Editor’s Note: this is the first of a two-part series regarding atonement theology. Check back on Friday for the second part! 

Those familiar with the doctrine of atonement know that it has long been populated by various explanations or models, including Christus Victor, Anselmian satisfaction, the ransom theory, the moral exemplar theory, and others. While disputes over which of these models should hold sway are not new, the fervor with which penal substitutionary atonement – and increasingly substitutionary atonement in general – is rejected has intensified in recent years. Penal substitution, which developed in part through Aquinas’ treatment of Anselm and was largely popularized by Calvin and other Reformers (though the language of substitution, sacrifice, and satisfaction were common far earlier) (1) argues that Christ’s death was propitiatory, a death in humanity’s place and for their sins, and that through it, Jesus bore the righteous wrath of God against sin on mankind’s behalf. (2) Not all substitutionary atonement theories are penal in nature – some simply propose that the atonement involved Christ’s death as humanity’s substitute, without any penal element in which Christ’s substitutionary role entails receiving the punishment due humanity. 

Penal Substitution and Substitutionary Atonement on Trial

Penal substitution has particularly drawn the ire of feminist and nonviolent theologians in in recent years: it has been likened to “cosmic child abuse”, with some alleging that the doctrine itself has been used to promote abuse, (3) and it is increasingly argued that violent and substitutionary language around the atonement ought to be abandoned altogether. (4) One of the exemplary rejections of any type of violence or substitution whatsoever in atonement is found in Delores Williams’ womanist theology. (5) Williams’ Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk discusses the long history of African American women’s experiences of enslavement and surrogacy, in which Black women were often forced to care for or bear, through rape, the children of white oppressors. Williams takes issue with much atonement doctrine, as she avers that it frequently encourages oppressed women to look to the example of Jesus in redemption as a type of surrogate, and therefore coerces them into complying with the suffering inflicted on them. (6) She argues, “…Jesus represents the ultimate surrogate figure; he stands in the place of someone else: sinful humankind.” (7) This, Williams says, is a means of making surrogacy sacred and persuading Black women to accept subjugation. 

Even if Jesus’ surrogacy on the cross is voluntary, Williams asks, “Can there be salvific power for Black women in Christian images of oppression (for example, Jesus on the cross) meant to teach something about redemption?” (8) The solution, she posits, is to jettison accounts of atonement which center “…any kind of surrogate or substitute role Jesus was reputed to have played in a bloody act that supposedly gained victory over sin and/or evil.” (9) Instead, Williams argues that atonement was actually about “…God, through Jesus, giving humankind new vision to see the resources for positive, abundant relational life.” (10) She concludes that Jesus’ death was an unjust display of human sin and defilement, which does not accomplish human reconciliation to God. (11) Williams asserts, “Humankind is, then, redeemed through Jesus’ ministerial vision of life and not through his death. There is nothing divine in the blood of the cross.” (12)

Similarly, feminist theologians Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Parker argue against the notion that suffering is redemptive and hold that theology which views the cross as the means of atonement ought to be forsaken. They assert that this doctrine has been used to argue for women’s acquiescence to suffering and submission to abuse. (13) Brock and Parker weave their doctrinal work with the stories of women who endured abuse, sometimes even death, because they were instructed to comply with violence and suffering in the name of being Christ-like. (14) One such woman, who went to her priest for counsel about the domestic abuse she experienced, was told to “‘…accept the beatings and bear them gladly, as Jesus bore the cross.’” (15) Brock and Parker argue that this acceptance of abuse by women thus results from the direct application of the church’s theology, and that the theology itself is therefore problematic. (16) Explaining the harm in Anselm and John Calvin’s respective atonement doctrines of satisfaction and substitution, Brock and Parker posit, “If God is imagined as a fatherly torturer, earthly parents are also justified, perhaps even required, to teach through violence.” (17) Instead of adjuring women to emulate the suffering of Christ on the cross, Brock and Parker insist that women should rather be empowered to resist violence by seeing Jesus’ life as supporting acts of protest and work for justice. (18) The cross, on this reading, is an act of injustice with no resolution, rather than the means of humanity’s redemption; its significance is only in illustrating God’s support of acts of “…revolutionary disobedience and spirited protest.” (19)

The concerns posed by feminist theologians demand attention and certainly ought to be treated seriously. Women, and women of color more particularly, have been subject to the outworking of patriarchal, white supremacist theology that has often been justified via misapplication of Scripture or through distorted Trinitarian theology. (20) However, is the claim that there is a necessary link between penal or substitutionary atonement theology and misogynistic, abusive theology a valid one?

1. “Atonement: The State and Shape of the Doctrine,” in Adam J. Johnson, T&T Clark Companion to Atonement, 1st edition (London: T&T Clark, 2017), 16.

2. John Stott, The Cross of Christ, Anniversary edition (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 1986), 134-136, 142-144.

3. Rita Nakashima Brock, “And a Little Child Will Lead Us: Christology and Child Abuse,” in Joanne Carlson Brown and Carole R. Bohn, Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1989), 52–53.

4. Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Redeeming the Name of Christ,” in Catherine M. Lacugna, Freeing Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 1993), 124. See also Delores S. Williams; and Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, Anniversary Edition (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2013).

5. Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk, Anniversary Edition (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 2013), 146–47.

6. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 54–74, 143.

7. Williams, 143.

8. Williams, 144.

9. Williams, 146.

10. Ibid.

11. Williams, 147.

12. Williams, 148.

13. Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 6–9.

14. Brock and Parker, 17–28.

15. Brock and Parker, 21.

16. Brock and Parker, 27.

17. Brock and Parker, 30–31.

18. Brock and Parker, 31.

19. Ibid.

20. Arnfríður Guðmundsdóttir, “Crucified - So What?” in Johnson, T&T Clark Companion to Atonement, 335–52. See also Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2021), 11–36.