‘He laid His hand upon both’: Self-punishment, vicarious punishment and Gregory's spirituality of the cross in the <i>Moralia in Job</i>

Abstract Gregory the Great's Moralia in Job has been said to mark a transitional phase in the development of atonement doctrine. I argue that the Moralia cohesively portrays Christ's redemptive work as achieving something in two directions: towards God, a vicarious payment of humanity's debt of punishment; towards humanity, an efficaciously convicting and restorative example. This sustains a spirituality in which exacting and self-denying moral effort rests on freedom from judgement and on the death accomplished by the Mediator. Engaging the Moralia in this manner illuminates patristic exegetical sensibilities and proves instructive about how the fathers fit into later taxonomies of atonement models.