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The Doctrine of the Atonement
2004-02-07 - 11:02 p.m.

Atonement: Satisfaction or reparation made by giving an equivalent for an injury, or by doing of suffering that which will be received in satisfaction for an offense or injury; expiation; amends; -- with for. Specifically, in theology: The expiation of sin made by the obedience, personal suffering, and death of Christ.
Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.

To atone for something is to make restitution for it. In our world we atone for crimes by imprisonment - after our time has finished, after we have made due restitution for what we did, our crimes are not - or should not be - counted against us. We are accounted as innocent of any crime. Such is the work of Christ. His death on the cross is referred to as the Atonement because in God's eyes the only way to make restitution for sin is for an unblemished offering to be made. We know that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), and so in order for our sins to be removed, someone had to die. Not just anyone, but a pure and sinless offering. No man could ever be found who could be the necessary offering, no man but Christ. He was and is the only sinless human being who ever existed, by virtue of His divinity.

Jesus was the second Adam, this is important. Adam was created a perfect man, but through his disobedience rendered all mankind flawed and sinful. Jesus too was born perfect but unlike Adam, He continued in perfection and His obedience wiped away the results of Adam's disobedience from all who belong to Him.

The purpose of this essay is to give a broad sweep through some of the different ideas about the Atonement, various theories and theologies that there have been on the issue. The Greek Father, Origen, who I admittedly have a soft spot for, had several different views on the Atonement. One of these was that Jesus' death was a ransom to Satan for the souls of men. Christ offered Himself to the devil (hence, "He descended into Hell" as the creeds have it) but Satan was deceived, not realising that he could not keep Christ, because of His divinity and perfection. As Louis Berkhof (whose book I have been reading) said: "Satan swallowed the bait of Christ's humanity, and was caught on the hook of His divinity". Thus the souls of all men, including those in Hell, were freed.

Most people now would not follow Origen's example. We tend to follow the Latin church and say that the price for man's ransom from sin was paid to God in order to fulfil the demands of Justice than to give power to Satan, to say that it gives Satan too much credit. Other ancient Fathers had ideas still more odd to our eyes, or at least to mine. Both Irenaeus and Athanasius believed that the Incarnation, the participation of God in humanity, deified the human flesh, allowing its immortality. This concludes with Gregory of Nyssa who, in common with Irenaeus, believed that Satan himself will be redeemed through the Cross in time to come. This thought comes from the idea that the death of Christ means that no sin - even Satan's - is too great to be atoned for by His sacrifice.

That is the ancient Eastern theology of the Atonement, the West (that is, the Latin church, Catholicism and later Protestantism as opposed to the Eastern and Greek Orthodoxies) had different conceptions. Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose both tended to view Christ's death as a sacrifice to God - Ambrose viewed it as the satisfaction of the sentence passed on man, though he also held to the idea of a ransom paid to Satan for the souls of men. Augustine's thought was not so much on the Atonement as other issues like original sin, grace, etc but he also subscribed to the idea of the deification of human nature - at least in ethics. He viewed man as living under the wrath of God, and Christ's sacrifice placates this wrath, reconciling man to God.

Of the Fathers, Gregory the Great made the most concise statement on the Atonement, one I and I suspect, many others could wholeheartedly agree with. A book I have been reading, by Louis Berkhof, states it most admirably:

"Man voluntarily fell under the dominion of sin and death, and only a sacrifice could blot out such sin. But where was the sacrifice to be found? An animal could not serve the purpose; only a man would do, and yet no man could be found without sin. Therefore the Son of God became incarnate, assuming our nature, but not our sinfulness. The Sinless One became a sacrifice for us, a victim that could die in virtue of His humanity, and could cleanse in virtue of His righteousness. He paid for us a debt of death which He had not deserved, that the death which was our due might not harm us." [1]

For all that this is an important issue in Christianity, five centuries passed between Gregory the Great and the next theologian to pay great attention to it. That theologian was Anselm, writer of the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God and author of a book called Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man) which actually addresses the questions that we, and evidently our ancestors had about salvation. Questions like, could God have not saved mankind by a mere act of His omnipotence rather than a sacrifice, could He not have ignored the need for restitution and why did He choose His Son and not another being? Anselm rejected utterly the idea of a ransom being paid to Satan and the idea that the death of Christ was simply an expression of the love of God for man (Abelard's theory). For him, the necessity of the Atonement was the be all and end all. It was all about honour, for him, and his theory is known as the Satisfaction Theory.

Mankind as a creation of God had an obligation to be utterly subject to his Maker. When man (that is, Adam) rebelled, he dishonoured God, and this is the foundation of the debt we owe to God. Anselm used the metaphor of royalty insulted - honour demands the insult be repaid, even if the King privately wishes it to be forgotten. God's honour must be restored. He could not ignore the debt otherwise God would be unjust. There were two ways God's honour could be restored: punishment or satisfaction. God did not choose punishment, for that would mean the utter destruction of the human race. He chose satisfaction of the debt instead. This meant that man now needs to give God the obedience that is owed and make amends for dishonouring God by paying over and above the debt we owe. However, even the tiniest sin committed against an infinite God outweighs the whole world and it is beyond the power of man to repay. As though a man were asked to repay the debt of an entire country or the whole world from his own wages. It is impossible for him to do it. The gift that could satisfy a debt so large as to be bigger than everything that is not God can only be God Himself. God alone could repay the debt we owe to Him, and because He is merciful and does not desire our destruction, He sent His Son in order to repay it. It was not enough for Jesus to appear simply as God, He had to be man as ewll, to be one of those who owed the debt as a race but not Himself owing any. Only a divine man, one both man and God (Deus verus et homo verus) could do justice to God's honour.

Had Jesus lived on earth and had He not died, this would not have freed us. To live in obedience to God - not sinning - is merely our duty, it does not repay the second part, the original debt of that insult. Doing your duty does not constitute merit, which was what was needed. However, Jesus as a sinless man had no obligation to suffer and die, this was entirely voluntary. By submitting to shame and death Jesus gave infinite glory to God over and above the debt that was owed. Justice would demand that this action from a sinless being should be rewarded - but the Son needs nothing and so the reward falls to man - and so we have the forgiveness of sins (our debt) and the future hope.

Now, I like Anselm, but there are criticisms that have been made of him. These are that it is not true that God could choose between punishment or satisfaction; that it does nto say Christ endured the penalty of sin but instead represents this suffering as a voluntary tribute to the honour of God; that it denies the redemptive power of Christ's life and that it represents the application of the merits of Christ as an external transaction rather than an internal union.

Peter Abelard gives a very different idea of the Atonement to this. He said that God loves us and desires penitence and not satisfaction. Christ revealed the love of God by His teaching and continued it even to death. This awakens love in the heart of the sinner, and that love brings repentance and forgiveness. This love redeems us from the power of sin and we thenceforth obey God willingly. The major objection to this is that it ignores God's justice and holiness, looking only at the love of God.

Some of the writers following Anselm and Abelard combined elements of their two theological viewpoints. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest theologians of all time, believed that the redemption of man was not necessary because God could have chosen to allow man to die in his sins. The life of Christ provides redemption because His teachings, acts and sufferings awaken a responsive love and obedience, where we join into the family of Christ, and His grace overflows to the members of this family. That God did choose to redeem us is because of His attributes of mercy and love, not because He had to in any way. Aquinas said that God could have overlooked man's sin because He was both Judge and injured party, but He chose not to by His will, thus necessitating the death of Christ for the reasons Anselm gave. God is both mercy and justice - hence He decided that full payment of the debt was required. The death of Christ also shows virtues of constancy, obedience and humility which we are to follow besides providing redemption.

Duns Scotus more or less follows Aquinas in his idea of the Atonement, in that he said that the Atonement was not necessary but was willed to be so by the arbitrary will of God. It likewise was not necessary that Christ be the one to render satisfaction to God - an angel could have done so, but God decided Christ was the one He wanted to do it. Christ's sacrifice did not have infinite merit because it was the action of a finite man, it was efficacious only because God accepted it as such. This is known as the Acceptilation Theory.

Now to the Reformation, though I hope to cover this in greater detail at some other time. In other words: please excuse any mistakes I make! The Reformers had no fundamental disagreement with the Catholic Church on the nature of the Atonement, as their concentration was on other matters. However, the Reformers generally took their influence from Anselm while the Catholic church went with Aquinas, who was himself influenced by Anselm. The Reformers saw the nature of the debt we owe more as a transgression of the law of God rather than an insult to the honour of God and that it required penal sacrifice rather than, as Anselm had it, a superabundant gift to God. They also rejected Anselm's idea of God choosing between satisfaction and punishment with the idea that the satisfaction obtained through the death of Christ was satisfaction through punishment. They also said that Christ satisfied the demands of God both through His death and through His fulfillment of the covenant of works, making this a part of the redemptive process in order to usher in the convenant of grace. The merits of Christ are obtained by the act of faith which inaugurates the mystical union between the believer and Christ.

There are many more theories of the Atonement, which I will come back to at some other time, but you can definitely see our ideas in the theories of the Reformers and of Anselm. A rather more difficult topic than at first sight, as with much in theology, and this essay has been a bit sweeping, I'm afraid. I have included some links throughout and below this for more on this most important and fascinating subject.

Berkhof, Louis, The History of Christian Doctrines (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1978) p170

Links

The Doctrine of the Atonement (Catholic Encyclopaedia)

The Central Message of the New Testament by Joachim Jeremias

The Nature of the Atonement study notes by Phil Johnson

The Meaning of the Atonement by Mark M. Mattison

The Governmental Theory of the Atonement (in support of the Arminian point of view)

Atonement Where? an article against the Word of Faith movement, charging them with holding the ransom theory.

Reflections on the Atonement holding the Abelardian view, from Reason and the Christian Religion, Oxford, 1994, pp. 265-276, ed. A.G.Padgett; by J R Lucas.

Was Christ Literally Made Sin on the Cross? by Dave Williams, quotes from the Fathers, against the Reformers.

The Case for Unlimited Atonement by Ron Rhodes

Anselm and the Doctrine of the Atonement

The History of the Doctrine of the Atonement the various theories briefly explained in chronological order

The Atonement by Arthur O Roberts (a Quaker). Going through the various ideas.

The Atonement by John Murray

The Doctrine of the Atonement in the Middle Ages (pdf)

Limited Atonement Resources (L in TULIP)

Against Calvin's Limited Atonement

Spurgeon: Limited Atonement or Particular Redemption?

Atonement and Saving Faith TheologyToday

Christian Classics Ethereal Library (search for "atonement")

-HolyFool