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25 God presented him as the mercy seat by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his restraint God passed over the sins previously committed.
Quid Pro Quo Satisfaction? An Analysis
and Response to Garry Williams on Penal
Substitutionary Atonement and Definite
Atonement
Michael Lynch
Michael Lynch is a PhD candidate at Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids,
Michigan. He teaches secondary school Latin and Greek at Tall Oaks Classical School,
Bear, Delaware.
Key Words: atonement, penal substitution, limited atonement, Reformed theology
I. Introduction
I. Introduction
Advocates of limited atonement regularly claim that their view of the extent
of Christ’s satisfaction is alone consistent with a penal substitutionary atonement
(hereafter, PSA).1 Accordingly, the introductory chapter of a recent collection
of essays defending definite atonement states that ‘the doctrine [i.e.,
definite atonement] is a fitting and necessary corollary of penal substitutionary
atonement’.2 Garry Williams of London Seminary, who has elsewhere defended
the doctrine of PSA against its more modern critics,3 makes the same claim: ‘Penal
substitutionary atonement rightly understood entails definite atonement’.4
Williams says that ‘[i]nsistence on an atonement made for all without exception
undermines belief in penal substitutionary atonement.’5
1 The term ‘atonement’ will be used as a rough synonym for words like ‘satisfaction’
or ‘redemption accomplished’, etc. Yet it is recognized that each of these terms has a
specific semantic range in the Bible as well as in dogmatic systems. When necessity
arises to be more precise, the more precise terms will be employed. The terms ‘limited’
and ‘definite’ as applied to the ‘atonement’ will also be used synonymously. The term
‘limited’ or ‘definite atonement’ in this paper will be defined as that doctrine which
teaches that Christ made satisfaction for the sins of the elect alone.
2 David Gibson and Jonathan Gibson, ‘Sacred Theology and the Reading of the
Divine Word: Mapping the Doctrine of Definite Atonement’, in From Heaven He
Came and Sought Her: Definite Atonement in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and
Pastoral Perspective, ed. by David Gibson and Jonathan Gibson (Wheaton: Crossway,
2013), 33–53 (34). Cf. J. I. Packer, ‘What Did the Cross Achieve? The Logic of Penal
2013), 33–53 (34). Cf. J. I. Packer, ‘What Did the Cross Achieve? The Logic of Penal
Substitution’, Tyndale Bulletin 25 (1974), 3–45 (37); Robert A. Peterson and Michael D.
Williams, Why I am Not an Arminian (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2004), 201ff.
3 Garry J. Williams, ‘Penal Substitution: A Response to Recent Criticisms’, JETS 50/1
(2007), 71–86.
4 Garry J. Williams, ‘The Definite Intent of Penal Substitutionary Atonement’, in From
Heaven, 461–82, (461).
5 Ibid.,
52 • EQ Michael Lynch
The argument logically linking the two ideas (i.e., PSA and definite atonement)
assumes various aspects of one central premise—viz., that for whomever
Christ was made a substitute and for whosever’s sins Christ was punished, they
alone can and must be forgiven. Employing what has been termed the ‘doublepayment
argument’ against advocates of universal redemption, Williams writes:
‘Any attempt to insist that Christ died for all without exception raises the specter
of God punishing the same sin twice when he punishes the lost.’6 In Williams’s
mind, all advocates of an indefinite atonement who eschew universalism must
redefine the definition of sin and punishment—necessarily denying the classic
understanding of PSA.7 This argument from the nature of the atonement to definite
atonement is not new. Francis Turretin, a Reformed orthodox theologian of
the seventeenth-century, argued similarly from the nature of Christ’s suretyship
to definite atonement:
For since it implies the substitution of Christ in our stead, so that he died
not only for our good, but in our place (…) so that he transferred to himself
by his suretyship all the debt of those whose persons he bore and took it
away from them and as he effaced it most fully as if his own no less than
if the sinners themselves had done this very thing, it cannot be conceived
how they for whom he died and made satisfaction in this way could still
be subjected to an eternal curse and obliged again to bear the deserved
punishments.8
Only recently, however, have contemporary Reformed theologians attempted to
critically interact with such arguments.9
This paper focuses on two essays by Williams found in From Heaven He Came
and Sought Her.10 These two essays are worth considering for at least a couple of
reasons. First, these essays represent the best recent attempt to prove the necessary
link between PSA and limited atonement. Second, Williams’s essays also
interact with the challenges made by certain Reformed theologians to either undermine
limited atonement while upholding PSA or challenge the logic undergirding
the double payment argument.11 Williams’s two essays stand out because
he recognizes the significant criticisms levied against the double payment argument
and responds to them.
6 Ibid., 480, emphasis original.
7 Ibid.
8 Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. by George M. Giger, ed. by
James T. Dennison, Jr., 3 vols (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1994), 2:466.
9 E.g., Oliver D. Crisp, Deviant Calvinism: Broadening Reformed Theology (Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2014), 213–33; David Allen, The Extent of the Atonement: A Historical and
Critical Review (Nashville: B&H, 2016), passim.
10 Garry J. Williams, ‘The Definite Intent of Penal Substitutionary Atonement’, in
From Heaven, 461–82; ‘Punishment God Cannot Twice Inflict: The Double Payment
Argument Redivivus’, in From Heaven, 483–515.
11 It should be clear that I presume that one can be a ‘Reformed theologian’ while
denying ‘limited atonement’ as defined in footnote 1.
Quid Pro Quo Satisfaction? EQ • 53
The thesis of this essay is that Garry Williams’s contention that the ‘classical’
PSA doctrine entails limited atonement, and by extension, an indefinite atonement
necessitates a denial of a penal substitutionary view of Christ’s atoning
work, is grounded upon dubious historical work and fails to address the chief
arguments against his view. Moreover, the double payment argument that lies at
the heart of Williams’s rationale is also significantly undermined by ecclesiastical
history and theological arguments against it. Hence, it should be evident that
this essay is not an investigation into the question of the extent of Christ’s satisfaction
per se, but it investigates, from a historical and theological perspective,
the nature of Christ’s satisfaction as it impacts the former question (i.e., extent).
What is the relation of Christ’s satisfaction of divine justice vis-à-vis forgiveness
of sins? More pointedly, does Christ’s satisfaction ipso facto demand forgiveness
on the part of those for whom satisfaction is made? Can Christ make a satisfaction
for sins or sinners who ultimately end up being punished for sin? Does the
biblical metaphor of debt-payment necessitate the double payment argument?
These, and questions like it, are what this paper will investigate.
II. Definite Atonement and Penal Substitution
II. Definite Atonement and Penal Substitution
II.1 Definite Atonement as a Necessity of Penal Substitution
II.1 Definite Atonement as a Necessity of Penal Substitution
Williams’s argument for PSA as necessitating limited atonement is a twopronged
argument: historical and theological. First, Williams identifies two
significant Reformed theologians advocating a universal atonement in order to
show how they were bound to revise their notion of PSA to fit with their scheme
of universal redemption. The first theologian Williams examines is the eminent
early modern Reformed theologian, Bishop James Ussher, to ‘illustrate the effect
of universalizing the atonement itself on our understanding of the object
for whom or for which Christ bore punishment’.12 Secondly, Williams looks at D.
Broughton Knox (1916–1994)—more well-known in Great Britain and Australia,
but a significant twentieth-century Reformed theologian nevertheless. With respect
to Knox, Williams provides evidence which in his estimation further proves
that an affirmation of an indefinite atonement affects ‘our understanding of the
nature of the punishment that Christ bore’.13 It is unnecessary to summarize Williams’s
full exposition of Ussher and Knox. Given the relative importance and
pages spent on Ussher especially, only Williams’s treatment of Ussher will be examined.
14 Moreover, much of our criticism of Williams regarding Ussher could
be equally applied to Williams’s interpretation and criticism of Knox.
Regarding Ussher, Williams rightly acknowledges that Ussher strictly distinguishes
(though without separation) the act of satisfaction from its application.
Ussher, not unlike Anselm, claims that, ‘the satisfaction of Christ only makes
12 Williams, ‘The Definite Intent of Penal Substitutionary Atonement’, 462.
13 Ibid.
14 Williams spends almost twice as long dealing with Ussher as he does with Knox.
54 • EQ Michael Lynch
the sins of mankind fit for pardon, which without it could not well be; the injury
done to God’s majesty being so great, that it could not stand with his honour to
put it up without amends made.’15 The application of this satisfaction, for Ussher,
is grounded on the intercession of Christ for the elect. Satisfaction, as the
first work of Christ’s priestly function, ‘respects God the party offended’.16 The
application of redemption by faith assumes not only the execution of Christ’s
prophetic and priestly office in the work of regeneration, but also includes the
intercession of Christ, the second act of Christ’s priestly function, when one is
actually (de potentia in actum) discharged from God’s anger towards the sinner
and is justified.17
Williams’s most important point with regard to Ussher’s atonement theory respects
the object of satisfaction. Williams, relying on Crawford Gribben for support,
claims that ‘Ussher teaches that Christ did not make satisfaction for any
individual specifically, but for human nature qua nature.’18 Williams anchors his
interpretation (chiefly)19 upon Ussher’s claim that ‘the one [i.e., satisfaction] may
well appertain to the common nature, which the Son assumed, when the other
[i.e., intercession] is a special privilege vouchsafed to such particular persons
only, as the Father hath given him.’20 On account of his exposition of Ussher,
Williams critiques Ussher’s atonement theology observing that human nature
cannot be the object of satisfaction, but only persons are the true objects of satisfaction.
Natures do not exist in abstraction and they cannot bear punishment;
only persons can bear punishment. Hence, Williams concludes: ‘Substitution
and satisfaction must, therefore, be made for persons in human nature, not for
human nature alone.’21
A few responses against Williams are worth noting. First, at the most basic
level, even if Ussher did teach that Christ made satisfaction for human nature
qua nature, it does not follow that Ussher affirms it on account of, or because of,
15 James Ussher, The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, D.D., Lord Archbishop
of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, 17 vols (Dublin: Hodges, Smith, and Co., 1864),
12:554. Cf. Anselm, Why God Became Man [Cur Deus Homo?] in Anselm of Canterbury:
The Major Works, ed. by Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998), esp., 1.24; 2.14; 2.20.
16 Ussher, Works, 12:568.
17 Ibid., 12:569.
18 Williams, ‘The Definite Intent of Penal Substitutionary Atonement’, 464, 465. Cf.
Crawford Gribben, ‘Rhetoric, Fiction, and Theology: James Ussher and the Death of
Jesus Christ’, The Seventeenth Century 20/1 (2005), 53–76 (70): ‘The implication of
Ussher’s thought, though he does not put it quite so succinctly, is that Christ was not
an actual substitute for any in his death, but that he becomes a substitute for any
given individual at the moment of their conversion.’ Note, however, there is neither
mention of satisfaction, nor mention of nature in the quote. Even if Gribben is rightly
reading Ussher, Gribben does not seem to make the point that Williams is making.
19 To further substantiate the point, Williams notes similar language found elsewhere in
Ussher.
20 Ussher, Works, 12:559.
21 Williams, ‘The Definite Intent of Penal Substitutionary Atonement’, 465.
54 • EQ Michael Lynch
the sins of mankind fit for pardon, which without it could not well be; the injury
done to God’s majesty being so great, that it could not stand with his honour to
put it up without amends made.’15 The application of this satisfaction, for Ussher,
is grounded on the intercession of Christ for the elect. Satisfaction, as the
first work of Christ’s priestly function, ‘respects God the party offended’.16 The
application of redemption by faith assumes not only the execution of Christ’s
prophetic and priestly office in the work of regeneration, but also includes the
intercession of Christ, the second act of Christ’s priestly function, when one is
actually (de potentia in actum) discharged from God’s anger towards the sinner
and is justified.17
Williams’s most important point with regard to Ussher’s atonement theory respects
the object of satisfaction. Williams, relying on Crawford Gribben for support,
claims that ‘Ussher teaches that Christ did not make satisfaction for any
individual specifically, but for human nature qua nature.’18 Williams anchors his
interpretation (chiefly)19 upon Ussher’s claim that ‘the one [i.e., satisfaction] may
well appertain to the common nature, which the Son assumed, when the other
[i.e., intercession] is a special privilege vouchsafed to such particular persons
only, as the Father hath given him.’20 On account of his exposition of Ussher,
Williams critiques Ussher’s atonement theology observing that human nature
cannot be the object of satisfaction, but only persons are the true objects of satisfaction.
Natures do not exist in abstraction and they cannot bear punishment;
only persons can bear punishment. Hence, Williams concludes: ‘Substitution
and satisfaction must, therefore, be made for persons in human nature, not for
human nature alone.’21
A few responses against Williams are worth noting. First, at the most basic
level, even if Ussher did teach that Christ made satisfaction for human nature
qua nature, it does not follow that Ussher affirms it on account of, or because of,
15 James Ussher, The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, D.D., Lord Archbishop
of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, 17 vols (Dublin: Hodges, Smith, and Co., 1864),
12:554. Cf. Anselm, Why God Became Man [Cur Deus Homo?] in Anselm of Canterbury:
The Major Works, ed. by Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998), esp., 1.24; 2.14; 2.20.
16 Ussher, Works, 12:568.
17 Ibid., 12:569.
18 Williams, ‘The Definite Intent of Penal Substitutionary Atonement’, 464, 465. Cf.
Crawford Gribben, ‘Rhetoric, Fiction, and Theology: James Ussher and the Death of
Jesus Christ’, The Seventeenth Century 20/1 (2005), 53–76 (70): ‘The implication of
Ussher’s thought, though he does not put it quite so succinctly, is that Christ was not
an actual substitute for any in his death, but that he becomes a substitute for any
given individual at the moment of their conversion.’ Note, however, there is neither
mention of satisfaction, nor mention of nature in the quote. Even if Gribben is rightly
reading Ussher, Gribben does not seem to make the point that Williams is making.
19 To further substantiate the point, Williams notes similar language found elsewhere in
Ussher.
20 Ussher, Works, 12:559.
21 Williams, ‘The Definite Intent of Penal Substitutionary Atonement’, 465.
56 • EQ Michael Lynch
to bear their punishment’.25 Williams—by mere assertion26—claims that it is illegitimate
to gloss PSA as indicating that ‘the atonement was the substitution of
the penalty itself.’27 In Williams’s view, what is substituted in penal substitution
is not the penalty, but the person. Christ is substituted on our behalf, not the
punishment. Williams supports his claim by noting R. L. Dabney’s work, Christ
our Penal Substitute, and emphasizing that in Mark 10:45 what is substituted is
the person or a life in the place of lives or persons (ψυχὴ ἀντὶ ψυχῶν), not a substitution
of punishments.28
Given the importance of this topic to our thesis, an explanation and response
to Williams is necessary. First, Williams assumes that the renowned early modern
Reformed theologian John Owen represents the ‘classical’ view on the nature of
satisfaction. Yet, there are significant reasons to questions such a claim. Owen’s
work entitled the Death of Christ—the work Williams cites29—is a polemical
piece against Richard Baxter who argues for an alternative (though not necessarily
non-classical)30 approach.31 Ironically, in their debate with one another, it
was Baxter who first questioned the orthodoxy of Owen’s work on satisfaction.32
We should also note that Owen’s work was never designed to be a defense of a
classic exposition of PSA, but was simply a response to Baxter’s charge against
him of heterodoxy. Regardless, given the importance of the debate between
Owen and Baxter for Williams’s ‘classical’ assertion, it will be helpful to briefly
highlight their differences.
Owen and Baxter’s debate on the nature of satisfaction can only be briefly
summarized, but many secondary sources are available for more detailed
study.33 Owen argued that Christ bore the idem (the exact same) punishment
25 Ibid., 467, emphasis added.
26 Williams does footnote a work by John Owen. See below.
27 Williams, ‘The Definite Intent of Penal Substitutionary Atonement’, 467.
28 Ibid., 467–468. R. L. Dabney, Christ Our Penal Substitute (Richmond, VA: The
Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1898).
29 Williams, ‘The Definite Intent of Penal Substitutionary Atonement’, 467.
30 Baxter argues that his view of satisfaction (as opposed to Owen’s) was the judgment of
such theologians as John Cameron, (Andre?) Rivet, John Ball, Hugo Grotius, Andreas
Essenius, Thomas Bilson; all but Grotius being unambiguously Reformed. See
Richard Baxter, Universal Redemption of Mankind, By the Lord Jesus Christ (London:
John Salusbury, 1694), 85.
31 John Owen, Of the Death of Christ, the Price He Paid, and the Purchase He Made in The
Works of John Owen, ed. by W. H. Goold, 24 vols (repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth,
1967), 10:430–79.
1967), 10:430–79.
32 Richard Baxter, Aphorisms of Justification With their Explication Annexed (London:
Francis Tyton, 1644), Appendix, 137–65.
33 On Baxter, see esp. Hans Boersma, A Hot Pepper Corn: Richard Baxter’s Doctrine
of Justification in Its Seventeenth-Century Context of Controversy (Zoetermeer:
Uitgeverij Boekencentrum, 1993), 245–54. On Owen, see esp., Carl Trueman, ‘John
Owen on the Nature of Christ’s Satisfaction’, in From Heaven He Came and Sought Her,
201–23; Edwin Tay, ‘Christ’s Priestly Oblation and Intercession: Their Development
and Significance in John Owen’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to John Owen’s
Quid Pro Quo Satisfaction? EQ • 57
due sinners, such that God must, according to his distributive justice, forgive
all for whom Christ bore such punishment. The satisfaction worked on a pecuniary
or commercial model that ipso facto entailed the deliverance of all for
whom satisfaction was made.34 The alternative posed by Baxter, cribbing certain
aspects of Hugo Grotius’s own work on satisfaction, claimed that the satisfaction
for sin sustained by Christ was a tantundem (a just equivalent) due sinners.35 For
Baxter, because God’s law originally demanded that the very person who sins is
to be punished (Gal. 6:5), God’s provision of a substitute ipso facto meant that
the punishment due sinners is substituted.36 God’s written law, which originally
did not allow for substitution of persons, is relaxed by allowing for a penal substitute,
and so a substitute is provided. A generation before Baxter and Owen,
the Reformed theologian John Ball helpfully summarizes the view Baxter himself
adopts:
The Law in the rigour thereof, doth not admit of any commutation, or substitution
of one for another. And, therefore, that another person suffering
may procure a discharge to the person guilty, and be valid to free him, the
will, consent and mercy of him to whom the infliction of the punishment
belongeth, must concurre, which in respect of the debtour is remission;
and his over-ruling power must dispence, though not with the substance
of the Lawes demands, yet with the manner of execution, which in respect
of the Law is called relaxation.37
The point to appreciate in Ball and Baxter’s approach is simply the fact that while
Owen represents one form of PSA, there are other early modern Reformed versions.
It is difficult to see why Owen’s view should be deemed classical over and
against other forms of PSA which pre-date Owen and find significant acceptance
among Protestant circles. In fact, Williams curiously seems to grant this: ‘There
is such a thing as penal substitution in that sense [“that the atonement was the
substitution of the penalty itself”], but the classical theological idea is that it was
our very punishment that fell on Christ.’38 Williams, at this point, changes the
Theology, ed. by Kelly M. Kapic and Mark Jones (Burlington, VA: Ashgate, 2012), 159–
69.
69.
34 The commercial aspect of Owen’s doctrine of satisfaction is well-known. Cf. Carl
Trueman’s comment in The Claims of Truth: John Owen’s Trinitarian Theology
(Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 140. According to Trueman, Owen ‘seems to rely on a
crudely commercial theory of the atonement’, though not without qualification.
Even so, Trueman concludes, 140: ‘One can argue that notions of satisfaction and the
commercial theory of the atonement play an important subsidiary role within the
overall argument of the treatise.’ Cf. also Williams, ‘Punishment God Cannot Twice
Inflict’, 483–84.
35 E.g., Baxter, Universal Redemption, 78–90.
36 Owen is sensitive to this point. See Owen, Of the Death of Christ, 10:440: ‘That the law
was relaxed as to the person suffering, I positively assert; but as to the penalty itself,
that is not mentioned.’
37 John Ball, A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace (London: G. Miller, 1645), 290.
38 Williams, ‘The Definite Intent of Penal Substitutionary Atonement’, 467.
58 • EQ Michael Lynch
terms of his original thesis. No longer can he claim that a universal satisfaction
theologically precludes any PSA theory, but only his understanding of what is
classical. In essence, Williams begs the very question in dispute by limiting the
‘classical’ penal substitution model to a particular instantiation of penal substitution
found in the middle of the seventeenth-century.
Williams’s supposition about ‘classical’ PSA is further weakened by his appeal
to Dabney. Williams claims that, ‘Dabney’s phrasing [in his book Christ Our
Penal Substitute] shows nicely that the substitute was the person Christ and that
his substitution was in the realm of penalty, rather than that the punishment
was replaced by something else.’39 Elsewhere, Williams also appears to speak as
if Dabney is a representative of his version of PSA.40 Dabney, however, argues the
very PSA position Williams rejects. Not only does Dabney defend the version of
PSA that Williams is explicitly rejecting as contra-classical, but Dabney’s reading
of the tradition from what he calls ‘the standard authors’ also contradicts Williams’s
‘classical’ claim.41 Dabney writes:
For the substitution, not only of one person for another, but of one penalty
for another, in the atoning transaction called by theologians satisfaction,
is the very thing asserted by the standard authors. It is obvious that if one
person is substituted for another, then the penalty substituted cannot be
identical with that in the room of which it came, in the sense of a numerical
identity, however absolutely conformed it might be in a generic identity.42
Had Williams realized that Dabney debated the very issue Williams addresses,
openly differing with some of his fellow Southern Presbyterians such as Benjamin
Morgan Palmer, who took a position akin to Williams’s ‘classical’ penal
satisfaction view, Williams probably would have avoided looking to Dabney for
support.43
39 Ibid.
40 Curiously, though, Williams admits that Dabney denied a limited satisfaction. See
ibid., 508.
ibid., 508.
41 Robert L. Dabney, ‘Speech on Fusion with the United Synod’, in Discussions, ed. by
C. R. Vaughan, 5 vols (Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1892),
C. R. Vaughan, 5 vols (Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1892),
2:296–311, 2:309. In context, ‘standard authors’ for Dabney includes Francis Turretin
(1623–1687), George Hill (1750–1819), and John H. Rice (1777–1831). Cf. George Hill,
Lectures in Divinity, ed. by Alexander Hill (Philadelphia: Herman Hooker, 1842),
430–82, esp. 435: ‘Although the sufferings of Jesus Christ, in consequence of this
translation of guilt, became the punishment of sin, it is plain that they are not that
very punishment which the sins deserved; and hence it is that they are called by those
who hold the Catholic [i.e., universal] opinion, a satisfaction for the sins of the world.’
Also, 464: ‘The doctrine of pardon by the substitution of the sufferings of Christ in
place of the punishment due to sinners is the doctrine of Scripture.’
42 Dabney, ‘Speech on Fusion with the United Synod’, 309, emphasis original.
43 An overview of the broader theological debate Dabney had with certain Old School
Southern Presbyterians can be found in S. Donald Fortson, The Presbyterian Creed:
A Confessional Tradition in America, 1729–1870 (Milton Keyes: Paternoster, 2008),
187–207. On the debate over the nature and extent of the atonement between Dabney
Quid Pro Quo Satisfaction? EQ • 59
Finally, it is unclear whether Williams is aware of later, rather eminent, Reformed
theologians, who, while appreciating Owen’s limited atonement doctrine,
were less appreciative of his insistence on idem satisfaction. In view of
the explicit criticisms levied against John Owen’s version of penal satisfaction
by such Reformed theologians as Herman Witsius, William Cunningham, and
Herman Bavinck, Dabney’s reading of the tradition appears more plausible than
Williams’s reading.44 Does Williams believe that Witsius, Cunningham, and Bavinck
all deny the classic PSA doctrine? One wonders whether Professor Williams
thinks that Charles Hodge, the nineteenth-century Princeton theologian, denied
the classic doctrine of PSA when he wrote that Christ ‘did not suffer either
in kind or degree what sinners would have suffered’?45 Put simply, we do not see
why Williams insists on using Owen’s rather atypical elements of penal satisfaction
as the plumb line for the ‘classical’ position.
To be fair, Williams is absolutely correct to recognize how the nature of the
atonement can and often does impact one’s view of the extent of Christ’s atoning
work. Owen’s view of the nature of the atonement most certainly impacted the
work. Owen’s view of the nature of the atonement most certainly impacted the
way he understood the extent of the atonement. Yet, as can be seen in the objections
made by other advocates of definite atonement to Owen’s idiosyncratic
emphasis on idem punishment, the two need not necessarily necessitate each
other. Definite atonement, at least historically, has not always needed Owen’s
idem satisfaction. Baxter’s tantundem view does not necessarily lead to either
a definite or indefinite atonement.46 There are disagreements over the nature
of satisfaction in the seventeenth-century, one of which Williams does rightly
recognize, namely, whether Christ bore the idem punishment due sinners or a
tantundem punishment. Yet, these were debates inside of a general PSA theory,
and his fellow Old School Southern Presbyterians, see Michael J. Lynch, ‘“In Mediis
Tutissime Ibis”: An Examination of Robert Lewis Dabney’s View of the Extent of
Christ’s Satisfaction’, Lecture, Evangelical Theological Society, San Diego, CA, Nov.
20, 2014. Essential reading to understand Dabney’s position must include: R. L.
Dabney, ‘Dr. Dabney for the Plan of Union’, Southern Presbyterian (Columbia, SC), 3
December 1863, New Series Vol. IV., No. 4.
44 Herman Witsius, Conciliatory, or Irenical Animadversions, on the Controversies
Agitated in Britain, Under the Unhappy Names of Antinomians and Neonomians,
trans. by Thomas Bell (Glasgow: W. Lang, 1807), III.15 [50–51]. Herman Bavinck,
Reformed Dogmatics, ed. by John Bolt, trans. by John Vriend, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 2003–2008), 3:401–402; William Cunningham, Historical Theology, 3rd edn, 2
vols (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1870), 2:304–306.
45 Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3 vols (New York: Charles Scribner and Company,
1872), 2:471. Hodge’s whole section on ‘satisfaction’ is an implicit argument against
1872), 2:471. Hodge’s whole section on ‘satisfaction’ is an implicit argument against
Williams’s view.
46 By indefinite atonement we only mean the belief that Christ made a universal
satisfaction. Baxter and other hypothetical universalists also believed that Christ died
for the elect alone in a certain sense. See Michael Lynch, ‘Confessional Orthodoxy and
Hypothetical Universalism: Another Look at the Westminster Confession of Faith’,
in Beyond Calvin: Essays on the Diversity of the Reformed Tradition, ed. by Bradford
Littlejohn and Jonathan Tomes (The Davenant Trust, 2017), 127–48, esp. 137ff.
60 • EQ Michael Lynch
not outside such a theory. If even Grotius’s satisfaction theory is properly called
a ‘penal satisfaction’ theory, as Williams affirms, then maybe it would have been
more judicious to argue that John Owen’s PSA demands a limited satisfaction.47
Williams’s evidence might have justified such an argument, but it would not
nearly have had the same sort of rhetorical power that his more wide-sweeping
conclusion has.
Finally, Williams’s defense of Christ having made satisfaction for particular
human beings as opposed to mere human nature is not especially relevant to
the disagreement between advocates of a universal satisfaction and a limited
satisfaction.48 The question of what punishment Christ bore relative to sinners
emphasizes the importance of carefully delineating the nature of satisfaction.
Does Christ’s satisfaction ipso facto deliver one from condemnation? Is its application
to individuals infallible? It is questions such as these that the rest of
this essay will address.
III. The Double Payment Argument and Pecuniary Satisfaction
III. The Double Payment Argument and Pecuniary Satisfaction
The second prong in Williams’s argument—i.e., that PSA demands limited
atonement—is founded upon the double payment argument. This argument assumes
that God’s justice forbids the damnation of any person for whom Christ
made satisfaction. The most well-known form of this argument is found in John
Owen’s Death of Death:
God imposed his wrath due unto, and Christ underwent the pains of hell
for, either all the sins of all men, or all the sins of some men, or some sins
of all men. If the last, some sins of all men, then have all men some sins to
answer for, and so shall no man be saved; for if God enter into judgment
with us, though it were with all mankind for one sin, no flesh should be justified
in his sight: “If the Lord should mark iniquities, who should stand?”
Ps. cxxx. 3. We might all go to cast all that we have “to the moles and to the
Ps. cxxx. 3. We might all go to cast all that we have “to the moles and to the
bats, to go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks,
for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty,” Isa. ii. 20, 21. If the
second, that is it which we affirm, that Christ in their stead and room suffered
for all the sins of all the elect in the world. If the first, why, then, are
not all freed from the punishment of all their sins? You will say, “Because of
their unbelief; they will not believe.” But this unbelief, is it a sin, or not? If
not, why should they be punished for it? If it be, then Christ underwent the
punishment due to it, or not. If so, then why must that hinder them more
than their other sins for which he died from partaking of the fruit of his
death? If he did not, then did he not die for all their sins. Let them choose
47 Williams, ‘The Definite Intent of Penal Substitutionary Atonement’, 466, 492.
48 The author of this essay is not aware of any advocate of a universal satisfaction or
atonement who argues that Christ was a penal substitute only or merely for human
nature qua nature.
Quid Pro Quo Satisfaction? EQ • 61
which part they will.49
In its simplest form, the argument imagines only two options for those advocating
a universal satisfaction: either universalism, or, in Williams’s words, ‘to
redefine the object or nature of the atonement’.50
Obviously, the double payment argument was not regularly employed until
the rise of the limited atonement doctrine in the mid to late sixteenth-century.51
Yet, it would be foolish to assume that earlier theologians were ignorant of the
logic behind such an argument. For example, both Thomas Aquinas and Zachary
Ursinus address a form of the argument.
Thomas describes humanity’s plight as being a ‘debt of punishment, to which
man was bound according to God’s justice’.52 Christ’s satisfaction, correspondingly,
is depicted as ‘a price by which we were freed’ from the obligation of the
debt of punishment.53 Further, Aquinas describes this price of our redemption
as a ‘universal cause of salvation’ or ‘universal cause of the forgiveness of sins’.54
And, in case one might be tempted to think that this satisfaction is a satisfaction
for only the sins of the elect, instead of the sins of all human beings, Aquinas is
clear that satisfaction is for the sins of the whole human race. The merit of Christ
‘has the same relation to all men’, though regarding its application, the merit of
Christ is efficacious only for some.55 For Aquinas, a universal cause, such as the
49 John Owen, Salus Electorum, Sanguis Jesu; Or The Death of Death in the Death of
Christ: A Treatise of the Redemption and Reconciliation that is in the Blood of Christ,
in Works, 10:173–74.
50 Williams, ‘The Definite Intent of Penal Substitutionary Atonement’, 480.
51 This controversial historical claim is based on John Davenant’s reading of the history
of the question in John Davenant, A Dissertation on the Death of Christ, as to its
Extent and special Benefits: containing a short History of Pelagianism, and shewing
the Agreement of the Doctrines of the Church of England on general Redemption,
Election, and Predestination, with the Primitive Fathers of the Christian Church, and
above all, with the Holy Scriptures, in An Exposition of the Epistle of St. Paul to the
Colossians, trans. by Josiah Allport, 2 vols (London: Hamilton, Adams and Co., 1832),
2:309–558 (317–339). For an early instantiation of the double payment argument, see
Gottschalk, OEuvres théologiques et grammaticales de Godescalc d’Orbais, ed. by D.
C. Lambot (Louvain: “Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense” Bureaux, 1945), pg. 182 [De
C. Lambot (Louvain: “Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense” Bureaux, 1945), pg. 182 [De
Praedestinatione, 7.3].
52 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, in Corpus Thomisticum: S. Thomae De
Aquino Opera Omnia (Pamplona: Univesitatis Studiorum Navarrensis, 2000), 3.48.4.
Respondeo.
53 Aquinas, ST, in Corpus Thomisticum, 3.48.4. Resp.
54 Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, in Corpus Thomisticum, 4.55: ‘Mors enim Christi
est quasi quaedam universalis causa salutis’; SCG, in Corpus Thomisticum, 4.56;
ST in Corpus Thomisticum, 3.49.1. Ad Quartum: ‘quia passio Christi praecessit ut
causa quaedam universalis remissionis peccatorum’; Aquinas, De Veritate, in Corpus
Thomisticum, 29.7.
55 Aquinas, De Veritate, in Corpus Thomisticum, 29.7: ‘Ad quartum dicendum, quod
meritum Christi quantum ad sufficientiam aequaliter se habet ad omnes, non autem
quantum ad efficaciam: quod accidit partim ex libero arbitrio, partim ex divina
electione, per quam quibusdam misericorditer effectus meritorum Christi confertur,
62 • EQ Michael Lynch
death of Christ, is not infallibly effected: ‘it is proper that a universal cause be
applied to each human being especially, so that he or she might secure the effect
of the universal cause.’56
God’s justice does not forbid the damnation of those for whom satisfaction
is made. Aquinas raises the following objection: ‘If Christ made sufficient satisfaction
for the sins of the human race, then it seems unjust that human beings
suffer the penalties’ which sin introduced.57 Yet, for Aquinas, there is no injustice
on God’s part if those for whom satisfaction is made are damned because they
do not apply the remedy to themselves.58 The effect of Christ’s merit and satisfaction
is only applied when each person (unumquemque) is conjoined and incorporated
(coniungitur et incorporatur) into Christ by faith.59 In short, Aquinas
does not think that a satisfaction made for all sinners demands universalism.
In Aquinas’s exposition of PSA, justice does not demand that forgiveness infallibly
result from satisfaction. Williams’s claim that ‘so long as God has identified
this punishment as the punishment for these sins, then he cannot punish them
again’ is not a position that Aquinas grants. Like Aquinas, some of the more eminent
Reformed theologians also reject the logic behind Williams’s PSA theory.
Zachary Ursinus, the eminent German Reformer and primary author of the
Heidelberg Catechism, expressly deals with the double payment argument in his
lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism. Ursinus’s imaginary interlocutor objects
on multiple occasions to Ursinus’s claim that Christ made a sufficient satisfaction
for the sins of all human beings:
[Objection:] Whomsoever Christ hath fully satisfied for, they are to be received
of God into favour; for so doth the justice of God require: But Christ
hath fully satisfied for all the sins of all men. Therefore all men are to be
received of God into favour; or if this be not done, God shall be unjust, or
somewhat derogated from Christ’s merit.60
[Objection:] If Christ satisfied perfectly for all, then all must be saved. But
all are not saved. Therefore he satisfied not perfectly for all.61
Ursinus’s response to the notion that God’s justice demands that a universal satisfaction
result in universalism agrees with Thomas Aquinas’s answer. Ursinus
appeals to the conditionality of the effects of Christ’s satisfaction. The major
proposition (viz., ‘Whomsoever Christ hath fully satisfied for, they are to be received
of God into favour’) is false because there is a condition attached to the
quibusdam vero iusto iudicio subtrahitur.’
56 Aquinas, SCG, in Corpus Thomisticum, 4.55.
57 Aquinas, SCG, in Corpus Thomisticum, 4.53: ‘Si Christus pro peccatis humani generis
sufficienter satisfecit, iniustum videtur esse quod homines adhuc poenas patiantur,
quas pro peccato Scriptura divina inductas esse commemorat.’
58 Cf. Aquinas, ST, in Corpus Thomisticum, 3.49.3. Ad Primum.
59 Aquinas, SCG, in Corpus Thomisticum, 4.55.
60 Zachary Ursinus, The Summe of Christian Religion (London: James Young, 1654), 132.
61 Ibid., 293.
Quid Pro Quo Satisfaction? EQ • 63
application of Christ’s satisfaction.62 The effects of satisfaction, like remission
of sins, are suspended upon the condition of belief. That some are not saved by
Christ’s satisfaction for the sins of all human beings is due to the fault of men
‘who do not […] apply unto themselves by a true faith Christ’s merit’.63 Other
Reformed theologians responded to the double payment argument in much the
same way.64
In short, for both Aquinas and Ursinus, the accomplishment of Christ’s satisfaction
and the application of Christ’s redemption are not co-extensive regarding
human beings. Williams is not ignorant of these sorts of objections to the double
payment, and thus deems it necessary to defend the irrefusability or necessary
application of the death of Christ to all for whom Christ made satisfaction. The
remainder of this essay will focus on testing the credibility of Willams’s defense
of the double payment argument. As will hopefully become evident, Williams
fails to adequately address the concerns against the double payment argument
proffered by later Reformed theologians.
III.1 Satisfaction as Pecuniary or Penal?
III.1 Satisfaction as Pecuniary or Penal?
In the nineteenth-century it became customary for some theologians, especially
those who imbibed the New England theory of Christ’s satisfaction, to strictly
distinguish between a pecuniary satisfaction and a penal satisfaction.65 A brief
explanation of this distinction is necessary to explain why Williams argues that
‘the [double payment] argument can be reworked without the commercial concepts’
rendering ‘the double payment version safe to handle’.66
Most Reformed theologians, even those who understood Christ’s satisfaction
as a tantundem satisfaction, have willingly granted that ‘in the Scriptures, and in
common discourse, the punishment which sinners deserve is figuratively represented
as a debt’.67 Notwithstanding this concession, many Reformed theologians
equally have presumed that such commercial language found in Scripture
62 Cf. Ibid., 132, 293.
63 Ibid., 133.
64 Cf. Davenant, Death of Christ, in Colossians, 2:374–77; Baxter, Universal Redemption,
376–412; Ussher, Works, 12:569.
65 On the New England theory of the atonement see especially the literature found
in The Atonement. Discourses and Treatises by Edwards, Smalley, Maxcy, Emmons,
Griffin, Burge, and Weeks, ed. by Edwards Amasa Park (Boston: Congregational
Board of Publication, 1859). This is not to say that there are no differences among
those theologians who, in one way or another, were influenced by the New England
atonement theory. Note the diversity Henry B. Smith, a New School Presbyterian who
was very sympathetic to the teaching of the New England theologians of the previous
generation, identifies among the four main theories of the atonement, three of which
relate to God’s justice: Henry B. Smith, System of Christian Theology, ed. by William S.
Karr, 2nd edn (New York: A. C. Armstrong and Son, 1884), 464–77.
66 Williams, ‘Punishment God Cannot Twice Inflict’, 486, emphasis original.
67 Leonard Woods, The Works of Leonard Woods, 5 vols (Boston: John P. Jewett &
Company, 1851), 2:474.
64 • EQ Michael Lynch
must not be pressed so far as to imply that Christ’s satisfaction functioned in
every way like a pecuniary satisfaction. The nineteenth-century Congregationalist,
Leonard Woods, explains how the pecuniary language found in Scripture
could result in theological problems:
When a man’s pecuniary debt is paid, or when that is done which his creditor
accepts in lieu of it, he is no longer liable to be called upon for payment,
and it would be unjust and oppressive in his creditor to require payment.
But this is not true in regard to the atonement, which does, in a certain
sense, pay the debt of sinners. Their ill desert is neither taken away nor
diminished. Nor would it be any injustice to them, if God should inflict
punishment.68
Like Aquinas and Ursinus, Woods maintains that ‘God provided the propitiation—
that he might be just while he justifies believers; not that he might be
obliged in justice to save them, but that he might graciously save them, might
save them contrary to their personal desert, and yet do it consistently with the
honor of his justice.’69 To use the language of Aquinas, for Woods the satisfaction
or propitiation is the universal cause of forgiveness, but the satisfaction does
not strictly necessitate forgiveness. Forgiveness is a result of grace, not an act of
strict justice.
Oddly, Williams spends much of his essay arguing for the propriety of the
metaphor of punishment understood as a debt repayment, even though the
typical objection made against the double payment argument is not with the
metaphor per se, but the misapplication of the metaphor to certain aspects of
the nature of Christ’s satisfaction.70 Williams argues, ‘the metaphorical description
of punishment as repayment of a debt cannot be rejected tout court’, even
though many Reformed theologians who reject the double payment argument,
including Woods (as seen above), never claim to rule the metaphor out tout
court.71 Williams repeatedly asserts that PSA, in accordance with the pecuniary
language of Scripture, must give an answer to actual sins committed by actual
people. The real problem, however, facing Williams’s double payment argument,
a problem that he never adequately addresses, is his claim that punishment is
for particular people and particular sins and thus demands forgiveness. More
directly, the problem underlying Williams’s exposition of PSA is his assertion that
the satisfaction or offering of Christ was absolute rather than conditional as, for
instance, Aquinas, Ursinus, and other theologians have argued.
As already demonstrated, it was the conditionality attached to the atoning
work of Christ that allowed earlier advocates of PSA to affirm both a universal
satisfaction of sins and a limited number of persons for whom the saving benefits
of Christ’s satisfaction—chiefly remission of sins and freedom from the bondage
68 Ibid., 2:475.
69 Ibid.
70 Williams, ‘Punishment God Cannot Twice Inflict’, 487–506.
71 Ibid., 506.
Quid Pro Quo Satisfaction? EQ • 65
of sin—are applied. Both Owen and Williams recognize the conditionality of the
gospel offer (i.e., if you believe, you will be saved), but the satisfaction made only
for the elect is absolute such that the application of Christ’s satisfaction is infallibly
applied to the elect alone. As Owen expresses it, ‘It cannot be said that this
satisfaction was made for us on such a condition as should absolutely suspend
the event, and render it uncertain whether it should ever be for us or no.’72 Owen
argues (and apparently Williams as well) that while the unbelieving elect are not
temporally reconciled to God until they believe, the elect have an ‘actual right to
the things he purchased’.73
To be sure, Reformed theologians have insisted on an infallibility of the application
of Christ’s satisfaction to the elect, but this infallibility is not to be found
in or grounded on the nature of satisfaction. To rest the infallibility of application
on the nature of Christ’s satisfaction assumes not only a crass pecuniary logic
regarding the satisfaction, but also collapses the distinction between election
and the work of Christ. For most Reformed theologians, it is the decree of election
or predestination—a decree based solely on God’s good-pleasure (voluntas
beneplaciti)—that infallibly safeguards the atoning work of Christ from being
of no saving benefit to any sinner.74 By decreeing to absolutely grant the gift of
saving faith and repentance to the elect alone, God ensures that the atoning
work of Christ is not accomplished in vain. In fact, Charles Hodge says that ‘[the
atonement] does not derive its nature from the secret purpose of God as to its
application’.75 Yet, for Williams (and Owen) it is the very nature of Christ’s satisfaction—
its mechanism, if you will—that does this work.
72 John Owen, The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, in Works, 5:217.
73 Owen, The Death of Christ, 462–68. Cf. Owen, The Death of Christ, 466: ‘The right,
then, whereof we speak, which they for whom Christ died have to the things which by
his death are procured, consists in that equity, proportion, and equality, which, upon
the free compact, constitution, and consent of God the Father, is between the death
of Christ and their enjoyment of the fruits of that death.’
74 John Davenant, Animadversions Written by the Right Reverend Father in God John,
Lord Bishop of Sarisbury, upon a Treatise intitled Gods love to Mankind (Cambridge:
Roger Daniel, 1641), 8: ‘Predestination is an eternal decree or purpose of God, in time
causing effectuall grace in all those whom he hath chosen, and by this effectuall grace
bringing them infallibly to glory.’ Cf. also Augustine, A Treatise on the Predestination
of the Saints in vol. 5 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, ed. by
Philip Schaff, Series One, 14 vols (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1886–1900), ch. 19 [10]; see
also, Art. 6 and 7 of the first head of the Canons of Dort.
75 Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 2:558. NB: The atonement, broadly considered,
does for most early modern Reformed theologians include the infallibility of its
application to the elect and the elect alone. But, importantly, this infallibility is not
grounded on the nature of satisfaction, but on the nature of the pactum salutis (or
the decree of predestination) as it plays out in the work of Christ. More specifically, all
those for whom Christ was ordained by the Father to infallibly impetrate the salvific
benefits of Christ’s death will be saved. Cf. Davenant, Death of Christ, in Colossians,
2:550–551. This point was realized by George Smeaton, The Apostles’ Doctrine of the
Atonement (1870; reprint, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1957), 540–43.
66 • EQ Michael Lynch
The objection posed by Dabney to an absolute application of Christ’s satisfaction,
an objection Williams is evidently aware of (given his quotation from
Dabney), is the Achilles’ heel of the double payment argument. The structure of
the double payment argument looks like this:
Major Premise: If Christ was punished for any person’s sins, then that person
cannot be punished for their sin.
Minor Premise: Christ was punished for the elect’s sins.
Therefore: The elect cannot be punished for their sins.
Dabney challenges the major premise, but affirms the minor. Dabney questions
the major premise, asking, if justice forbids the same sin to be punished once in
Christ and then in a sinner, how can God ‘justly hold elect unbelievers subject
to wrath till they believe’ (cf. Eph. 2:1–3)?76 In other words, according to Dabney,
both experience and Scripture teach that the elect are punished for the sins
for which Christ made satisfaction. The wrath that rests upon all unbelievers,
whether elect or non-elect, is on account of sin. If it is granted, as Williams indeed
does,77 that the elect are under God’s wrath until they believe, how is such
wrath not a punishment for the same sin twice over? In other words, would not
the double-payment argument also forbid God to punish the unbelieving elect
for their sins on the grounds that their sins have been punished in Christ?
Williams does not address Dabney’s counter response to the double payment
argument. How is it that Williams can affirm that the elect are guilty for their
sin until they believe, while maintaining that the same sin cannot be punished
twice over? For what guilt are the elect punished while under God’s wrath? Is not
culpability a punishment for sin? According to Williams’s double payment logic,
once Christ made satisfaction for sin, and assuming God cannot punish twice
over, a declaration of penal guilt cannot rest on the elect whether they believe
or not. It was this very objection to Owen’s view that drove Baxter to conclude
Owen’s view of Christ’s satisfaction necessitated a justification of the elect before
their exercise of faith and repentance. After all, if the double payment argument
is true, then on what grounds can God justly be alienated from the unbelieving
elect?
Theologians have objected to the double payment argument not because,
as Williams seems to think, they denied the usefulness of pecuniary language
in explaining the work of Christ. Rather, it was because those theologians perceived
that the argument rested on a pecuniary satisfaction logic implying dangerous
theological conclusions, such as ipso facto application and irrefusability.
76 Robert L. Dabney, Syllabus and Notes of The Course of Systematic and Polemical
Theology, 2nd edn (St. Louis: Presbyterian Publishing Company of St. Louis, 1878),
521.
521.
77 So Williams, ‘Punishment God Cannot Twice Inflict’, 468: ‘It [i.e., his understanding
of satisfaction] might also be thought to procure an immediate release from sin and
therefore to render all the elect innocent, even before their conversion, a thought
inimical to the apostle Paul, for whom the elect Ephesians were once “by nature
children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:3).’
Quid Pro Quo Satisfaction? EQ • 67
As Williams himself admits, the double payment argument does not allow any
‘refusability’.78 Christ’s atoning work ipso facto delivers all for whom it was made,
even though Williams (via Owen) distinguishes between the ‘right’ to pardon
purchased and actual pardon applied in time. We now turn, finally, to Williams’s
notion of irrefusability.
III.2 Irrefusability and Pecuniary Satisfactions
III.2 Irrefusability and Pecuniary Satisfactions
Williams, following Owen, tries to claim that ‘refusability’ is a function of pecuniary
satisfaction, as opposed to penal satisfaction.79 Owen does in fact make
this claim, but it is not the typical understanding of the two types of satisfaction.
80 If person X (not himself being in debt) pays person Y’s commercial debt
owed to person Z, Y is immediately and absolutely freed from the financial obligation
owed to Z. Person Z cannot continue to hold Y under such an obligation.81
Charles Hodge helpfully explains the logic behind a pecuniary satisfaction:
When a debtor pays the demand of his creditor in full, he satisfies his
claims, and is entirely free from any further demands. In this case the thing
paid is the precise sum due, neither more nor less. It is a simple matter of
commutative justice; a quid pro quo; so much for so much. There can be
no condescension, mercy, or grace on the part of a creditor receiving the
payment of a debt. It matters not to him by whom the debt is paid, whether
by the debtor himself, or by some one in his stead; because the claim of
the creditor is simply upon the amount due and not upon the person of
the debtor.82
Yet in a penal satisfaction wherein a substitute is provided to bear the penalty in
the place of the criminal:
It would be to the offender a matter of pure grace, enhanced in proportion
to the dignity of the substitute, and the greatness of the evil from which
the criminal is delivered. Another important difference between pecuniary
and penal satisfaction, is that the one ipso facto liberates. The moment
the debt is paid the debtor is free, and that completely. No delay can be
admitted, and no conditions can be attached to his deliverance. But in the
case of a criminal, as he has no claim to have a substitute take his place, if
one be provided, the terms on which the benefits of his substitution shall
78 Williams, ‘Punishment God Cannot Twice Inflict’, 510–11, 515.
79 John Owen, The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, in Works, 5:217.
80 Apart from those expositions of the two theories of satisfaction already mentioned in
this essay, by Ball, Hodge, Baxter, Smith, and Woods, note also: George Hill, Lectures
in Divinity, 436–39; William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 3rd edn, ed. by Alan
Gomes (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2003), 694–95, 726–27.
81 Even if there were a condition attached to the payment made by X to Z in the place
of Y, it still holds true that as soon as X pays Z, Y is immediately and absolutely
released from pecuniary obligation to Z. A new debtor-creditor relationship would be
established, between X and Y, while the previous one, between Y and Z, is annulled.
82 Hodge, Systematic Theology, 2:470.
68 • EQ Michael Lynch
accrue to the principal, are matters of agreement, or covenant between the
substitute and the magistrate who represents justice. The deliverance of
the offender may be immediate, unconditional, and complete; or, it may
be deferred, suspended on certain conditions, and its benefits gradually
bestowed.83
Williams, along with Owen, affirms that the application of deliverance is ‘gradually
bestowed’ upon the condition of belief, but denies that the satisfaction can
be ‘absolutely suspended’. They both insist that it would be unjust for God to
punish the elect’s sins once satisfaction has been made. In contrast, for Hodge,
there is no injustice on God’s part in a penal understanding of satisfaction if the
elect were to die as adults in unbelief and consequently ‘perish notwithstanding
the satisfaction made for their sins’.84
The Reformed English Bishop, John Davenant, was accurate when he claimed
that ‘the Doctors of the Reformed Church’ in the sixteenth century, along with
the great majority of Christian theologians previous to them, ‘judged it improper
to mingle the hidden mystery of Election and Preterition [i.e., non-election or
reprobation] with this doctrine of the Redemption of the human race through
Christ, in such a manner as to exclude any one, before he should exclude himself
by his own unbelief’.85 It is uncertain, however, how Williams’s doctrine does not,
in fact, exclude the non-elect from salvation because of the limitation of the satisfaction.
It would seem that on Williams’s view, the sins of the non-elect are unforgivable
on the same logic that the elect’s sins must be forgiven. Further, what
does such teaching have to say about the gospel offer itself? Can one proclaim
to every person that God is able (according to his justice) to forgive them of their
sins, antecedent to their exercise of faith? The preacher, as the mouthpiece of
God himself, could only, on Williams’s theory, consistently proclaim that the sins
of the elect are forgivable or able to be remitted.
IV. Conclusion
IV. Conclusion
In conclusion, Williams’s attempt to prove the logic behind PSA as necessitating
definite atonement falls quite short of the evidence produced. First, Williams
delimits his understanding of what can rightly be deemed ‘classic’ PSA to such
a degree that it merely begs the question—amounting to little more than something
like: ‘my understanding of Christ’s satisfaction for certain sins/sinners demands
the conclusion that Christ died for the elect alone.’ This seems to be the
nature of the conclusion to his two essays:
83 Ibid., 2:470–71.
84 Ibid., 2:557–58.
85 Davenant, Death of Christ, in Colossians, 2:336. Cf. also, 2:339: ‘Our orthodox Doctors
so explained the doctrines of election and reprobation, that the decree concerning
the choosing of certain individual persons to the infallible obtaining of eternal
life, and passing by others, might not infringe the universality of the redemption
accomplished by the death of Christ.’
Quid Pro Quo Satisfaction? EQ • 69
The nature of punishment, reflected in the idea of repayment, requires
that for suffering to be punishment it must be an answer returned to specific
sins committed by specific people. The atonement must in itself be
definite. The nature of punishment as answer also establishes the double
punishment argument: when God has given an answer to a sin, it has been
given. Payment God cannot twice demand; punishment God cannot twice
inflict. Christ’s blood has spoken an answer to the sins of his people, including
their sins of unbelief. Nothing more remains to be said.86
Second, Williams does not respond to the principal complications associated
with his particular understanding of satisfaction, namely, the notion of refusability
and the double payment which results when he affirms that unbelieving
elect are under God’s wrath. Again, Williams is quite right to recognize that
the double payment argument rests on a particular understanding of the nature
of satisfaction. But he fails to account for how the double payment argument
presupposes fundamentally pecuniary or commercial notions, which challenge
other doctrines like justification by faith, the sufficiency of Christ’s death to forgive
all sinners, or the universal gospel offer. If satisfaction is for this sinner and
not that sinner, this sin and not that sin, then how can he disavow a quid pro
quo satisfaction, a quantification of Christ’s work, excluding the non-elect from
redeemablity?87 When Reformed theologians described the double payment argument
as ‘pecuniary’, they did so because they rightly recognized that the argument
presupposed a satisfaction that functioned like a debt-payment.
One final point worth mentioning regards the rhetoric of those who argue
that PSA demands definite atonement. It is rather strange to argue, as Williams
has, that PSA is a catholic doctrine found amongst not only the earliest of church
fathers but also among the rest and most significant theologians of the later
Christian tradition, when that same Christian tradition has by and large argued
for some form of universal satisfaction.88 To be sure, Williams probably would
not grant such a reading of the tradition, but that just emphasizes how critical it
is to question his claim regarding ‘classical’ PSA, before arguing that it demands
definite atonement. Williams’s two essays neither demonstrate that PSA logically
implies definite atonement, nor do they deal with the substantial objections lev-
86 Williams, ‘Punishment God Cannot Twice Inflict’, 515.
87 Ibid., 515: ‘Nor should [the idea of punishment as repayment] be taken to imply that
the penal substitutionary suffering of Christ is quantifiable.’
88 Again, this claim is well beyond the scope of this essay, but is adequately
demonstrated by John Davenant, Death of Christ, in Colossians, 2:317–339; Cf. also
Jean Daille, Apologiae Pro Synodis Alensonensi et Carentonensi, 2 vols (Amsterdam:
John Ravensteynus, 1655), 2:753–1224; Herman Hildebrand, Orthodoxa Declaratio
Articulorum Trium, De Mortis Christi Sufficientia et Efficacia, Reprobationis Causa
Meritoria, Privata Denique Communione…et Postmodum Judiciis Theologorum
clarissimorum, in Anglia Reverendiss. Johannis Davenantii Sarisburiensis et Josephi
Halli Exoniensis Episcoporum, in Germania Brandenburgensium Hassiacorum et
Bremensium comprobata (Bremen: Bertholdus Villierianus, 1642), Auctoritatis et
Testimonia, 1–221.
70 • EQ Michael Lynch
ied against the double payment argument. Regarding the latter point, it was simply
inadequate to repeat the arguments John Owen made while defending the
metaphor of debt-payment given the various objections offered against Owen’s
theory, especially in the nineteenth-century controversies. In light of these deficiencies,
one can only hope that advocates of Owen’s satisfaction doctrine will
be more attuned to the concerns of later Reformed theologians.
Abstract
Advocates of definite atonement have often argued that penal substitutionary
atonement entails the doctrine that Christ satisfied for the sins of the elect
alone. Recently, Garry Williams published two essays in a book entitled From
Heaven He Came and Sought Her defending the thesis that logical consistency
demands that if one affirms penal substitution, classically understood, then one
must affirm definite atonement. This paper responds to Williams’s two essays
and his main thesis by noting several historical considerations that significantly
undermine Williams’s exposition of what he deems to be the ‘classic’ doctrine of
penal substitutionary atonement. Further it is shown that the various theological
problems proffered by Reformed theologians against Williams’s pecuniary
version of penal substitution—such as R. L. Dabney’s response to John Owen’s
double-payment argument—are inadequately addressed.