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divine honor, divine justice, the moral law, and legal debts. Let us begin by considering Crisp’s five components of Edwards Jr’s theory of atonement:

      A—Necessity of Atonement

Crisp begins by unpacking a common assumption of moral government theories, namely that they do not necessitate the atonement. According to Crisp, the Edwardsian version of the governmental model does in fact necessarily requires the atonement. Drawing recourses from Francis Turretin, Crisp explains the fine-grained distinction between to types of necessity: hypothetical necessity and absolute necessity. On hypothetical necessity, the atonement is, first, merely the most fitting way for to solve the problem of humanities sin against God, and, second, it is contingent on other divinely ordained features of redemption.46 On absolute necessity, divine retribution is not necessary for penal non-substitution. According to Crisp, “Defenders of penal non-substitution regard the atonement as a means of vindicating the moral law and government of God, rather than as a means to satisfying divine retributive justice.”47 This leads Crisp to the conclusion that Edwards Jr’s model could be developed according to either form of necessity.

It is true that the Grotian version of the moral government theory implicitly rejects an absolute necessity concerning punishment. Accordingly, rectoral justice is independent from retributive justice (where God’s justice is penal in nature rather than his right governing of the moral order through the moral law). In this way, God’s righteous governance of the world is primary in terms of his justice, and his retributive justice could be deferred. This is not to say that God would not also be just in his act of retribution, this act is not necessary—if he so deems. In a similar fashion, the Edwardsian theory can articulate the logic of the atonement, as fundamentally depending upon either atonement made for governing the world or retribution. The Edwardsian theory depends upon an absolute necessity in this sense. Accordingly, a contemporary defender of penal non-substitution can supply a rationale for God’s ongoing governance of the world through Christ’s act as a penal non-substitute. Human sin is acquitted, individually, based on the human response to the benefits made in Christ’s act. However, as stated above, the theory could retrieve from the early nineteenth century Methodist theologian, John Miley, a hypothetically necessary atonement because it seems peculiar that God could not bring about atonement in another way in any possible world. Crisp summarizes what is at stake for the necessity of the atonement in three parts. First, “Atonement was necessary for the salvation of some number of fallen human beings.” Second, as “Some act of atonement was necessary for the salvation of some number of fallen human beings.” Third and finally, as “A particular act of atonement was necessary for the salvation of some number of fallen human beings.”48 On a hypothetical necessity understanding of penal non-substitution, atonement becomes necessary based on God’s ordination to save the “elect” and to provide the atonement by one particular means—Christ’s act on the cross. Thus, the atonement is neither random nor is it based on the divine will alone.49

      Again, what we aim to show next is that not only did Edwards Jr (also represented in the tradition he inspired—Gelston) affirm penal non-substitution, but penal substitution with some elements of the governmental theory. Accordingly, we will see that retribution is fundamental for penal substitution and that rectoral justice is dependent upon it—retribution is necessary for the moral government of the world and God’s moral government fits into his providential control. And with this we transition into Crisp’s discussion of:

      B—Divine will, moral law, and atonement

There appears to be a deeper problem with the moral government theory of atonement. The problem seems to amount to the notion that God is supremely free to save in the manner he chooses. This means that laws are always contingent upon divine arbitration—laws are mutable, and are not internal to God’s nature—and as such not binding on God in any way. Some would call this “legal voluntarism” where the moral law(s) are rooted in an act of God’s will alone. The contemporary defender of legal voluntarism can avert the challenge in two ways. First, he can defend a modified voluntarism. On a modified voluntarism, the moral law is based upon the divine will, this is true, but the divine will is somehow always reflecting of the divine nature in the human context. In this way, if God’s moral law is primarily rectoral in nature, and this somehow reflects his nature, then it is perfectly within his right and just to relax the punitive consequences of the law, once again, so long as God has made right the moral order in which humans find themselves. The moral law, in some sense, then, is binding on God, once it is set in motion, because it reflects his nature and is contingent up what has already been divinely determined about the moral order in which he has created humans. In a similar way, a defender of penal non-substitution could affirm a non-voluntaristic doctrine of the moral law. By claiming that the law is not primarily based in divine volition, but that the law is an extension of the divine character where God must act in such a way as to satisfy the highest law—the goodness of the eternal law.50

      The questions that most concern us here is the necessity and nature of divine justice and, more than that, the divine motivation as they relate to the moral law and human transformation. These important distinctions are fundamental to both New England theology and contemporary models of justice and the atonement. For, the apparent de-coupling the rectoral and retributive justice in the thought Edwards Jr is a crucial aspect for our understanding the Edwardsian doctrine of atonement. However, we understand Gelston and the Edwardsian tradition to affirm a penal substitution of a modified sort. What we mean by this is not that rectoral justice is fundamental, in a non-voluntarist or voluntarist sense, but that retributive justice is fundamental to God’s moral governing of the world (within God’s providence). So, Christ as a penal substitute becomes central in God’s governance of human beings. Another question we raise, is whether rectoral justice or retributive justice are fundamentally a payment made to the moral law or is it a payment made to God himself? By differentiating within New England dogmatics, the atonement options are expanded for contemporary discussions. Rather provocatively, we think that within these discussions the atonement theories are a more complex, with several new vignettes than may have been thought to this point. For it seems that there are at least three models of the atonement at work in the Edwardsian tradition that have relevance to contemporary atonement. Let us move on to Crisp’s next point.

      C—Sin and Its Penal Consequences

The third component of the moral government model or penal non-substitution concerns the nature of sin and its penal consequences. Both penal substitution and penal non-substitution affirm that there is some debt of punishment required for re-establishing the sin-fractured relationship between God and humanity. Both Grotian and Edwardsian variants of the moral government model involve maintain that sin requires a penalty—“non-transferable” penalty. This is because guilt is not transferable either between humans or between divine-human and other humans. Penal substitution on the other hand, says that the penal consequence of a guilty sinner is transferable. Herein lies the mechanism of the atonement—the consequences from human sin are transferred to Christ and Christ pays the debt of punishment for those sinners (of the world or the elect). Distinctively, what is required is not a debt of punishment on penal non-substitutionary atonement, but a penal equivalent to satisfy the demands of the moral law. Atonement, then, is construed more communally in virtue of God’s means of governing the world. An actual, individual payment to God for sins committed is thus not required. Instead, a “suitable equivalent” must pay the penalty for the disorder in God’s moral order where humans have failed to honor God’s means of governance. There is an imbalance in the force or the moral order hindering the means by which God has chosen to providentially orchestrate the world toward its proper end. Christ, then, brings about balance by paying the penalty as a “suitable equivalent.”51

      Several important questions emerge from this discussion that concern the relation

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