Chapter 21
Christus Victor — Christ's Victory Over Sin, Death, and the Powers

Introduction: The Sound of Trumpets

There is a note of triumph that rings through the pages of the New Testament like a trumpet call. It echoes in Paul's letter to the Colossians, where Christ is said to have "disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them" on the cross (Col. 2:15). It resounds in the letter to the Hebrews, where the Son of God destroyed "the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil" (Heb. 2:14). It reverberates in the vision of John, where the Lamb who was slain has conquered, and the accuser of God's people has been thrown down by "the blood of the Lamb" (Rev. 12:10–11). Whatever else happened at Calvary, something was won there. A battle was fought. An enemy was defeated. A victory was achieved.

This note of victory has been called by many names. In the twentieth century, the Swedish theologian Gustaf Aulén gave it a name that has stuck: Christus Victor — "Christ the Victor." In his influential 1931 book by that title, Aulén argued that this dramatic, victorious understanding of the cross was the "classic" view of the atonement, held by the Church Fathers for the first thousand years of Christian history, recovered briefly by Martin Luther, and then once again eclipsed by the more juridical categories of Protestant scholasticism.¹ Aulén's thesis has been debated, refined, and criticized ever since — but no serious student of the atonement can ignore the reality he pointed to. The New Testament does present the cross and resurrection as a decisive cosmic victory. That much is beyond dispute.

The question this chapter addresses is not whether the Christus Victor motif is biblical — it clearly is. The question is how this victory relates to the other dimensions of the atonement, and especially to penal substitutionary atonement (PSA). Is Christus Victor a competing theory that renders PSA unnecessary? Is it the true center of the atonement, with everything else arranged around it? Or is it a genuine but complementary facet — a real dimension of what Christ accomplished that finds its deepest explanation when we understand how the victory was won?

I want to argue in this chapter that the last option is the right one. Christus Victor captures something profoundly true about the cross. Christ did defeat sin, death, the devil, and every hostile power. But the New Testament itself tells us how that victory was achieved: through the bearing of the penalty of human sin. The record of our debt was nailed to the cross — and because it was cancelled, the powers were disarmed. The forensic and the dramatic, the penal and the triumphant, are not rivals. They are two dimensions of a single, glorious event. And when we hold them together, as the New Testament does, the full beauty and power of the cross comes into view.

The Christus Victor Model: A Fair Presentation

Before we evaluate the Christus Victor model or relate it to PSA, we need to understand it on its own terms. What does this model claim? What are its central ideas? And where does it come from?

The "Classic" View: Aulén's Thesis

The story of the Christus Victor model in modern theology really begins with Gustaf Aulén. His book Christus Victor, originally published in Swedish in 1930 and translated into English the following year, was a deliberate provocation. Aulén argued that theologians had been wrong to frame the history of atonement theology as a debate between two main options: the "objective" or legal view associated with Anselm of Canterbury (Christ's death satisfying something in God), and the "subjective" or moral view associated with Peter Abelard (Christ's death inspiring and transforming us). There was, Aulén insisted, a third view — one that was actually older and more central than either of the other two.²

Aulén called this third option the "classic" or "dramatic" view. It was "dramatic" because it envisioned the atonement as a cosmic drama — God in Christ entering into battle with the powers of evil and emerging victorious. It was "classic" because, Aulén claimed, it was "the ruling idea of the Atonement for the first thousand years of Christian history."³ The essence of this view, in Aulén's own definition, is that "the work of Christ is first and foremost a victory over the Powers which hold mankind in bondage: sin, death, and the devil.... The victory of Christ creates a new situation, bringing their rule to an end, and setting men free from their dominion."⁴

According to Aulén, this dramatic understanding was held by virtually all the Greek Fathers, from Irenaeus at the end of the second century to John of Damascus at the beginning of the eighth. It was the dominant perspective of the leading Western Fathers as well — Ambrose, Augustine, and Popes Leo the Great and Gregory the Great — though they sometimes held it alongside more "objective" ideas. It was then lost in the medieval period, when Anselm's satisfaction theory took center stage. Luther recovered it powerfully. But subsequent Protestant scholasticism lost it again, reverting to juridical categories.⁵

In Aulén's reading, the Christus Victor view differed from both the satisfaction and moral influence models in a crucial way. In both Anselm's model and Abelard's model, there is a sense in which the primary action is "from below" — a human work (Christ's obedience, Christ's love) being offered to God or demonstrated to humanity. In the classic view, by contrast, the primary movement is "from above" — God Himself is the acting subject, invading enemy-occupied territory, waging war against the powers that hold humanity captive, and winning a definitive victory. The atonement is, above all, God's initiative from start to finish.⁶

This is worth pausing over. One of the genuine strengths of Aulén's work is his insistence that the atonement is fundamentally something God does, not something we do or even something we offer back to God through Christ. The cross is God's rescue mission. It is God's invasion. As we will see, this emphasis is entirely correct — and it is something that the best formulations of penal substitution also affirm. Stott's famous concept of "the self-substitution of God" (treated in Chapter 20) captures exactly this point: the cross is not the Father punishing an unwilling victim, but God Himself bearing the cost of our redemption.⁷

The Patristic Background

Aulén was right that the victory theme is prominent in the Church Fathers. As we explored in more detail in Chapters 13–15, the Fathers regularly described Christ's work in dramatic, triumphant terms. Irenaeus spoke of Christ "recapitulating" the human story and defeating the devil through obedience where Adam had failed (see Chapter 23 for the full treatment of recapitulation). Origen described Christ's death as a ransom that lured the devil into overreaching, only to find that he could not hold the sinless Son of God. Gregory of Nyssa developed the famous "fishhook" image — Christ's humanity was the bait concealing the hook of His divinity, so that the devil, in swallowing the bait, was caught and destroyed.⁸

One of Aulén's most important contributions was his argument that Martin Luther powerfully recovered the Christus Victor theme at the heart of his theology. As Rutledge observes, Aulén demonstrated that Luther, "at the very center of his theology, had mounted a robust reaffirmation of the biblical and patristic Christus Victor account, based on Luther's reading of the New Testament." Luther wrote with extraordinary force about Christ overcoming the "monsters" of sin, death, God's wrath, hell, and the devil. In Luther's own words: "Christ, who is God's power, righteousness, blessing, grace and life, overcomes and carries away these monsters, sin, death and the curse." For Luther, this was not the work of any created being but of "almighty God."⁵² What is particularly striking about Luther's appropriation of the victory theme is that he never saw it as opposed to penal and substitutionary categories. Luther simultaneously spoke of Christ bearing the curse of the law in our place (Gal. 3:13) and of Christ triumphing over the powers. For Luther, as for the New Testament, the two went hand in hand (see Chapter 17 for the full treatment of Luther's atonement theology).

The broader context for these images is the conviction, shared across the patristic tradition, that humanity was in genuine bondage — held captive by sin, death, and the devil. Salvation, therefore, required liberation. Christ came not merely to teach, not merely to inspire, but to fight and to win. As David Allen notes, the essence of the Christus Victor view "is Christ's victory over Satan through the cross and the resurrection," and major Fathers including "Irenæus, Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Basil, the two Gregories, Cyril of Alexandria, John of Damascus, Hilary, Rufinus, Jerome, Augustine, and Leo the Great all advocated some form of it."⁹

But here is a point that is often overlooked in popular treatments, and one that Allen and others have documented carefully: "most patristic theologians also held to some form of a satisfaction/substitutionary atonement" alongside their Christus Victor language.¹⁰ The Fathers were not one-dimensional thinkers. They held multiple atonement themes together, often in the same passage. Augustine, as we will see shortly, is perhaps the best example of this integration. The idea that the Fathers were committed exclusively to Christus Victor, and that substitutionary or penal ideas were foreign to their thinking, is a popular misconception generated by selective reading of the secondary literature — a point that William Lane Craig has documented compellingly.¹¹ We addressed this in depth in Chapter 15, where we examined the extensive penal and substitutionary language found throughout the patristic tradition.

Aulén's Significance — and His Limitations

So was Aulén right? Partly. He was right to draw the church's attention back to the theme of cosmic victory. He was right that this note of triumph had been muted in some strands of post-Reformation theology. He was right that Luther himself had sounded this note with extraordinary power. And he was right that the atonement is fundamentally God's act — God Himself, in Christ, doing battle with the forces that enslave us.

But Aulén's thesis had significant weaknesses, too. For one, as Stott has pointed out, Aulén was unfair to Anselm. He represented Anselm's view as though it depicted Christ's death as merely "a human work of satisfaction accomplished by Christ" — an offering from below. But as we saw in Chapter 16, Anselm himself emphasized that only God could make the satisfaction that was needed, and that it was God Himself, through the unique God-man Christ Jesus, who both made and received the satisfaction.¹² Aulén's sharp contrast between the "classic" and "Latin" views was overdrawn.

More seriously, Aulén drew too sharp a line between the victory motif and the satisfaction/penal motif, as if they were mutually incompatible alternatives. The New Testament, as we will see, does not force us to choose. It combines them freely. As Stott puts it with characteristic clarity: "An admirable attempt to combine the two concepts was made by the nineteenth-century Scottish commentator John Eadie: 'Our redemption is a work at once of price and of power — of expiation and of conquest. On the cross was the purchase made, and on the cross was the victory gained.'"¹³

Furthermore, as Allen notes, the Christus Victor model by itself "does not really explain how the atonement itself functions to deal with the sin problem." It describes a result — victory, liberation — without explaining the mechanism. "It functions more like a metaphor rather than a model," Allen observes. "Only satisfaction and substitution models focus on the actual act of the atonement and how sin is dealt with."¹⁴ This is a crucial observation. We know that Christ won. But how did He win? What was it about His death that defeated the powers? Christus Victor, taken alone, does not answer that question. We need the penal and substitutionary categories to explain the mechanism of victory.

The Biblical Basis for Christus Victor

Whatever we make of Aulén's historical thesis, the biblical data itself is what matters most. And the biblical evidence for a victory dimension of the atonement is extensive and compelling. Let me walk through the key texts.

Genesis 3:15 — The Protoevangelium

The victory theme begins on the very first pages of the Bible. After the fall of Adam and Eve, God pronounces judgment on the serpent:

"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." (Gen. 3:15, ESV)

This verse has traditionally been called the protoevangelium — the "first gospel." It is the first promise of redemption in all of Scripture. And what form does it take? A promise of victory. The offspring of the woman (which the Christian tradition has always understood as pointing ultimately to Christ) will crush the head of the serpent. The serpent will strike his heel — inflicting real pain, real suffering — but the lethal blow will fall on the serpent's head. The basic shape of the gospel is already here in embryonic form: the Redeemer will suffer, but through His suffering He will destroy the enemy.¹⁵

What Genesis 3:15 gives us in seed form, the rest of Scripture develops. Every Old Testament text that declares God's present reign or His future reign through the Messiah can be read as a further prophecy of the ultimate crushing of the serpent's head. The kingdom of God is coming — and when it comes, every hostile power will be subdued.¹⁶

Colossians 2:13–15 — The Cross as Triumph

If there is one New Testament passage that captures the Christus Victor theme in its fullest form, it is this one. And remarkably, it is also one of the passages that most clearly integrates the victory motif with penal and forensic categories. Here is the text:

"And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, 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. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him." (Col. 2:13–15, ESV)

Let me unpack this text carefully. Paul begins with the human condition: we were "dead in trespasses." Our fundamental problem was not merely that we were captive to hostile powers (though we were), but that we were dead because of our own sin. God's response to this condition was twofold — or rather, it was one act with two dimensions.

First, the forensic dimension. Paul says God forgave our trespasses by "canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands." The word translated "record of debt" is cheirographon (χειρόγραφον), which referred to a handwritten document — specifically, a certificate of indebtedness, a bond.¹⁷ This is legal, forensic, courtroom language. We owed a debt to God's justice because of our sin. That debt "stood against us" — it was an accusation, a condemnation. And God dealt with it by "nailing it to the cross." The imagery may allude to the titulus, the placard fixed above a crucified person's head listing their crimes. On Christ's cross, it was not His crimes but ours that were inscribed.¹⁸ The point is clear: the penalty for our sin was dealt with at the cross. The debt was paid. The accusation was silenced.

Then, immediately — in the very next breath — Paul moves to the victory dimension. "He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him." Three vivid verbs describe what God did to the hostile powers. He "disarmed" them — stripped them of their weapons. He "put them to open shame" — exposed them publicly as the defeated, humiliated forces they now are. And He did this "by triumphing over them" — the image of a Roman triumphant procession, where a conquering general parades his defeated enemies through the streets in chains.¹⁹

Now here is the crucial point: Paul does not treat these two dimensions as separate or competing. He brackets them together. The debt was cancelled, and therefore the powers were defeated. As Stott explains, Paul brings together "two different aspects of the saving work of Christ's cross, namely the forgiveness of our sins and the cosmic overthrow of the principalities and powers." And then he adds this important observation: "Is not his payment of our debts the way in which Christ has overthrown the powers? By liberating us from these, he has liberated us from them."²⁰

This is absolutely vital for understanding how Christus Victor and PSA relate. The powers had a claim on us — the claim of our guilt, our sin, our deserved condemnation. When Christ bore the penalty of that sin and the debt was cancelled, the powers lost their hold. Their authority was grounded in the legitimacy of the accusation against us. Once the accusation was dealt with, once the verdict of "guilty" was answered by Christ's substitutionary death, the powers had nothing left. They were disarmed. Their weapons were taken away. The forensic resolution is the mechanism of the cosmic victory.

Allen makes this point succinctly: "This text explicitly lays out the triumph of the cross. Here the demonic powers were disarmed, divested of power, and defeated by the cancellation of the legal debt on the cross."²¹ The triumph and the legal cancellation are not two separate events. They are one event viewed from two angles.

Hebrews 2:14–15 — Destroying the Devil Through Death

The author of Hebrews presents the victory theme in language that is both beautiful and theologically precise:

"Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage." (Heb. 2:14–15, ESV)

This passage tells us several things at once. First, it confirms the reality of human bondage. People are held captive by the fear of death, and the devil wields that fear as a weapon of enslavement. Second, it tells us that the incarnation — Christ's "partaking" of flesh and blood — was necessary for the victory. Only by becoming truly human could the Son of God enter the arena where the battle needed to be fought. Third, and most strikingly, it tells us that Christ destroyed the devil "through death." Not through a display of overwhelming power. Not through a cosmic confrontation in heaven. Through death. The weapon of victory was the very thing that looked like defeat.

But how does death destroy the one who has the power of death? On a Christus Victor model alone, this is somewhat mysterious. But when we bring in the penal substitutionary framework, the logic becomes clear. Death is "the wages of sin" (Rom. 6:23). The devil's power over humanity is grounded in the reality of human guilt — we are sinners, and sin's penalty is death. When Christ dies as the sinless substitute, bearing the penalty of our sin, He exhausts the power of death. There is no more penalty to be paid. The debt is settled. And with the debt settled, the devil has no more leverage. As Craig notes regarding Augustine's treatment of exactly this dynamic: Christ was "the one and most real sacrifice offered up for us," and because His innocent death removed the penalty of sin, Satan could no longer justly hold those who are united to Christ by faith.²²

The author of Hebrews immediately connects this victory to Christ's priestly, sacrificial role: "He had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people" (Heb. 2:17). Victory and propitiation. Triumph and sacrifice. The same author, in the same breath, holds them together — as we explored in depth in Chapter 10's treatment of Hebrews.

Rutledge draws special attention to this integration in Hebrews 2, noting that the passage "combines the image of Christ as the victor over Death with that of the priestly sacrifice."⁵¹ This is not an accident or a careless mixing of metaphors. It reflects the deep logic of the New Testament itself: Christ's priestly sacrifice — His offering of Himself as a propitiation for sin — is the means by which death and the devil are destroyed. The priest and the warrior are one and the same person. The altar of sacrifice and the field of battle are one and the same cross. When the author of Hebrews says Christ destroyed the devil "through death," that death is not a random act of martyrdom; it is the priestly, substitutionary, sin-bearing death that Hebrews 9–10 will develop in magnificent detail.

1 John 3:8 — Destroying the Works of the Devil

John states the purpose of the incarnation in strikingly clear terms:

"The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil." (1 John 3:8b, ESV)

This is a purpose statement. It tells us why the Son of God came. And the answer is: to destroy. The Greek word is lyō (λύω), which means to loose, to dissolve, to break apart. The works of the devil — sin, death, deception, bondage, accusation — are being undone, dismantled, destroyed by the work of Christ. And it is worth noting that John, the same author who gives us this Christus Victor statement, is also the one who declares that Jesus is "the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2). For John, as for Paul and the author of Hebrews, the victory and the propitiation go hand in hand (see Chapter 12 for the full Johannine treatment).

1 Corinthians 15:54–57 — Death Swallowed Up in Victory

Paul's great resurrection chapter reaches its climax with a shout of triumph:

"When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: 'Death is swallowed up in victory.' 'O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?' The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Cor. 15:54–57, ESV)

Notice how Paul explains the mechanism of death's defeat. "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law." Death has "sting" because of sin. Sin has "power" because of the law — that is, because the law exposes our guilt and pronounces the sentence. But Christ has dealt with both sin and the law's condemnation (as Paul argues in Romans 8:1–4 and Galatians 3:13), and therefore death has lost its sting. The victory over death comes through the resolution of the sin-and-guilt problem. Once again, the forensic and the triumphant are inseparably joined.

Revelation 12:10–11 — Victory Through the Blood of the Lamb

In John's great apocalyptic vision, the victory of God's people over Satan is described in a way that explicitly links triumph to sacrificial death:

"And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, 'Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.'" (Rev. 12:10–11, ESV)

This is Christus Victor language through and through. The accuser has been "thrown down." God's people have "conquered him." But how was the conquest achieved? "By the blood of the Lamb." The sacrificial, substitutionary death of Christ — the shedding of His blood — is the weapon that defeats the accuser. Satan's power lies in accusation. He is the kategorōn (κατηγορῶν), the one who brings charges against God's people "day and night." But the blood of the Lamb silences the accusation. When the penalty has been paid and the guilt has been removed, the accuser has nothing left to say.²³

Here, in the most vividly apocalyptic book of the New Testament, we see the same integration we have found everywhere: the blood of the sacrificial lamb — a penal, substitutionary image — is the very means by which the cosmic victory is won.

John 12:31–33 — The Ruler of This World Cast Out

Jesus Himself, in John's Gospel, links His death to the defeat of Satan:

"Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die. (John 12:31–33, ESV)

Jesus refers to Satan as "the ruler of this world" three times in John's Gospel (12:31; 14:30; 16:11). In each case, He connects the devil's defeat to His own approaching death. It is at the cross — when Jesus is "lifted up" — that the ruler of this world is judged and cast out. The cross is the turning point of the cosmic drama. Not the resurrection alone (though the resurrection is the vindication and demonstration of the victory), but the death itself.

This is a point worth underlining. In many popular presentations of Christus Victor, the emphasis falls heavily on the resurrection as the moment of victory, with the cross portrayed mainly as the dark moment before the dawn. But the New Testament repeatedly locates the actual victory at the cross itself. It was "through death" that Christ destroyed the devil (Heb. 2:14). It was by "nailing" the debt to "the cross" that the powers were disarmed (Col. 2:14–15). The cross is not merely the prelude to victory; it is the victory.

Rutledge's Apocalyptic Framework

Before turning to the integration of Christus Victor and PSA, I want to engage with one of the most powerful modern presentations of the victory theme: Fleming Rutledge's treatment in The Crucifixion. Her chapter on "The Apocalyptic War: Christus Victor" is one of the finest discussions of this motif in recent scholarship, and it deserves careful attention.

Rutledge situates the Christus Victor theme within what she calls an "apocalyptic" framework. By "apocalyptic," she does not mean the popular end-times speculation that the word often evokes. She means the biblical worldview in which "the truly significant battle is the ongoing one between the Lord God of Sabaoth (Hebrew, meaning armies) and the Enemy, who deploys the principalities and Powers." This cosmic conflict plays out on the earthly level through "struggles large and small in the realm of human affairs — battles waged not with worldly weapons but with the spiritual armor of God."²⁴

In this framework, the cross is God's decisive invasion of enemy-occupied territory. Creation itself has been occupied by hostile Powers — sin, death, and the devil. Humanity is held captive. And God, in Christ, has launched a rescue operation. The arrival of the kingdom of God in Jesus' ministry was, as Rutledge puts it, a "transgression into spaces occupied by others."²⁵ The healings, the exorcisms, the authority Jesus displayed over sickness and demons and even death itself — all of these were advance skirmishes in a cosmic war that would reach its decisive moment at Calvary.

Rutledge is especially strong on the reality of the Powers. She insists that we must take seriously the New Testament's three-actor drama. In most modern theology, she observes, only two characters appear on stage: God and humanity. But the New Testament consistently presents three: God, humanity, and the hostile Powers (called variously the principalities and authorities, the rulers of this age, Satan and his legions, or the personified forces of Sin, Death, and the Law).²⁶ When Paul writes that "none of the rulers of this age understood" the wisdom of God, "for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Cor. 2:8), he is not referring to Pilate or Caiaphas. He is speaking of cosmic Powers who overreached — who, in putting Christ to death, unwittingly accomplished their own defeat.

Where I find Rutledge most helpful is in her recognition that the various atonement motifs, far from being mutually exclusive, belong together in a unified drama. She points explicitly to Colossians 2:13–15 as a passage that "blends the forensic motif ('legal demands') with the metaphor of the conquering Christ disarming the Powers and leading them captive."²⁷ And she writes movingly about Christ entering the decisive battle "not only as the utterly undefended commander of the Lord's hosts but also as the one who will stand alone on the front line in our place, absorbing the full onslaught of Sin, Death, and the devil."²⁸ That phrase "in our place" is substitutionary language — right in the heart of a Christus Victor framework.

Rutledge's work demonstrates that a robust understanding of Christus Victor does not require abandoning the substitutionary or penal dimensions. Quite the opposite. The drama of the cosmic victory is at its most powerful precisely when we understand that the weapon God wielded was not raw power but self-giving love — the Son of God standing in our place and bearing the full weight of what was due to us.

Chandler's "Victorious Substitution" — Where She Is Right and Where She Goes Too Far

A different approach to the Christus Victor theme appears in Vee Chandler's Victorious Substitution. Chandler agrees wholeheartedly that Christ died as our substitute and that the atonement involves a decisive victory over the hostile powers. In that sense, she and I share significant common ground. But Chandler parts company with the penal substitutionary tradition by rejecting the penal element. She proposes a "Victorious Substitution" model that combines substitutionary and Christus Victor/ransom themes while arguing that penal substitution is "logically, morally, and theologically flawed."²⁹

Where is Chandler right? She is right that the Christus Victor theme is deeply biblical. She is right that the ransom and redemption language of the New Testament must be taken seriously. She is right that the language of conflict, bondage, and liberation runs through Scripture as a major motif. And she provides a useful overview of Aulén's thesis, noting that in the "classic" view, God in Christ "triumphs over the powers of evil, which are hostile to his will," and that this dramatic understanding "differs significantly from other views" because "it declares a complete change in the situation."³⁰

Where does she go too far? In two ways. First, she argues that the victory of Christ is the "dominant theme in Scripture underlying the meaning of the Atonement" — not merely an important theme, but the dominant one, displacing the penal and forensic categories.³¹ Second, she rejects the penal element outright, arguing that penal substitution portrays "a change taking place in God" (which she regards as problematic), while the classic view portrays "a complete change in the situation."³²

I have addressed Chandler's specific objections to PSA in Chapters 19 and 32–33, where I responded to both the logical-moral objections and the exegetical objections against penal substitution. Here, my concern is narrower: Is it possible to have a genuinely biblical Christus Victor model without the penal dimension? I believe the answer is no, and Colossians 2:13–15 is the decisive text. As we have seen, Paul does not simply say that Christ triumphed over the powers. He tells us how: by cancelling the "record of debt" — the cheirographon — that stood against us with its "legal demands." The forensic and penal resolution of our guilt is the mechanism by which the victory is achieved. Remove the penal dimension, and you remove the explanation of how the powers were defeated.

I find Allen's assessment here particularly apt: "Only satisfaction and substitution models focus on the actual act of the atonement and how sin is dealt with." Christus Victor tells us the result — Christ won. But it does not, by itself, explain the mechanism. The penal and substitutionary categories supply what is missing.³³

This does not mean Chandler's work is without value — far from it. Her emphasis on the narrative of cosmic conflict, on the reality of human bondage, and on Christ's substitutionary entry into the domain of death and darkness is genuinely helpful. But her rejection of the penal dimension leaves her model without the explanatory power it needs. A victory without an explanation of how the victory was won is incomplete.

Augustine: Victor quia Victima — "Victor Because Victim"

If we are looking for a model of how to integrate the victory and penal themes, we can hardly do better than Augustine. In one of the most important phrases in the entire history of atonement theology, Augustine called Christ both Victor and Victima — both Victor and Victim — "and therefore Victor, because the Victim" (Confessions 10).³⁴

This phrase beautifully captures the logic of the New Testament's own integration. Christ is the Victor — He conquered sin, death, and the devil. But He is also the Victim — He was sacrificed, He bore our sins, He died in our place. And the crucial connection is the word "because": He is the Victor because He is the Victim. The victory was achieved through the sacrifice. The triumph was accomplished by means of the substitutionary death.

Craig's analysis of Augustine is illuminating here. In his discussion of Augustine's On the Trinity, Craig shows how Augustine wove together the Christus Victor and penal substitution themes into a unified account. Augustine affirmed that Satan held humanity in bondage because of human sin — the devil's authority over us was grounded in our guilt. Christ's victory over Satan was therefore won "not through an exercise of raw power but by righteousness." And the deeper meaning of that "righteousness" was this: "innocent blood was shed for the remission of our sins."³⁵

In other words, the way Christ conquered was by dealing with the root problem. Satan's claim on us was based on our guilt. Christ removed the guilt by bearing the penalty. And once the guilt was gone, the claim was void. The powers were disarmed not by a display of superior force but by the exhaustion of their legal ground. As Craig summarizes: "Christ bore undeservedly the punishment of sin that we deserved, namely, death, so that by his death our sins are remitted. This is how he through righteousness achieves victory over the devil."³⁶

Augustine's formulation also helps us see why the resurrection is so important in the victory framework. Christ "conquered the devil first by righteousness, and afterwards by power: namely, by righteousness, because He had no sin, and was slain by Him most unjustly; but by power, because having been dead He lived again, never afterwards to die."³⁷ The cross is where the decisive victory was won (by righteousness — through the substitutionary bearing of the penalty). The resurrection is where the victory was vindicated and displayed (by power — the demonstration that death could not hold the sinless one).

I believe Augustine's Victor quia Victima is one of the most profound statements about the atonement ever written. It holds together, in three Latin words, what so many modern theologians have wrongly torn apart. Christ is the Victor because He is the Victim. Christus Victor works because of penal substitution.

Integration: How Christus Victor and PSA Work Together

We have now seen the biblical data, engaged with Aulén's thesis, interacted with Rutledge and Chandler, and examined Augustine's remarkable synthesis. The time has come to state the integration clearly. How exactly do Christus Victor and penal substitutionary atonement relate?

I want to propose five theses.

Thesis 1: The Same Event, Two Dimensions

Christus Victor and PSA are not two separate theories about two different events. They are two dimensions of the same event — the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The cross is simultaneously an act of penal substitution (Christ bearing the penalty of our sin in our place) and an act of cosmic triumph (Christ defeating sin, death, the devil, and every hostile power). Colossians 2:13–15 is the clearest demonstration of this: the cancellation of the debt (v. 14) and the disarming of the powers (v. 15) happen together, in one breath, on one cross.

This means we should not think of the atonement as having a "penal substitution part" and a "Christus Victor part," as if they were separate compartments. There is one event — Christ's death and resurrection — and that event has both a forensic/legal dimension (dealing with our guilt before God) and a cosmic/dramatic dimension (defeating the powers that held us captive). Both are real. Both are essential. Neither is reducible to the other. But they are dimensions of the same reality, not competing accounts of different realities.

Thesis 2: PSA Provides the Mechanism for Victory

One of the most common criticisms of the Christus Victor model, when taken as a standalone theory, is that it does not explain how the victory was achieved. As Allen, Craig, and Stott all observe, simply saying "Christ defeated the powers" does not tell us what it was about His death that accomplished that defeat. Christus Victor, taken alone, describes the result without explaining the mechanism.³⁸

PSA supplies the missing mechanism. The powers had a claim on us grounded in the reality of our guilt. Satan's role as "accuser" (Rev. 12:10) depended on there being a legitimate accusation. The "record of debt" standing against us (Col. 2:14) gave the hostile powers their leverage. When Christ bore the penalty of our sin on the cross, the debt was paid, the accusation was answered, and the powers lost their grip. As Stott puts it, Christ's "payment of our debts" is "the way in which Christ has overthrown the powers."³⁹

This means PSA is not just one model among equals sitting alongside Christus Victor. PSA explains how the victory was won. It provides the mechanism, the engine, the inner logic of the triumph. Without it, the victory is affirmed but unexplained. With it, everything makes sense: the powers are defeated because the penalty has been paid.

Thesis 3: Sin Is Both a Legal Problem and a Cosmic Problem

The reason both models are necessary is that sin itself is multi-dimensional. Sin is not just one thing. It creates multiple problems that require multiple solutions — or rather, one comprehensive solution that addresses every dimension of the problem.

Sin is a legal problem: it creates guilt before a holy God. We have violated God's law. We stand condemned. The penalty of death hangs over us. This dimension of sin requires a forensic solution — forgiveness, justification, the cancellation of the record of debt. PSA addresses this directly.

Sin is also a cosmic problem: it puts us in bondage to powers beyond our control. We are enslaved to sin as a power (Rom. 6:6, 17–18). We are subject to death as a tyrant (1 Cor. 15:26). We are held captive by the devil (2 Tim. 2:26; Heb. 2:14–15). This dimension of sin requires liberation, rescue, deliverance. Christus Victor addresses this.

And here is the profound insight of the New Testament: the liberation from cosmic bondage comes through the resolution of the legal problem. Once the guilt is removed, the bondage is broken. The powers' authority rested on the legitimacy of the accusation. Cancel the debt, and you disarm the accuser. Pay the penalty, and death loses its sting. The forensic resolution is the key that unlocks the prison door.

Thesis 4: Christ Won by Obedience, Love, and Self-Sacrifice — Not by Raw Power

One of the most beautiful aspects of the Christus Victor theme, when integrated with PSA, is the nature of the victory itself. This was not a victory won through superior force. It was a victory won through obedience, love, and self-giving sacrifice.

Stott makes this point with great power. Christ overcame the devil, he argues, through three things: total obedience to the Father, unconditional love for His enemies, and the refusal to resort to worldly power. "Tempted to avoid the cross, Jesus persevered in the path of obedience, and 'became obedient to death — even death on a cross'" (Phil. 2:8). "Provoked by the insults and tortures to which he was subjected, Jesus absolutely refused to retaliate." And "when the combined forces of Rome and Jerusalem were arrayed against him, he could have met power with power" — but He declined. "He was 'crucified in weakness,' though the weakness of God was stronger than human strength."⁴⁰

The cross is the great reversal. The devil's strategy was to destroy Christ. Instead, Christ's death destroyed the devil. The weapon intended for Christ's defeat became the instrument of His victory. The apparent weakness was the true strength. The victim became the victor. This is the peculiar, paradoxical, upside-down logic of the gospel — and it only makes sense when we hold Christus Victor and PSA together. Christ did not defeat the powers by overpowering them. He defeated them by dying for us. His substitutionary, penalty-bearing death was itself the victory.

Thesis 5: The Already and the Not Yet

The Christus Victor framework also helps us understand the tension that runs through the entire New Testament between what has "already" been accomplished and what is "not yet" fully realized. The decisive victory has been won at the cross. Satan has been defeated. Death has been conquered. The powers have been disarmed. And yet — we still live in a world where evil is present, where suffering continues, where death still takes people we love. How do we make sense of this?

The answer is what theologians call "inaugurated eschatology" — the kingdom of God has been inaugurated but not yet consummated. D-Day has happened, but V-Day is still coming. The cross was the decisive battle that determined the outcome of the war, but the final mopping-up operations continue until Christ returns. Paul captures this beautifully in 1 Corinthians 15:24–26: "Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death."

The powers are defeated but not yet fully destroyed. Death is conquered in principle but not yet abolished in practice. The Christian lives in the overlap of the ages — the old age is passing away, and the new age has dawned, but we await the consummation. Christus Victor, properly understood, embraces this tension. The victory is real and accomplished. The full manifestation of that victory awaits the return of Christ. And in the meantime, believers live in the power of the victory already won, even while they await its completion. As Aulén himself recognized, "It is not that they are as yet wholly annihilated; he looks to 'the end,' when all power shall be taken from 'His enemies'... Yet the decisive victory has been won already."⁴¹

This already/not-yet dynamic has profound pastoral implications. When Christians face suffering, evil, injustice, and even death, they do not face these things as people for whom the outcome is uncertain. They face them as people who know that the decisive battle has already been fought and won. The outcome of the war is not in doubt — it was settled at Calvary. What remains is the working out of that settled victory across history until Christ returns. This means Christians can face the worst that the world throws at them — persecution, sickness, loss, death itself — with the confident knowledge that none of these things can separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:38–39). The powers that threaten them have already been disarmed. Death has already been conquered. The accuser has already been thrown down. We live not as people fighting for victory but as people living in the victory that Christ has already achieved.

Stott's Six Stages of Victory

Stott provides a helpful framework for understanding the unfolding of Christ's victory in six stages, which I want to briefly summarize because they give us a clear narrative arc for the Christus Victor theme across the whole sweep of Scripture.⁴²

First, the conquest predicted. Beginning with Genesis 3:15, God promised that the offspring of the woman would crush the serpent's head. Every Old Testament prophecy of the coming kingdom and the Messiah's reign is a further prediction of this ultimate victory.

Second, the conquest begun in the ministry of Jesus. During His earthly ministry, Jesus demonstrated the advance of God's kingdom and the retreat of Satan's. Demons were cast out. Sickness was healed. Death itself was reversed. Jesus described His works as evidence that "the kingdom of God has come upon you" (Matt. 12:28). When the seventy-two returned from their mission reporting that even demons submitted to them in Jesus' name, He responded, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven" (Luke 10:18). The ministry of Jesus was the opening campaign in the great war.

Third, the conquest achieved at the cross. This is the decisive moment — the D-Day of the cosmic conflict. As we have seen, Jesus Himself described His approaching death as the moment when "the ruler of this world" would be "cast out" (John 12:31). At the cross, the powers were disarmed, the debt was cancelled, the devil was defeated. The victory was won — not by force, but by self-giving love.

Fourth, the conquest confirmed and announced in the resurrection and ascension. The resurrection did not win the victory — the cross did. But the resurrection demonstrated and confirmed it. Christ "was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1:4). The ascension completed the triumph, as Christ was exalted to the right hand of God, "far above all rule and authority and power and dominion" (Eph. 1:21).

Fifth, the conquest extended through the church. As the gospel goes out into the world, the victory of Christ is extended through the mission of God's people. "God ... leads us in triumphal procession in Christ" (2 Cor. 2:14). The church does not fight for victory but from victory — the battle has been won, and we live in the reality of that triumph even as we await its completion.

Sixth, the conquest consummated at the return of Christ. At the end, every remaining pocket of resistance will be eliminated. "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" (1 Cor. 15:26). Christ will return, and "every knee shall bow" and "every tongue confess" that Jesus Christ is Lord (Phil. 2:10–11). The victory that was won at the cross will be fully and finally realized.

This six-stage framework, spanning from Genesis to Revelation, shows the cosmic scope of the Christus Victor theme. The cross is the decisive center of a story that begins in the garden and ends in the new creation.

The Powers: What Are They?

Before concluding, it is worth addressing a question that sometimes arises in modern discussions of Christus Victor: What exactly are the "powers" and "principalities" that Christ defeated? This matters, because some modern interpreters have tried to demythologize these powers — reducing them to social structures, political institutions, or cultural ideologies rather than personal spiritual beings.

Paul refers to a range of hostile forces using various terms: "rulers and authorities" (archai kai exousiai, ἀρχαὶ καὶ ἐξουσίαι, Col. 2:15; Eph. 6:12), "rulers of this age" (1 Cor. 2:8), "thrones" and "dominions" (Col. 1:16), and "powers" (dynameis, δυνάμεις, Rom. 8:38). He also personifies Sin and Death as quasi-personal powers that reign over humanity (Rom. 5:14, 17, 21; 6:9, 12, 14). And of course, behind all of these stands "the devil" (Eph. 6:11), "Satan" (2 Cor. 11:14), "the god of this world" (2 Cor. 4:4), and "the ruler of this world" (John 12:31).⁴³

I believe the New Testament presents these powers as genuine spiritual realities — personal beings in the case of Satan and the demons, and quasi-personal forces in the case of Sin and Death understood as powers that exercise real dominion over human life. To reduce them entirely to social or political structures is to flatten the New Testament's three-dimensional worldview into two dimensions. As Rutledge rightly insists, "most biblical interpretation in the modern age has been done as though there were only two dramatis personae, God and humanity — thereby demystifying the New Testament, which presents three."⁴⁴

At the same time, the powers do work through earthly structures, institutions, and ideologies. The "rulers of this age" who crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:8) were cosmic powers operating through the earthly structures of Roman government and Jewish religious authority. Ephesians 6:12 says our struggle is "not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." The powers are real spiritual beings, and they work through — and behind — earthly structures of oppression and evil.

This means that the victory of Christ has implications not only for our personal salvation but for the whole created order. The defeat of the powers has social, political, and cosmic dimensions. When we proclaim the gospel, we are not merely announcing a private spiritual transaction; we are announcing that the powers that enslave humanity have been defeated. The kingdom of God has arrived, and the old order is passing away. This is the note of cosmic triumph that Aulén and Rutledge rightly emphasize — and it is a note that the church must continue to sound.

Why Christus Victor Cannot Stand Alone

For all its biblical richness and theological power, the Christus Victor model is insufficient as a standalone theory of the atonement. I want to state this clearly and explain why, even while affirming the model's importance and indispensability.

First, as I have already argued, Christus Victor does not explain the mechanism of the atonement. It tells us that Christ won a victory, but not how. How does Christ's death defeat the devil? How does the cross disarm the powers? Without the penal and substitutionary categories — Christ bearing the penalty of our sin, the legal debt being cancelled, the accusation being answered — the victory is affirmed but unexplained. As Allen puts it, Christus Victor "focuses more on the result of the atonement in terms of what is accomplished."⁴⁵ Only when we understand that Christ's bearing of the penalty is the means of victory do we have a complete picture.

Second, Christus Victor alone does not adequately address the problem of human guilt before God. The deepest problem facing humanity is not merely bondage to external powers (though that is real). It is the guilt of our own sin before a holy God. We are not merely victims who need rescuing; we are rebels who need forgiving. We are not merely enslaved; we are condemned. The biblical drama is not only a story of captivity and liberation; it is a story of transgression and pardon, of broken law and restored relationship. Christus Victor, taken alone, tends to portray humanity primarily as victims — held captive by forces beyond our control. PSA adds the essential dimension that we are also agents — responsible for our sin and in need of forgiveness, not merely rescue.⁴⁶

Third, Christus Victor without PSA has difficulty explaining why the cross was necessary. If the goal is simply to defeat the devil, why couldn't God have accomplished that by a direct exercise of divine power? Why was the incarnation necessary? Why the suffering? Why the death? As both Craig and Augustine noted, many of the Church Fathers themselves acknowledged that God could, in principle, have liberated humanity by sheer power alone.⁴⁷ The necessity of the cross becomes clear only when we understand that the problem was not merely captivity but guilt — and that guilt requires not just power but justice, not just liberation but propitiation, not just a battle won but a penalty paid.

Fourth, as Kevin Vanhoozer has observed, Aulén was "right to focus on the theme of drama, but wrong in making victory the paramount motif to the exclusion of others." The atonement is indeed a drama, but it is a drama with multiple acts and dimensions. The victory is real, but it is one facet of a many-faceted reality.⁴⁸

The Cross as Battlefield and Courtroom

Perhaps the simplest way to capture the relationship between Christus Victor and PSA is with an image. Picture the cross as both a battlefield and a courtroom — simultaneously.

In the courtroom, we stand accused. The evidence is overwhelming: we are guilty. The "record of debt" is there in black and white, itemizing every sin. The prosecution (Satan, the accuser) has an airtight case. The verdict should be clear: guilty as charged, sentence of death. But then the Judge Himself — the one who has been sinned against — does something staggering. He steps down from the bench, takes the defendant's place, and bears the sentence Himself. The debt is paid. The record is cancelled. The case is closed. Not through a legal fiction, but through a genuine, costly substitution: the Judge Himself has satisfied the demands of His own justice. This is penal substitution.

And in the same moment, on the same cross, the battlefield comes into view. The accuser who brought the charges discovers that his weapon has been taken from him. The accusation that gave him power over humanity has been answered. The debt he used as leverage has been wiped clean. He is disarmed. He is exposed. He is led away in chains. This is Christus Victor.

The courtroom and the battlefield are not two different locations. They are the same cross, viewed from two angles. And neither makes full sense without the other. The courtroom scene explains how the battle was won. The battlefield scene shows us the scope of what the courtroom verdict accomplished. Together, they give us the full picture.

P. T. Forsyth, the great Scottish theologian, drew attention to exactly this when he spoke of the "satisfactionary," "regenerative," and "triumphant" aspects of Christ's work as a "threefold cord" — intertwined, inseparable, three dimensions of one act. Jesus Christ is at once Savior, Teacher, and Victor, because we ourselves are at once guilty, apathetic, and in bondage.⁴⁹

And the nineteenth-century commentator John Eadie put it perfectly: "Our redemption is a work at once of price and of power — of expiation and of conquest. On the cross was the purchase made, and on the cross was the victory gained. The blood which wipes out the sentence against us was there shed, and the death which was the death-blow of Satan's kingdom was there endured."⁵⁰

Conclusion: The Trumpet and the Lamb

We began this chapter with the note of triumph that sounds through the New Testament like a trumpet call. We end it in the same place — but with a deeper understanding of what that triumph means and how it was achieved.

The Christus Victor model is genuinely biblical, deeply important, and pastorally powerful. It reminds us that the gospel is not merely about the forgiveness of individual sins (though it is that) but about the cosmic defeat of every power that opposes God and enslaves humanity. Sin, death, the devil, the principalities and powers — all have been defeated at the cross. The Christian message is not just "your sins are forgiven" but "the kingdom of God has come." Not just "you are pardoned" but "you are free."

But as we have seen, the victory and the pardon are not separate things. They are two dimensions of one event. The Lamb who was slain is the Victor who conquered. The blood that was shed is the weapon that disarmed the powers. The penalty that was borne is the means by which death was destroyed. Augustine was right: Victor quia Victima — Victor because Victim.

When we try to have Christus Victor without penal substitution, we get a victory without an explanation — a triumph whose inner logic remains mysterious. When we try to have penal substitution without Christus Victor, we get a legal transaction that can feel disconnected from the larger cosmic drama of redemption. But when we hold them together, as the New Testament itself does, the full glory of the cross comes into view. The cross is the place where justice and mercy meet, where guilt is cancelled and bondage is broken, where the penalty is paid and the powers are routed — all in one magnificent, terrible, beautiful act of self-giving love.

In Chapter 22, we will examine three other atonement models — ransom, satisfaction, and moral influence — and see how they too complement and enrich the central penal substitutionary framework. And in Chapter 24, we will bring everything together into a comprehensive, integrated account of the multi-faceted atonement with penal substitution at the center. But even here, with just two models — PSA and Christus Victor — the beauty of the cross is already breathtaking. The trumpet sounds, and the Lamb is on the throne.