The Scriptures give us a robust revelation about all that Jesus accomplished on the cross. As we go about seeking to categorize all of the various dimensions of the cross, we discover that there are both vertical and horizontal dimensions to Jesus’ work. The vertical dimensions are foundational; the horizontal are consequential. The vertical dimensions include Jesus’ defeat of Satan (Gen. 3:15; John 12:31; Col. 2:15), His propitiating the wrath of God (Rom. 3:25; Heb. 2:7; 1 John 2:2; 4:10), His atoning for our sin (Heb. 1:3; Rom. 4:7–8), His breaking the power of sin (Rom. 6:9–14), His securing the new heavens and new earth (Heb. 2:5–11), and His overcoming the world (John 12:31; 16:33). The horizontal dimensions include His becoming the example of self-sacrificial living (Rom. 15:2–3; 1 Peter 2:21) and His reconciling men to one another, thereby making peace for those who formerly lived in hostility with one another (Eph. 2:14).

When men pervert or deny the biblical teaching concerning the vertical nature of the cross, it inevitably leads to a false gospel. When men put horizontal aspects of the cross in the place of the vertical, it ultimately leads to a false gospel. We must diligently study the biblical teaching about the work of Jesus—especially with regard to what is foundational (vertical) and what is consequential (horizontal). We must also be students of the historical development of the doctrine of the atonement and its related dimensions. In this short series, we will consider the historical development and the biblical teaching about the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the cross in order to emphasize that the vertical must have precedence over the horizontal dimensions.

In the final decade of the eleventh century, Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury, wrote his magnum opus, Cur Deus homo (Why the God-man?). Nearly a thousand years later, this work remains the seminal defense of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. In it, Anselm argued that the main thing Jesus accomplished on the cross—the thing for which the eternal Son of God became incarnate and was crucified—was substituting Himself for His people in order to atone for their sins. Anselm’s treatment of substitutionary atonement captures the essence of the biblical teaching on the atonement and set the standard for theologians through the Reformation and down to our own day.

There have been, however, numerous theologians who have challenged Anselm’s work and leveled attacks on the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Some of these attacks have been quite forthright and others more subversive. While Anselm focused on the objective nature of the atonement, Peter Abelard—the medieval French scholastic theologian and philosopher—gave primacy to a subjective understanding of the atonement. Abelard taught that Jesus’ death on the cross was chiefly exemplary, “functioning primarily as an example of obedience to the will of God, or of Divine love, which inspires a response in the human heart of love for God that transforms the person.”¹ Throughout the medieval period of the church, the Anselmic and the Abelardian understandings of the death of Jesus stood as the two competing views.