The Doxological Obedience of Christ and the Transformation of Sin's Penalty: Retrieving a ‘Dialectical’ Account of Penal Substitutionary Atonement☆

Abstract

This essay engages with a recent critique of penal substitutionary atonement presented by Khaled Anatolios in his book, Deification through the Cross. According to Anatolios, this account of Christ's work is deficient in that it fails to capture a ‘dialectic of transference and transformation’ in which Christ not only assumes the penalty of sin vicariously, but renders an appropriate, ‘doxological’ response to the penalty that transforms it from a purely reprobative divine act into a means of forgiveness. In this essay, I demonstrate that the early protestant tradition, in which the penal substitutionary view of atonement largely originates, does in fact preserve this dialectic in its understanding of the ‘satisfaction’ for sin that Christ accomplishes through his so-called ‘passive obedience’. I also show that multiple noteworthy figures in the tradition (including several who strongly influenced the development of penal substitutionary accounts of atonement) explicate Christ's satisfaction in overtly ‘doxological’ terms, portraying Christ's God-exalting agency in submission to sin's penalty as the basis for the atoning value of his suffering. Constructing a ‘dialectical’ account of penal substitution can therefore be achieved through a renewed attentiveness to the traditionally protestant concept of satisfaction.