Chapter 35
Contemporary Objections — Violence, Feminism, and Liberation Theology

In the previous three chapters, we examined exegetical objections to penal substitutionary atonement (Chapter 32), theological and moral objections (Chapter 33), and the distinctive critique from the Eastern Orthodox tradition (Chapter 34). But those are not the only challenges PSA faces in the modern world. Over the last several decades, a cluster of objections has emerged from very different quarters — feminist theology, liberation theology, and theologies of nonviolence — that deserve careful attention. These objections share something in common: they worry less about whether PSA is exegetically correct and more about whether it is morally safe. Does the cross, as understood through PSA, promote violence? Does it encourage the oppressed to accept abuse in the name of "redemptive suffering"? Does it reinforce unjust power structures? Is it, as one provocative phrase puts it, a form of "cosmic child abuse"?

These are not trivial questions. They arise from real experiences of real people — women who have been told to endure domestic violence because Christ endured the cross, communities of color who have seen the language of sacrifice weaponized to justify their oppression, peacemakers who wonder how a God of love could require bloodshed. I take these concerns seriously. Any theology worth its salt must face the hardest questions honestly, and any version of atonement theology that actually does glorify abuse or silence the oppressed deserves to be rejected.

But here is the thesis I will defend in this chapter: contemporary objections to penal substitutionary atonement from feminist, liberationist, and nonviolent perspectives raise important pastoral and ethical concerns that must be taken seriously, but they ultimately fail to overturn the doctrine when it is rightly understood within a Trinitarian framework of divine love and self-sacrifice. The problem, in case after case, lies not with PSA itself but with distorted versions of PSA — caricatures that strip away the Trinitarian heart of the doctrine and leave behind something ugly. When we correct those distortions, we find that the cross, rightly understood, is actually the most powerful critique of violence, abuse, and oppression the world has ever known.

I. The "Cosmic Child Abuse" Objection Revisited

We dealt with this accusation at length in Chapter 20, where we examined the Trinitarian character of the atonement and demonstrated that the cross is not the Father punishing an unwilling victim but the Triune God acting in unified, self-giving love. Here I want to return to the specific charge itself, trace its origin and cultural resonance, and address why it has proven so rhetorically powerful — even though, as I will argue, it profoundly misrepresents the doctrine it attacks.

The Origin and Influence of the Charge

The phrase "cosmic child abuse" entered mainstream theological discourse through Steve Chalke and Alan Mann's 2003 book The Lost Message of Jesus. In a passage that would become one of the most debated sentences in contemporary theology, Chalke described penal substitutionary atonement as depicting "a form of cosmic child abuse — a vengeful Father, punishing his Son for an offence he has not even committed."¹ The phrase caught fire. It was vivid, memorable, and — for many people — it captured exactly what had always troubled them about certain presentations of the cross. Chalke's accusation ignited a firestorm in British evangelicalism, leading to the 2005 London Symposium on the Theology of the Atonement and numerous published responses.²

To be fair to Chalke, he was not attacking a straw man entirely of his own invention. Some popular-level presentations of the cross really do sound like what he described. We have all heard sermons or read tracts where the story goes something like this: "God was furious at you for your sin. He was going to destroy you. But Jesus stepped in between you and God's rage, and God poured out all His anger on Jesus instead, so now He can love you." Presented that way, the atonement does sound troubling. It sounds like a father beating one child so he can be nice to the other children. It sounds like the Father and Son are on opposite sides, with Jesus protecting us from a God who would otherwise harm us.

I understand why that bothers people. It should bother people. And if that were an accurate description of penal substitution, I would join the critics in rejecting it. A God who vents His fury on an innocent bystander so He can calm down enough to tolerate the rest of us is not the God of the Bible. That is not a God anyone should worship.

But here is the thing: that is not what penal substitutionary atonement actually teaches. Not in its classical Reformation formulations, not in its best contemporary expressions, and certainly not in the version I have been defending throughout this book. The answer is not to abandon penal substitution. The answer is to correct the caricature — and to insist, loudly and clearly, that the caricature is not the doctrine.

Why the Charge Resonates Today

It is worth pausing to ask why the "cosmic child abuse" language resonates so deeply in our cultural moment. Part of the answer is that we live in a world newly attuned — and rightly so — to the realities of abuse. The #MeToo movement, the exposure of sexual abuse scandals within churches and institutions, and a growing cultural awareness of domestic violence and child abuse have made people understandably sensitive to any language that seems to normalize or sanctify the suffering of the innocent at the hands of someone more powerful.

When people hear "God punished His innocent Son," they may instinctively translate that into the categories of abuse they have encountered in their own lives or in the lives of people they love. A woman who was beaten by her husband and told by her pastor to "bear her cross" will hear PSA differently than someone who has never experienced that kind of suffering. A survivor of childhood abuse at the hands of a parent will hear "the Father poured out His wrath on the Son" and feel something visceral. A young person in a culture increasingly attuned to power dynamics and abuse will hear the story of a powerful Father sending His Son to die and wonder how that is different from the stories of exploitation they see all around them.

We need to acknowledge this reality with compassion and without defensiveness. These are not people looking for reasons to reject Christianity; they are people whose experience has made certain theological language genuinely painful. And their pain is not something to be dismissed or argued away — it is something to be acknowledged, honored, and addressed with both pastoral sensitivity and theological precision.

But — and this is crucial — the fact that a doctrine can be misused does not mean the doctrine itself is wrong. Virtually every Christian truth has been distorted and weaponized at some point in history. The doctrine of divine sovereignty has been used to justify fatalism and passivity. The doctrine of forgiveness has been used to silence victims. The doctrine of submission has been used to perpetuate domestic violence. In every case, the problem is the distortion, not the truth that was distorted.

Why the Charge Fails

As argued in detail in Chapter 20, the "cosmic child abuse" accusation fails for several interconnected reasons. Let me summarize them briefly here.

First, the charge misrepresents the Trinitarian nature of the atonement. The cross is not something the Father does to the Son against the Son's will. Jesus went to the cross voluntarily: "No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again" (John 10:18, ESV). The Son is not a passive, unwilling victim; He is an active, willing participant in an act of divine love. And the Father does not send the Son the way an abusive parent sends a child into harm's way — He sends Him in love (John 3:16), and He is present with Him in the suffering. As Paul puts it, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19).³

Second, the charge ignores what John Stott called "the self-substitution of God."⁴ This is one of the most important insights in all of atonement theology. The cross is not a transaction between two parties where one party suffers and the other benefits. It is God Himself — in the person of His Son — bearing the cost of our redemption. The Judge takes the place of the condemned. The Offended One absorbs the offense. It is as if a judge, having passed sentence, stepped down from the bench, removed his robes, and served the sentence himself. That is not abuse. That is breathtaking love.

Bruce McCormack offers a penetrating response to the child abuse charge. He argues that the logic of penal substitution is not that the Father does something violent to His eternal Son, but rather that the cross is an event between the Father and the Son — the Logos as human — in which the human experience of the penalty of death is taken into the very life of God Himself.⁵ Since it is the Triune God involved in the atonement, the Father is not doing something to someone other than Himself. This is the crucial point: a well-ordered doctrine of penal substitution, grounded in a well-ordered Christology and a well-ordered Trinitarianism, is not vulnerable to the "cosmic child abuse" charge.

Third, the charge confuses the form of Christ's suffering (which was indeed violent — crucifixion was a Roman instrument of torture) with the theological meaning of Christ's suffering. Yes, Jesus was killed through an act of human violence. But the New Testament's primary focus is not on the physical violence of the crucifixion; it is on the shame (Hebrews 12:2), the dereliction (Mark 15:34), and the theological significance of Christ bearing the sin of the world (2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:24). Fleming Rutledge makes this point powerfully: the New Testament pays remarkably little attention to the physical details of crucifixion. Instead, "it focuses on shame, contempt and mockery, scandal and foolishness, Jesus' blamelessness, and his dereliction or Godforsakenness — anything and everything but the physical details."⁶

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, the charge inadvertently undermines the sovereignty of God over the cross. As Peter declares in his Pentecost sermon, Jesus was "delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God" (Acts 2:23, ESV). The cross was not an accident, not an act of divine rage that got out of hand, and not a case of the Father abusing the Son. It was the eternal plan of the Triune God to save the world through self-giving love.⁷

II. The Feminist Critique of Atonement Theology

While the "cosmic child abuse" language gets the most attention in popular discussions, the feminist critique of atonement theology actually runs deeper and was being articulated well before Chalke coined his memorable phrase. Feminist theologians have raised concerns about atonement theology — especially substitutionary and satisfaction models — that deserve a careful and compassionate hearing.

The Feminist Objection Stated Fairly

The most influential feminist critique of atonement theology comes from Joanne Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker in their 1989 essay "For God So Loved the World?" and from Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker in their 2001 book Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us.⁸ Their core argument can be summarized as follows:

Traditional atonement theology — particularly models that emphasize substitution, satisfaction, and the "necessity" of the cross — glorifies suffering as redemptive. It tells people that innocent suffering can be meaningful and pleasing to God. This message, they argue, has been devastating for women and other vulnerable people. When a woman in an abusive relationship hears that Jesus endured the cross willingly and that his suffering saved the world, the takeaway is clear: she, too, should endure her suffering silently. After all, if God required His own Son to suffer, why should she expect to be exempt?

Brock and Parker describe their own pastoral experiences with women who were told by their churches to stay in abusive situations because "Christ suffered for you" and "bearing your cross" means accepting mistreatment without complaint.⁹ They argue that atonement theology that glorifies the cross inherently encourages passive acceptance of abuse, particularly among those who are already vulnerable.

Brown and Parker put it starkly: "The central image of Christ on the cross as the savior of the world communicates the message that suffering is redemptive.... The message is complicated further by the theology that says Christ suffered in obedience to his Father's will. Divine child abuse is paraded as salvific and the child who suffers 'without even raising a voice' is lauded as the model of obedience."¹⁰

Responding with Pastoral Sensitivity and Theological Precision

How should we respond? I believe we must begin with honesty. The concern that the cross has been used to justify abuse is not a fabrication. It has happened. It continues to happen. And every time it does, it is a grotesque betrayal of the gospel. We need to say that clearly and without hedging. Using the cross to tell an abused woman to keep enduring violence is not a faithful application of Christian theology — it is a perversion of it. Full stop.

But having said that, I want to make several careful distinctions that show why the feminist critique, while pastorally important, does not succeed in undermining penal substitutionary atonement itself.

First, the misuse of a doctrine does not invalidate the doctrine. This principle is foundational. Every good truth can be distorted. The doctrine of divine providence has been used to justify inaction in the face of injustice ("It's God's will"). The doctrine of forgiveness has been used to protect abusers and silence victims ("You need to forgive and move on"). The doctrine of wifely submission has been used to keep women in dangerous marriages. In every case, the problem is the misuse, not the truth itself. If we rejected every doctrine that had ever been misused, we would have no Christian theology left at all.

Rutledge puts this point well. She acknowledges that feminist theologians in the 1980s and 1990s raised important concerns about how the cross has been presented, but she notes that the critique "has already had its day, so widespread has been the reaction — including reaction from other women theologians."¹¹ The critique's greatest success, she says, has been as a corrective — and a needed one. But a corrective to distortion is not the same as a refutation of the doctrine itself.

Second, the cross is actually the most powerful critique of abuse the world has ever seen. This is where the feminist argument, ironically, undermines itself. When God identifies with the innocent sufferer — when God becomes the innocent sufferer — the cross does not validate violence against the innocent. It condemns it. The cross exposes the horror of what happens when power is wielded against the powerless. It reveals that human systems of domination, injustice, and violence are so evil that they would crucify God Himself. Far from sanctioning abuse, the cross unmasks it in the most devastating way imaginable.

Think about what the crucifixion narrative actually shows us. An innocent man is falsely accused, subjected to a sham trial, beaten, mocked, and executed by the combined forces of religious and political power. And God says: I am with the victim, not the oppressor. I am on the cross, not on the throne of Pilate. I am the one being crucified, not the one giving the orders. If anything, the cross is a divine protest against the abuse of power — a declaration that God stands with the abused against their abusers.¹²

Third, Christ's suffering is unique and unrepeatable. This is a critical theological distinction that the feminist critique often overlooks. When the New Testament speaks of Christ suffering "for us" and "on our behalf" (1 Peter 2:21; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:13), it is describing a singular, once-for-all event. Christ's bearing of the judicial consequences of sin is not a pattern to be replicated in the lives of believers. We are not called to be crucified for the sins of others. We are not asked to absorb abuse so that someone else can go free. Christ's atoning work is finished (John 19:30; Hebrews 10:12–14), and no one else needs to do what He did.

When 1 Peter 2:21 says that Christ left us "an example, so that you might follow in his steps," it is not talking about passive acceptance of abuse. As the context makes clear, the "example" refers to Christ's refusal to retaliate with evil — "When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly" (1 Peter 2:23, ESV). The point is not "accept your suffering without complaint" but "trust God to judge justly and do not repay evil with evil." There is a world of difference between those two messages. The first is a recipe for oppression; the second is a call to trust in a just God while refusing to become like one's oppressors.¹³

We must also note the crucial distinction between suffering that is chosen in love and suffering that is imposed by injustice. Christ chose His suffering — freely, knowingly, and in love (John 10:17–18). An abused woman does not choose her suffering; it is imposed on her by someone who should love and protect her. To tell her that her situation is comparable to Christ's sacrifice is a grotesque misapplication of theology. Christ's suffering was purposeful, voluntary, and salvific. Abuse is purposeless, imposed, and destructive. The two are not analogous, and no responsible reading of Scripture should ever confuse them.

Rutledge drives this home with characteristic clarity. She argues that it is not Anselmian doctrine or penal substitution that has stood behind the suffering of women. Other scriptural passages — the curse upon Eve, the household codes, the "submit" texts — have been far more directly responsible for the subjugation of women than theories of atonement have ever been.¹⁴ The problem is patriarchal misuse of Scripture, not the doctrine of the cross.

Fourth, feminist theology's own alternatives often fail to account for the depth of evil. This is a harder point to make but an important one. If we remove the notion that sin carries real consequences — that wrongdoing has a judicial dimension, that justice demands a response to evil — then we lose something essential to the biblical witness. A theology that offers only God's gentle acceptance without any reckoning with the gravity of sin ultimately cannot account for the depth of human evil. Victims of injustice do not want to hear that their suffering doesn't really matter in the cosmic scheme of things, that God simply "moves past" the evil done to them. They want justice. And the cross — understood through PSA — declares that God takes evil so seriously that He bears its consequences Himself rather than letting it go unaddressed.¹⁵

III. The Nonviolent Atonement: Weaver and the Rejection of Divine Violence

A related but distinct challenge to penal substitutionary atonement comes from theologians who advocate for a "nonviolent" understanding of the cross. The most prominent voice here is J. Denny Weaver, whose book The Nonviolent Atonement (2001) argues that all satisfaction-based and penal models of the atonement make God complicit in violence and should be abandoned in favor of what he calls "narrative Christus Victor."¹⁶

Weaver's Argument

Weaver stands in the Mennonite peace tradition, and his theology is shaped by a deep commitment to nonviolence. His argument runs something like this: If God is truly nonviolent — if God opposes all violence — then God cannot have required the violent death of His Son as the means of salvation. Any theory that says God "needed" the death of Jesus, or that God "punished" Jesus in our place, makes God the author of violence. It takes the cross — an act of human brutality — and turns it into something God wanted, planned, and required. And if God required violence to accomplish salvation, then violence has been sanctified at the highest possible level.¹⁷

Weaver proposes instead a "narrative Christus Victor" model in which Jesus confronts the powers of evil through His life, teaching, and nonviolent resistance, and the powers of evil respond by killing Him. The cross, in this view, is not God's plan for saving the world through sacrificial death; it is the world's rejection of God's kingdom. God's victory comes through the resurrection, which vindicates Jesus and defeats the powers. The cross reveals the evil of human systems; the resurrection reveals God's power to overcome that evil without resorting to violence Himself.¹⁸

Weaver's position has been influential among Mennonite and Anabaptist theologians, and it draws support from scholars working in the tradition of René Girard, whose "mimetic theory" sees human violence as rooted in scapegoating and the cross as the event that unmasks and destroys the scapegoat mechanism.¹⁹

Evaluating the Nonviolent Objection

Weaver raises an important concern, and his commitment to peace is admirable. But I find his argument unconvincing for several reasons.

First, Weaver's argument requires him to reject the New Testament's own interpretation of the cross. This is the most serious problem with the nonviolent atonement position. The New Testament consistently interprets Jesus' death not merely as an act of human violence against an innocent man, but as a divinely planned, sacrificial, and substitutionary event. Jesus Himself says He came "to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). Paul says God "made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). The author of Hebrews describes Jesus as the priest who "offered up himself" (Hebrews 7:27). Peter says Christ "bore our sins in his body on the tree" (1 Peter 2:24). These are not marginal texts; they are central to the New Testament's proclamation.

A theology that cannot affirm the New Testament's own interpretation of the cross — that insists the cross was merely something that happened to Jesus rather than something Jesus did for us — has a problem that goes far deeper than any particular model of the atonement. It has a problem with the authority of Scripture itself. If the earliest Christians, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, consistently interpret Jesus' death in sacrificial, substitutionary, and penal terms, then a theology that declares all such interpretations illegitimate is not correcting a tradition — it is overriding the biblical witness. And for those of us who take the authority of Scripture seriously, that is a step too far.²⁰

Second, the cross involves voluntary self-sacrifice, not imposed violence. This is where Weaver's framing goes wrong. PSA does not say that God committed an act of violence against an unwilling victim. It says that the Son of God voluntarily offered Himself to bear the consequences of human sin. There is a vast moral difference between violence imposed on the unwilling and sacrifice freely chosen by the one who bears it. A firefighter who runs into a burning building to save a child is not a victim of violence (though the fire is violent). A soldier who throws himself on a grenade to save his comrades is not being "abused" by those he protects. The moral character of suffering depends enormously on whether it is chosen or imposed.²¹

Jesus chose the cross. He chose it freely, knowingly, and lovingly. "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10:17–18, ESV). To call this "violence" in the morally relevant sense — the sense that makes violence wrong — is to misunderstand the nature of self-sacrificial love.

Third, the assumption that God is "nonviolent" in an absolute sense is not self-evidently biblical. Weaver treats divine nonviolence as an axiom — a starting point that cannot be questioned. But the Bible presents a more complex picture. God judges. God exercises wrath against evil. God acts decisively against oppression. The exodus — God liberating Israel from Egypt through plagues and the destruction of Pharaoh's army — is not an act of nonviolence. The prophets repeatedly describe God as acting in judgment against wickedness. As we argued in Chapter 3, God's wrath is not irrational rage or vindictive cruelty; it is the settled, holy, just opposition of God's perfect nature to everything that is evil. To eliminate divine judgment entirely is to create a God who does not take evil seriously — and, ironically, that is bad news for victims of oppression, who desperately need a God who will act against their oppressors.²²

Fourth, Weaver's "narrative Christus Victor" model is itself not free from the problem of violence. As David Allen observes, citing Jeffrey Pugh, "it could be said that there is no such thing as a non-violent atonement theory. Every theory of the atonement, even non-violent ones, involves God in redemptive violence."²³ If Christ is the Christus Victor who conquers the powers of evil, how exactly does He conquer them? Even in Weaver's version, Jesus confronts evil, evil responds violently, and Jesus is killed. The violence is still there; it has simply been relocated from God's initiative to evil's response. But if the cross was foreknown and planned by God (Acts 2:23), then God planned to enter into that violence and overcome it from within — which is precisely what PSA affirms.

Rutledge makes a similar point with characteristic directness. She argues that the Christus Victor model, with its imagery of Christ as a conquering hero, lends itself just as easily — if not more so — to a Crusader mentality as the substitution model does. Constantine's motto, In hoc signo vinces ("In this sign, conquer"), has had a bloody history, yet it draws on victory language rather than substitutionary language.²⁴ If we are worried about atonement language being co-opted to justify violence, we should be at least as concerned about triumphalist Christus Victor language as about the language of sacrificial substitution.

IV. The "Violence Within God" Objection

A more philosophically sophisticated version of the violence objection targets not the misuse of atonement language but the alleged violence within the being of God. The concern here is that if God required the death of His Son — if satisfaction of divine justice necessitated bloodshed — then something violent exists at the very heart of the divine nature. God's very being, on this reading, includes a demand for death. Hans Boersma has explored this territory in his influential book Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross, seeking to articulate a theology of the cross that takes the reality of divine judgment seriously while avoiding the charge that God is inherently violent.²⁵

How should we respond? Rutledge offers what I consider the most helpful framework. She insists that any model that requires us to split the Father from the Son violates Trinitarian theology and must be rejected. The cross is not something God does to someone else; it is "an event undertaken by the Three Persons united."²⁶ God does not change as a result of the cross. Rather, the event of the cross is the enactment in history of an eternal decision within the being of God. God has always been going out from God's self in sacrificial love. And God's "wrath" — His opposition to all that stands against His love — is not an eruption of sudden rage but a permanent feature of His holy character.²⁷

In other words, what happens at the cross is not the introduction of violence into God's being. It is the revelation, within history, of God's eternal commitment to stand against evil and bear its cost. The cross reveals that love — real love, not sentimental tolerance — sometimes requires suffering. A parent who shields a child from danger suffers in doing so. A doctor who treats an infectious disease puts herself at risk. Love that refuses to engage with evil and absorb its effects is not real love but indifference. The cross reveals a God whose love is so fierce, so relentless, so committed to our rescue that He enters into the worst that evil can do and overcomes it from within.²⁸

The real question is not "Does the cross involve suffering?" — of course it does. The question is "Who chose that suffering and why?" And the answer of the New Testament is clear: the Triune God chose it, freely and in love, to rescue a world enslaved to sin and death. That is not violence. That is the deepest love the universe has ever known.

V. The Liberation Theology Critique

Liberation theology, which emerged primarily in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, brought a distinctive set of concerns to the atonement discussion. While liberation theologians are not monolithic — their approaches range widely — a common thread runs through their critique of traditional atonement theology, especially PSA: it is too focused on individual sin and forgiveness and not focused enough on structural, systemic, and communal dimensions of evil.

The Liberationist Objection Stated Fairly

The liberationist critique goes something like this: Traditional Western atonement theology, particularly in its evangelical Protestant forms, treats sin as primarily an individual matter — "I sinned, God was offended, Jesus paid my penalty, now I'm forgiven." This individual focus, liberationists argue, blinds Christians to the systemic dimensions of evil: racism, poverty, exploitation, political oppression, colonialism, economic injustice. If salvation is reduced to "getting my sins forgiven so I can go to heaven," then the gospel has nothing to say about the structures of injustice that crush millions of people every day.²⁹

Some liberation theologians go further. Gustavo Gutiérrez, the father of liberation theology, argued that salvation must include liberation from social, political, and economic oppression — that the God who freed Israel from slavery in Egypt is the same God who acts today to free the oppressed.³⁰ Jon Sobrino, reflecting on the realities of poverty and political violence in El Salvador, insisted that theology must begin "from the foot of the cross" — from the perspective of those who suffer most.³¹

In this framework, PSA can appear problematically narrow. If the atonement is primarily about satisfying divine justice through the judicial transfer of penalty, it may seem disconnected from the lived experience of people whose primary struggle is not guilt before God but hunger, violence, and systemic oppression.

Where the Liberationists Have a Point

I want to be honest: liberation theology has identified a genuine blind spot in some evangelical atonement theology. When we reduce the entire meaning of the cross to "Jesus paid the penalty for my individual sins," we are not wrong about what we affirm, but we are incomplete in what we present. The Bible's vision of salvation is bigger than individual forgiveness — it includes cosmic reconciliation (Colossians 1:20), victory over the powers (Colossians 2:15), the renewal of all creation (Romans 8:19–23), and the establishment of justice and peace in God's kingdom. These are not secondary themes; they are woven into the fabric of the biblical witness.

Evangelical theology at its best has always known this. But evangelical theology in practice — in sermons, tracts, evangelistic presentations, and popular-level books — has sometimes been so focused on the individual's need for forgiveness that it has neglected these broader dimensions. To that extent, the liberationist critique is a helpful corrective.

Where the Liberationist Critique Falls Short

But the liberationist critique becomes problematic when it moves from saying "PSA is incomplete by itself" to saying "PSA is wrong" or "PSA doesn't matter." I believe the liberationist objection fails at several crucial points.

First, PSA does address individual guilt, and rightly so — because personal sin is real. Liberation theology is right that sin has structural and systemic dimensions. Racism is not just a collection of individual prejudices; it is embedded in laws, institutions, and social habits that perpetuate injustice even when no single person intends to be racist. Poverty is not just the result of individual bad choices; it is sustained by economic systems that benefit some at the expense of others. Liberation theology has helped the church see these realities more clearly, and for that we should be grateful.

But sin also has a deeply personal dimension that cannot be reduced to social structures. Each of us, individually, stands before God as a moral agent who has fallen short of His standards. I lie not because "the system" made me lie but because something in my own heart is bent away from the truth. I harbor resentment not because structures of injustice planted it in me but because my own will is corrupted. No amount of structural analysis eliminates the reality of personal guilt. The tax collector in Jesus' parable (Luke 18:13) beat his breast and said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" — not "God, change the structures of oppression!" Both prayers are legitimate and both are needed, but the personal cry for mercy is not something we can afford to lose. A theology that has no room for individual guilt before a holy God is a theology that has lost something essential to the biblical witness.³²

Second, the multi-faceted atonement model this book proposes includes both the individual/forensic and the corporate/cosmic dimensions. This is the key response. PSA is not the whole story of the atonement — it is the center of the story. Around PSA stand the other legitimate models: Christus Victor (which addresses the powers and structures of evil), reconciliation (which addresses broken relationships at every level — personal, communal, cosmic), recapitulation (which addresses the renewal of all creation), and the moral influence of the cross (which inspires transformed living). As I argued in Chapter 24, the atonement is a multi-faceted reality, and all these dimensions are necessary to capture the full scope of what Christ accomplished.

The Christus Victor dimension, in particular, speaks directly to the concerns of liberation theology. When Paul declares that at the cross God "disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him" (Colossians 2:15, ESV), he is describing the defeat of the very powers — spiritual and structural — that oppress people. The cross is God's declaration of war against every system of injustice, every power that enslaves, every structure that dehumanizes. That is good news for the oppressed.³³

Third, without PSA's insistence on divine justice, liberation theology loses its most powerful moral foundation. Here is another irony. Liberation theology demands justice. It insists that God cares about the oppressed and will act on their behalf. But where does this demand for justice come from? It comes from the very character of God that PSA takes so seriously — the God who is just, who cannot ignore evil, who must respond to wickedness. If God is merely "loving" in a sentimental sense, with no commitment to justice, then there is no theological basis for insisting that oppression must be addressed. PSA tells us that God takes sin — all sin, including the sin of systemic oppression — so seriously that He bears its consequences Himself. That is the foundation for any robust theology of justice.

VI. The Girardian Challenge: Scapegoating and the Cross

No discussion of contemporary objections to PSA from a violence-oriented perspective would be complete without engaging René Girard's influential "mimetic theory." Girard, a French-American literary critic and cultural theorist, developed a comprehensive theory of human violence rooted in the concept of "mimetic desire" — the idea that human beings learn to desire what others desire, leading inevitably to rivalry, conflict, and scapegoating.³⁴

In Girard's framework, the scapegoat mechanism is the foundation of human culture. Societies manage their internal violence by directing it against a single victim — the scapegoat — whose expulsion or death restores peace to the community. Ancient religions, Girard argues, sacralize this mechanism through the institution of sacrifice: the victim is killed and then declared sacred, hiding the violence at the heart of the system.

The cross of Christ, for Girard, is the event that reveals and destroys the scapegoat mechanism. Jesus is the innocent victim who is scapegoated by the powers — but unlike every previous scapegoat, His innocence is proclaimed and His resurrection unmasks the lie at the heart of the system. The cross does not work by the mechanism of sacred violence (as PSA allegedly claims); it works by exposing that mechanism as a lie.³⁵

Girardian thinkers, like Weaver, tend to reject PSA because they see it as perpetuating the very sacrificial logic the cross was meant to overthrow. If God "required" the death of Jesus as a sacrifice, then God is operating within the scapegoat system rather than overturning it.

Evaluating the Girardian Critique

Girard's insights are genuinely valuable. His analysis of scapegoating is brilliant, and his recognition that the cross unmasks human violence is an important contribution to our understanding of one dimension of what happened at Calvary. The Gospels do indeed present the crucifixion as a scapegoating event: the religious leaders conspire, the crowds are whipped into a frenzy, an innocent man is condemned, and the community is temporarily unified by the act of collective violence. Girard is right to see this pattern, and he is right that the resurrection exposes the lie at the heart of the system — the victim was innocent, and God vindicates Him.

Where I part ways with the Girardian tradition is in its rejection of the sacrificial and substitutionary dimensions of the cross. Girard and his followers tend to assume that any theology that uses the language of sacrifice is participating in the scapegoat mechanism. But this assumption rests on a conflation of two very different things: human sacrifice (in which the community projects its violence onto a victim) and divine self-offering (in which God voluntarily bears the cost of human sin). These are not the same, and treating them as the same leads to a serious misreading of the New Testament.

The fundamental problem is that the New Testament does interpret the cross as a sacrifice — not as a human sacrifice in the pagan sense, but as a divine self-offering. The language of sacrifice, blood, and atonement runs through the entire New Testament: Christ is "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29); He "gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:2); His blood is "the blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins" (Matthew 26:28). This language cannot be dismissed as a concession to the scapegoat mechanism. It is the New Testament's own theological interpretation of what happened on the cross.³⁶

Moreover, there is an important distinction between human scapegoating (in which the community projects its violence onto an innocent victim) and divine self-substitution (in which God voluntarily bears the consequences of human sin). In human scapegoating, the victim is chosen by the mob and sacrificed for the mob's benefit. In the cross, the "victim" is God Himself, acting in love to save the very people whose sin made the cross necessary. The direction of action is completely different. In scapegoating, violence flows from the community to the victim. In the cross, love flows from God to humanity. Girard is right that the cross reveals the evil of scapegoating. But it does more than that — it also accomplishes salvation through God's voluntary self-sacrifice.³⁷

VII. Womanist and Mujerista Perspectives

We should also note that feminist critiques of the atonement are not monolithic. Womanist theology (theology arising from the experience of Black women) and mujerista theology (theology arising from the experience of Latina women) have offered perspectives that both overlap with and diverge from the white feminist critiques discussed above.

Some womanist theologians, like Delores Williams, have argued that the cross cannot be redemptive because it repeats the pattern of "surrogacy" — the forced substitution of Black women's bodies for the comfort and benefit of others — that has marked Black women's experience throughout American history.³⁸ In Williams's reading, a theology that glorifies substitutionary suffering is dangerous for people whose entire history has been one of being forced to suffer on behalf of others. Williams argues that salvation should be understood not through the cross but through Jesus' life and ministry — His acts of healing, liberation, and resistance — and through the resurrection, which vindicates His life rather than His death.

Other womanist theologians have pushed back against this reading, arguing that the cross can be liberating precisely because it shows God identifying with those who suffer most. JoAnne Marie Terrell, for instance, argues that the cross speaks powerfully to the Black experience of suffering because it reveals a God who does not stand apart from human pain but enters into it fully.³⁹ For Terrell, the power of the cross lies not in glorifying suffering but in the solidarity of a God who knows what it is like to be unjustly condemned, beaten, and killed. Far from telling the oppressed to accept their lot, the cross reveals that God has entered their situation and will bring redemption out of it.

I mention these perspectives not to resolve the debate within womanist theology but to acknowledge that the concerns about atonement and suffering are deeply embedded in the lived experiences of marginalized communities. Any adequate theology of the cross must be willing to listen to these voices. But listening does not mean capitulating. The proper response, I believe, is the same one we have been developing throughout this chapter: when PSA is rightly formulated within a Trinitarian framework that emphasizes God's self-substitution — God entering into suffering in love, not imposing suffering on the unwilling — it speaks to the experience of the oppressed rather than against them.

VIII. A Constructive Synthesis: The Cross as the Critique of All Violence

Having examined the major contemporary objections, I want to step back and offer a constructive synthesis. The objections we have encountered are not random or unrelated — they share a common concern about the relationship between the cross and violence, between sacrifice and oppression, between theology and the lived experience of vulnerable people. What does the cross look like when we take the best insights from these critiques and integrate them with a robust penal substitutionary theology? I believe we arrive at a vision of the cross that is richer, deeper, and more pastorally powerful than either the critics or the caricaturists have imagined.

Here is what I believe the cross reveals, in its fullness:

The cross exposes the horror of violence. Crucifixion was not a sanitized religious ritual. It was a brutal act of state-sponsored torture and execution, designed to humiliate and terrorize. When God allows Himself to be subjected to this violence, He does not sanctify violence; He reveals its true horror. Every act of human violence, from the schoolyard bully to the genocidal dictator, stands exposed and condemned in the light of the cross.

The cross identifies God with the victim. In a world where power usually wins and the powerful define the narrative, the cross is an astonishing reversal. God is not on the side of the powerful. God is hanging on the cross. The Almighty becomes the powerless one, the Creator becomes the creature, the Judge becomes the judged. This is not a validation of suffering; it is God's declaration that He will not stand apart from the suffering of His creation but will enter into it fully and bear it completely.

The cross defeats evil from within. This is where Christus Victor and PSA work together. Christ does not defeat evil by counter-violence — by fighting fire with fire. He defeats it by absorbing its full force and exhausting its power. Sin does its worst; death claims its victim; the powers celebrate their apparent triumph. And then — resurrection. The very thing that was meant to destroy becomes the instrument of salvation. Death is swallowed up in victory. This is not the pattern of human violence (where victory comes through overpowering the enemy) but the pattern of divine love (where victory comes through self-giving sacrifice).⁴⁰

The cross provides the judicial basis for the full scope of salvation. Here is where PSA contributes what no other model can. Because the penalty of sin has been borne — because divine justice has been satisfied — the legal barrier between God and humanity is removed. This opens the way not only for individual forgiveness but for the entire scope of salvation: reconciliation, redemption, adoption, sanctification, and ultimately the renewal of all creation. The cosmic dimensions of salvation that liberation theology rightly emphasizes are grounded in the judicial achievement of the cross. Without PSA, there is no objective basis for the cosmic reconciliation described in Colossians 1:20.⁴¹

IX. Practical Implications: How Should the Church Preach the Cross?

The contemporary objections we have examined in this chapter are not merely academic. They have practical implications for how the church preaches, teaches, and applies the cross in pastoral ministry.

First, we must stop preaching caricatures of PSA. The "angry God beats up Jesus" version of the cross is not only bad theology — it is pastorally harmful. Preachers and teachers must learn to present PSA within its Trinitarian context, emphasizing the unity of the Father and Son, the voluntariness of Christ's sacrifice, and the love that motivates the entire saving event. Stott's language of "the self-substitution of God" should be standard in every evangelical presentation of the atonement.⁴²

Second, we must be sensitive to how our language lands on abuse survivors. This does not mean softening or abandoning the truth. It means being pastorally wise about how we communicate it. We should never tell abuse victims to "bear their cross" in the context of an abusive relationship. We should make clear that Christ's suffering was unique and unrepeatable. We should emphasize that the gospel calls us to protect the vulnerable, not to tell them to accept their suffering.

Third, we must preach the full scope of the atonement. If our preaching focuses exclusively on individual guilt and forgiveness, we are telling only part of the story — and we are leaving ourselves vulnerable to the very critiques we have examined in this chapter. We should also preach Christus Victor — the defeat of the powers. We should preach reconciliation — the restoration of broken relationships at every level, from the personal to the cosmic. We should preach new creation — the renewal of all things. We should preach the moral influence of the cross — how the love of God displayed at Calvary transforms hearts and inspires lives of sacrificial service. The cross is big enough to encompass all of human need, and our preaching should reflect that richness rather than reducing the atonement to a single dimension, however central that dimension may be.

Fourth, we must let the cross drive us to pursue justice. If we truly believe that God took evil so seriously that He bore its consequences Himself, how can we be indifferent to evil in our own world? The cross should make us the most passionate advocates for justice, the most tireless defenders of the vulnerable, the most committed opponents of oppression. A theology of the cross that leaves us comfortable with injustice is not a theology of the cross at all. Liberation theology is right about this: if our atonement theology does not move us to care about the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized, something has gone seriously wrong — not with the doctrine, but with us. The God who went to the cross rather than leave sin unaddressed calls us to live with that same fierce commitment to what is right.⁴³

Conclusion

The contemporary objections to penal substitutionary atonement that we have examined in this chapter — the "cosmic child abuse" charge, the feminist critique, the nonviolent atonement proposal, the liberation theology challenge, and the Girardian analysis — are not frivolous. They arise from genuine pastoral concerns, real experiences of suffering, and a legitimate desire to ensure that our theology does not become an instrument of harm. I have tried to present each objection as fairly and sympathetically as I can, because these concerns deserve to be taken seriously.

But in every case, I believe the objection ultimately targets a distortion of PSA rather than PSA itself. When penal substitutionary atonement is rightly understood — as the Trinitarian act of a loving God who bears the judicial consequences of human sin in His own person, through the voluntary self-offering of the Son, in the power of the Spirit — it is not a theology that promotes violence, sanctions abuse, or ignores systemic injustice. It is, in fact, the most profound critique of all these evils that has ever been articulated. The very critics who attack PSA are borrowing, whether they realize it or not, from the moral vision that PSA makes possible — a vision in which justice matters, in which innocent suffering is wrong, in which the powerful cannot abuse the weak with impunity, and in which God Himself stands with the oppressed.

The cross tells us that God refuses to ignore evil. It tells us that God identifies with the victim, not the oppressor. It tells us that divine love is not sentimental tolerance but fierce, costly, sacrificial commitment. It tells us that justice and mercy are not in competition but find their perfect union in the self-giving of God. And it tells us that the final word is not death but resurrection — not defeat but victory — not despair but hope.

Those who have suffered violence, abuse, and oppression do not need less of the cross. They need more of it — the real cross, not the caricature. They need the cross that reveals a God who knows what it is like to be a victim of injustice, who stands with the suffering, and who will one day make all things right. They need the cross that tells them their pain is not invisible, that justice will be done, and that the God of the universe entered into their suffering and bore its weight in His own body. That is the cross of penal substitutionary atonement, rightly understood. And it is good news for everyone.