Historic Theories of the Atonement
to find some liberating meaning in His death. While it continues to speak of atonement, it really empties this term of all real meaning.
What pitiful fragments it leaves us of the doctrine of the atonement can best be seen in such works as Campbell's The New Theology,
Rauschenbusch's A Theology for the Social Gospel, and Shailer Mathew's The Atonement and the Social Process.
In view of the central significance of the doctrine of the atonement in the Christian religion, of the widespread tendency to ethicize it and denude it of its objective and vicarious nature, and of the virtual denial of it in many circles, a study of the subject in the light of Scripture and with reference to present day conceptions becomes one of vital importance.
Historic Theories of the Atonement Atonement in the early Fathers.
FOR a proper understanding of the following discussion a brief statement of the different theories of atonement is highly desirable.
As indicated in the previous chapter the early Church Fathers contributed very little to the construction of this doctrine. They frequently express the general biblical idea that love constrained
Christ to suffer and die for sinners, and, especially in the earliest period, usually confine themselves to the language of Scripture. And when the Fathers of the second, third, and fourth centuries begin to speak in more specific terms about the work of Christ, their representations do not always agree. Sometimes they stress the fact that Christ appeared as the Logos to impart a fuller revelation of the truth to man and to give him an example of true virtue. Then again, at least some of them teach that Christ gave Himself as a ransom to Satan for the deliverance of man, and then Himself escaped from the clutches of the devil by the power of His divinity. In some cases they
conceive of sin as an evil power rather than as guilt, and speak of Christ as delivering man from sensuality and mortality and imparting to him true holiness and the gift of eternal life. And, finally, they also express the thought that Christ suffered and died as a substitute for man, to deliver him from the power of guilt and pollution, and to obtain for him the forgiveness of sins, complete sanctification, and eternal bliss.
Contrasted theories.
In the Scholastic period the idea of Christ as a ransom to Satan gradually died out, but the mystical, ethical, and judicial conceptions of his saving work all recur. The last two, presented in different forms in the course of history, proved to be the most persistent. They developed more and more into antagonistic and rival theories. The advocates of the ethical view regard sin primarily as ignorance, as ethical corruption, and as an evil power, while the champions of the judicial theory consider it above all as guilt in the sight of God. The former ground the need of the atonement—in so far as there is any need—in the intellectual and moral disabilities of man, while the latter infer its absolute necessity from the very nature of God. Once more, the former conceive of the atonement as entirely subjective, that is, as aiming exclusively at the reconciliation of the sinner to God, while the latter maintain that it is altogether objective, and as such aims primarily at the reconciliation of God to the sinner and only secondarily at the reconciliation of the sinner to God.
Satisfaction or Commercial Theory of Anselm.
Anselm of Canterbury was the first scholar to offer a rather complete theory of the atonement towards the close of the eleventh century.
The purpose of his brief treatise, Cur Deus Homo, was to establish the absolute necessity of the atonement. His fundamental assumption was that man by sinning offended the honor of God.
Now God could either punish man or demand satisfaction of him.
Since the former alternative would have involved the destruction of
man, His handiwork, He chose the latter, in order that man might be saved. The satisfaction required was an infinite satisfaction, such as no mere man could render; and therefore it became necessary for the Son of God to become man, in order to satisfy the divine honor. The God-man could not render to God the required satisfaction by consecrating His life to Him, since He already owed this to God for Himself. He could do it only by submitting voluntarily to sufferings and death, for as a sinless being He was not obliged to suffer and to die. The gift thus offered to God was of infinite value and therefore called for a reward. Since the Son of God, who already possessed all things, did not need anything for Himself, He passed the reward on to the sinner in the form of redemption. Thus the work of Christ accrues to the benefit of man.
Abelard's Moral Influence Theory.
This view of Anselm met with considerable opposition. The greatest of his immediate opponents was Abelard, one of the acutest and most subtle of the Scholastics. While Anselm's conception of the atonement was judicial and objective, that of Abelard was ethical and subjective. His fundamental postulate is that God could have forgiven sins apart from the passion of Christ, merely on the repentance of the sinner. In answer to the question, which is naturally raised at this point, why God then sent His Son into the world to suffer and die, he says that God gave sinful men the supreme manifestation of His love in the sending of His Son, and particularly in the fact that the only begotten of the Father took our human nature and persevered in instructing us both in word and deed even unto death. This manifestation of the great love of God tends to awaken a responsive love in the heart of the sinner and thus promotes true repentance and paves the way for the forgiveness of sins. Hence Abelard maintains that two benefits proceed from the passion of Christ, namely (1) the forgiveness of sins; and (2) the liberty of the sons of God, that is, a life of willing obedience to God.
However, the order of the two is reversed in the logic of his scheme.
In this scheme the main idea is not that of any satisfaction rendered to God, but that of a moral impression made on man.
View of Thomas Aquinas; Acceptilation Theory of Duns Scotus.
In the period immediately following the days of Anselm and Abelard such theologians as Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventura, Hugo of St.
Victor, Peter the Lombard, Alexander, and others, usually sought to combine elements of both the Anselmian and the Abelardian theory.
This is true also of Thomas Aquinas, the great master of Roman Catholic theology. In view of the fact that God might have allowed fallen man to die in his sins, he denies the absolute necessity of the atonement, though he regarded it as a fitting way of redemption. At the same time he admitted that it was possible to speak of the atonement as necessary, because God decided not only to save man but also that adequate satisfaction should be made. Christ offered a sufficient and even a superabundant satisfaction for the sins of mankind, and that satisfaction is reckoned to those who believe in virtue of their mystical union with Christ. Duns Scotus went far beyond Thomas Aquinus in denying the necessity of the atonement.
He saw no need for it whatever and ascribed it simply to the arbitrary will of God. Had God so willed, an angel or a sinless man might also have wrought redemption for mankind. He also denied the infinite value of the atonement of Christ and maintained that God graciously accepted it as sufficient for the sin of man. Hence his theory is called the Acceptation or Acceptilation Theory of the atonement.
The Reformers and the Penal Substitutionary Theory In a general way the teachings of the Reformers are in line with those of Anselm. Like him, they have a judicial conception of the atonement and regard it as a satisfaction rendered to God, whereby
He is reconciled to man, and which issues in the forgiveness of sins and in the renewal of life. Yet the Reformers differ from Anselm in some important particulars. They do not speak of an absolute, but rather of a hypothetical necessity of the atonement in virtue of the
divine decree. This does not mean, however, that they are in agreement with Duns Scotus, for they do not recognize an arbitrary will in God, but only a will that is determined by all His perfections.
In distinction from Anselm they assert that Christ rendered satisfaction to the justice rather than to the honor of God, and rendered this by His active as well as by His passive obedience or, to use a more common expression, by His life as well as by His death.
Moreover, they recognize the penal character of the sufferings and death of Christ, and do not regard these, after the fashion of Anselm, as a gift of infinite value given to God. And, finally, they improve upon the Anselmian conception of the manner in which the blessings of Christ are communicated to the sinner. They point out that the merits of Christ are imparted to believers through the mystical union and are appropriated by faith. The views of the Reformers became the official doctrine of the Churches of the Reformation, which is found in all the great historic Creeds.
Socinian Theory of Example.
While the Reformation led to the final formulation of the penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement, Humanism gave birth to the Socinian Example Theory, which is quite the opposite, bears the earmarks of several ancient heresies, and shows special affinity with the critical position of Duns Scotus and his school. Socinus denies the necessity of giving satisfaction for sin. There is no such righteousness inherent in the very nature of God as would make it imperative. God exercises both punitive justice and forgiving mercy at will, without any inner constraint. He cannot exercise both at the same time, however, so that, when man transgressed the law, He could either punish him or show him mercy, but could not do both. If He punished sin in Christ, it cannot be said that He forgives sin; and if He forgives sin, it cannot be said that He punished it in Christ.
Socinus believes that God freely forgives sin, and therefore denies that Christ rendered satisfaction for sin. The great significance of the work of Christ lies in this that He gave us a perfect revelation of the will of God, by His example pointed out the way of a real obedience
that issues in life, and Himself by His perfect obedience obtained the power to give eternal life to sinners. This theory is constructed on Pelagian principles, contains no objective element whatever, and stresses the redeeming power of the life rather than of the death of Christ. In fact, it fails completely to give a convincing statement of the redemptive significance of the Savior's death.
The Governmental Theory of Grotius.
Grotius, the noted Holland jurist, undertook to defend the orthodox faith over against Socinus, but succeeded only in steering a middle course between the position of the Reformers and the Socinian theory. He finds the fundamental error of this theory in the fact that it represents God not only as a sovereign Lord, but also as an offended Party or as a Creditor, and maintains that it is only proper to regard Him as the supreme Governor of the world. And when this supreme Ruler of the universe punishes sin, He does it not in virtue of His inherent righteousness or natural law, but by reason of a positive law, which is the effect of His will, and is therefore mutable.
Such a positive law is dispensable just because it depends on the will of the lawgiver. While it is only just that the transgression of such a law should be punished, this is not an absolute requirement of judicial rectitude. The law can be relaxed and the penalty remitted, if this should prove to be in the interest of the moral government of the world. And this is exactly what happened in the case under consideration. Yet the punishment was not simply cancelled since
Christ was punished for man's sins. Grotius speaks of Christ as making 'some payment' rather than full satisfaction. Nevertheless he occasionally speaks of Christ as making satisfaction, though this idea scarcely fits in his system of thought. God punished sin in Christ, in order to show His hatred of sin. The purpose was not to satisfy justice, but to deter men from sin, and thus to secure the interests of the moral government of the world. Some writers, such as Dale,
Miley, and Creighton, aver that this theory maintains the objective nature of the atonement, but this is hardly correct, since it finds the
purpose of the work of Christ, not in the satisfaction of justice, but in its deterring influence on men.
Arminian View of the Atonement.
Though Grotius belonged to the Arminian party, it cannot be said that the Arminians of his day adopted his theory in toto. They agree with him that there is no principle of justice in God which makes the execution of the threatened penalty absolutely imperative, and maintain that the Ruler of the universe is free to substitute something else for the penalty. At the same time they do not regard the sufferings and death of Christ merely as a penal example, but as in some measure a sacrifice which was not a complete satisfaction for sin, but a mere substitution for the penalty, involving a relaxation of the law. Like the Old Testament sacrifices it was merely the conditio sine qua non (the indispensible condition) rather than the ground of the forgiveness of sins. Another important point on which they differ from the Reformers pertains to the extent of the atonement. They believe that the atonement in Christ was intended, not only for the elect, but for every individual of the human race.
The Penal Substitutionary View of the atonement was incorporated in the great historic Confessions of both the Lutheran and the Calvinistic Churches, and was strongly defended by many prominent theologians. On this point Quenstedt and Turretin joined hands, as did the Angelicans Hooker and Pearson and the great Puritan, John
Owen. Baxter, however, favored the Governmental Theory of Grotius. This theory also became the New England doctrine of the atonement. For a long time theologians simply rehearsed the various theories that were developed in the past.
Schleiermacher's Mystical Theory.
In Schleiermacher, however, we meet with a new view, which has since been called the Mystical Theory of the atonement. This great theologian, frequently called "the father of modern theology," rejects
the doctrine of penal satisfaction through the sufferings and death of Christ, and substitutes for it a theory of atonement by incarnation.
He finds the essence of religion in feeling, more specifically, in man's sense of the presence of God within him, or his God-consciousness.
This God-consciousness is intended to permeate and control the lower consciousness of man, but is constantly oppressed and thwarted in its development by the lower consciousness. Left to himself, man cannot overcome this opposition. It is exactly at this point that Jesus comes to man's assistance. He is the ideal or archetypal man, in whom the God-consciousness controlled the lower consciousness from the start. He is really a new creation, but yet a true man. He enters the human race and becomes a new leaven in humanity. By his personal influence, exercised through the historical channel of the Church. He liberates the Godsciousness of those who join the Church from the domination of the lower consciousness and thus makes them like Himself. In a mystical way
He transforms and saves men. This thoroughly subjective theory reminds one somewhat of the views expressed by Irenaeus and Athanasius among the early Church Fathers. Edward Irving, the great English preacher, advocated a similar view; but while
Schleiermacher regarded Jesus as sinless from the very beginning of his life, Irving held that Jesus had to purge his own human nature from sin first before He could influence the lives of others.
Campbell's Theory of Vicarious Repentance.
Another theory which represents a new central idea is that of McLeod Campbell. This Scottish theologian had great respect for the penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement, but regarded it as deficient in that it was too legal and did not sufficiently reflect the love of God. He found his real cue, so it seems, in an admission of Edwards that perfect repentance on the part of man would have availed as an atonement, if man had only been capable of it, which he was not. Hence he promptly made repentance the central element in the atonement. He maintains that Christ offered to God, in behalf of humanity, the requisite repentance, and thus fulfilled the condition