Matt Pinson

Reformed Arminians emphasize what Leroy Forlines called the penal-satisfaction model of atonement. (Forlines, with scholars like Charles Hodge, J. I. Packer, and Thomas Oden, liked this more precise phrase that refers to what most people call penal-substitutionary atonement.) I have discussed this approach elsewhere at greater length than I will do here. [1] My purpose in this essay is to address the concerns of some of my students who have asked whether we Reformed Arminians neglect other facets of atonement.

My quick answer is, “Perhaps it seems we do, because most of the time our context is a discussion with our Calvinists friends who say, ‘But you Arminians don’t affirm penal-substitutionary atonement—that Christ paid the penalty for sin.’” We are quick to respond that, not only do we affirm penal-substitutionary atonement, but it is the sine qua non of why we are Reformed Arminians, and not Wesleyan Arminians. As Forlines and Robert Picirilli emphasize, we heartily affirm the classic Reformed account of the active and passive obedience of Christ in his sinless life and sacrificial death on the cross. This obedience alone is what provides satisfaction—pays the debt—for sin and makes us righteous before God.

This penal-satisfaction doctrine of atonement issues forth in a penal-satisfaction doctrine of justification: Christ’s active and passive obedience are made ours through union with Christ, and we come into that union, and remain in that union, through faith alone. While we can exit that faith through apostasy, unless and until that apostasy occurs, we remain in union with Christ and in that union are still imputed the death (passive obedience) and righteousness (active obedience) of Christ. So without the penal-satisfaction doctrine of atonement, and the penal-satisfaction doctrine of justification that goes with it, there is no Reformed Arminianism.

A quintessential expression of the penal-satisfaction model of atonement is found in the General Baptist Orthodox Creed of 1678:

. . . and being made under the Law, [Christ] did perfectly fulfill or keep it, and underwent the Punishment due to us, which we should have suffered, our sin, and the punishment of it being reckoned, or imputed to him; he being made a Curse for us, and underwent and trod the Wine-press of his Father’s Wrath for us, in dolorous pangs and agony of Soul, and painful sufferings in his Body. . . . And the same Lord Jesus, by his perfect Obedience to the whole Law, and Sacrifice of himself, which he through the Eternal Spirit offered up unto God the Father, hath fully satisfied the Justice of God, and reconciled him to us; and hath purchased an everlasting Inheritance in the Kingdom of Heaven. . . .  Justification is a Declarative, or Judicial Sentence of God the Father, whereby he of his infinite Love, and most free Grace, for the alone and Mediatorial Righteousness of his own Son, performed in our Nature and stead; which Righteousness of God-Man, the Father imputing to us, and by effectual Faith received and embraced by us, doth free us by Judicial Sentence from Sin and Death, and accepts us Righteous in Christ our Surety, unto Eternal Life; the Active and Passive Obedience of Christ being the Accomplishment of all that Righteousness and Sufferings the Law, or Justice of God required; and this being perfectly performed by our Mediator, in the very Nature of us Men, and accepted by the Father in our stead, according to that eternal Covenant-Transaction, between the Father and the Son. And hereby we have deliverance from the Guilt and Punishment of all our Sins, and are accounted Righteous before God, at the Throne of Grace, by the alone Righteousness of Christ the Mediator, imputed, or reckoned unto us through Faith. [2]

Thus the doctrine of penal satisfaction in atonement and its implications for justification and the Christian life are very important to Reformed Arminians. As I explain to my students, what can come across as an exclusive emphasis on the penal-substitutionary aspect of atonement occurs because we are discussing primarily our Reformed Arminian distinctions from other Arminians. But in our preaching and teaching, we must not neglect other facets that contribute to the doctrine of atonement. Those main facets are (1) Christ’s atonement as victory over the devil that provides a ransom price for sinners (Christus victor), (2) Christ as moral influence or example (moral influence), and (3) Christ’s atonement as a public protection and exhibition of justice (governmental).

Those are the three other historical theories of atonement: the Christus victor, moral influence, and governmental views. We need to make sure that we include, in our preaching and teaching of Holy Scripture, proper emphasis on the truths taught in these models of atonement. The difficulty with these models is not what they teach, it’s what they leave out. And when the biblical principle of penal satisfaction in the atoning work of Christ remains as the animating center of our doctrine of atonement—without which there would be no atonement—then these other models shed light on non-negotiable biblical principles that are crucial to our holistic understanding of atonement.

Christus Victor

The Bible speaks in a few places of Christ’s atonement as a ransom paid to free sinners from the dominion of evil. In the Old Testament, Isaiah (35:10; 43:3; 51:11), Jeremiah (31:11), and Hosea (13:14) speak of the children of Israel as having been ransomed. In the New Testament, Jesus said the Son of Man came to “give his life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28; Mk. 10:45), and Paul said Christ “gave Himself a ransom for all” (2 Tim. 2:6). These texts, however, simply speak in broad terms about a ransom-price for sinners but do not explain what that means.

Origen speculatively advanced a ransom theory of atonement that held that the atonement was a ransom paid to the devil for the souls of sinners. But, as Thomas Oden said, this theory “never gained broad, general consent,” because of the uniform biblical witness that Christ’s payment for sin is a sacrifice offered to God, not the devil. Church fathers such as Gregory of Nanzianzus said that, in essence, Origen’s theory made God the author of a “bait-and-switch” tactic, which was beneath Him, and that Satan was never the true owner of sinners. [3]

However, there is a grain of truth even in Origen’s ransom theory, as Michael Horton has pointed out: “God outwitted Satan and the rulers of this age by triumphing over them precisely where they celebrated God’s defeat.” [4] This notion is key to the broader Christus victor approach that sees the atonement as being the victory of Christ over the evil forces and over sin, death, and hell.

This frame on the atonement, which Gustaf Aulén vividly reminded us of, is accurate, for “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12). Christ’s righteous life and atoning death gives the elect decisive victory over these principalities and powers. In our preaching and teaching and counseling, we need to give attention to the victory that Christ’s atonement achieves over the forces of darkness. It is a biblical theme that cannot be neglected without doing violence to the overall picture the Spirit gives of what Christ is doing in His atoning work through His sinless life and sacrificial death. [5]

As Oden has reminded us, however, we must emphasize that the only way for this victory over the powers of darkness to occur is for Christ to free sinners from the dominion of the devil, and the only way for this to occur is to provide satisfaction or payment of the debt sinners owe to God that they never can themselves repay. Thus atonement that is centered on penal substitution, which had to occur for Christ to take humanity’s place, pay the price for humanity’s sin, and fulfill the law in humanity’s stead, is for Oden precisely what is necessary for Christus victor—for Christ to have victory over sin, death, and the devil. [6]

This approach to Christus victor contrasts starkly with that of Aulén, who had a very negative opinion of Reformation construals of penal satisfaction. One of the authors on this subject whom Leroy Forlines recommended most to me was his friend H. D. McDonald, the British evangelical who taught during the summers at Winona Lake School of Theology and Northern Baptist Seminary. McDonald wrote one of the best books ever written on the atonement, The Atonement of the Death of Christ. McDonald is right when he says that the Christus victor model of the atonement is “right in what it affirms” because the “idea of victory” is a “vital part” of “every statement of the atonement that would be true to its biblical source.” In his cross-work, Christ has achieved victory over sin, death, and the devil. [7]

So the Christus victor model of atonement is not so much wrong as it is “inadequate because of what it omits.” McDonald correctly argues that Aulén’s account leaves out big chunks of the atonement theology that his greatest protagonists—Irenaeus of Lyon and Martin Luther—affirm about the necessity of satisfaction for sin for Christ’s victory over evil to occur. (264–65). While Aulén is right to emphasize the warrior role of God gaining victory for His people, preaching only this point fails to emphasize the core doctrine of the atonement that makes that victory possible. It “gives little notice to what it cost God. . . . The cost to God was more than his entry into the field of victory” over the forces of evil. It cost Him the life of His Son, who was “wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities” (Isa. 53:5), and this cost was necessary to pay our debt of sin (265).

Moral Influence/Example

Oden describes the moral influence and example theories of the atonement as “the Pelagian-Abelardian-Socinian tradition,” noting: “The tradition of Abelard and Socinus, anticipated by Pelagius, is not a consensual tradition, but a distortion that reappears in heavier or lighter tones periodically” (404).

While, as Oden mentions, this approach does not “deny” the “objective aspects of the atonement altogether,” it has “overstressed” the subjective aspects of the atonement, teaching that at the very center of the atonement is the idea that Christ’s death “was to serve as supreme example of divine love eliciting and enabling a loving human response, so as to draw humanity toward the love of the Father.” He points out that these themes were picked up by Protestant Liberalism exemplified by theologians like Friederich Schleiermacher and Horace Bushnell (404).

Forlines refers to “the moral influence theory of liberalism,” noting that orthodoxy has not taken this theory seriously because it denies that God’s nature requires satisfaction, that it is necessary for sin to be directly punished, and that it sees Christ’s death primarily as a revelation of what is important to God, not as propitiation for sin. [8]

The seventeenth-century English General Baptist Thomas Grantham discusses this view at length, responding to the Socinian view that was gaining currency in his day. Because, for Grantham, the essence of the atonement is Christ’s fulfilling the law and taking on Himself “the Punishment due for our Sin,” he goes into great depth eschewing a moral influence or “example” view of atonement, which was popular among the Socinians of his day. “How it cometh to pass, that any should take the Righteousness of Christ’s Performances, or actual Obedience, to be designed by God only as an excellent Pattern, or Examble to Men, is not easie to conceive.” If the righteousness of Christ consists merely in His being our example or pattern, then the saints’ pattern or example could suffice. “Now if Christ should be called our Righteousness only because he is our Pattern,” Grantham argued, “he alone could not be called our Pattern; and consequently, he alone would not be called our Righteousness. But seeing Christ, and Christ alone, may truly be said to be our Righteousness, Jer. 23. 6. We must therefore look upon his Righteousness to be of far greater Concernment to us, than the Righteousness of the most holy Saint that ever yet lived.” [9]

However, we must be careful in our preaching and teaching not to obscure the moral influence and example of the atoning work of Christ. The moral influence/example view of atonement is the most difficult of all the atonement theories in which to find anything worth salvaging. This is because whether it is Pelagius, the Socinians, or modern liberal Protestants, their emphasis on the love and moral influence and example of Christ is most often separated from biblical and orthodox understandings of the person of the God-man Jesus Christ and even the need for salvation from sin or from divine wrath against it. Furthermore, as we look back at Anselm of Canterbury’s famous question in Cur Deus Homo—Why did God become man?—we must admit that neither an incarnation nor Christ’s death on the cross was needed for there to be moral influence and example.

Still, even with these problems in view, we can acknowledge that Jesus’s life and death are not only a payment for our sins but also a moral example for us. Yet, like the Christus victor model, while moral influence and example represent a frame or aspect that sheds light on the full-orbed meaning of atonement, they are not what makes the atonement what it is. They are necessary for atonement to take place, but not sufficient, not enough. 

Governmental

The third main position on atonement historically is the governmental theory. This theory was first developed by the Dutch Remonstrant legal theorist Hugo Grotius, a follower of Arminius though he differed substantially from Arminius’s more Reformed views. Grotius held that God could freely pardon sinners without any satisfaction for the violation of divine law, because such a pardon was within God’s discretion as governor or sovereign. Thus the sacrifice of Christ is accepted by God as governor or ruler rather than as judge. The death of Christ, in this view, is a symbol of the punishment sin may induce. God uses this symbol as a deterrent. The penalty for sin is thereby set aside rather than paid. Therefore, upon faith, the believer is pardoned as a governor would pardon a guilty criminal, and all past sins are forgotten. [10]

The Arminian Puritan John Goodwin articulated a similar view in his book Imputatio Fidei, a book of over four hundred pages whose sole purpose was to disprove the doctrine that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to believers for their eternal acceptance with God. Goodwin argued, “The sentence or curse of the Law, was not properly executed upon Christ in his death, but this death of Christ was a ground or consideration unto God, whereupon to dispence with his Law, and to let fall or suspend the execution of the penalty or curse therein threatened.” Not until God dispensed with His law, said Goodwin, could He pardon men and women and forgive their sins: “But God in spareing and forbearing the transgressors (who according to the tenor of the Law should have bin punished) manifestly dispenceth with the Law, and doth not execute it.” It was not absolutely necessary, according to Goodwin, for Christ to die on the cross to pardon sinners, but it was the method that God in His government chose. Goodwin explains:

Neither did God require the death and sufferings of Christ as a valuable consideration whereon to dispence with his Law towards those that beleeve, more (if so much) in a way of satisfaction to his justice, than to his wisdome. For (doubtlesse) God might with as much justice, as wisdome (if not much more) have passed by the transgression of his Law without consideration or satisfaction. For him that hath the lawfull authority and power, either to impose a Law, or not, in case he shall impose it, it rather concerns in point of wisdome and discretion, not to see his Law despised and trampled upon without satisfaction, then in point of justice.

Christ’s death was for Goodwin, therefore, an exhibition of public justice, not a penal satisfaction. He mirrored Grotius, who stated that “the law is not something internal with God or the will of God itself, but only an effect of that will. It is perfectly certain that the effects of the divine will are mutable,” or that divine law is promulgated by God as “a positive law which at some time he may wish to relax.” [11]

Like the Christus victor and moral influence/example theories of atonement, much of what the governmental theory, at its heart, affirms is not wrong: God does indeed have a desire to satisfy public justice. We need to bear witness to this truth in our preaching and teaching. Justice is at the heart of God’s character, and indeed He does use the cross to show the world, indeed the principalities and powers, a public display of His justice and His wrath against sin.

Still, the leading advocates of the governmental model of atonement do not value divine justice enough because, unlike the penal-satisfaction view, they do not see an absolute necessity for the punishment of sin. It is within God’s right as rector or sovereign or governor simply to relax His law and offer forgiveness to individuals as long as Christ’s death exhibits God’s public justice. However, these problems do not take away from the fact that God’s public justice is an important aspect of the atonement.

The chief difficulty with the other three major historical atonement theories, even when seen at their best, is that they are necessary but not sufficient for atonement to take place. And they do not get at the heart of the work of Christ as the fulfillment of the sacrificial system of the Old Covenant.

However, we need to ensure that, in our preaching and teaching, as well as in our counseling, we do not obscure the basic biblical principles that motivate these alternatives to the penal-satisfaction view of atonement. As my colleague Kevin Hester has said, we should “always maintain the priority of the satisfaction view while being willing to entertain additional analogies. This will allow us to paint a fuller picture of Christ’s atonement, equip us tell a multilayered story of personal relationships, and enable us to view the gospel story from all angles of the multifaceted jewel it is.” [12]

While penal satisfaction is at the indispensable core of the biblical doctrine of atonement, in our zeal to defend it, we also need to keep the primary biblical motifs of the other models in plain view: through His atoning sacrifice, Christ has also vanquished the powers of sin and evil and the devils. He has given us the supreme example of self-giving love and holiness unto the Lord. And He has publicly safeguarded and declared the justice that is at the heart of God’s holy character. Thanks be to God!

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[1] J. Matthew Pinson, 40 Questions About Arminianism (Grand Rapids: Kregel Academic, 2022); J. Matthew Pinson, “Thomas Pinson, “Thomas Grantham’s Theology of Atonement and Justification,” Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry 8 (2011), 7–21; J. Matthew Pinson, “The Nature of Atonement and the Soteriological Implications in Arminian Theology,” Criswell Theological Review 18NS (2021): 31–52.

Forlines wanted to revive the phraseology of “penal satisfaction,” thus rescuing it from its associations with Anselm. The Anglican scholar George Cadwalader Foley was correct when he stated that “the Reformers taught that our Lord’s sufferings were penal, and Anselm expressly distinguishes between punishment and satisfaction. . . . As a commutation, satisfaction was instead of punishment; but they transformed it into satisfaction by punishment.” Many scholars have used the term penal satisfaction to describe this Reformational emphasis. The term was employed as early as the liberal Protestant scholar Albrecht Ritschl. Nineteenth-century conservative Protestant thinkers such as Charles Hodge, Augustus Strong, William G. T. Shedd, and Robert L. Dabney used the term, taking it over from earlier Reformed scholastics like Francis Turretin and Stephen Charnock. In the twentieth century the term was employed by writers as diverse as James Orr, Lewis Sperry Chafer, and Cornelius Van Til. Recent scholars like J. I. Packer and Timothy George, the Methodist Thomas Oden, and the Lutheran Jack Kilcrease have also employed the term. See George Cadwalader Foley, Anselm’s Theory of the Atonement (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), 219. Parts of this paragraph are adapted from J. Matthew Pinson, “A Rejoinder to the Responses to ‘Thomas Grantham’s Theology of Atonement and Justification,’” Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry 8 (2011), 35–36 (rejoinder to Rhyne Putman).

[2] Orthodox Creed, http://baptiststudiesonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/orthodox-creed.pdf.

[3] Thomas C. Oden, The Word of Life (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989), 398.

[4] Michael Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 502.

[5] See Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement, trans. A. G. Hebert (London: SPCK, 1953).

[6] Oden, The Word of Life, 404.

[7] H. D. McDonald, The Atonement of the Death of Christ: In Faith, Revelation, and History (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 264.

[8] F. Leroy Forlines, Classical Arminianism: A Theology of Salvation (Nashville: Randall House, 2011), 232.

[9] Grantham, Christianismus Primitivus, Book II, 62, 66. This paragraph is adapted from Pinson, “Thomas Grantham’s Theology of Atonement and Justification,” Journal for Baptist Theology and Ministry 8 (2011), 15.

[10] This and the next paragraph are adapted from Pinson, “Thomas Grantham’s Theology of Atonement and Justification,” 18–19.

[11] The quotations from John Goodwin are from his Imputatio Fidei. Or A Treatise of Justification (London, 1642), part 2, 33–35. (The word “then” in the last sentence of the Goodwin quotation is an early modern English usage for our word “than” today.) The quotations from Hugo Grotius are from his A Defence of the Catholic Faith Concerning the Satisfaction of Christ, against Faustus Socinus, trans. Frank Hugh Foster (Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1889), 75.

[12] See his chapter “The Atonement and Justification by Faith in Jonathan Edwards,” in Jonathan Edwards: A Reformed Arminian Engagement, J. Matthew Pinson, ed. (Brentwood: B&H Academic, 2024).