Chapter 13
The Apostolic Fathers and Second-Century Atonement Thought

Introduction: The Seeds of Atonement Theology

What did the earliest Christians after the apostles believe about why Jesus died? This is one of the most important questions we can ask when studying the history of atonement theology. If penal substitutionary atonement is really at the heart of what Scripture teaches — as I believe it is — then we would expect to find at least the seeds of this teaching in the very first Christian writings after the New Testament. And that is exactly what we find.

In this chapter, we step out of the New Testament itself and into the world of the Apostolic Fathers — the earliest Christian writers after the apostles — and the major theologians of the second century. These men lived and wrote in the decades immediately following the apostolic era, some of them within living memory of the apostles themselves. Their writings give us a window into what the earliest post-apostolic church actually believed about the cross.

My thesis is straightforward: the earliest post-apostolic Christian writers reflect atonement ideas that are broadly substitutionary, sacrificial, and ransom-oriented. They show us that the church, from its very first days after the apostles, understood Christ's death as involving the bearing of sin on behalf of others, the payment of a ransom, the offering of a sacrifice, and victory over the powers of evil. These writers did not develop one neat, systematic atonement theory. What they gave us was something more like raw materials — building blocks of substitution, sacrifice, ransom, and victory language that later theologians would arrange into more formal models. But the key ingredients of what would eventually be called penal substitutionary atonement were present from the very beginning.

Why does this matter? It matters because one of the most common objections to penal substitutionary atonement is that it was a late invention — a creation of the Protestant Reformers in the sixteenth century, or at best a product of medieval Western theology with no roots in the earliest church. Gustaf Aulén argued influentially in his 1931 book Christus Victor that the "classic" patristic view of the atonement was exclusively about Christ's victory over sin, death, and the devil, and that substitutionary and penal ideas were foreign intrusions.¹ More recently, William Hess has argued from an Eastern-influenced perspective that the "classical view" of the early church was a Christus Victor model that has nothing to do with penal substitution.² I believe both of these claims are oversimplifications. As we will see, the evidence from the earliest Christian writings tells a much more complex and interesting story.

Let me be clear about what I am not arguing. I am not claiming that the Apostolic Fathers taught penal substitutionary atonement in its full, systematic, Reformation-era formulation. They did not. What I am arguing is that the ideas that form the core of penal substitution — Christ dying in our place, bearing our sins, taking on the curse that was due to us, paying a ransom, offering Himself as a sacrifice, and satisfying the demands of divine justice — are present in these earliest writings. The raw materials are all there, waiting to be assembled. And this fact undermines the claim that penal substitution is a late, artificial invention with no connection to the faith of the earliest church.

We will examine the major Apostolic Fathers and second-century writers one by one, paying close attention to their actual words. Along the way, we will engage with the claims of those who read these same texts differently. Our journey begins with a letter written from Rome to Corinth near the close of the first century.

1 Clement: The Blood of Christ Shed for Our Salvation

The letter known as 1 Clement is one of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament. It was written from the church in Rome to the church in Corinth around AD 96 — within the lifetimes of people who had known the apostles personally. Tradition attributes it to Clement, who was a leader (and possibly bishop) of the Roman church. This letter gives us a precious glimpse into what the Roman Christians believed about the cross at the very end of the first century.

Clement writes with a pastoral heart, urging the Corinthian Christians to set aside their divisions and rivalries. And when he holds up the ultimate example of self-giving love, he turns to the cross. In chapter 7 of his letter, Clement writes: "Let us fix our gaze on the blood of Christ, and let us know that it is precious to his Father, because it was poured out for our salvation and brought the grace of repentance to the whole world."³

Notice several things about this short statement. First, the blood of Christ is "precious to his Father." This is sacrificial language — the blood shed on the cross has value and significance before God. Second, it was "poured out for our salvation." The preposition "for" (Greek hyper, ὑπέρ) carries the sense of "on behalf of" or "for the benefit of." As we discussed in Chapter 2, this preposition is central to the New Testament's substitutionary language. Third, the scope is universal: the blood of Christ "brought the grace of repentance to the whole world."⁴ This echoes the New Testament's teaching about the universal scope of the atonement (see Chapter 30).

Later in the same letter, Clement writes even more pointedly. In chapter 49, he says: "On account of the love he had for us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave his blood for us by the will of God — his flesh for our flesh, and his soul for our souls."⁵ This is remarkable language. Christ gave "his flesh for our flesh, and his soul for our souls." The exchange is explicit: Christ's life given in place of ours. While Clement does not use the word "substitution," the concept is clearly present. Christ gave something of His own — His flesh, His soul, His blood — for us, in exchange for us, so that we might be saved.

Now, someone might object: "Saying Christ died 'for us' doesn't necessarily mean substitution. It could just mean He died for our benefit." That is true in the abstract — the word "for" is flexible. But when Clement says Christ gave "his flesh for our flesh, and his soul for our souls," the exchange language strongly implies substitution. Christ's flesh stands in the place of our flesh. His soul stands in the place of our souls. This is the language of one life given in exchange for another, which is the heartbeat of substitutionary atonement.

The Epistle of Barnabas: Old Testament Sacrifice Points to Christ

The Epistle of Barnabas is an early Christian writing dated to somewhere between AD 70 and 130. Despite its name, most scholars do not think it was written by the Barnabas who traveled with Paul. The author does not identify himself by name but refers to himself simply as a "teacher." What makes this letter especially valuable for our study is its extensive use of Old Testament typology — that is, its habit of reading Old Testament events and rituals as pictures that point forward to Christ.

In chapter 5, the author writes: "For it was for this reason that the Lord endured to deliver up his flesh to corruption, that we should be sanctified by the remission of sin, that is, by his sprinkled blood. For the Scripture concerning him relates partly to Israel, partly to us, and it speaks thus: 'He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, by his stripes we were healed. He was brought as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb dumb before its shearer.'"⁶

The author is quoting Isaiah 53, the great Suffering Servant passage that we examined in depth in Chapter 6. The fact that a writer from the late first or early second century is applying Isaiah 53 to the death of Jesus — and reading it as teaching that Christ was "wounded for our transgressions" and "bruised for our iniquities" — tells us that the earliest Christians read this passage in a substitutionary way. Christ's wounds correspond to our transgressions. His bruises correspond to our iniquities. The exchange is clear.

The Epistle of Barnabas goes further. The author explains that "the Lord endured to suffer at the hand of man" precisely because humanity had fallen into sin and deserved death. In chapter 7, he writes: "Because He also Himself was to offer in sacrifice for our sins the vessel of the Spirit, in order that the type established in Isaac when he was offered upon the altar might be fully accomplished."⁷ Here Christ's death is described as a sacrifice for our sins, and it is connected to the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22 — one of the most important Old Testament types of substitutionary sacrifice. Just as God provided a ram to die in Isaac's place, so God provided Christ to die in our place.

The author also develops extensive typology around the scapegoat ritual of the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), reading it as a picture of Christ bearing away the sins of the people. He writes that Christ "suffered in our behalf" so that we might become "the people of inheritance," redeemed from darkness.⁸ The language is rich and layered: sacrifice, suffering on behalf of others, redemption from sin, and deliverance from the power of evil. All of these themes coexist in a single writer — which is exactly the multi-faceted picture we would expect if the New Testament's own multi-dimensional atonement teaching was being faithfully transmitted.

Hess, writing from a Christus Victor perspective, acknowledges the "suffering for us" language in Barnabas but insists that this does not amount to penal substitution. He argues that Christ's suffering was about destroying death rather than satisfying divine justice.⁹ I think Hess raises a fair point — Barnabas does emphasize the destruction of death and the defeat of corruption. But I also think it is a false choice to set "destroying death" against "bearing our sins." The Epistle of Barnabas holds both together. Christ suffered for our sins and Christ destroyed death. These are not competing explanations but complementary dimensions of what happened at the cross.

Ignatius of Antioch: Christ Suffered for Our Sakes

Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch in Syria, one of the most important early Christian churches. He was arrested during the reign of Emperor Trajan and transported to Rome to be executed, probably around AD 110–115. Along the way, he wrote a series of letters to various churches that have survived as some of the most passionate and theologically rich documents of the early church.

Ignatius writes with an intense focus on the reality of Christ's incarnation, suffering, and death. He was battling a heresy called Docetism — the idea that Jesus only appeared to have a real human body and only appeared to suffer. Against this, Ignatius insists again and again that Jesus truly suffered in real human flesh. And he connects this real suffering to our salvation.

In his letter to the Smyrnaeans, Ignatius writes: "Now, He suffered all these things for our sakes, that we might be saved."¹⁰ In his letter to Polycarp, he says: "Look for Him who is above all time, eternal and invisible, yet who became visible for our sakes; impalpable and impassible, yet who became passible on our account; and who in every kind of way suffered for our sakes."¹¹

In his letter to the Trallians, Ignatius uses even more striking language. He writes that Christ "died for us, in order, by believing in His death, ye may escape from death." And again: "Do ye therefore, clothing yourselves with meekness, become the imitators of His sufferings, and of His love, wherewith He loved us when He gave Himself a ransom for us, that He might cleanse us by His blood from our old ungodliness, and bestow life on us when we were almost on the point of perishing through the depravity that was in us."¹²

This passage is packed with atonement theology. Christ gave Himself a ransom for us — ransom language, echoing Jesus' own words in Mark 10:45 (see Chapter 7). His blood cleanses us from our "old ungodliness" — purification and cleansing language that carries sacrificial overtones. And all of this was motivated by love: "His love, wherewith He loved us." The atonement, for Ignatius, is fundamentally an act of divine love — exactly the point I have been making throughout this book.

Hess argues that Ignatius's "dying for us" language does not require substitution: "To die for someone does not require a vicarious punishment or a satisfaction of wrath. Instead, it could be an act of love to throw oneself into an abyss to prevent your friends from falling in."¹³ Hess has a point that "dying for someone" is a broad phrase. But when Ignatius specifically calls Christ's death a ransom — a price paid to secure the release of captives — he is using transactional, substitutionary language that goes beyond simply "dying for someone's benefit." A ransom is not just an act of goodwill; it is a payment made in exchange for the release of the captive. That is substitutionary logic at its core.

Polycarp of Smyrna: A Disciple of the Apostle John

Polycarp (c. AD 69–155) is one of the most important links between the apostolic and post-apostolic eras. According to Irenaeus — who was himself a student of Polycarp — Polycarp was personally taught by the apostle John. This is an extraordinary chain of connection: the apostle John, who leaned on Jesus' breast at the Last Supper, taught Polycarp, who in turn taught Irenaeus. When Polycarp speaks about the meaning of Christ's death, we are hearing a voice that is only one step removed from the apostles themselves.

Polycarp was bishop of Smyrna in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) and was eventually martyred at a great age — burned alive for his refusal to deny Christ. His Letter to the Philippians is the primary surviving document from his pen, and it contains atonement language that is striking in its simplicity and clarity.

Polycarp writes of Christ: "who bore our sins in His own body on the tree, who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; but for our sakes, that we might live in Him, He endured all things."⁴⁸ This is a nearly direct quotation of 1 Peter 2:24 — "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree" — and its significance should not be missed. Polycarp, a man taught by the apostle John, passes on the language of the apostle Peter as a faithful description of what happened at the cross. Christ "bore our sins." He did so "in His own body." He endured this "for our sakes." And the purpose was "that we might live in Him." This is substitutionary language — the sinless Christ bearing the sins that belonged to us — and it is expressed as settled, received truth, not as a controversial new idea.

Hess acknowledges that Polycarp's language describes Christ suffering to destroy the power of death, and he reads the "debt of sin" as something God freely forgives rather than something requiring penal satisfaction.⁴⁹ But Polycarp's language echoes 1 Peter 2:24 so directly that the substitutionary overtones are hard to avoid. Peter's original language — "He bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness" — is recognized by virtually all scholars as containing substitutionary atonement theology (see Chapter 11 for the full exegesis). When Polycarp repeats this language, he is transmitting that same theology.

Polycarp also urges believers to "forgive one another, because we are in the debt of sin." The debt language here is significant. It assumes that sin creates an obligation — a debt — that must somehow be dealt with. And the way it was dealt with, as Polycarp has already explained, is through Christ bearing our sins in His own body on the cross. The logic is straightforward: we owe a debt of sin; Christ paid that debt by bearing our sins Himself. This is the basic framework of substitutionary atonement.

The Didache: Eucharistic Theology and the Cross

The Didache (pronounced "DID-ah-kay"), also known as "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," is one of the very earliest Christian documents, possibly dating to as early as AD 50–70, though most scholars place it somewhere between AD 70 and 120. It is essentially a church manual — a practical guide for early Christian communities on topics like baptism, fasting, prayer, and the Lord's Supper (the Eucharist).

The Didache does not contain a developed atonement theology. It is a practical document, not a theological treatise. But what it does contain is significant. In its instructions about the Eucharist, the Didache uses language that connects the Lord's Supper to the sacrificial death of Jesus. The eucharistic prayers give thanks for "the life and knowledge" revealed through Jesus, and the broken bread is described with language echoing Christ's self-offering.¹⁴

The significance of the Didache for our study is not that it develops a theory of the atonement. It does not. Rather, its significance lies in what it reveals about the practice of the earliest Christians. They gathered regularly to break bread and share the cup in remembrance of Christ's death. The very act of celebrating the Eucharist — "this is my body... this is my blood, shed for you" — kept the sacrificial, self-giving death of Jesus at the center of Christian worship from the very beginning. The earliest Christians did not merely theorize about the cross; they built their communal life around it. Their worship assumed that Christ's death was a sacrifice offered for their benefit.

Justin Martyr: Christ Bore the Curse for All Humanity

Justin Martyr (c. AD 100–165) is one of the most important Christian writers of the second century. Born to Greek parents in Samaria, Justin was a philosopher who searched through various schools of thought before encountering an old man on a beach near Ephesus who directed him to the Old Testament prophets. Justin became a passionate defender of the Christian faith and was eventually executed in Rome for refusing to sacrifice to the Roman gods — hence his title "Martyr."¹⁵

Justin is especially important for our study because he takes us back to within a generation of the apostolic era. It is quite likely that Justin spoke to people who had personally known the apostles. His most important work for understanding his atonement theology is his Dialogue with Trypho, a record of a conversation with a Jewish man named Trypho around AD 130.

In this dialogue, Trypho raises a powerful objection. He is willing to accept that the Messiah would suffer — the Old Testament prophets speak of a suffering Messiah. But he cannot understand why the Messiah would be crucified, since Deuteronomy 21:23 says that anyone who hangs on a tree is under God's curse. How could God's Messiah be cursed by God?

Justin responds in three steps. First, he affirms that Christ was not cursed for His own sins: "Though a curse lies in the law against persons who are crucified, yet no curse lies on the Christ of God, by whom all that have committed things worthy of a curse are saved."¹⁶ Second, Justin argues that the entire human race stands under God's curse because all have failed to keep God's law — both Jews (who violated the Mosaic law) and Gentiles (who turned to idolatry).¹⁷

Then Justin reaches the crucial point of his argument. He explains why Christ was crucified: "If, then, the Father of all wished His Christ for the whole human family to take upon Him the curses of all, knowing that, after He had been crucified and was dead, He would raise Him up, why do you argue about Him, who submitted to suffer these things according to the Father's will, as if He were accursed, and do not rather bewail yourselves?"¹⁸

As Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach observe, this amounts to a clear statement of penal substitution: "Although Christ was innocent, he bore the curse due to sinful humanity, enduring in his death the punishment due to us."¹⁹ Justin reads Galatians 3:13 and Deuteronomy 21:23 together and concludes that Christ took on Himself the curse that the whole human race had earned through sin. This is not merely "dying for someone's benefit" in a vague sense. It is the specific transfer of a curse — a legal consequence — from the guilty to the innocent.

Hess disagrees. He argues that reading "curse" as "God's wrath poured out for the satisfaction of sins" is an error that must be "assumed into the text." According to Hess, the curse Jesus experienced was simply death itself — the mortality that comes from being human in a fallen world — not a divine penalty transferred from us to Him.²⁰ I respect Hess's careful engagement with the text, and I think he is right that we should not read later systematic formulations back into Justin's words uncritically. But I find his alternative reading strained. Justin's argument depends on a specific logical sequence: (1) all humans are under God's curse because of sin; (2) Christ was not under this curse for His own sin; (3) therefore, Christ took our curse upon Himself. This is a transfer of legal consequence from the guilty to the innocent — which is the basic logic of penal substitution, even if Justin does not use the later terminology.

Justin also draws on the Passover imagery, noting that "as the blood of the Passover saved those who were in Egypt, so also the blood of Christ will deliver from death those who have believed."²¹ Here again, we see multiple atonement motifs held together: sacrifice, deliverance, and the protective power of blood. Justin's atonement thinking is multi-faceted — exactly the kind of multi-dimensional picture we see in the New Testament itself.

The Epistle to Diognetus: The Sweet Exchange

The Epistle to Diognetus is a beautiful early Christian writing, probably dating to the mid-second century (c. AD 130–160). The author is unknown — he identifies himself only as a disciple writing to an inquirer named Diognetus. But whoever he was, he produced one of the most eloquent and theologically profound descriptions of the atonement in all of early Christian literature.

In chapter 9, the author describes how God waited patiently as humanity sank deeper and deeper into sin, not because He delighted in wickedness but because He wanted humanity to recognize its own inability to save itself. Then, at the appointed time, God acted:

But when our wickedness had reached its height, and it had been clearly shown that its reward, punishment and death, was impending over us; and when the time had come which God had before appointed for manifesting His own kindness and power, how the one love of God, through exceeding regard for men, did not regard us with hatred, nor thrust us away, nor remember our iniquity against us, but showed great long-suffering, and bore with us, He Himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities, He gave His own Son as a ransom for us, the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous, the incorruptible One for the corruptible, the immortal One for them that are mortal. For what other thing was capable of covering our sins than His righteousness? By what other one was it possible that we, the wicked and ungodly, could be justified, than by the only Son of God? O sweet exchange! O unsearchable operation! O benefits surpassing all expectation! That the wickedness of many should be hid in a single righteous One, and that the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors!²²

I want to linger over this extraordinary passage because it is one of the most important texts in all of early Christian literature for understanding how the earliest Christians thought about the cross.

Notice the layers of meaning packed into this passage. First, the motivation is love: "the one love of God, through exceeding regard for men." The atonement flows from God's love for humanity, not from divine rage. Second, the mechanism is exchange: "the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous." The preposition "for" here carries clear substitutionary force — one thing given in exchange for another. Third, the result is justification: "the righteousness of One should justify many transgressors." The author uses judicial, forensic language — the language of a courtroom — to describe how Christ's righteousness makes it possible for the wicked to be declared righteous before God.

Fourth — and this is critical — God "Himself took on Him the burden of our iniquities." This echoes Isaiah 53:6, where the LORD "laid on him the iniquity of us all" (see Chapter 6 for the full exegesis of this passage). The author of Diognetus reads the cross through the lens of Isaiah's Suffering Servant, seeing in Christ's death the bearing of human sin by the righteous One.

Fifth, Christ is described as "a ransom for us" — the same ransom language used by Jesus Himself in Mark 10:45 and echoed by Paul in 1 Timothy 2:6. And sixth, the closing exclamation — "O sweet exchange!" — captures the heart of what later theology would call the admirabile commercium, the "wonderful exchange" between Christ and the believer. As John Stott notes, the Epistle to Diognetus is "probably" the first post-apostolic example of Christian writers meditating on this great exchange, a tradition that would continue through Luther, Calvin, and the entire Reformation.²³

Even Hess, who reads most of these early texts through a Christus Victor lens, acknowledges the power of this passage, noting its emphasis on God's love and His desire to rescue a fallen creation.²⁴ But I think the passage goes further than Hess allows. The specific language of exchange — righteousness for wickedness, the holy for the transgressors — combined with the forensic language of justification and the explicit statement that God "took on Him the burden of our iniquities," points in a clearly substitutionary direction. Christ does not merely rescue us from an external enemy; He stands in our place, taking what was ours (sin, guilt, curse) and giving us what was His (righteousness, justification, life).

Irenaeus of Lyons: Recapitulation, Ransom, and the Seeds of Substitution

Irenaeus of Lyons (c. AD 130–202) is the most important atonement theologian of the second century. He was a student of Polycarp, who was himself a disciple of the apostle John. This gives Irenaeus a direct chain of connection back to the apostles — which makes his testimony about the meaning of the cross especially valuable.

Irenaeus is best known for his great work Against Heresies (Adversus Haereses), written to combat the Gnostic heresies that were threatening the church. Because the Gnostics denied the goodness of the material world and the reality of Christ's physical body, Irenaeus had to develop a robust theology of incarnation, creation, and redemption. The result was the most sophisticated atonement theology of the second century — a multi-dimensional vision that brings together several distinct themes.

Recapitulation: Christ Undoes What Adam Did

Irenaeus's most distinctive contribution to atonement theology is his theory of recapitulation (Greek: anakephalaiōsis, ἀνακεφαλαίωσις). This is a rich and beautiful idea. "Recapitulation" literally means "to sum up" or "to go over again from the beginning." Irenaeus taught that Christ "recapitulated" — summed up, replayed, and reversed — the entire story of humanity. Where Adam failed, Christ succeeded. Where Adam disobeyed, Christ obeyed. Where Adam's choice led to sin, corruption, and death, Christ's obedient life and death led to righteousness, restoration, and life.

As David Allen explains, Irenaeus "suggested that Christ recapitulated in His life and work what Adam failed to accomplish. Christ recapitulated the scene of the Fall on behalf of the whole human race and turned the defeat of Adam into victory, restoring all that man lost."²⁵

Irenaeus himself puts it this way: "God recapitulated in Himself the ancient formation of man, that He might kill sin, deprive death of its power, and vivify man; and therefore His works are true."²⁶ Christ became fully human — truly and really taking on our flesh, our weakness, our mortality — in order to reverse the damage that Adam's sin had caused. He went through every stage of human life, "restoring to all of them communion with God."²⁷

This is a profound theological vision, and it captures something genuinely important about the atonement. Christ did not simply pay a legal debt in some mechanical transaction. He entered into the full human experience, took on everything that had gone wrong, and set it right from the inside. The recapitulation model beautifully expresses the cosmic scope of what Christ accomplished. We will return to this model in greater depth in Chapter 23, where we examine the Eastern Orthodox contribution to atonement theology.

Ransom and Victory

Alongside recapitulation, Irenaeus also develops ransom and victory language. He teaches that humanity, through sin, had fallen under the dominion of Satan. God did not simply rip humanity from Satan's clutches by brute force — which He certainly could have done — but instead redeemed humanity by a "manner consonant to reason." In Against Heresies 5.1, Irenaeus writes that Christ, "the mighty Word, and very man, who, redeeming us by His own blood in a manner consonant to reason, gave Himself as a redemption for those who had been led into captivity."²⁸

This is ransom language — Christ gave Himself as the price of our freedom. William Lane Craig notes that underlying Irenaeus's ransom approach is the idea that Satan had certain power over humanity because of human sin, and that God, being perfectly just, dealt with this situation not through raw power but through the righteous self-offering of Christ.²⁹ Irenaeus emphasizes that God acted with justice and wisdom, not merely with strength. This concern for divine justice — the idea that God's way of saving us had to be right and not merely powerful — is significant. It shows that even in the second century, Christian thinkers were wrestling with the relationship between God's justice and God's mercy at the cross.

Hess reads Irenaeus almost exclusively through the lens of Christus Victor. He argues that for Irenaeus, "Christ's mission was to destroy sin and death to redeem mankind, not to satisfy God's justice or wrath."³⁰ I think Hess captures one genuine dimension of Irenaeus's thought — the victory dimension. But I believe he underplays other elements that are equally present in Irenaeus's writings.

Substitutionary and Penal Language in Irenaeus

Here is where things get especially interesting. Alongside the recapitulation and ransom themes, Irenaeus also uses language that is clearly substitutionary and that touches on the satisfaction of divine justice. Consider this passage from Against Heresies 5.16.3:

Therefore, by remitting sins, He did indeed heal man, while He also manifested Himself who He was. For if no one can forgive sins but God alone, while the Lord remitted them and healed men, it is plain that He was Himself the Word of God made the Son of man, receiving from the Father the power of remission of sins; since He was man, and since He was God, in order that since as man He suffered for us, so as God He might have compassion on us, and forgive us our debts, in which we were made debtors to God our Creator.³¹

Notice the language here: Christ "suffered for us" (substitutionary), we were "debtors to God our Creator" (forensic/judicial), and God "forgives us our debts" through the suffering of Christ. This is not merely victory over Satan — it is about a debt owed to God that requires forgiveness.

Irenaeus also writes in Against Heresies 5.17.1: "He has destroyed the handwriting of our debt, and fastened it to the cross; so that as by means of a tree we were made debtors to God, so also by means of a tree we may obtain the remission of our debt."³² This echoes Colossians 2:14, where Paul describes Christ as "having canceled the record of debt that stood against us" by "nailing it to the cross." Irenaeus understands the cross as the place where our debt to God — not merely our bondage to Satan — was dealt with.

Furthermore, Irenaeus speaks of Christ as our High Priest who propitiates God for humanity: He "did not make void, but fulfilled the law, by performing the offices of the high priest, propitiating God for men, and cleansing the lepers, healing the sick, and Himself suffering death, that exiled man might go forth from condemnation."³³ The word "propitiating" is significant. As we discussed in Chapter 2, propitiation (Greek: hilasmos, ἱλασμός) involves the satisfaction or turning aside of God's righteous response to sin. When Irenaeus says Christ was "propitiating God for men," he is saying that Christ's self-offering addressed something in God's own righteous nature that needed to be satisfied — which is exactly the logic of penal substitution.

Allen rightly observes that "most patristic theologians also held to some form of a satisfaction/substitutionary atonement" alongside their Christus Victor and ransom themes. He notes that even within the broadly Christus Victor framework, "a precursor of the Moral Influence theory can be found in Irenaeus" and "the seeds of Anselm's Satisfaction theory can be found in Origen."³⁴ The patristic writers were not neatly divided into camps. They held multiple atonement motifs together because the New Testament itself holds them together.

Irenaeus also speaks of Christ "propitiating indeed for us the Father against whom we had sinned, and canceling our disobedience by His own obedience."³⁵ This language of Christ's obedience canceling our disobedience is both recapitulatory (the Second Adam undoing what the first Adam did) and substitutionary (Christ's obedience standing in the place of our disobedience). Irenaeus holds both together without any sense of contradiction.

Engaging Aulén: Was Christus Victor the Only Patristic View?

At this point, we need to engage directly with Gustaf Aulén's influential thesis. In his 1931 book Christus Victor, Aulén argued that there were essentially three types of atonement theory in Christian history: the "classic" or "dramatic" view (Christus Victor — Christ's victory over sin, death, and the devil), the "Latin" or "objective" view (satisfaction and penal substitution, beginning with Anselm and developed by the Reformers), and the "subjective" view (moral influence, associated with Abelard). Aulén claimed that the "classic" Christus Victor model was the dominant and essentially exclusive view of the patristic era, and that substitutionary and penal ideas were late inventions that distorted the original Christian message.³⁶

Aulén's thesis has been enormously influential. It has shaped how generations of students have understood the history of atonement theology. And it contains a genuine insight: the Christus Victor theme is a major and important strand of patristic thought that had been somewhat neglected in Protestant scholarship before Aulén wrote. He was right to call attention to it.

But Aulén's thesis is also a serious oversimplification. As William Lane Craig observes: "The notion that the Fathers were singularly committed to a Christus Victor theory of the atonement is a popular misimpression generated by the secondary literature. A reading of the primary sources makes it clear that they were equally committed to the understanding of Christ's death as a sacrificial offering to God for human sins."³⁷ Craig cites the patristic scholar Joseph Mitros, who demonstrated that by the fourth and fifth centuries in both the Latin West and the Greek East, "the sacrificial theory of salvation combined with the idea of penal substitution constituted the main stream of thinking."³⁸

The evidence we have reviewed in this chapter confirms Craig's assessment. Even in the earliest writers — the Apostolic Fathers and second-century theologians — we find not just victory and ransom language but also substitutionary, sacrificial, and forensic language. 1 Clement speaks of Christ giving "his flesh for our flesh." The Epistle of Barnabas applies Isaiah 53's substitutionary language to Christ. Ignatius calls Christ's death a "ransom." The Epistle to Diognetus describes the "sweet exchange" in which the righteous One justifies many transgressors. Justin Martyr argues that Christ bore the curse that was due to the whole human race. And Irenaeus speaks of Christ propitiating God, canceling our debt, and suffering for us.

Allen similarly notes that "in 1931, Rivière demonstrated that both the Latin and Greek church fathers utilized the concepts of sacrifice and penal substitution," and that "Garry Williams also has demonstrated that penal substitution was taught by the early church fathers."³⁹ Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach provide an extensive historical survey of patristic figures who used penal substitutionary language, beginning with Justin Martyr and continuing through the centuries. They argue that "the myth of the 'late development' of penal substitution has persisted for quite long enough. It is time to lay it to rest for good."⁴⁰

I want to be fair to Aulén. He was reacting against a genuine problem — the tendency of some Protestant scholars to read the entire history of atonement theology through exclusively penal substitutionary lenses, ignoring the Christus Victor dimension. That was a real imbalance, and Aulén was right to correct it. But he overcorrected, swinging to the opposite extreme and denying the substitutionary and penal elements that are genuinely present in the patristic sources. The truth lies in recognizing that the Fathers held multiple atonement motifs together, just as the New Testament does.

Engaging Hess: The "Historical Case for a More Classical View"

William Hess, in chapter 13 of Crushing the Great Serpent, presents his own survey of the early church writers and argues that they support a "more classical view" of the atonement — by which he means a Christus Victor model that excludes penal substitution.⁴¹ Hess's survey covers many of the same writers we have examined in this chapter: the Epistle of Barnabas, Ignatius, the Epistle to Diognetus, Irenaeus, and Justin Martyr. His readings are thoughtful and detailed, and he raises legitimate concerns about reading later theology back into earlier texts.

But I find Hess's overall argument unconvincing for three reasons.

First, Hess repeatedly acknowledges the substitutionary language in these writers but then argues that "dying for us" does not mean substitutionary atonement. He writes: "Dying for someone can simply be a selfless act of unconditional love" — like someone jumping in front of a bullet to save a friend.⁴² This is true as far as it goes, but it does not account for the full range of language used by these writers. When the Epistle to Diognetus says "the holy One for transgressors, the blameless One for the wicked, the righteous One for the unrighteous" and describes this as an "exchange" that results in the justification of many transgressors, we have moved well beyond a simple "dying for someone's benefit." This is an exchange of status — Christ's righteousness for our wickedness — which is substitutionary logic.

Second, Hess tends to present Christus Victor and penal substitution as mutually exclusive alternatives. He assumes that if a writer emphasizes victory over death and the devil, they cannot also be teaching substitution. But as we have seen, the early writers hold both together without any apparent sense of contradiction. Irenaeus is the perfect example: he teaches recapitulation, ransom, victory, and substitution all at the same time. The early church's atonement theology is both/and, not either/or.

Third, when Hess encounters explicit penal and forensic language — such as Justin Martyr's argument about Christ bearing the curse of the law, or Irenaeus's language about propitiating God and canceling the debt — he tends to redefine these terms in ways that drain them of their penal content. For example, he argues that the "curse" Christ bore was simply mortality and death, not a judicial penalty from God.⁴³ But Justin's argument specifically depends on the idea that this curse comes from God's law (Deuteronomy 21:23; Galatians 3:13) and rests on humanity because of our violation of God's commands. It is not merely a natural consequence of living in a fallen world; it is a legal consequence of breaking God's law. That is a penal concept.

I want to give Hess credit for one important insight: he consistently emphasizes the role of divine love in the atonement. Commenting on the Epistle to Diognetus, he writes that we should take "special note as to what is emphasized here — God's love for mankind."⁴⁴ He is absolutely right about this. The early writers consistently root the atonement in the love of God. And this is exactly the point I have been making throughout this book: penal substitution, rightly understood, is not about an angry God punishing an unwilling victim. It is about a loving God who, in the person of His Son, bears the consequences of our sin Himself. Love and substitution are not opposites — they are two sides of the same coin.

The Big Picture: What the Earliest Church Believed

As we step back and survey the evidence from the Apostolic Fathers and second-century writers, what picture emerges? I believe the evidence points to several clear conclusions.

First, the earliest post-apostolic church did not have one systematic atonement theory. These writers were not systematic theologians building carefully defined models. They were pastors, letter-writers, apologists, and teachers who spoke about the cross in a variety of ways, drawing on the rich and diverse language of the New Testament itself.

Second, the ideas that form the foundation of penal substitutionary atonement are present from the very beginning. We find: (a) sacrificial language — Christ's blood is precious, poured out for us, offered as a sacrifice; (b) substitutionary language — Christ gave His flesh for our flesh, the righteous for the unrighteous, bearing the curse that was due to us; (c) ransom language — Christ gave Himself as a ransom to free captives; (d) forensic/judicial language — justification of transgressors, cancellation of debt, propitiation; (e) victory language — Christ's triumph over sin, death, and the devil.

Third, these various atonement themes coexist in the same writers, often in the same passages. Irenaeus teaches recapitulation and ransom and victory and substitution. The Epistle to Diognetus describes both the exchange of righteousness for sin (substitution) and the deliverance from bondage (victory). Justin Martyr speaks of Christ bearing the curse (penal substitution) and of the Passover blood delivering believers from death (victory/deliverance). The early church saw no contradiction between these themes because there is no contradiction. They are all genuine dimensions of what Christ accomplished at the cross.

Fourth, the common claim that penal substitutionary atonement is a late Reformation invention with no roots in the early church is simply unsustainable in light of the evidence. The raw materials of PSA — substitution, penalty-bearing, curse-bearing, debt-cancellation, propitiation, and forensic justification — are present in the earliest post-apostolic literature. The systematic formulation of PSA came later, with Anselm, the Reformers, and the post-Reformation theologians. But the substance was there from the beginning.

Fifth, those who claim the early church was exclusively committed to a Christus Victor model are reading the evidence selectively. Aulén's thesis, while containing genuine insights about the importance of the victory theme, paints a misleadingly one-sided picture of patristic thought. The same is true of Hess's attempt to read the early writers through an exclusively Christus Victor lens. As Craig rightly notes, "A reading of the primary sources makes it clear that they were equally committed to the understanding of Christ's death as a sacrificial offering to God for human sins."⁴⁵

Sixth, the emphasis on divine love as the motive behind the atonement is present from the very beginning. These early writers do not describe a God who is angry and vengeful, reluctantly mollified by the suffering of His Son. They describe a God who acts out of "exceeding regard for men" (Epistle to Diognetus), whose blood is "precious to his Father" (1 Clement), and who gave Himself as a ransom motivated by "His love, wherewith He loved us" (Ignatius). This is enormously significant. It confirms that the earliest church understood the cross as the supreme expression of God's love — and that substitution and love are not opposites. The God who sends His Son to bear the curse in our place is the God who loves us with an everlasting love. Penal substitution, rightly understood, has always been a doctrine of love.

The Significance of the Earliest Confession

Before closing this chapter, I want to draw attention to one more piece of evidence that bridges the apostolic and post-apostolic periods. As Simon Gathercole has demonstrated, the earliest identifiable Christian confession — the formula Paul quotes in 1 Corinthians 15:3–4, "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures" — already contains substitutionary atonement at its core.⁴⁶ This formula predates Paul's letters and goes back to the very earliest days of the church. It is, in a sense, the first "creed" of Christianity. And what does it say? "Christ died for our sins."

The significance of this for our study of the Apostolic Fathers is that the post-apostolic writers were not inventing something new when they spoke of Christ dying "for us," bearing our sins, or offering Himself as a sacrifice. They were echoing and elaborating on the earliest confession of the church itself. The substitutionary understanding of Christ's death is not a later theological overlay imposed on simpler, earlier beliefs. It is present in the very first Christian creed and is faithfully transmitted through the Apostolic Fathers into the broader patristic tradition.

Gathercole's work also helps us understand why substitutionary language is so persistent in the early sources. He argues that substitution is not one optional way of reading Paul's atonement theology but is woven into the very fabric of it. The formula "Christ died for our sins" is not about Christ dying for our benefit in a vague way — it is about Christ dying as a sacrifice that deals with the specific problem of our sins.⁴⁷ And this is exactly what we see the Apostolic Fathers continuing to affirm.

A Bridge to the Third Century and Beyond

The writers we have examined in this chapter bring us from the close of the apostolic age (1 Clement, c. AD 96) through the end of the second century (Irenaeus, d. c. AD 202). Before we leave this period, it is worth briefly noting one writer who falls just outside our second-century scope but powerfully illustrates how the themes we have traced continued to develop: Eusebius of Caesarea (c. AD 275–339).

Eusebius, the great church historian and trusted advisor to Emperor Constantine, wrote in his Proof of the Gospel one of the most explicit statements of penal substitution in all of early Christian literature: "The Lamb of God... was chastised on our behalf, and suffered a penalty He did not owe, but which we owed because of the multitude of our sins; and so He became the cause of the forgiveness of our sins, because He received death for us, and transferred to Himself the scourging, the insults, and the dishonour, which were due to us, and drew down upon Himself the appointed curse, being made a curse for us."⁵⁰ Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach rightly call this "an unequivocal statement of penal substitution." Christ "suffered a penalty He did not owe, but which we owed" — the penalty language could not be clearer. He "transferred to Himself" what was "due to us" — this is the transfer of legal consequence from the guilty to the innocent. Writers like Eusebius did not invent this language out of thin air; they received it from the tradition of the Apostolic Fathers and the second-century theologians we have surveyed in this chapter.⁵¹

As we will see in Chapters 14 and 15, the atonement thinking of the third through fifth centuries — the great era of the Church Fathers — will develop these themes further. Origen will elaborate the ransom motif. Athanasius will connect the incarnation to the atonement in powerful new ways. The Cappadocian Fathers will refine the understanding of Christ's victory. Cyril of Alexandria and John Chrysostom will use strikingly penal and substitutionary language. Augustine will produce the brilliant synthesis Victor quia Victima — "Conqueror because Victim" — showing that Christ wins His victory precisely through His self-sacrificial offering. And the Orthodox liturgical tradition, as Fr. Joshua Schooping has demonstrated in remarkable detail, will preserve penal and substitutionary language in its hymnography — the very worship of the church — for centuries to come.⁵²

But all of these later developments grow out of the seeds planted in the earliest post-apostolic period. The Apostolic Fathers and second-century writers gave the church its foundational conviction: Jesus Christ died for our sins, bore our curse, paid our ransom, conquered our enemies, and reconciled us to God. The full, systematic articulation of how all these themes fit together would take centuries to develop. But the essential ingredients were all present from the very start.

Conclusion

We began this chapter by asking what the earliest Christians after the apostles believed about why Jesus died. The answer, drawn from the primary sources themselves, is clear: they believed that Christ's death was a sacrifice for sins, a ransom for captives, a bearing of the curse that was due to humanity, a victory over death and the devil, and the supreme expression of God's love for the world. They did not have a single, unified theory of the atonement, but they had something arguably even more valuable — a rich, multi-dimensional understanding of the cross that faithfully reflected the New Testament's own diverse witness.

The claim that penal substitutionary atonement is a late Western invention with no roots in the early church does not survive contact with the actual evidence. From 1 Clement's language of Christ giving "his flesh for our flesh" to Justin Martyr's argument that Christ bore the curse due to all humanity to the Epistle to Diognetus's breathtaking description of the "sweet exchange" to Irenaeus's language of propitiation, debt-cancellation, and suffering on our behalf — the building blocks of penal substitution are present in the earliest post-apostolic literature.

At the same time, I want to be clear that these writers are more than just proof texts for PSA. They also give us the raw materials for Christus Victor (especially Irenaeus's victory and ransom themes), for recapitulation (Irenaeus's signature contribution), and for what would later become the moral influence model (the emphasis on Christ as our example). The earliest church's atonement theology was multi-faceted. And that, I believe, is exactly right. The cross is too vast, too deep, too rich to be captured by any single model. What we need — as I will argue in Chapter 24 — is an integrated vision that holds all these facets together, with penal substitution at the center.

As we turn in the next chapter to the great Church Fathers of the third through fifth centuries, we will see these themes develop further — and we will find that the substitutionary and penal elements do not disappear but actually become more explicit over time. The seeds planted in the Apostolic Fathers will grow into a rich harvest.

Bibliography

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Craig, William Lane. Atonement and the Death of Christ: An Exegetical, Historical, and Philosophical Exploration. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2020.

Eusebius of Caesarea. Proof of the Gospel [Demonstratio Evangelica]. Translated by W. J. Ferrar. London: SPCK, 1920.

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Hess, William L. Crushing the Great Serpent: Did God Punish Jesus? 2024.

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Mitros, Joseph F. "Patristic Views of Christ's Salvific Work." Thought 42 (1967): 415–447.

Polycarp of Smyrna. Letter to the Philippians. In The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, edited by Michael W. Holmes, 3rd ed., 272–301. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007.

Schooping, Fr. Joshua. An Existential Soteriology: Penal Substitutionary Atonement in Light of the Mystical Theology of the Church Fathers. Olyphant, PA: St. Theophan the Recluse Press, 2020.

Stott, John R. W. The Cross of Christ. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006.