Chapter 22
Ransom, Satisfaction, Moral Influence, and Governmental Theories

Introduction: A Rich Tradition of Reflection

Throughout the history of the Christian church, believers have never stopped thinking deeply about the cross. What exactly did Jesus accomplish when He died? How does His death actually save us? And what is the best way to explain something so vast and so mysterious? As we have seen in the preceding chapters, penal substitutionary atonement — the teaching that Christ bore the judicial penalty for our sins in our place — stands at the center of the biblical witness. And in Chapter 21, we explored the powerful Christus Victor model, which highlights Christ's triumph over sin, death, and the devil. But these are not the only ways Christians have tried to make sense of the cross.

In this chapter, we turn our attention to four additional atonement models that have played important roles in the history of Christian thought: the ransom theory, the satisfaction theory, the moral influence (or moral exemplar) theory, and the governmental theory. Each of these models picks up on something real and important in the Bible's teaching about the cross. Each captures a genuine facet — a true side — of what Christ accomplished. And each has been held by sincere, thoughtful Christians who were trying their best to understand the depths of God's saving work.

But I also want to be honest from the start: I believe that each of these models, when taken by itself, falls short as a complete explanation of the atonement. Each one tells part of the story, but none of them tells the whole story. The cross is simply too big, too rich, and too multidimensional for any single model to capture all by itself. That is why we need an integrated approach — one that places penal substitution at the center while gratefully receiving the genuine insights that each of these other models provides. That integration will be the work of Chapter 24. Here, our task is to understand each model on its own terms, to appreciate its strengths, to honestly acknowledge its weaknesses, and to see how it relates to the broader picture of the atonement.

We will examine each model using the same basic framework: What does this model teach? What biblical evidence supports it? What are its real strengths? Where does it fall short? And how does it connect to penal substitutionary atonement? My goal is to be fair to each view — even where I disagree — while also showing why none of them can stand alone as a sufficient account of what happened at Calvary.

I. The Ransom Theory

A. What the Ransom Theory Teaches

The ransom theory is one of the oldest approaches to the atonement in the history of the church. In its simplest form, it teaches that humanity, because of sin, had fallen under the power and dominion of Satan. We were captives — prisoners of the devil — and we needed to be set free. Christ's death on the cross was the price paid to secure our release. His life was the ransom — the payment — that purchased our freedom from the forces of evil.¹

The word "ransom" itself carries the idea of a payment made to secure the release of a captive. In the ancient world, prisoners of war and enslaved people could sometimes be freed if someone paid a ransom price on their behalf. The early Christians noticed that the New Testament uses exactly this kind of language to describe what Jesus did for us, and they developed the ransom theory to explain it.

Now, where things got interesting — and controversial — was the question of to whom the ransom was paid. Different church fathers gave different answers. Some, like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, taught that the ransom was paid to Satan. Since humanity was under the devil's dominion, God had to pay the devil to let us go. Gregory of Nyssa famously used the image of a fishhook: Christ's humanity was the bait, and His divinity was the hook hidden inside it. Satan took the bait — he thought he was getting a prize when he claimed Christ's life — but he was caught on the hook of Christ's divine power and defeated.² Gregory the Great used a similar image, comparing the cross to a mouse trap baited with Christ's blood, which tricked Satan.³

Others disagreed strongly with this idea. Gregory of Nazianzus — a different Gregory — objected to the notion that God would owe anything to the devil. He denied that the ransom was paid to Satan or to God, and he argued that pressing the "payment" language too far was a mistake.⁴ Still others suggested the ransom was paid to God's justice — that humanity owed a moral debt to the Father, and it was God who received the payment.

And then there was a third option: a combination of these ideas. In this view, to ransom us from the devil and to purify us before God, Jesus paid the price of His own life. The devil received nothing except his own defeat, while God received the offering of Christ's perfect sacrifice. This combined approach tried to hold together the victory dimension (Christ defeating the powers) and the Godward dimension (Christ satisfying divine justice) in a single framework.

B. Biblical Support for the Ransom Model

The ransom model has genuine and important biblical support. The language of ransom, redemption, and purchase runs throughout the New Testament like a golden thread.

The most important text is Mark 10:45, where Jesus Himself says: "For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." This is a stunning statement. Jesus describes His own death as a ransom — a payment made on behalf of others. The Greek word here is lytron (λύτρον), which means a price paid for release. And the phrase "for many" uses the preposition anti (ἀντί), which means "in the place of" or "instead of" — a word with clear substitutionary force.⁵ As argued in Chapter 7, this is one of the most important statements Jesus made about the meaning of His death.

Paul picks up the same language in 1 Timothy 2:5–6: "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all." Here Paul uses the even stronger word antilytron (ἀντίλυτρον) — a "substitutionary ransom" — and extends it to "all" people, emphasizing the universal scope of Christ's saving work.⁶

Peter writes in 1 Peter 1:18–19: "...knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot." Peter makes clear that the ransom price was not money but something infinitely more valuable: the blood — the very life — of Christ. And the image of a "lamb without blemish" ties the ransom directly to the Old Testament sacrificial system, connecting purchase language with sacrificial language.

Paul also uses purchase language in 1 Corinthians 6:20: "For you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body." And the book of Revelation celebrates this same reality in a song of worship: "Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9).

The language of redemption — which is closely related to ransom — is even more widespread. The Greek word apolytrōsis (ἀπολύτρωσις), meaning "redemption" or "deliverance procured by a ransom," appears in many key passages, including Romans 3:24, Ephesians 1:7, and Colossians 1:14.⁷ As discussed in Chapter 2, this entire word group carries the connotation of liberation — of being set free from bondage through a costly payment.

C. Hess's Defense of the Ransom Model

In his book Crushing the Great Serpent, William Hess provides an energetic defense of the ransom motif as central to the atonement. Hess argues that the biblical concept of "ransom" does not necessarily involve a monetary transaction or a payment to a specific party. Instead, he proposes that ransom should be understood more broadly as "freedom at a great cost."⁸

Hess builds his case by looking at how ransom language is used in the Old Testament, especially in connection with the Exodus. When God brought Israel out of Egypt, the Bible describes it as a "ransoming" or "redemption" (Micah 6:4; Isaiah 43:3). But God did not pay Egypt anything — He brought judgment on Egypt to set His people free. The Exodus was liberation, not a commercial exchange. God used the very weapon of the enemy — death — to procure freedom for His people.⁹

Hess draws a vivid modern analogy: "In WW2 the Allied Powers ransomed the Jews from Nazi Germany." There was no monetary exchange, no bribery — but there was a terrible cost in blood and life to purchase freedom for the oppressed. In the same way, Hess argues, Christ paid the price by giving His own life and blood to ransom us from the devil's bondage. Satan did not receive a payment; he was properly and thoroughly defeated.¹⁰

Hess also connects the ransom to the Passover. At the first Passover, the blood of the lamb marked God's people and caused the angel of death to pass over them. In the same way, Christ's blood — shed at Passover time — marks a new covenant people. For Hess, the blood does not "satisfy" God's wrath but rather cleanses, purifies, and marks God's people, causing wrath to be averted rather than appeased.¹¹

I want to be fair to Hess here, because he raises some genuinely important points. He is absolutely right that the biblical concept of ransom is broader than a simple commercial transaction. He is right that the Exodus is a powerful paradigm for understanding redemption. And he is right that the language of liberation, freedom, and victory is woven deeply into the New Testament's account of the atonement. These are real insights that deserve to be taken seriously.

D. Strengths of the Ransom Model

The ransom theory has several genuine strengths. First, it is clearly rooted in biblical language. When Jesus says He came "to give his life as a ransom for many," He is using ransom language. When Paul speaks of being "bought with a price," he is using purchase language. When Peter says we were "ransomed" by the blood of Christ, he is using redemption language. Any theory that takes these texts seriously captures something real about the atonement.

Second, the ransom model rightly emphasizes the human predicament as one of bondage. We are not just guilty before God — we are also enslaved. Sin has us in its grip. The devil exercises a real, though limited, dominion over fallen humanity. The New Testament is clear about this: Satan is called "the ruler of this world" (John 12:31), "the god of this age" (2 Corinthians 4:4), and the one who holds people captive to do his will (2 Timothy 2:26). Any account of the atonement that ignores this captivity dimension is incomplete.

Third, the ransom model captures the costliness of salvation. Freedom is not cheap. It cost God something immeasurably precious — the life of His own Son. As Hess rightly emphasizes, love is willing to pay whatever cost is necessary to rescue the beloved.¹² The ransom model keeps this truth front and center.

E. Weaknesses of the Ransom Model

Despite its real strengths, the ransom theory has serious weaknesses when it is treated as a complete, standalone explanation of the atonement.

The most obvious problem is the question of to whom the ransom is paid. If the ransom is paid to Satan, this gives the devil a kind of "right" over humanity — a claim that God must honor by making a payment. But as Gregory of Nazianzus argued, this is deeply problematic. Satan is a usurper, not a legitimate ruler. He has no rights that God is obligated to respect. The idea that the holy God would enter into a commercial transaction with the devil — that He would "pay off" Satan to secure our release — strikes many theologians as, in Anselm's word, an "outrage."¹³

David Allen notes several serious problems with the ransom theory as a standalone model. First, there is no clear scriptural evidence that God paid a ransom to Satan. Second, the theory "presses the debt metaphor in Scripture to the extreme limit." Third, it "rested upon unsound views of the unity, sovereignty, and moral character of God."¹⁴ Oliver Crisp has observed that the ransom theory is less like a developed doctrine and "more like a motif or metaphor, for it does not provide a clear mechanism of atonement."¹⁵

If, on the other hand, the ransom is paid to God's justice (as some suggest), then we have essentially moved into the territory of penal substitution or satisfaction theory — Christ's death satisfies the demands of divine justice on our behalf. This is not really a separate theory at all but a confirmation that ransom language, when pressed to its logical conclusion, points toward the penal substitutionary framework.

And if we say the question "to whom is the ransom paid?" is simply pressing the metaphor too far — as Hess and some others suggest — then we are left with a powerful image but not a fully developed explanation. We know that Christ's death was costly and that it secured our freedom, but we have not yet explained how or why it accomplished this. What is the mechanism? What is the connection between Christ's death and our liberation? The ransom model, by itself, does not provide a clear answer.

I find Hess's proposal — that ransom simply means "freedom at a great cost" without a specific recipient — to be partially helpful but ultimately insufficient. He is right that we should not imagine God dropping coins into Satan's palm. But Hess goes too far when he denies any Godward dimension to the ransom. The Bible does not merely say that Christ's death freed us from Satan; it also says that His death dealt with our guilt before God, satisfied divine justice, and turned away divine wrath (Romans 3:25; 1 John 2:2; Hebrews 2:17). These Godward realities cannot be reduced to liberation from the devil alone.

F. How the Ransom Model Relates to Penal Substitutionary Atonement

The ransom model is not an alternative to penal substitutionary atonement. It is a complement to it. When we ask what the "ransom price" actually is, the answer the New Testament gives is that Christ bore the penalty of our sin. He paid the cost of our liberation by absorbing the judicial consequences of our rebellion against God. As Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach argue, the biblical theme of ransom has "an unmistakeable overtone of moral culpability" — we are not innocent captives but willing slaves of sin who stand guilty before God. Our bondage to Satan is itself a consequence of our rebellion against God. Therefore, "it is to God we are under obligation: to him the ransom must be paid. This takes us inescapably to the doctrine of penal substitution."¹⁶

In other words, the ransom model tells us that we needed to be set free and that Christ's death was the price of our freedom. Penal substitution tells us why that particular price was necessary: because sin incurs a penalty under God's justice, and only by bearing that penalty could Christ secure our release. The two models work together beautifully. As argued in Chapter 21's treatment of Colossians 2:13–15, Christ's bearing of the penalty (the penal dimension) is the very means by which the powers are defeated and we are set free (the ransom and victory dimension).

II. The Satisfaction Theory (Anselm of Canterbury)

A. What the Satisfaction Theory Teaches

The satisfaction theory is most closely associated with Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), one of the greatest theologians of the medieval period. Anselm laid out his theory in his famous work Cur Deus Homo — Latin for "Why the God-Man?" — written in 1098. This book is one of the most important works on the atonement ever written, and it marked a major turning point in how Christians thought about the cross.¹⁷

Anselm was deeply dissatisfied with the ransom theory, particularly the idea that God had paid a ransom to Satan. He found this notion disgraceful — an outrage against God's sovereignty and dignity. So he set out to provide a better explanation, one that focused not on a transaction with the devil but on the relationship between humanity and God.¹⁸

At the heart of Anselm's argument is a concept drawn from the feudal world in which he lived: honor. In the medieval feudal system, a vassal owed loyalty, obedience, and honor to his lord. If a vassal dishonored his lord — by disobedience, rebellion, or treachery — the breach had to be repaired. The lord's honor had to be "satisfied" either by adequate punishment or by some compensating act of honor that was greater than the original offense.

Anselm applied this framework to the relationship between God and humanity. God created us and we owe Him the total response of obedience, worship, and love. Sin is the withholding of this debt. When we sin, we rob God of the honor that is rightfully His. We create a deficit — a debt — that must be repaid. And here is the problem: the offense is infinite, because it is committed against the infinite God. Therefore, the satisfaction required must also be infinite. No ordinary human being can provide it, because even a perfect life of obedience would only pay what was already owed — it could not make up for the past deficit.¹⁹

This is why, Anselm argued, the God-Man was necessary. Only a human being ought to make satisfaction (since it is humanity that sinned), but only God can make satisfaction (since only an infinite being can offer an infinite payment). Therefore, the one who makes satisfaction must be both God and man — and that is exactly who Jesus Christ is. Christ, the God-Man, lived a perfect life and then offered His death on the cross as an act of supreme honor to the Father. Because Christ was sinless, He did not owe this death — He freely gave it. And because He is divine, His sacrifice has infinite value, more than sufficient to cover the infinite debt of human sin.²⁰

As Allen summarizes, Anselm concluded that humanity should make atonement but cannot, while God could do it but must not — since the debt is owed by human beings. The only solution is Christ, the God-Man, who alone can make the infinite satisfaction that God's honor requires.²¹

Since a thorough historical treatment of Anselm was provided in Chapter 16, I will not repeat it here. Instead, our focus in this chapter is on how the satisfaction theory relates to penal substitution and to the other atonement models.

B. Strengths of the Satisfaction Theory

Anselm's satisfaction theory was a genuine breakthrough in the history of atonement theology, and it has several important strengths.

First, Anselm rightly located the problem of sin in the God-human relationship rather than in a God-devil transaction. By moving the focus from Satan to God — from a ransom paid to the devil to a satisfaction rendered to God — Anselm recovered a crucial biblical insight. The fundamental problem of sin is not just that we are enslaved to the devil but that we have offended the holy God. Our primary debt is owed to God, not to Satan. This was an enormous improvement over the more speculative versions of the ransom theory.

Second, Anselm took the seriousness of sin with profound gravity. Sin is not a trivial matter that God can simply wave away. It is an infinite offense against the infinite God, and it demands a response that is proportionate to the offense. Anselm's insistence on this point — captured in his famous statement to his dialogue partner Boso, "you have not yet considered the seriousness of sin" (nondum considerasti quanti ponderis sit peccatum) — remains one of the most penetrating critiques of all merely subjective theories of the atonement.²²

Third, Anselm rightly grounded the necessity of the atonement in who God is. The cross was not arbitrary; it arose from God's own nature. God cannot simply overlook sin, because to do so would contradict His own character. As Anselm put it, the problem is not merely that God's feelings are hurt but that the entire moral order — which flows from God's own being — is at stake.²³

Fourth, Anselm showed that the incarnation was necessary for the atonement. Only a God-Man could make the satisfaction, because only a man ought to pay the debt and only God could provide a payment of infinite value. This insight has been profoundly influential and is affirmed across Christian traditions.

Fifth, as Fleming Rutledge notes, Anselm's framework preserves the Trinitarian unity of the atonement. The cross proceeded from God's eternal, triune inner being: "We must emphatically reject any interpretation that divides the will of the Father from that of the Son, or suggests that anything is going on that does not proceed out of love."²⁴ This is a point on which Anselm and the position defended in this book are fully agreed.

C. Weaknesses of the Satisfaction Theory

For all its strengths, Anselm's satisfaction theory has some significant limitations.

The most common criticism is that Anselm framed the problem of sin primarily in terms of God's honor rather than God's justice. Critics have long argued that this reflects the feudal honor culture of Anselm's medieval world more than the biblical categories of justice, law, and penalty. In the Bible, the problem is not merely that God's honor has been offended but that His law has been broken, His justice has been violated, and a penalty is owed. Sin is not just a failure to honor a feudal lord; it is a transgression of the moral law of the universe, and it incurs a judicial penalty — death and separation from God.²⁵

However, we should be careful not to overstate this criticism. Allen notes that Anselm himself was quite clear that he was not simply concerned with God's personal honor in a petty sense. Rather, the "whole conception revolves around our need to honor God, not God's need to be honored." For Anselm, God's honor is closely connected to the objective moral order.²⁶ As Ben Pugh has observed, Anselm's Cur Deus Homo "should be viewed as more post-patristic than proto-Reformed" — it is not a primitive version of penal substitution but a distinct approach with its own integrity.²⁷

A second weakness is that Anselm's model does not clearly include the concept of punishment. In Anselm's framework, Christ offers a "compensating good" — an act of supreme honor — that outweighs the deficit created by human sin. But Christ does not bear the penalty for sin. He provides satisfaction through the positive offering of His obedient death, not through the endurance of the punishment that sinners deserve. This is an important distinction. The Reformers would later argue that Anselm did not go far enough: it is not merely God's honor that needs satisfaction but God's justice, and the way justice is satisfied is through the bearing of the penalty itself — that is, through penal substitution.²⁸

Third, Anselm's model introduced the notion of "excess merit" — the idea that Christ's sacrifice earns more than is required and that the surplus can be distributed to sinners. While the underlying instinct is sound (Christ's sacrifice is more than sufficient), the concept of transferable merit has no clear biblical basis. The New Testament does not speak of merit in connection with the atonement but of substitution, sacrifice, and grace.²⁹

D. How the Satisfaction Theory Relates to PSA

The relationship between Anselm's satisfaction theory and penal substitution is one of the most important relationships in the history of atonement theology. They are close relatives — so close that they are sometimes confused — but they are not identical.

Both models agree on several fundamental points: sin is an objective problem that must be dealt with objectively; mere forgiveness without satisfaction would undermine the moral order; only the God-Man can provide what is needed; and the cross is the place where that provision is made. These shared convictions form the backbone of what might be called the "objective" tradition of atonement theology — the tradition that insists Christ's death actually accomplished something in relation to God, not merely in relation to us.

Where they differ is in specifying what needs to be satisfied and how it is satisfied. Anselm says God's honor needs satisfaction, and it is satisfied by Christ's offering of a compensating good of infinite value. The Reformers — especially Calvin — said God's justice needs satisfaction, and it is satisfied by Christ's bearing of the actual penalty that sinners deserve.³⁰ The shift from "honor" to "justice" and from "compensation" to "penalty" is what distinguishes penal substitution from Anselmian satisfaction.

I believe PSA represents a genuine advance beyond Anselm, because the biblical language of atonement is more naturally at home in the categories of justice, law, penalty, and substitution than in the categories of honor, compensation, and merit. When Paul says that God put Christ forward "as a propitiation by his blood" to demonstrate His "righteousness" and to show that He is both "just and the justifier" of the one who has faith in Jesus (Romans 3:25–26), the categories are judicial, not feudal. When Isaiah says the Servant was "pierced for our transgressions" and "crushed for our iniquities" and that "the punishment that brought us peace was on him" (Isaiah 53:5), the language is penal, not merely honorific. As argued in Chapters 6 and 8, the biblical data points more naturally toward penal substitution than toward Anselmian satisfaction alone.

But I also want to say clearly: Anselm was on the right track. His instinct that sin creates an objective problem requiring an objective solution is profoundly correct. His insight that only the God-Man can provide the solution is permanently valuable. And his framework provides an important stepping-stone from the patristic era to the full-blown penal substitutionary theology of the Reformation. Anselm should be honored, not dismissed, even by those of us who believe the Reformers took the next necessary step.

III. The Moral Influence Theory

A. What the Moral Influence Theory Teaches

The moral influence theory (sometimes called the moral exemplar theory) offers a dramatically different account of the atonement. While the ransom theory focuses on our bondage to Satan and the satisfaction theory focuses on our debt to God's honor, the moral influence theory focuses on the effect the cross has on us. In this view, the power of the cross lies not in any objective transaction — not in a ransom paid or a penalty borne — but in its subjective impact on human hearts. The cross is God's supreme demonstration of love, and when we see how far God was willing to go for us, we are moved to repentance, gratitude, and a transformed life.³¹

This approach is most commonly associated with Peter Abelard (1079–1142), the brilliant and controversial French philosopher-theologian who was a younger contemporary of Anselm. Abelard agreed with Anselm that the idea of a ransom paid to the devil was absurd. But he also disagreed sharply with Anselm's satisfaction theory. As Abelard wrote: "How cruel and wicked it seems that anyone should demand the blood of an innocent person as the price for anything, or that it should in any way please him that an innocent man should be slain — still less that God should consider the death of his Son so agreeable that by it he should be reconciled to the whole world!"³²

Instead of viewing the cross as an objective satisfaction, Abelard depicted Jesus primarily as a teacher and example. The voluntary self-sacrifice of the Son of God moves us to grateful love in response, and that love produces contrition and repentance. As Abelard put it, redemption is "that greatest love kindled in us by Christ's passion, a love which not only delivers us from the bondage of sin, but also acquires for us the true freedom of children, where love instead of fear becomes the ruling affection."³³ In other words, what saves us is not the objective act of Christ bearing our penalty but the subjective response of love that His sacrifice awakens in our hearts.

Now, I should note that recent scholarship has shown that Abelard himself was more nuanced than the simple label "moral influence theorist" suggests. As Allen notes, Abelard also expressed penal substitutionary ideas in his comments on Romans 4:25, and Caroline Walker Bynum has argued that "there are subjective and objective elements in the theories of both Anselm and Abelard," so that "it is quite wrong to see two redemptive theories warring for precedence in the twelfth century."³⁴ So the real Abelard was more complex than the caricature.

Nevertheless, the moral influence tradition that bears Abelard's name has been enormously influential, especially from the eighteenth century onward. Thinkers like Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Horace Bushnell, and Hastings Rashdall all developed variations on this theme. The common thread is the denial that the cross involves any objective transaction between God and Christ and the insistence that its saving power lies entirely in its subjective effect on us.³⁵

In Hess's treatment, while he does not formally identify himself with the moral influence tradition, his emphasis on the cross as a demonstration of God's love and his rejection of any notion that God's wrath needed to be "satisfied" shares some kinship with this approach. He writes that "love covers a multitude of sins" by cleansing us and reversing the corruption of sin — a view that emphasizes the transformative rather than the penal dimension of the cross.³⁶

B. Biblical Support for the Moral Influence Dimension

We must be honest: the moral influence dimension of the cross is genuinely biblical. The New Testament really does present the cross as a demonstration of God's love, and it really does call us to respond to that love with lives of gratitude, obedience, and self-giving service.

Romans 5:8 is perhaps the most important text: "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Paul says the cross is a demonstration — a visible display — of God's love. And notice the breathtaking nature of this love: it is not a response to our goodness but an initiative taken while we were still sinners, still enemies, still rebels. This is love that goes to the cross for those who do not deserve it.

First John 4:10–11 makes the connection between God's love and our response even more explicit: "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." The cross reveals the nature and depth of God's love, and that revelation is meant to produce a response — our love for one another.

Peter makes the exemplary dimension explicit: "For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps" (1 Peter 2:21). The cross is, among other things, an example to be followed. Christ's willingness to suffer for the sake of others is meant to shape our own character and conduct.

And Paul, in 2 Corinthians 5:14–15, describes the motivating power of Christ's love: "For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised." The love displayed at the cross exercises a controlling, shaping influence over the lives of believers.

So the moral influence dimension is real. The cross really does demonstrate God's love. It really does provide an example. It really does transform hearts and lives. Any account of the atonement that leaves out this subjective dimension is incomplete.

C. Strengths of the Moral Influence Model

The moral influence model has several real strengths. First, it highlights the love of God as the motivating force behind the cross. This is profoundly biblical. God did not send His Son to die because He was forced to or because He had no other option. He sent His Son because He loved us (John 3:16). The cross is, above all else, an act of divine love.

Second, the model correctly insists that the atonement must produce real change in human hearts and lives. A salvation that leaves us unchanged — that merely adjusts our legal status before God without transforming our character — would be incomplete. The moral influence tradition rightly emphasizes that the cross calls for a response: repentance, faith, love, and a new way of living.

Third, the model emphasizes not just Christ's death but also His life and ministry as revelations of God's character and will. Christ's entire life — His teachings, His compassion, His courage, His integrity — is a demonstration of what God is like and what human life is meant to be.

D. Weaknesses of the Moral Influence Model

Despite these real strengths, the moral influence model has serious and ultimately fatal weaknesses when it is treated as a sufficient account of the atonement.

The first and most fundamental weakness is that it lacks an objective foundation. If the cross is merely a demonstration of love — if nothing objective happened between God and Christ on our behalf — then the demonstration is emptied of content. As John Stott argued with characteristic clarity, true love is purposive in its self-giving; it does not make random or reckless gestures. If you jumped off a pier and drowned for no saving purpose, you would convince me of your folly, not your love. But if you drowned while rescuing me, I would indeed see love in your action. In the same way, the death of Jesus on the cross cannot be seen as a demonstration of love in itself. It can only be a demonstration of love if He gave His life in order to accomplish something — if His death had a saving purpose.³⁷

As Stott put it, "the cross can be seen as a proof of God's love only when it is at the same time seen as a proof of his justice." Paul and John saw love in the cross because they understood it as a death for sinners (Romans 5:8) and as a propitiation for sins (1 John 4:10). Without the objective accomplishment — without the bearing of the penalty, the satisfaction of justice, the defeat of the powers — the demonstration of love has no substance. It is like a firework that makes a beautiful flash but leaves nothing behind.³⁸

Second, the moral influence model does not adequately deal with the problem of sin. As Anselm told Abelard, "you have not yet considered the seriousness of sin." If sin is merely a bad habit that can be overcome by better motivation, then perhaps a powerful example of love is all we need. But if sin is a deep-rooted rebellion against the holy God — if it incurs real guilt and a real penalty — then an example, however inspiring, is not enough. We do not need merely to be motivated; we need to be forgiven, justified, and reconciled. We need our guilt to be dealt with, our penalty to be paid, and our broken relationship with God to be restored. The moral influence model, by itself, provides none of this.³⁹

Third, the moral influence model tends to require the rejection of large portions of the New Testament's own teaching about the cross. Hastings Rashdall, one of the most outspoken advocates of the moral influence view, openly rejected Jesus' ransom saying (Mark 10:45) as a "doctrinally coloured insertion" and dismissed any text that suggested the cross was necessary for the forgiveness of sins. As Stott observed, Rashdall essentially said: first construct your atonement theory, then defend it against all objections, and do not allow a little matter like divine inspiration to stand in your way.⁴⁰ This approach may be logically consistent, but it is not one that any Christian who takes the Bible seriously can follow.

Fourth, as Kevin Vanhoozer has argued, if the cross saves merely by manifesting a universal truth — "God loves you" or "God is on the side of the victims" — then it does not really change anything except our ignorance. Once we grasp the principle, the particular historical event becomes dispensable. This leads to what Vanhoozer calls "the eclipse of Jesus": the cross becomes merely an illustration of a truth that could, in theory, be communicated some other way. The preaching of the cross becomes a reassuring affirmation rather than a radical transformation.⁴¹

E. How the Moral Influence Model Relates to PSA

The moral influence model, rightly understood, is not an alternative to penal substitutionary atonement but a consequence of it. The cross demonstrates God's love because it is the place where God, in Christ, bore the penalty for our sins. The subjective effect (the stirring of our hearts) depends on the objective accomplishment (the bearing of our penalty). Without the objective, the subjective collapses.

Consider Paul's logic in Romans 5:8: "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Why does Christ's death demonstrate God's love? Because it was a death for us — a substitutionary, saving death that accomplished our rescue at the cost of His own life. If Christ's death did not actually accomplish anything — if it was merely a dramatic gesture — it would demonstrate God's willingness to make grand gestures, not His saving love.

Similarly, in 1 John 4:10, John grounds the demonstration of love in the objective accomplishment: "In this is love... that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." The love is real precisely because the propitiation is real. Take away the propitiation, and you take away the ground of the love.

So the proper relationship is this: PSA provides the objective foundation; the moral influence is the subjective response. Both are real. Both are important. But the foundation must come first. As R. W. Dale argued in his great work on the atonement, "unless the great Sacrifice is conceived under objective forms, the subjective power will be lost."⁴² The cross is an objective redemption before it is a subjective revelation, and it is precisely because it is a redemption that it is such a powerful revelation.

IV. The Governmental Theory (Hugo Grotius)

A. What the Governmental Theory Teaches

The governmental theory of the atonement was developed by Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), a Dutch jurist, statesman, and theologian. Grotius wrote in the early seventeenth century, in the wake of the Reformation, and his theory represents an attempt to defend the objectivity of the cross against the attacks of the Socinians while also nuancing the Reformers' penal substitutionary model.⁴³

To understand the governmental theory, we need a brief word about the Socinians. Faustus Socinus (1539–1604) and his followers mounted a powerful attack on penal substitution. They argued that the transfer of penalty from the guilty to the innocent was logically incoherent and morally unjust. They denied that God's justice required a satisfaction for sin and claimed that God could simply forgive by an act of will. The Socinians essentially advocated a moral influence view: the cross demonstrates God's love and inspires our repentance, but no objective transaction takes place.⁴⁴

Grotius was deeply troubled by the Socinian position because he believed it undermined the moral seriousness of the cross. But he also wanted to address some of the philosophical difficulties the Socinians had raised about the transfer of punishment. His solution was to develop what came to be called the "governmental" or "rectoral" theory.

The key move in Grotius's theory is a shift in how we think about God's role. In penal substitution, God is primarily the judge who must uphold His law and impose the penalty for its violation. In Grotius's theory, God is primarily the ruler — the moral governor of the universe — whose concern is not simply to impose the exact penalty for every sin but to uphold the moral order of creation for the good of all His creatures.⁴⁵

As ruler, God has the authority to relax the strict requirements of the law if doing so serves the greater good. A human ruler, for example, might pardon a criminal not because the crime was trivial but because the pardon serves a larger public purpose. But — and this is the crucial point — the ruler cannot simply ignore crime altogether, because that would undermine the entire system of law and order. The public must see that the ruler takes sin seriously.

In this framework, Christ's death is not the exact penalty that sinners deserve (as in strict penal substitution) but rather a "penal example" — a powerful demonstration that God takes sin seriously and will not allow His moral law to be violated with impunity. Christ's suffering shows the entire moral universe that sin has terrible consequences, even though Christ Himself is not bearing the precise punishment due to each individual sinner. God, having made this demonstration, is then free to forgive sinners on the basis of repentance and faith, because the moral order has been publicly upheld.⁴⁶

Stott summarizes Grotius's position helpfully. Grotius saw God "neither as the offended party nor as creditor nor even as judge, but as the Supreme Moral Governor of the world." What mattered to Grotius was public justice — the maintenance of the moral order — more than retributive justice. Christ's death upheld "the order of things and the authority of his own law."⁴⁷

B. The Debate Over Grotius: Did He Actually Abandon Penal Substitution?

Here is where the story gets interesting — and where much of the standard history has gotten things wrong. It has been common in theological textbooks to present Grotius as someone who abandoned penal substitution in favor of a weaker, purely governmental alternative. But as Garry Williams has demonstrated in careful research, this standard reading of Grotius is a misinterpretation.⁴⁸

Williams shows that Grotius himself clearly and repeatedly affirmed that Christ bore the actual penalty for sin. Grotius wrote that "God was moved by his own goodness to bestow considerable blessings upon us, but our sins, which deserved punishment, were an obstacle to this; so he decided that Christ, willingly and because of his love for mankind, should pay the penalty for our sins by undergoing the most severe tortures and a bloody and disgraceful death." He used the Latin word poena (penalty/punishment) three times in this single statement.⁴⁹

As Allen notes, Williams successfully challenges the conventional reading: Grotius "plainly set out here to defend the Penal doctrine, and he remains faithful to his purpose throughout the work." The punishment Christ endured arose "from the very nature of God as an example of His retributive justice" and was "of an equivalent value to the punishment deserved by sinners."⁵⁰ Williams concludes that the tradition of reading Grotius as departing from the Protestant inheritance is only accurate at two points: in his relative isolation of the atonement doctrine and in his increased emphasis on God as Ruler.⁵¹

This is an important corrective. The real Grotius was much closer to penal substitution than the caricature suggests. His distinctive contribution was not to replace the penal dimension but to supplement it with an emphasis on the public, governmental function of the cross — its role in upholding the moral order for the benefit of all God's creatures.

C. Strengths of the Governmental Theory

Even apart from the question of what Grotius himself actually believed, the governmental dimension of the cross is genuinely important.

First, the governmental theory rightly emphasizes that God is not merely a private party in a dispute with sinners. He is the sovereign Ruler and Lawgiver of the moral universe. As such, He has a responsibility to uphold the moral order — not just for His own sake but for the good of all His creatures. Simple forgiveness without any demonstration that sin is taken seriously would undermine the entire moral fabric of creation. This is a profound insight.

Second, the governmental theory captures the public dimension of the cross. The cross is not merely a private transaction between God and the individual sinner. It is a cosmic event with universal significance. In the cross, God publicly demonstrates His righteousness — His commitment to justice and His hatred of sin. Paul seems to point to this dimension in Romans 3:25–26 when he says that God put Christ forward as a propitiation "to show his righteousness... so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." The cross is a public declaration to the entire moral universe that God is just.⁵²

Third, several important twentieth-century theologians developed this insight in valuable ways. P. T. Forsyth wrote of "this cosmic order of holiness" that demands atonement wherever moral ideas are taken with final seriousness. Emil Brunner spoke of the "law of God's divine Being, on which all the law and order in the world is based," which "demands the divine reaction, the divine concern about sin." If this were not true, Brunner argued, "there would be no seriousness in the world at all; there would be no meaning in anything, no order, no stability; the world order would fall into ruins."⁵³ This is not a rejection of penal substitution but a deepening of it — an explanation of why the penalty matters.

D. Weaknesses of the Governmental Theory

When the governmental theory is understood as Grotius himself intended it — as a defense of penal substitution with an added governmental emphasis — it has few serious weaknesses. But when it is developed into a standalone alternative to penal substitution (as some later theologians did), several problems emerge.

First, if Christ's death is merely a "demonstration" that God takes sin seriously — rather than the actual bearing of the penalty — then the cross becomes a kind of divine theater. God stages a dramatic event to make a point, but no real penalty is actually paid. This seems to diminish both the seriousness of sin and the costliness of the cross. If the penalty could have been waived and a mere demonstration substituted, then the penalty was not really necessary in the first place — and we are back to the Socinian position that God could simply forgive by decree.

Second, the governmental theory in its weaker forms tends to ground the necessity of the cross in administrative expediency rather than in God's nature. The cross becomes necessary not because God's justice demands it but because the moral order needs to be publicly maintained. But this makes the necessity of the cross contingent and pragmatic rather than rooted in who God is. As the Reformers argued, it is something in God Himself — His perfect justice and holiness — that requires the penalty to be borne, not merely something in the social order that needs to be upheld.⁵⁴

Third, the governmental theory can inadvertently depersonalize the atonement. If the cross is primarily about maintaining the moral order, then the individual sinner's relationship with God can be lost in the bigger institutional picture. The deeply personal dimension of the atonement — that Christ died for me, that He bore my penalty, that I am individually reconciled to God — can be obscured by the focus on public governance.

It is also worth noting that the common assumption that Wesleyan theology adopted Grotius's governmental theory in place of penal substitution is historically inaccurate. As Allen demonstrates, the majority of Wesleyan systematic theologians have affirmed some form of substitutionary atonement, often penal substitution. John Wesley himself held to penal substitution.⁵⁵

E. How the Governmental Theory Relates to PSA

The governmental theory, properly understood, is not a rival of penal substitution but a complementary perspective. It highlights the public, cosmic, governmental dimension of what happens when Christ bears the penalty for sin. When the penalty is paid, justice is not only done — it is seen to be done. The moral order is publicly vindicated. The entire universe is shown that God takes sin seriously and that His law is not a dead letter.

This is the insight that both PSA and the governmental theory share: the insight captured in the Reformers' emphasis on the cross as the place where God's justice is publicly demonstrated. As discussed in Chapter 8, Romans 3:25–26 teaches that God put Christ forward as a propitiation "to show his righteousness" — a public demonstration of divine justice. The governmental dimension is embedded in the biblical text itself.

But the governmental dimension only works if the penal dimension is real. If Christ does not actually bear the penalty — if the cross is merely a dramatic illustration of God's seriousness about sin — then the demonstration rings hollow. A judge who stages a mock trial to show the public that he takes crime seriously, while actually letting every criminal go free, has demonstrated nothing except his own inconsistency. Only when the penalty is genuinely borne is the moral order genuinely upheld.

V. Comparing the Four Models: A Summary

Having examined each of these four models in detail, let me now step back and offer a comparative summary of what each one contributes and where each one falls short.

The ransom theory captures the truth that we were captives who needed to be liberated, and that Christ's death was the costly price of our freedom. It highlights the bondage dimension of our predicament — we were enslaved to sin, death, and the devil. But it does not adequately explain the mechanism of our liberation or the Godward dimension of the cross. When pressed, it either collapses into penal substitution (if the ransom is paid to God's justice) or into an evocative metaphor without a clear mechanism (if the "payment" language is not taken literally).

The satisfaction theory captures the truth that sin creates an objective problem that requires an objective solution — that God's nature demands a response to sin and that only the God-Man can provide that response. It rightly emphasizes the gravity of sin and the necessity of the incarnation. But it frames the problem primarily in terms of honor rather than justice, and it does not include the concept of penalty-bearing that is so central to the biblical witness.

The moral influence theory captures the truth that the cross demonstrates God's love and calls for a response of repentance, gratitude, and transformed living. It rightly insists that salvation must produce real change in human hearts and lives. But it lacks an objective foundation — it confuses the result of the atonement with its mechanism and cannot explain how a mere demonstration of love actually deals with the problem of guilt, penalty, and broken relationship with God.

The governmental theory captures the truth that God is the sovereign moral governor of the universe and that the cross publicly upholds the moral order. It rightly emphasizes the cosmic and public dimension of the atonement. But in its weaker forms, it reduces the cross to a dramatic illustration rather than an actual bearing of the penalty, and it grounds the necessity of the cross in pragmatic governance rather than in God's own nature.

VI. Why Penal Substitution Integrates and Completes the Other Models

Having examined each model carefully, I want to conclude by showing why I believe penal substitutionary atonement is the model that best integrates and completes the insights of all the others. This is not because the other models are wrong — they are not. It is because PSA provides the foundation on which the others stand and the center around which they are arranged.

Consider what PSA affirms. It says that Christ, the God-Man, voluntarily took our place on the cross, bearing the judicial penalty for our sins in order to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God. Now notice how this central affirmation naturally encompasses the insights of each of the other models:

The ransom insight is preserved because Christ's bearing of the penalty is the means by which we are set free from bondage. The ransom price is the penalty itself. Christ liberates us from sin, death, and the devil precisely by absorbing the judicial consequences of our rebellion. As Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach argue, penal substitution "underpins and enriches" the ransom perspective; it does not compete with it.⁵⁶

The satisfaction insight is preserved and deepened because PSA agrees that something in God's nature must be satisfied — but specifies that it is God's justice, not merely His honor, that requires satisfaction, and that the satisfaction is achieved through the bearing of the penalty, not merely through the offering of a compensating good. PSA takes Anselm's core insight and completes it with the biblical categories of law, penalty, and substitution.

The moral influence insight is preserved because the cross demonstrates God's love precisely by means of the objective accomplishment. God's love is revealed in the fact that He bore the penalty Himself rather than leaving us to bear it. The subjective impact flows from the objective reality. Without PSA, the moral influence has no content; with PSA, it has infinite depth.

The governmental insight is preserved because the bearing of the penalty is the very thing that publicly upholds the moral order. When Christ bears the penalty for sin, the entire universe sees that God's justice is real, that His law is not a dead letter, and that sin has consequences. The governmental dimension is a natural outworking of the penal dimension.

In short, PSA does not compete with these other models — it completes them. It provides the mechanism that the ransom model lacks, the specificity that the satisfaction model needs, the objective foundation that the moral influence model requires, and the substance that gives the governmental model its power. This is why I believe penal substitutionary atonement, rightly understood within a Trinitarian framework of divine love, stands at the center of the atonement — not as the only truth about the cross, but as the central truth around which all the other truths are arranged.

In Chapter 24, we will develop this integrated vision more fully, showing how all the major atonement models — including Christus Victor (treated in Chapter 21) and recapitulation/theosis (treated in Chapter 23) — fit together into a single, coherent, multi-faceted picture of the cross with penal substitution at its heart. For now, it is enough to say this: the cross is too rich, too deep, and too glorious for any single model to capture. But when we place penal substitution at the center and let the other models take their proper places around it, the picture that emerges is breathtaking in its beauty, its coherence, and its power.

Conclusion

We have covered a lot of ground in this chapter, and I want to make sure the main takeaways are clear.

First, we examined the ransom theory and found that it captures the genuine biblical truth that Christ's death liberated us from bondage at a great cost. But when we ask how and to whom the ransom was paid, the model either leads us back to penal substitution or leaves us with an evocative image without a clear mechanism.

Second, we looked at Anselm's satisfaction theory and found that it rightly emphasizes the objective seriousness of sin and the necessity of a divine solution. But it focuses on honor rather than justice and does not include the concept of penalty-bearing that is central to the biblical witness. PSA builds on Anselm's foundation and takes the next necessary step.

Third, we evaluated the moral influence theory and found that the cross genuinely does demonstrate God's love and inspire our response. But this subjective dimension depends on an objective foundation. Without penal substitution, the demonstration of love has no saving content.

Fourth, we considered the governmental theory and found that the cross genuinely does uphold the moral order of the universe. But this public dimension depends on the reality of the penalty being borne. A demonstration without a real penalty is merely theater.

Each of these models tells part of the truth. Each captures a genuine facet of the cross. But none of them, taken alone, tells the whole truth. The full picture emerges only when penal substitutionary atonement stands at the center, with ransom, satisfaction, moral influence, and governmental dimensions arranged around it as complementary facets of one magnificent, multi-dimensional reality.

The cross is like a diamond with many facets. Each facet catches the light in a different way and reveals a different aspect of the diamond's beauty. But the diamond itself — the central reality — is what gives each facet its brilliance. Penal substitutionary atonement is, I believe, the heart of the diamond. And the other models are the facets that help us see its glory from every angle.

In the chapters that follow, we will continue to explore additional facets — recapitulation and theosis in Chapter 23 — before bringing everything together in the great integrating chapter of this section, Chapter 24. But even now, I hope it is becoming clear that the atonement is not a puzzle with competing pieces but a masterpiece with complementary dimensions, each one revealing more of the inexhaustible glory of the cross.

Bibliography

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Crisp, Oliver. Approaching the Atonement: The Reconciling Work of Christ. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2020.

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Gathercole, Simon. Defending Substitution: An Essay on Atonement in Paul. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015.

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

Jeffery, Steve, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach. Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007.

Rutledge, Fleming. The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015.

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

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