Chapter 14
The Patristic Era (3rd–5th Century):
What the Church Fathers Actually Taught

Introduction: Letting the Fathers Speak for Themselves

Few topics in the history of atonement theology are more hotly contested than the question of what the Church Fathers actually taught about the cross. If you have spent any time reading modern books on the atonement, you have probably noticed something interesting: both sides of the debate claim the Fathers as their allies. Defenders of penal substitutionary atonement insist that the Fathers taught substitutionary themes centuries before the Reformation. Critics of penal substitution argue that the Fathers held a "classical" view centered on Christ's victory over sin, death, and the devil — and that substitutionary atonement was invented much later by Anselm or the Reformers. Who is right?

I believe the honest answer is: both sides are partly right, and both sides are partly wrong. The great Church Fathers of the third through fifth centuries — both Eastern and Western — developed rich and multi-dimensional atonement theologies that included substitutionary, sacrificial, ransom, victory, and recapitulation themes all woven together. A fair reading of the primary sources reveals a much more complex picture than modern polemics — whether pro- or anti-PSA — typically acknowledge.

This chapter surveys the atonement thought of the major patristic theologians from Origen in the early third century through Augustine in the early fifth century. Our goal is to let the Fathers speak as much as possible in their own voice, without forcing them into categories they did not use. We will look at what they actually said — not what later theologians on either side of the debate wish they had said.

Before we begin our survey, a word of caution is in order. I am convinced that secondary sources sometimes misstate what the primary sources actually taught. Scholars with an agenda — whether they are defending penal substitution or attacking it — sometimes cherry-pick patristic quotations to make the Fathers sound like modern Calvinists or modern Christus Victor advocates. The reality is messier and more interesting than either side admits. The Fathers were not systematic theologians of the atonement in the way that later Reformers would be. They did not produce a single, tidy "theory" of the cross. Instead, they drew on the full range of biblical images — sacrifice, ransom, victory, substitution, healing, recapitulation — and wove them together in creative, sometimes uneven, but profoundly rich ways.¹

With that caution in place, let us turn to the Fathers themselves.

Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–254): The Multi-Faceted Pioneer

Origen was one of the most brilliant and creative minds the early church ever produced. He was also one of the most controversial. Some of his speculative ideas — particularly about the pre-existence of souls and universal restoration — were later condemned by church councils. But on the subject of the atonement, Origen's thinking was enormously influential, and it illustrates the multi-faceted character of early Christian reflection on the cross.

Origen is most often associated with the ransom theory of the atonement. He was perhaps the first Christian theologian to explicitly ask the question: to whom was the ransom paid? His answer was striking. He directly denied that the ransom could possibly be paid to God. "But to whom did He give His soul as a ransom for many? Surely not to God. Could it, then, be to the Evil One? For he had us in his power, until the ransom for us should be given to him, even the life of Jesus."² For Origen, the ransom was paid to the devil, who held humanity captive — but the devil was then unable to hold Christ, and so was defeated by his own greed.

This idea has struck many later readers as strange, even offensive. How could God owe anything to the devil? But as Gustaf Aulén pointed out, we should not dismiss this teaching too quickly without looking for the deeper religious convictions underneath the vivid imagery.³ The ransom language expresses a profound truth: humanity really is in bondage to sin, death, and evil. Liberation from that bondage really did cost something — the life of God's own Son. The victory really was won through what looked like defeat.

What is less commonly recognized, however, is that Origen also used substitutionary and even penal language alongside his ransom imagery. Origen spoke of Christ bearing human sins, suffering the consequences that were due to sinners, and satisfying the demands of divine justice. As David Allen has documented, "the seeds of Anselm's Satisfaction theory can be found in Origen."⁴ Origen was not a systematic theologian of the atonement in the later Western sense, but the raw materials for multiple atonement models — ransom, victory, substitution, and even satisfaction — are all present in his writings. He combined them freely, without worrying about whether they fit neatly into a single logical system.

Aulén acknowledged that even those Fathers who were most strongly influenced by Greek philosophy — and Origen was certainly among them — "take essentially the same view of the Atonement as the 'unphilosophical' Athanasius."⁵ In other words, philosophical sophistication did not lead Origen away from the basic Christian conviction that Christ's death and resurrection were God's decisive victory over the powers that held humanity captive. But it is equally true that Origen's theology cannot be reduced to Christus Victor alone. His writings contain a genuine plurality of images and ideas about what the cross accomplished.

We should also note that Origen's understanding of the atonement was deeply shaped by his commitment to biblical exegesis. He was, above all, a biblical commentator. His reflections on the cross were not abstract philosophical speculations but grew out of careful engagement with the scriptural text. When he encountered the ransom language of Mark 10:45, he asked the natural question: to whom is the ransom paid? When he encountered the sacrificial language of Leviticus and Hebrews, he explored how Christ's death fulfilled and transcended the Old Testament sacrificial system. When he encountered the victory language of Colossians 2:15, he reflected on how Christ triumphed over the cosmic powers. Each stream of biblical language prompted a different theological reflection, and Origen held them all together without feeling the need to choose one at the expense of the others.

Interestingly, Fleming Rutledge noted that Origen "called Jesus' death the mors turpissima crucis, the utterly shameful death of the cross" — a reminder that for the ancient world, crucifixion was not merely a painful death but a degrading and humiliating one.⁴⁸ This awareness of the shame and horror of the cross is an important corrective to overly abstract theological discussions. The Fathers knew that they were reflecting on something dreadful and scandalous — the execution of the Son of God by the Roman state. Their theology of the atonement was not a calm academic exercise. It was an attempt to understand the most shocking event in human history.

The lesson from Origen is an important one for our study. From the very beginning of serious theological reflection on the atonement, Christian thinkers drew on multiple biblical images and refused to be confined to a single model. Origen's theology is messy, creative, and sometimes contradictory — but that messiness reflects the richness of the biblical witness itself.

Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 296–373): Incarnation, Death, and the Defeat of Corruption

If Origen was the most creative patristic thinker on the atonement, Athanasius was perhaps the most influential. His great treatise On the Incarnation (De Incarnatione) remains one of the most important works in the history of Christian theology, and it deals directly with the question of why the Son of God became human and died on the cross.

Athanasius is often presented as a purely "incarnational" or "theosis" (divinization) theologian — someone who believed that salvation was accomplished through the incarnation itself rather than through the penal suffering of the cross. His famous statement captures this emphasis: "He became what we are that we might become what He is."⁶ The idea is that by taking on human nature, the eternal Word of God healed that nature from the inside, restoring what sin had corrupted and opening the way for human beings to share in the divine life. This is the doctrine of theosis (θέωσις), or deification — a concept that remains central to Eastern Orthodox theology to this day.

This much is well known. What is less commonly recognized is that Athanasius also used clearly substitutionary language when speaking about the cross. In On the Incarnation, Athanasius wrote that Christ, "taking a body like our own, because we all were liable to the corruption of death, he surrendered his body to death instead of all, and offered it to the Father." He continued: "the Word, since it was not possible for him to die, took to himself a body such as could die, that he might offer it as his own in the stead of all."⁷

Notice the key phrases here: "instead of all" and "in the stead of all." This is substitutionary language. Christ took a body so that He could die the death we deserved — in our place, as our substitute. Allen rightly observes that this language speaks not only to the "how" of atonement (substitution) but also to the "who" — "all," indicating an unlimited scope.⁸

Athanasius argued that the incarnation was necessary because of the seriousness of the human problem. If the only issue were guilt, perhaps God could simply forgive through an act of sovereign mercy. But the problem was deeper than that — human nature itself had become corrupted by sin and was subject to death. "Forgiveness alone could not deal with the radical corruption of human nature caused by sin," as Allen summarizes Athanasius's argument.⁹ Only if the Word of God — who is Life itself — entered into human nature and passed through death could death be conquered and human nature healed. The incarnation and the cross are inseparable in Athanasius's thought.

Now, Aulén acknowledged that Athanasius discussed the purpose of the incarnation at length, and that his central emphasis was on deliverance from death and corruption.¹⁰ Aulén argued that this represents the "classic" Christus Victor pattern: God in Christ enters the domain of death to defeat it from within. But Aulén also acknowledged a legitimate question: does Athanasius emphasize deliverance from death at the expense of deliverance from sin? Is his doctrine of salvation merely "physical" — a kind of automatic healing of human nature through the incarnation — rather than moral and judicial?

Aulén rightly rejected this interpretation. He pointed out that for Athanasius, sin and death are not separate problems. Death is the consequence and expression of sin. Christ's victory over death is a victory over sin. "He came 'that He might set all free from sin and the curse of sin, and that all might evermore live in truth, free from death, and be clothed in incorruption and immortality.'"¹¹ The Greek Fathers did not separate the physical and the moral dimensions of salvation the way modern Western theology tends to do.

What does all this mean for our study? It means that Athanasius cannot be claimed exclusively for either side of the modern atonement debate. His theology includes both incarnational/victory themes (Christ defeats death and corruption by entering into human nature) and substitutionary themes (Christ dies "in the stead of all," bearing the death that was due to us). The attempt to read Athanasius as a pure Christus Victor theologian with no substitutionary dimension — or, conversely, as a proto-penal substitution theorist — is a selective reading of the evidence. The reality is richer than either caricature allows.

The Cappadocian Fathers: Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa

The Cappadocian Fathers — Basil the Great (c. 330–379), Gregory of Nazianzus (329–390), and Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–394) — were three of the most important theologians of the fourth century. They played a decisive role in the development of Trinitarian theology and the defeat of Arianism at the Council of Constantinople in 381. But they also made significant contributions to atonement thought, and their writings illustrate both the strengths and the tensions of patristic reflection on the cross.

Gregory of Nazianzus: Rejecting the Ransom to the Devil

Gregory of Nazianzus is best known in atonement discussions for his famous rejection of the idea that the ransom was paid to the devil. In one of the most often-quoted passages in patristic theology, Gregory asked:

To whom and why was this blood poured out for us, the great and precious blood of God, the high priest and sacrifice? We were in bondage to the Evil One, sold under sin and receiving pleasure in exchange for wickedness. Now, if the ransom belongs to no one else but him who holds the captive, I ask to whom it was offered and why. If to the Evil One — what an outrage! ... But if to the Father, first, how? For it was not by Him that we were oppressed. And next, on what principle did the blood of His Only-Begotten Son delight the Father?¹²

This passage is remarkable for several reasons. First, Gregory clearly rejected the idea that the ransom was paid to the devil. He called it an "outrage" — a word that carries real theological weight. Second, and this is less often noticed, Gregory also expressed discomfort with the idea that the blood of Christ was offered to the Father as a payment that "delighted" Him. Gregory did not want to portray God the Father as someone who demands or enjoys the suffering of His Son.

Does this mean Gregory rejected substitutionary atonement altogether? Not at all. Gregory still affirmed that Christ's suffering and death have genuine atoning significance. What he rejected was a crude transactional model — whether the transaction is imagined as a payment to the devil or as a payment to an angry Father. Aulén noted that Gregory "sums up the purpose of the Incarnation thus: 'that God, by overcoming the tyrant, might set us free and reconcile us with Himself through His Son.'"¹³ For Gregory, the atonement is the work of divine love. God acts in Christ to defeat the powers that hold us captive and to reconcile us to Himself. The mechanism is not a commercial transaction but a divine invasion of enemy-occupied territory.

Gregory of Nazianzus also made a profound contribution to Christology that is directly relevant to the atonement. His famous principle — "What is not assumed is not healed" — established that Christ must be fully human in order to save humanity. If the Son of God did not truly take on a complete human nature — body, soul, and mind — then that nature remains unhealed and unredeemed. This principle was decisive in the defeat of Apollinarianism (the view that Christ had a human body but a divine mind) and remains foundational for Christian theology. As we will argue more fully in Chapter 23, the incarnation is the necessary precondition for the atonement — Christ must be fully human to represent humanity, and fully divine to accomplish what only God can do.¹⁴

Gregory of Nyssa: The Fishhook and What Lies Beneath

Gregory of Nyssa, the younger brother of Basil the Great, developed the ransom imagery in a direction that many modern readers find almost comical — the famous "fishhook" theory. Gregory pictured the devil as a great fish who saw the humanity of Christ as bait. The devil swallowed the bait eagerly, thinking he could devour this man as he had devoured all others. But hidden within the bait of Christ's humanity was the hook of His divinity. The devil was caught and destroyed by the very one he thought he was consuming.¹⁵

To modern ears, this sounds bizarre — perhaps even offensive. How can we speak of God deceiving the devil? Stott noted that "to us the analogy of the fish hook is grotesque," and he was joined by R. W. Dale, who called such patristic theories "intolerable, monstrous, and profane."¹⁶ But before we dismiss Gregory too quickly, we should pay attention to the deeper theology that lies beneath the vivid imagery.

Gregory was not merely telling a clever story. He was making a profound theological point about the nature of evil and the nature of God's victory. Evil overreaches. Sin and death and the devil are ultimately self-defeating. When the powers of evil conspired to destroy the sinless Son of God, they sowed the seeds of their own destruction. This is, in fact, a deeply biblical idea. Paul wrote that none of the rulers of this age understood God's wisdom, "for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Corinthians 2:8, ESV). The cross is the ultimate irony: what looked like the triumph of evil was actually its defeat.

But there is another element in Gregory's thought that is often overlooked. Gregory also spoke of the atonement in terms of God's righteousness and justice. He argued that God could have saved humanity by sheer force — by an almighty decree that simply overruled the devil's dominion. But God chose not to act that way. Instead, God acted righteously, justly, and wisely. As Aulén explained, "Various answers are given" by the Greek Fathers to the question of why God chose the way of the incarnation and cross rather than a simple act of omnipotent rescue. Gregory's answer was that God's righteousness required a more complex solution than brute force.¹⁷

Aulén offered an important observation about what lies beneath the mythological language of the ransom to the devil. The idea that the devil has "rights" over fallen humanity — strange as it sounds — is really an expression of a much deeper conviction: "the desire to assert the guilt of mankind, and the judgment of God on human sin."¹⁸ The Fathers were trying to express the fact that sin has real consequences, that death is not an accident but a judgment, and that God could not simply wave these consequences away without undermining His own justice. This is, in embryonic form, the same theological instinct that would later find more precise expression in the satisfaction and penal substitution models.

Cyril of Alexandria (376–444): A Crucial Voice in the Substitution Debate

Cyril of Alexandria is one of the most important — and most underappreciated — Fathers for the debate about substitutionary atonement. Known primarily for his Christological contributions (particularly his defense of the title Theotokos, "God-bearer," for Mary, and his role in the Council of Ephesus in 431), Cyril also wrote extensively about the saving significance of Christ's death. And his writings contain some of the most explicit substitutionary language to be found anywhere in the patristic tradition.

In his commentaries on Isaiah and other biblical books, Cyril consistently interpreted the death of Christ in substitutionary terms. He spoke of Christ bearing our sins, suffering in our place, enduring the punishment that was due to us, and satisfying the demands of divine justice. As we will document more fully in Chapter 15, Cyril's substitutionary language is extensive and unambiguous.¹⁹

Cyril wrote, for example, that Christ "suffered for us, and bore the punishment due to us." In his commentary on Isaiah, he described Christ as the one who "was wounded for our transgressions" and "bore our sins in His own body on the tree" — language drawn directly from Isaiah 53 and 1 Peter 2:24, and interpreted in a plainly substitutionary way. When he commented on 2 Corinthians 5:21 ("For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God," ESV), Cyril understood this as a genuine exchange: Christ took our sin upon Himself so that we might receive His righteousness.

The significance of Cyril for the modern atonement debate should not be underestimated. Here is an Eastern Father — one of the most revered theologians in the Eastern Orthodox tradition — using substitutionary language that sounds remarkably similar to what Protestant Reformers would later say. This does not mean Cyril was a proto-Protestant. He was thoroughly Eastern in his theology, emphasizing the incarnation, theosis, and the cosmic scope of salvation. But it does mean that the common claim — that substitutionary atonement is a purely Western invention with no support in the Eastern Fathers — simply does not hold up when you read the primary sources carefully.

Aulén listed Cyril of Alexandria alongside Origen, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Chrysostom, and others as representatives of the "classic idea" of the atonement in the East.²⁰ And that is true — Cyril did hold to Christ's victory over death and the devil. But Cyril also held these victory themes alongside substitutionary language in a way that Aulén's neat categories do not fully capture. The reality is that Cyril, like many of the Fathers, combined multiple atonement images without feeling any tension between them.

John Chrysostom (c. 349–407): The Golden-Mouthed Preacher of the Cross

John Chrysostom — whose name means "golden-mouthed" — was the greatest preacher of the ancient church. As archbishop of Constantinople, he combined brilliant oratory with a deep pastoral concern for ordinary believers. His sermons and commentaries are still read and treasured today, both in the East and in the West. And his writings contain some of the richest atonement theology in the entire patristic period.

Chrysostom's commentary on 2 Corinthians 5:21 is especially important for our purposes. This verse reads: "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (ESV). This is one of the most important atonement texts in the New Testament (discussed in depth in Chapter 9), and Chrysostom's interpretation of it is striking.

Chrysostom understood this verse as teaching a genuine exchange between Christ and the believer. Christ, who was sinless, was "made sin" — He took upon Himself the burden of our sin, bearing its consequences in our place — so that we might receive His righteousness. Chrysostom interpreted this not merely as a moral influence or a demonstration of love, but as an objective transaction in which something real was accomplished on our behalf. Christ truly bore what we deserved; we truly received what He earned.

Chrysostom also preached powerfully about the love of God displayed in the cross. For him, the cross was not a scene of divine anger directed at an unwilling victim. It was the supreme expression of God's love for fallen humanity. The Son went willingly to the cross out of love for us, and the Father sent Him out of the same love. The cross is where divine love and divine justice meet — where God demonstrates both His hatred of sin and His passionate desire to rescue sinners.

In his homilies on Romans, Chrysostom explored the significance of Paul's statement that "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8, ESV). For Chrysostom, the key word was "while" — God did not wait for us to clean ourselves up before acting on our behalf. He came to us in the depths of our sin, our rebellion, our hostility toward Him. This, Chrysostom insisted, is what makes the cross so astonishing. It is not a transaction between equals. It is not a bargain struck between a demanding God and a worthy humanity. It is an act of sheer, undeserved, breathtaking grace — the sinless Son of God bearing the consequences of sin for those who were His enemies.

Chrysostom's approach to the atonement also included a strong emphasis on the practical and moral transformation that flows from the cross. He was, after all, a pastor who cared deeply about the daily lives of his flock. For Chrysostom, the cross was not merely a theological doctrine to be believed but a reality to be lived. Those who have been reconciled to God through Christ's substitutionary death are called to live lives of gratitude, holiness, and love for others. The objective reality of the atonement (what Christ accomplished for us) produces the subjective reality of transformation (what Christ accomplishes in us). This is another example of how the Fathers held together dimensions of the atonement that later theologians sometimes pulled apart.

In this way, Chrysostom anticipated the very position that this book defends: the atonement is genuinely substitutionary (Christ bears what we deserve), but it is motivated and characterized by love, not by wrath directed at the Son. The Trinitarian unity of the Father and the Son in the work of salvation was never in question for Chrysostom. The Father and the Son acted together, in unified purpose and mutual love, to accomplish the redemption of the world.

Aulén recognized Chrysostom as holding the "classic idea" of the atonement, and he was right to see Christus Victor themes in Chrysostom's preaching.²¹ But once again, the reality is more complex than a single label can capture. Chrysostom combined victory, substitution, sacrifice, and moral transformation in a single, richly woven tapestry. He did not feel the need to choose between them — and neither should we.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430): The Bridge Between East and West

Augustine is widely considered the most influential theologian in the history of Western Christianity. His thought shaped virtually every subsequent development in Western theology — Catholic and Protestant alike. Martin Luther was an Augustinian monk. John Calvin was deeply indebted to Augustine. Thomas Aquinas drew extensively on his work. On the doctrine of the atonement, Augustine occupies a unique position as a bridge between the Eastern patristic tradition and the later Western developments that would culminate in Anselm and the Reformers.

Augustine's atonement theology is remarkably multi-faceted. Though he wrote no dedicated monograph on the atonement, his writings contain several distinct strands of thought about what Christ accomplished on the cross. Allen summarizes these as "mediation, sacrifice, substitution, deliverance from Satan, and moral influence" — and notes that "these ideas differ little from those of the church fathers preceding him."²² In one sense, Allen is right to describe Augustine as "the halfway house between the Greek fathers of the church and Anselm in the Middle Ages."²³

Augustine and the "Classic" Christus Victor Theme

Aulén devoted considerable attention to Augustine in his survey of the Fathers, and his conclusions are worth engaging carefully. Aulén argued that "whenever Augustine treats of Christ's redemptive work his thought belongs in all essentials to the classic type" — that is, to the Christus Victor model.²⁴ Augustine spoke of humanity as being delivered into the power of the devil on account of sin. Guilt rests on the whole human race. Yet God does not cease to love humanity, and the incarnation is the proof of the greatness of His love. In Christ, God's love enters the world to overcome the powers of sin, death, and the devil, and to effect reconciliation between God and the world.

Augustine developed this dramatic view with characteristic power and depth. He argued that through sin, the human race had fallen under the dominion of the devil — not because the devil had any legitimate authority, but because humanity's rebellion against God had placed it in bondage to the one who first rebelled. The incarnation was God's answer to this bondage. By sending His Son into the world in human flesh, God entered enemy territory. The Word became what we are — weak, vulnerable, mortal — in order to defeat the enemy from within.

For Augustine, the cross was the decisive battle in this cosmic conflict. When the devil — working through human agents like Judas and the Roman authorities — succeeded in putting Christ to death, he overplayed his hand. Christ was sinless. The devil had no legitimate claim on Him. By shedding innocent blood, the devil forfeited his hold on guilty humanity. Augustine described this in vivid terms. He spoke of the devil as a bird of prey swooping down on what it thought was easy quarry, only to be caught in a trap. The cross is the trap; the blood of Christ is the bait. The devil's greed was his undoing.

Aulén pushed back against Adolf von Harnack's dismissive treatment of Augustine's Christus Victor themes. Harnack had branded these ideas as mere "relics of common Catholicism," implying that they were a less important or less sophisticated part of Augustine's thought.²⁵ Aulén rightly rejected this characterization. The dramatic view of Christ's redemptive work was intimately connected with Augustine's theology of the incarnation — a subject of central importance for Augustine. It was not a marginal leftover from an earlier era but a genuine and central element of his soteriology.

Aulén made a further argument that deserves attention. He pointed out that the Christus Victor view in Augustine was closely connected to his "very clear teaching on the Incarnation," and that "it was at this point that Neoplatonism appeared to him to fail most completely."²⁹ In other words, the dramatic, incarnational view of the atonement was precisely the point where Augustine was most distinctively Christian, most decisively breaking with the philosophical tradition that had shaped his earlier thinking. The Neoplatonists could speak of the soul ascending to God through contemplation. They could not speak of God descending to humanity through incarnation. Augustine could — and this conviction was inseparable from his understanding of what Christ accomplished on the cross.

Augustine also used the ransom imagery in creative ways. He spoke of the cross as a kind of trap set for the devil — a mousetrap baited with the blood of Christ.²⁶ The devil, deceived by his own pride, overreached by putting Christ to death and thereby lost his hold on humanity. As William Hess has pointed out, "Augustine mostly used ransom language when describing Christ's work," though with the distinctive twist that the devil "deceived himself with his own pride" rather than being actively deceived by God.²⁷

Augustine and the Turn Toward the West

But there is another side to Augustine's atonement theology that Aulén acknowledged but did not develop as fully. Augustine agreed with Athanasius on the corruption of human nature by sin, but he placed much greater emphasis on the guilt of sin — the judicial dimension. For Augustine, the deeper problem is not merely that human nature is corrupted and subject to death, but that humanity stands guilty before God and has incurred His wrath. "Death is a result of sin," Allen observes in summarizing Augustine, "but the greater problem is humanity's separation from God, which is the judicial consequence of Adam's sin."²⁸

This emphasis on guilt, wrath, and judicial consequences is what made Augustine the bridge to the later Western tradition. In the Greek Fathers, the accent tends to fall on the ontological dimension of salvation — the healing and transformation of human nature. In Augustine, the judicial dimension begins to come more clearly into focus — the need for forgiveness, the satisfaction of divine justice, the removal of guilt. Both dimensions are present in both traditions. But the emphasis is different, and Augustine's emphasis on guilt and justice would prove decisive for the development of Western atonement theology from Anselm through the Reformers.

Aulén recognized that "Neoplatonic influence" in Augustine's doctrine of love sometimes weakened the dramatic view of the atonement.²⁹ But the more important point, which Aulén somewhat underplayed, is that Augustine's theology contains genuine seeds of the satisfaction and substitution models that would later flower in Anselm and the Reformers. Augustine spoke of Christ as a sacrifice offered to God, as a mediator between God and humanity, and as one who bore the consequences of human sin on our behalf. These ideas sit alongside his Christus Victor themes without contradiction — because for Augustine, as for the other Fathers, the atonement was a single, multi-dimensional reality that could not be captured by any one image or model.

The Broader Patristic Landscape: Unity in Diversity

So far, we have surveyed the atonement thought of six major Fathers: Origen, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, and Augustine. But these were not the only important voices. The broader patristic landscape includes many other theologians who contributed to the church's developing understanding of the cross.

Leo the Great and Ambrose: Western Voices

Leo the Great (c. 400–461), Bishop of Rome, is best known for his Christological formulation at the Council of Chalcedon (451) — the famous "Tome of Leo" that articulated the doctrine of Christ's two natures in one person. But Leo also made important contributions to atonement thought. He spoke of Christ's death as a sacrifice offered on behalf of all humanity, using language that combines substitutionary and victory themes. For Leo, the incarnation was the necessary precondition for the atonement: only the God-man could accomplish what neither God alone (who cannot die) nor man alone (who cannot save) could do. This argument would later be taken up and developed by Anselm in Cur Deus Homo, but its roots are clearly patristic.

Ambrose of Milan (c. 340–397), the great bishop who famously influenced Augustine's conversion, also used sacrificial and substitutionary language in his writings on the cross. Ambrose spoke of Christ as our priest and our sacrifice, the one who offered Himself to the Father on our behalf. He combined this priestly imagery with the language of victory and liberation, holding them together as complementary rather than competing themes. Aulén counted Ambrose among the Western Fathers who held the "classic" Christus Victor view,⁴⁹ but — as with so many of the Fathers — this label captures only part of the picture.

Gregory the Great: Dramatic Imagery and Growing Complexity

Gregory the Great (c. 540–604), the last of the traditional "four great Doctors" of the Western church, deserves special mention. In Gregory, the classic Christus Victor idea found "vigorous expression," as Aulén noted. Gregory "pictures the drama of redemption in lurid colours" — outdoing even his predecessors in the vividness and intensity of his imagery.⁵⁰ Gregory's writings are significant for two additional reasons. First, they were "assiduously read during the Middle Ages" and probably had "more influence than any other writer in preserving the classic idea in existence, and preventing its disappearance." Second — and this is a detail that Aulén himself noted as intriguing — Gregory was "one of the patristic authors most studied by Luther," which may partly explain Luther's later emphasis on Christ's dramatic battle with sin, death, and the devil.⁵¹

But Gregory also illustrates the growing complexity of Western atonement thought. Alongside his dramatic Christus Victor imagery, Gregory included a number of ideas that properly belong to what Aulén called the "Latin" view — ideas about sacrifice, satisfaction, and the offering of Christ's merits to God. The two sets of ideas coexist in Gregory's writings without any apparent awareness on his part that they might represent different theological approaches. This is a pattern we see repeatedly in the patristic period: the same writer uses both "classic" and "Latin" categories without sensing any tension between them.

Aulén provided a helpful overview of this broader landscape. He argued that "the classic idea of the Atonement" — the dramatic Christus Victor model — "dominates the whole of Greek patristic theology from Irenæus to John of Damascus." He listed the major representatives: "Origen, Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Cyril of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Chrysostom represent different schools of thought and differ much from one another ... but however we classify their differences from one another, we still find a deep-lying agreement in their interpretation of Christ's work."³⁰

Aulén's point is valid as far as it goes. The Greek Fathers do share a common framework: the incarnation and atonement belong together; Christ's work is a divine act of rescue from the powers of sin, death, and the devil; salvation is the restoration of the life that was lost through the Fall. This is the "classic idea," and it is genuinely dominant in the East.

In the West, Aulén acknowledged, the picture is "more complicated." He identified the first traces of the "Latin" view of the atonement — which would later find its full expression in Anselm's satisfaction theory — in the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian. Tertullian's teaching about penance centered on the idea of satisfaction made by humans for sin and the concept of merit. Cyprian "first applies the ideas of Tertullian directly to the Atonement."³¹ After Cyprian, these "Latin" ideas gradually worked their way into Western theological reflection, coexisting with the dominant Christus Victor themes.

But even in the West, Aulén insisted, the classic Christus Victor idea remained dominant during the patristic period. He pointed to Ambrose, pseudo-Ambrose, Augustine, Leo the Great, Caesarius of Arles, Faustus of Rhegium, and Gregory the Great as Western Fathers who held the classic view.³² The Latin satisfaction doctrine "was never fully worked out" during this period, "much less set consciously in opposition to the classic idea." Instead, elements of both types of thinking often stood "side by side without any apparent consciousness on the part of those who use them of their essential diversity."³³

This observation is extremely important. The Fathers did not see themselves as choosing between rival "theories" of the atonement. They drew freely on multiple biblical images — sacrifice, ransom, victory, substitution, healing, exchange — and combined them in creative ways. The idea that the atonement must be explained by one and only one model is a later development. The Fathers were more interested in proclaiming the reality of what God accomplished in Christ than in constructing a logically airtight system to explain how it all works.

The Incarnation and the Atonement: An Inseparable Connection

One of the most distinctive features of patristic atonement thought — and one that distinguishes it from much later Western theology — is the inseparable connection between the incarnation and the atonement. For the Fathers, the question "Why did the Son of God become human?" and the question "Why did Jesus die on the cross?" were not two separate questions. They were one question with one answer.

Aulén emphasized this point strongly: "The organic connection of the idea of the Incarnation with that of the Atonement is the leading characteristic of the doctrine of redemption in the early church."³⁴ The central thought is that "God Himself enters into this world of sin and death for man's deliverance, to take up the conflict with the powers of evil and effect atonement between Himself and the world."

Both Athanasius and Augustine discussed at length the question Cur Deus homo? — "Why did God become man?" For Athanasius, the answer lay in the fact that through sin, death had gained "legal rights" over humanity. God's love for the fallen race persists despite the judgment upon them. Therefore, Life itself — God the Word — must enter the world of death and prevail over it from within. For Augustine, the answer was similar but with a stronger emphasis on divine love: "His love could not be more clearly revealed than by the coming of His Son into fellowship with us, to take upon Himself our sufferings and the evil which rests upon us."³⁵

Gregory of Nyssa expressed this same conviction with unforgettable eloquence:

It is of the nature of fire to tend upwards, and no one finds anything strange when it thus takes its natural direction. But any who should see a tongue of flame shooting downwards would regard it as most surprising if the fire remained fire, and yet in its movement pointed in a direction which was contrary to its nature. Similarly, the invincibility of the Divine power is not so proved by the vastness of the heaven, the radiance of the stars, the orderliness of the universe, and the providential government of all things, as it is proved by its condescension to the weakness of our nature.³⁶

The point is stunning. The greatest demonstration of God's power is not the creation of the universe. It is the incarnation — the fact that God stooped down to share our weakness, our suffering, and our death. This is not weakness disguised as strength. It is the deepest kind of strength there is: the strength of self-giving love that enters into the darkness to bring light, enters into death to bring life.

This patristic emphasis on the incarnation as itself salvific has profound implications for atonement theology. It means that the cross cannot be isolated from the whole of Christ's life. As Aulén observed, "According to Anselm, Christ became man primarily in order that He might die; but this isolation of the death of Christ is impossible for the patristic view. Death is, indeed, the way by which the victory is won, but the emphasis lies on the victory."³⁷ For the Fathers, the incarnation, the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ form a single, inseparable saving event. To focus exclusively on the moment of death — as some later Western formulations tend to do — is to lose sight of the larger drama of redemption.

This is a genuine insight that later Western theology — including some versions of penal substitutionary atonement — has sometimes lost. I believe that a healthy doctrine of the atonement must hold together what the Fathers held together: the incarnation, the life, the death, and the resurrection as one integrated saving work. Substitutionary atonement is not diminished by this broader framework. It is enriched by it. Christ's substitutionary death on the cross is the climax of a life of perfect obedience, and it is vindicated by the resurrection. The whole of Christ's incarnate existence is the atonement.

God as Both Reconciler and Reconciled: The Double-Sidedness of the Atonement

One of Aulén's most important observations about the patristic view of the atonement was what he called its "double-sidedness." In the classic view, God is both the Reconciler and the Reconciled. God is the one who acts in Christ to save humanity, and God is also the one to whom humanity is reconciled. The atonement is not a transaction between two separate parties — a wrathful God and a loving Son — but a single divine act in which God Himself bears the cost of reconciliation.³⁸

This double-sidedness is profoundly important, and it aligns closely with the position defended in this book. When we say that the atonement is substitutionary, we are not saying that an angry Father punished an unwilling Son. We are saying that the Triune God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — acted in unified love to bear the consequences of human sin. The Son went willingly. The Father sent Him in love. The Holy Spirit sustained Him through the ordeal. This is what John Stott called "the self-substitution of God" — God Himself, in the person of His Son, becoming the substitute for sinners.³⁹

The Fathers understood this intuitively, even if they did not always express it in the precise language of later Trinitarian theology. For Athanasius, it was the Word of God — the Second Person of the Trinity — who entered into death to defeat it. For Augustine, it was divine love that motivated and accomplished the whole work of salvation. For the Cappadocians, God's wisdom and righteousness — not brute force — were the means by which the powers of evil were overcome. In every case, the emphasis is on God's own action, God's own initiative, God's own self-giving love as the driving force behind the atonement.

This is the insight that must be preserved in any faithful account of substitutionary atonement. The cross is not the Father versus the Son. It is God for us, bearing what we could not bear, defeating what we could not defeat, reconciling us to Himself at infinite cost to Himself. As we will argue more fully in Chapter 20, any version of penal substitution that pits the Father against the Son — that depicts a wrathful God pouring out rage on an innocent victim — fundamentally betrays the Trinitarian theology that the Fathers worked so hard to establish.

It is worth pausing to reflect on how this patristic insight speaks to the modern debate. Critics of penal substitutionary atonement — from Steve Chalke's infamous "cosmic child abuse" charge to more sophisticated theological critiques — often argue that PSA necessarily divides the Trinity. If the Father punishes the Son, they say, then the Father and the Son are working at cross purposes: the Son is the victim, the Father is the punisher. This would indeed be a devastating objection if it accurately described what PSA teaches. But it does not. The best defenders of substitutionary atonement — from Stott to Philippe de la Trinité — have always insisted that the cross is a unified act of the Triune God. The Father does not punish an unwilling Son. The Son volunteers. The Father sends Him in love, not in rage. The Spirit sustains Him through the ordeal. The entire Godhead acts in concert, in a single movement of self-giving love.

The Fathers understood this. When Athanasius spoke of the Word entering into death to defeat it, he was not describing a conflict between the Father and the Son. He was describing the Triune God acting in unified love to accomplish something that only God could accomplish. When Augustine spoke of God's love being "more clearly revealed" in the incarnation than in any other way, he was describing a Trinity united in purpose and action. When Gregory of Nazianzus rejected the idea that the Father was "delighted" by the blood of His Son, he was protecting this very Trinitarian insight: the cross is not a spectacle of divine violence but an act of divine love.

Philippe de la Trinité, writing from the Catholic Thomistic tradition, captured this beautifully when he spoke of Christ as the "victim of love" — one who suffers not because the Father forces suffering upon Him, but because love itself demands a costly response to the reality of human sin. The Father inspired in the Son "the will to offer Himself" out of "unmeasured charity and obedience."⁵³ This is substitution grounded in love, not in wrath. And I believe it is deeply consistent with what the Fathers themselves taught.

Evaluating Aulén's Thesis: Partly Right, Partly Wrong

At this point, we are in a position to offer a balanced evaluation of Gustaf Aulén's enormously influential thesis about the patristic view of the atonement. Aulén's Christus Victor, published in 1931, argued that the "classic" Christus Victor model — Christ's victory over sin, death, and the devil — was the dominant view of both the New Testament and the early church, and that the "Latin" satisfaction theory introduced by Anselm was a departure from this classic view. Aulén further argued that Luther recovered the classic view, only for it to be displaced again by Protestant scholasticism's emphasis on penal substitution.⁴⁰

Where is Aulén right? He is right that Christus Victor themes are genuinely dominant in the patristic period. The dramatic view of Christ's battle with the powers of evil, His victory through death and resurrection, and the deliverance of humanity from bondage — this is the common thread that runs through virtually all the Fathers, both Eastern and Western. Aulén performed an invaluable service by recovering this neglected dimension of patristic thought and giving it a name.

He is also right that the incarnation and the atonement are inseparably connected in patristic thought, and that later Western theology — particularly in its more extreme "Latin" forms — sometimes lost this connection by isolating the death of Christ from the broader drama of the incarnation, life, and resurrection.

But where is Aulén wrong? He is wrong — or at least seriously misleading — in suggesting that the "classic" view and the "Latin" (substitutionary/satisfaction) view are two fundamentally different and incompatible types of atonement theology. Aulén created a taxonomy — classic, Latin, subjective — that implies these are mutually exclusive options. You are either a Christus Victor theologian or a substitutionary atonement theologian. You cannot be both.

But the Fathers were both. As we have seen, Athanasius used clearly substitutionary language ("in the stead of all") alongside his incarnational and victory themes. Cyril of Alexandria combined extensive substitutionary language with his Christus Victor framework. Even Origen, the great pioneer of the ransom theory, used language that anticipates satisfaction theology. And Augustine combined all of these strands — victory, ransom, substitution, sacrifice, moral influence — in a single, multi-dimensional theology of the cross.

Allen made this point forcefully: "most patristic theologians also held to some form of a satisfaction/substitutionary atonement" alongside their Christus Victor convictions. He cited Jean Rivière's groundbreaking 1931 study, which "demonstrated that both the Latin and Greek church fathers utilized the concepts of sacrifice and penal substitution."⁴¹ Similarly, Garry Williams has documented that "penal substitution was taught by the early church fathers."⁴² The evidence is simply too widespread to be dismissed.

Aulén himself acknowledged that in the West, "Latin" and "classic" ideas often stood "side by side without any apparent consciousness on the part of those who use them of their essential diversity."⁴³ But Aulén attributed this to theological confusion — the Fathers did not realize they were mixing incompatible categories. I think a better explanation is that the Fathers saw no incompatibility because there is none. Christus Victor and substitutionary atonement are not competing theories. They are complementary dimensions of a single, multi-faceted reality. Christ's bearing of the penalty of sin is the means by which the powers are defeated. The "record of debt" is cancelled (the penal dimension) and the powers are disarmed (the victory dimension) in the same event (Colossians 2:13–15).

The Question of Penal Language: How Far Does It Go?

We must address directly a question that is often raised in the modern debate: did the Fathers use genuinely penal language — language of punishment, penalty, and divine judgment — in their descriptions of the atonement? Or did they speak only of substitution in a broader, non-penal sense?

The answer, I believe, is that penal language is present in the Fathers, though it is not the dominant note. The Fathers spoke frequently of Christ bearing our sins, dying in our place, and paying the debt that was due to us. They occasionally spoke of Christ enduring the punishment or penalty of sin. But they did not develop a systematic theory of penal substitution in the way that the Reformers would later do. The penal dimension is present as one element within a larger, multi-faceted picture — not as the organizing center of the whole.

This is an important distinction. Those who claim that the Fathers taught PSA in its full Reformation-era formulation are overstating the evidence. The Fathers did not speak of Christ "satisfying the demands of retributive justice" in the precise technical language of Francis Turretin or Charles Hodge. They did not use the language of "imputation" (the legal transfer of guilt from sinner to Christ and of righteousness from Christ to sinner) in the systematic way that later Reformed theologians would. They did not debate the exact relationship between Christ's active and passive obedience, or the precise mechanism by which the penalty of sin is transferred from the guilty to the innocent. These are questions that arose later, in a different theological context, driven by different philosophical and pastoral concerns.

But those who claim that the Fathers had no penal or substitutionary concepts at all are equally overstating the case in the opposite direction. When Athanasius says that Christ died "in the stead of all," that is substitutionary language. When Cyril speaks of Christ bearing "the punishment due to us," that is penal language. When Chrysostom interprets 2 Corinthians 5:21 as a genuine exchange of sin and righteousness, he is articulating the core logic of substitutionary atonement. When Augustine speaks of the guilt of the whole human race and the need for reconciliation through the blood of Christ, he is laying the groundwork for the later Western emphasis on judicial categories.

The analogy I find helpful is that of a seed and a full-grown tree. The Reformation-era doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement is the full-grown tree — a mature, systematic, precisely articulated theological position. The patristic writings contain the seeds of that tree — genuine substitutionary and penal concepts that are present but not yet fully developed or systematized. To deny that the seeds are there is to ignore the evidence. But to claim that the full-grown tree is already present in the patristic period is to confuse the seed with the harvest.

Allen expressed this well when he wrote that "in their discussions of the atonement, the church fathers anticipated in germinal form most of the models of the atonement, which would be more fully developed later."⁵⁴ The word "germinal" is key. The ideas are present in seed form. They would grow and develop over the centuries — through Anselm's satisfaction theory, through the Reformers' penal substitution, through the modern defenses of Craig, Stott, and Gathercole. But the roots go back to the Fathers.

The key question, as I see it, is not whether the Fathers taught PSA in its later systematic form. They did not. The key question is whether the theological substance of penal substitution — the conviction that sin has judicial consequences, that those consequences must be addressed, and that Christ bore them on our behalf — is present in patristic thought. And the answer to that question, based on a fair reading of the primary sources, is clearly yes. Chapter 15 will document this evidence in much greater detail.

Responding to Hess: Was the "Classical View" the Only View?

Before we conclude, it is worth engaging briefly with William Hess's treatment of the patristic evidence in Crushing the Great Serpent. Hess argues that "the early church primarily held to what I have called the Classical View" — a view centered on Christus Victor, recapitulation, and ransom — and that "PSA has its roots in Anselm's satisfaction theory and was later championed during the Reformation."⁴⁴

Hess is right that the classical themes were dominant. We have seen the evidence for this throughout the chapter. Where I respectfully disagree with Hess is in his suggestion that the classical view was the only view — that substitutionary and penal categories were absent from patristic thought until Anselm introduced them in the eleventh century.

Hess himself acknowledges the complexity of the evidence. He notes, for example, that Augustine "paved the way for more godward theories of the atonement to blossom" — a concession that Augustine's thought contained elements that would later develop in the direction of satisfaction and substitution.⁴⁵ And while Hess argues that Venantius Fortunatus's hymn about Christ bearing "wrath so great and justice fair" does not refer to divine wrath, his alternative interpretation — that the "wrath" refers to human wrath against Christ — is debatable.⁴⁶

The deeper issue, I believe, is that Hess sets up a false choice between the classical view and substitutionary atonement. If the early church held to Christus Victor, then (on Hess's logic) it could not have held to substitution. But as we have seen throughout this chapter, the Fathers freely combined both sets of imagery. Christus Victor and substitution are not competitors. They are dance partners. Christ's substitutionary bearing of sin is the very mechanism by which the victory over the powers is won. The Fathers understood this instinctively, even if they did not always articulate it in the systematic language we might prefer.

Hess also raises a fair point about the early church fathers not being infallible. He writes: "the early church fathers are not infallible, but they do provide helpful context to the thinking of the church in its earliest forms."⁴⁷ I agree entirely. We are not trying to "prove" substitutionary atonement by arguing that the Fathers taught it. The ultimate authority is Scripture, not the Fathers. But the Fathers are important witnesses. If the early church — the community closest to the apostles in time and culture — understood the cross in terms that include substitution, this is significant evidence that substitutionary themes are genuinely present in the New Testament itself, not inventions of later Western theology.

Conclusion: A Genuinely Multi-Faceted Tradition

What have we learned from our survey of the great Church Fathers of the third through fifth centuries? Let me summarize the key findings.

First, the patristic tradition is genuinely multi-faceted. The Fathers did not teach a single, monolithic theory of the atonement. They drew on the full range of biblical images — sacrifice, ransom, victory, substitution, healing, exchange, recapitulation — and wove them together in creative and sometimes unsystematic ways. This is not a weakness of patristic theology. It is a strength. The cross is too rich, too deep, and too mysterious to be captured by any single model.

Second, the Christus Victor model is genuinely dominant. Aulén was right about this. From Origen to Augustine, the dramatic view of Christ's battle with and victory over the powers of sin, death, and the devil is the common thread that unites virtually all the Fathers. This is the "classic idea," and it deserves the central place that Aulén gave it in the history of atonement thought.

Third, substitutionary and even penal themes are genuinely present alongside the Christus Victor themes. Athanasius spoke of Christ dying "in the stead of all." Cyril of Alexandria used extensive substitutionary language. Chrysostom interpreted 2 Corinthians 5:21 as a genuine exchange of sin and righteousness. Augustine combined victory, substitution, sacrifice, and moral influence in a single multi-dimensional theology. The attempt to read the Fathers as purely Christus Victor theologians with no substitutionary dimension is a selective reading of the evidence.

Fourth, the incarnation and the atonement are inseparable. This is perhaps the Fathers' most important contribution to the atonement debate. The cross cannot be isolated from the whole of Christ's incarnate life. The Son of God became human in order to save — and His saving work encompasses the incarnation, the life of perfect obedience, the sacrificial death, and the triumphant resurrection. Any theology of the cross that focuses exclusively on the moment of death, abstracted from this larger narrative, has lost something essential.

Fifth, the Fathers consistently grounded the atonement in the love of God. This is a point that cannot be emphasized enough, because it directly addresses one of the most common criticisms of penal substitutionary atonement — that it portrays God as a wrathful deity who must be appeased. The Fathers would have rejected this picture emphatically. For Athanasius, it was God's love for the fallen race that motivated the incarnation. For Augustine, "His love could not be more clearly revealed than by the coming of His Son into fellowship with us." For the Cappadocians, "the deepest reason for God's action" was "the necessity imposed by His love." The atonement, for the Fathers, was from first to last an act of divine love. If our doctrine of the atonement ever loses this note — if it ever portrays the cross as primarily about anger rather than love — it has departed from the patristic consensus and, more importantly, from the biblical witness itself.

Sixth, and finally: both those who claim the Fathers as exclusively supporting PSA and those who claim the Fathers had no penal or substitutionary concepts are reading selectively. The truth is more complex, more interesting, and more fruitful than either extreme allows. The Fathers give us a vision of the atonement that is at once cosmic and personal, victorious and substitutionary, incarnational and sacrificial. This is the vision that this book seeks to recover and defend — with substitution at the center, but the other facets arranged around it in their proper places.

As Philippe de la Trinité would later argue from within the Catholic tradition, the heart of the atonement is not divine rage but divine love. Christ is the "victim of love" — one who suffers willingly, in union with the Father, out of obedience and charity. This is not the negation of substitution. It is the fulfillment of it. The deepest substitution is not one coerced by anger but one motivated by love. And this is precisely what the Fathers teach us, across the full breadth of the patristic tradition.⁵²

In the next chapter (Chapter 15), we will look more closely at the specific penal and substitutionary language found in the Fathers — language that has been overlooked, minimized, or misrepresented by many modern scholars. We will let the Fathers speak in their own words, and we will see that the evidence for substitutionary themes in the patristic tradition is far more extensive than many people realize.

Bibliography

Allen, David L. The Atonement: A Biblical, Theological, and Historical Study of the Cross of Christ. Nashville: B&H Academic, 2019.

Athanasius. On the Incarnation. Translated by a Religious of C.S.M.V. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1996.

Aulén, Gustaf. Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement. Translated by A. G. Hebert. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2003.

Gregory of Nazianzus. Orations. In A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser., vol. 7. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. New York: Christian Literature Company, 1894.

Gregory of Nyssa. The Great Catechism (Catechetical Oration). In A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser., vol. 5. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. New York: Christian Literature Company, 1893.

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

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

Origen. Commentary on Matthew. In The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 9. Edited by Allan Menzies. New York: Christian Literature Company, 1897.

Philippe de la Trinité. What Is Redemption? How Christ's Suffering Saves Us. Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Road, 2021.

Rivière, Jean. The Doctrine of the Atonement: A Historical Essay. 2 vols. Translated by Luigi Cappadelta. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1909.

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.

Williams, Garry. "Penal Substitution: A Response to Recent Criticism." Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 50, no. 1 (2007): 71–86.