16th century (Institutes of 1559)

The Reformers and Calvin: penal substitutionary satisfaction

According to Berkhof, the doctrine of the atonement was not a matter of dispute between the Reformers and Rome – the differences concerned the application of Christ's work. The Reformers largely followed Anselm, but saw sin as transgression of the law and guilt rather than as an offense to honor, so that the atonement is a penal substitutionary sacrifice in the sphere of public law; they rejected the alternative "satisfaction or punishment": satisfaction was accomplished through punishment. They distinguished active obedience (fulfilling the law) and passive obedience (suffering and death), and supplemented mystical union with the appropriation of Christ's merits by faith. Calvin understood Christ's work as satisfaction: by his obedience unto death Christ merited forgiveness for us, but it is the inner working of the Holy Spirit, whose chief work is faith, that makes this effective for the believer. The ground of Christ's merit, according to McGrath, Calvin saw not in the sacrifice itself but in God's decision to accept it as sufficient.