such a theory of the atonement “is incompatible with God’s love.” Since penal substitutionary theories affirm God’s love, it follows that any such theory is incoherent and therefore unsalvageable. Stump calls this “the central and irremediable problem” with penal substitutionary atonement theories.

How are penal substitutionary atonement theories incompatible with God’s love? The problem Stump sees in such theories is that they require satisfaction of God’s justice as a precondition of God’s forgiveness. Stump thinks that such a precondition is incompatible with God’s unconditional love and forgiveness. She provides this pithy summary of her argument:

“Anselmian” is Stump’s rather misleading label for any atonement theory that sees the satisfaction of divine justice as a necessary condition of salvation. It is meant to comprise not only satisfaction theories but penal substitutionary theories as well.

Stump’s argument seems to be based on three simple premises:

Stump’s argument for the incompatibility of penal substitutionary theories of the atonement with God’s love and forgiveness is predicated on a number of questionable assumptions. In view of her argument’s much more fundamental problems, however, I relegate these difficulties to a footnote.

A curious feature of Stump’s argument is that it applies not only to necessitarian accounts of the atonement like Anselm’s and Turretin’s but also to non-necessitarian accounts like Aquinas’ and Grotius’. For if the consequent of (4) is true on necessitarian accounts of the atonement, it is also true on non-necessitarian accounts, howbeit by God’s free choice rather than by His nature. God has freely chosen to punish Christ for our sins because of the great advantages to be won thereby. But this leads to a bizarre conclusion. Suppose, for example, that God knew that free pardon without satisfaction would have taken on the appearance of “cheap grace” and so would have been far less effective in winning people to salvation. Therefore, He has freely chosen to make Christ’s satisfaction of divine justice a precondition of His pardon of sinners. It would seem absurd to think Him less loving for preferring a costly grace that implied enormous self-sacrifice for God in Christ if by such a means multitudes more would freely find salvation. Thus, it seems incredible that such accounts could be indicted for being incompatible with God’s love. In that case (3) is plausibly false, and it is hard to see why (3) would not also be false if God’s decision were demanded by His nature rather than contingently chosen. God’s forgiveness is, indeed, unconditional in the sense that it requires nothing of sinners, but that does not imply that it is not based on Christ’s satisfaction of divine justice on behalf of sinners.

On Stump’s view love involves both a desire for the good of the beloved and a desire for union with him. Just as a person can love unrequitedly, so he can forgive unilaterally, despite the wrongdoer’s rejection of that forgiveness. So, Stump says, “God can forgive a wrongdoer unilaterally and unconditionally, in the sense that, even without any repentance on the wrongdoer’s part, God can still desire the good for her and union with her.” Stump even goes so far as to argue that an attitude of hatred and aversion toward the wrongdoer, as well as anger with the wrongdoer, are compatible with love and forgiveness of him, so long as one’s ultimate desire remains for the good of the wrongdoer. So long as one would not be disappointed and grieved if the wrongdoer were to repent and change for the better, then hatred and anger toward the wrongdoer are compatible with love.

It should be obvious that there is nothing in penal substitutionary theories that precludes that wholly apart from the satisfaction of God’s justice, God both wills the good of every person and desires union with him. If Reformed and Lutheran theologians deny that God so wills and desires, that denial stems not from their atonement theory but from their doctrine of election. Arminian and Molinist defenders of penal substitution affirm that God wills the good of and desires union with all persons, even in their fallen condition. Hence, on Stump’s definition God forgives them unilaterally and, hence, unconditionally. Therefore, (4) is false, given Stump’s understanding of forgiveness.

Stump’s characterization of forgiveness has the odd implication that the exercise of God’s retributive justice in punishing wrongdoers is compatible with His also forgiving those wrongdoers. Biblically speaking, people whose sins have been forgiven will not be punished by God for those sins. But on Stump’s account God may both forgive their sins and yet punish them for those sins! Stump thinks that retributive justice can be seen as a good for the person punished, in which case God in punishing wrongdoers still wills their good and desires union with them, that is to say, He forgives them. So on her account of love and forgiveness, she concludes, “It is possible to hold that imposing warranted retributive punishment on a wrongdoer is at least sometimes obligatory, and still to maintain that love and forgiveness are always obligatory, even love and forgiveness for wholly unrepentant wrongdoers.” Now if it seems odd that a person can be both forgiven for his sins and punished for those sins, this oddity ought to make us question whether something has not gone wrong with Stump’s account of divine forgiveness. That forms a nice segue to the second fundamental failing of her argument against the coherence of penal substitutionary atonement theories.

On the contemporary scene legal philosopher Jeffrie Murphy has made a similar distinction between the private and public spheres in an effort to carve out conceptual space for exercises of mercy consistent with the demands of retributive justice. Distinguishing between a judge in a criminal case and a creditor in a civil lawsuit, Murphy maintains that as a litigant in a civil lawsuit, the creditor occupies a “private role” and so does not have “an antecedent obligation, required by the rules of justice, to impose harsh treatment” by demanding repayment of the debt owed. He is therefore free to show mercy without prejudice to justice. By contrast a judge in a criminal case “has an obligation to do justice—which means, at a minimum, an obligation to uphold the rule of law. Thus if he is moved, even by love or compassion, to act contrary to the rule of law—to the rules of justice—he acts wrongly.” Murphy thinks that the judge qua judge cannot, like the creditor, act mercifully without prejudice to the demands of justice. Like Grotius he thinks that the executive power can exercise mercy but only within the limits of individualized justice.

The overriding lesson is that God should not be thought of merely as a private party to a personal dispute but as Judge and Ruler of the world and therefore responsible for administering justice. Indeed, as we have seen in chapter 4, the Bible portrays God as at once Lawgiver and Judge and Ruler. In contrast to Western systems of government, God embodies in one individual the legislative, judicial, and executive functions of government. He is clearly not a merely private individual. He is a public person responsible for the administration of justice in the world.

Like far too many contemporary atonement theorists, Stump neglects legal analogies of the atonement and turns instead to private, personal relationships to motivate or criticize theories of the atonement, thereby overlooking God’s status as Ruler and Judge. She takes God to be like the offended party in a personal dispute and so extends Anselm’s insistence on our need to satisfy the demands of God’s justice (whether by compensation or punishment) to two private parties in a personal friendship. This sort of extension is illegitimate, both for Anselm and for the Reformers, who see us as sinners who have violated God’s law and so stand condemned before the bar of His justice.

On penal substitutionary theories God is like a judge who must administer justice whatever his personal feelings toward the accused. It is perfectly possible for a judge to love and forgive a personal friend brought before his bar, even as he declares him guilty and sentences him to severe punishment. As Stump herself recognizes, God can personally will the good of sinners and desire their union with him without waiving the demands of retributive justice.

Rather than thinking of God’s forgiveness of sins on the analogue of human friendships, Stump ought to be thinking of divine forgiveness in terms of legal analogies like pardon or commutation of punishment. As we shall see, pardon is a legal act that removes the criminal’s liability to punishment and restores his civil rights. God’s pardon of us is based on Christ’s fully discharging substitutionally our sentence and so satisfying divine justice.

The failing of Stump’s argument as I have formulated it, then, lies in an equivocal use of the word “forgiveness” in (3) and (4). On penal substitutionary atonement theories, God is perfectly forgiving in Stump’s sense and so provides satisfaction for undeserving sinners, but His forgiveness of sins in the sense of pardoning those sins is based on the precondition of Christ’s satisfaction of divine justice. In the penultimate draft of her book (graciously provided me in preprint), Stump uses the word “pardon” only once, in a subheading. But in the final draft pardon is introduced at several junctures. Unfortunately, Stump tends to conflate it with forgiveness in her sense and fails to differentiate it as a legal notion. For example, she speaks of a case in which “Paula has pardoned Jerome, but her pardon is insufficient to produce in Jerome the kind of state necessary for him to return to company with her.” Stump is evidently using “pardon” here in the sense of “forgiveness,” since Paula as a private person has no authority to issue a legal pardon. Or again, we find this interesting characterization of “Anselmian” atonement theories:

As we have seen, penal substitutionary theorists regard both claims as false, unless forgiveness is understood not as Stump understands it but as legal pardon. Citing Crisp in the quotation above, Stump suddenly introduces the notion of pardon and rightly says that it would not be given without Christ’s atonement. But then in the final sentence she lapses back into conflating God’s granting a pardon with His forgiveness and reconciliation as she understands them.

On penal substitutionary theories (whether necessitarian or non-necessitarian) God as Ruler (while willing our good and desiring union with us) does not merely pardon us but exacts the punishment demanded by retributive justice. He does not exact it from us but from Himself in Christ. We who accept Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice are thereby freed from our liability to punishment and therefore declared “not guilty.” Seeing that Christ has vicariously satisfied the demands of divine retributive justice on our behalf, God can, in turn, pardon us of our sins. It is in that sense that God can be said to have forgiven our sins. “And you, who were dead in your trespasses . . . , God made alive together with [Christ], having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Col 2:13-14 ESV). Forgiveness in this legal sense is the declaration that the penalty has been fully paid and therefore we are free.

There are fascinating questions to be explored here, and my point is that progress is more apt to be made by conceiving of God along Grotian lines as Ruler and Judge than along Socinian lines as an offended party in a private dispute. When we do so consider God, then it seems obvious that God’s being perfectly loving and forgiving are entirely compatible with legal condemnation of sinners and, indeed, may motivate God to provide the satisfaction for sinners requisite for His just pardon of them.

In conclusion, we have seen no good argument against the coherence of penal substitutionary atonement theories. The attempt to demonstrate an incoherence arising from the definition of punishment is based upon so many dubious assumptions that the alleged incoherence is not difficult to avoid. The attempt to show that penal substitutionary atonement theories are theologically incoherent is based on an equivocal use of “forgiveness” and the failure to construe divine forgiveness on the analogy of a legal pardon by an executive authority rather than on the model of reconciliation in private relationships. Consideration of such coherence objections has nonetheless proved to be profitable in view of the insights it has already yielded concerning penal substitution and divine punishment. With these insights in hand, we may now turn to the more important and pressing moral objection to the justice of penal substitution.