The history of interpreting the cross in Christian discourse is riddled with misunderstandings, ambiguities, and oftentimes, a conflation of terms. By now, many theologians understand that penal substitution is distinct and separate from “satisfaction” or “sacrifice,” but the question remains: How exactly did the concept of penal substitution arise? Travis E. Ables’s The Body of the Cross: Holy Victims and the Invention of the Atonement offers a remarkably astute and thorough answer to this question.