Yesus Memanggul Salib, lukisan karya El Greco, 1580.
Secara teknis, pendamaian pengganti (bahasa Inggris: substitutionary atonement) merupakan istilah untuk sejumlah model pendamaian atau penebusan dalam Kekristenan yang memandang wafatnya Yesus sebagai suatu substitusi bagi orang-orang lain, pengganti mereka. Hal ini diungkapkan dalam Alkitab melalui ayat-ayat seperti "Ia sendiri telah memikul dosa kita di dalam tubuh-Nya di kayu salib, supaya kita, yang telah mati terhadap dosa, hidup untuk kebenaran. Oleh bilur-bilur-Nya kamu telah sembuh.",1 Pet. 2:24 dan "Sebab juga Kristus telah mati sekali untuk segala dosa kita, Ia yang benar untuk orang-orang yang tidak benar, supaya Ia membawa kita kepada Allah"1 Pet. 3:18 (meskipun terdapat juga cara-cara lain dalam menafsirkan ayat-ayat semacam ini).[1][2]
Ada pula suatu penggunaan istilah "substitusi" atau "pengganti" yang kurang teknis dalam pembahasan mengenai pendamaian bila digunakan dalam "pengertian bahwa [Yesus, melalui wafat-Nya,] melakukan bagi kita apa yang tidak pernah dapat kita lakukan bagi diri kita sendiri".[3]
Terdapat sejumlah teori berbeda yang tergolong dalam istilah umum "pendamaian pengganti".[4] Beberapa teori yang paling dikenal misalnya teori tebusan dari para Bapa Gereja Perdana; versi demistifikasi teori tebusan dari Gustaf Aulen, disebut Christus Victor; teori pemenuhan dari Anselmus dari Canterbury; dan teori pengganti hukuman dari tradisi Calvinis. Pembaca perlu berhati-hati ketika membaca istilah "pengganti" atau "substitusi", seperti misalnya dalam literatur Patristik, agar tidak mengasumsikan penggunaan model substitusi tertentu sebelum memeriksa dan meneliti konteksnya untuk melihat bagaimana penulisnya menggunakan istilah tersebut.[5][6]
^(Inggris)J. Carter, The Letter to the Hebrews (Birmingham: CMPA), p. 83: after quoting 1 Peter 2:24, "He was there as our representative, partaking of the nature that was common to us all – a nature under sentence of death because of sin."
^(Inggris) Mark M. Mattison, The Meaning of the AtonementDiarsipkan 2010-01-30 di Wayback Machine.: in a section entitled Isaiah 53 and 1 Peter 2:24, "...it is possible that Jesus 'bore' or 'carried away' our sins from us not by becoming our substitute, but by becoming our sin offering."
^(Inggris)Vincent Taylor, The Cross of Christ (London: Macmillan & Co, 1956), p. 31. Compare J. I. Packer: "It would ... clarify discussion if all who hold that Jesus by dying did something for us which we needed to do but could not, would agree that they are regarding Christ’s death as substitutionary, and differing only on the nature of the action which Jesus performed in our place and also, perhaps, on the way we enter into the benefit that flows from it." ("What did the Cross Achieve? The Logic of Penal Substitution" [1973])
^(Inggris) Mark David Baker, Proclaiming the scandal of the cross (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006): "...many assume that 'substitutionary atonement' is merely a shorthand way to refer to 'penal substitutionary atonement.' [...] Substitution is a broad term that one can use with reference to a variety of metaphors."
^(Inggris) D. Flood, "Substitutionary atonement and the Church Fathers" in Evangelical Quarterly 82.2 (2010), p. 143: "It is not enough to simply identify substitutionary or even penal themes in the writings of the church fathers, and assume that this is an endorsement of the Reformed understanding of penal substitution. Instead, one must look at how a patristic author is using these concepts within their own understanding of the atonement and ask: what salvic purpose does Christ bearing our suffering, sin, and death have for this author? Rather than simply 'proof-texting' we need to seek to understand how these statements fit into the larger thought-world of an author. In short, it is a matter of context."
^(Inggris) J. K. Mozley, The doctrine of the atonement (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916), p. 94–95: "The same or similar words may point to the same or similar ideas; but not necessarily so, since a word which has been at one time the expression of one idea, may, to a less or greater extent, alter its meaning under the influence of another idea. Hence it follows that the preservation of a word does not, as a matter of course, involve the preservation of the idea which the word was originally intended to convey. In such respects no doctrine demands more careful treatment than that of the Atonement."