Atonement. Sin violates the ground of union which the personal creature has by nature with the holy God. The act of sin is one of separation; the act begets the state of sin, the state confirms and repeats the act. The doctrine of the atonement treats of the mediation necessary for restoring the union between God and man, which has been lost by sin. The atonement, therefore, must ever be the fundamental doctrine in every religion of sinful creatures. In the Christian religion, it manifestly occupies this central position; for the Christian doctrine of the atonement is but the explanation of its great historic fact—the embodiment in one person of the divine and human natures in perfect agreement. In the person of Christ, God and man are atoned or made at one; he is their Atonement.
So fundamental is the doctrine of the atonement in the Christian religion, that all churches may be said to be orthodox on this point. The Church of Rome, the Greek Church, the various Protestant churches all agree in resting the sinner's hope of salvation on the mediatorial work or atonement of Jesus Christ. Nevertheless, from the very beginning of speculative Christian theology, there have been within the several churches various ways of conceiving and explaining the nature and mode of operation of this mediatorial work. What follows is a brief sketch of the historical development of these speculations.
Christianity differs from heathenism in the clear perception which it has of the antagonism sin has introduced between God and man. Heathenism but vaguely conceives of this variance, and consequently has but an ill-defined notion of the atonement required. The abject subjection of man to nature prevents his rising into that sphere of conscious freedom which makes sin sinful, and demands an atonement with one who is Lord both of nature and man.
In Judaism, man stands above nature, in conscious relation to a personal God, whose written law exhibits the requirements of his relationship with man—requirements which are never met, and which only make him fearfully conscious of the ever-widening breach between himself and his God. Thus the law awakened the sense of guilt, and the desire for an atonement; a desire it could never satisfy. The never-ceasing demands of these ever-unfulfilled requirements were constantly acknowledged by its whole sacrificial cultus, which symbolically expressed the hidden ground of Jewish hope, and prophetically pointed to its future manifestation. The Holy Scriptures in the Old Testament exhibit the making of an atonement by vicarious sacrifice, but the idea of the suffering and vicarious Messiah, declared in the writings of the prophets, and not entirely hidden from the more thoughtful and devout contemporaries of Jesus, was one which was foreign to the Messianic faith of the great body of the people.
In the New Testament, Christ is exhibited as one sent from God for the salvation of the world; and as the condition, on the part of man, of his obtaining this salvation, we read of the requirement of repentance, faith, and reformation; whilst, on the part of God, as conditioning and mediating his forgiveness of sins, we have exhibited the life of Christ upon earth, but more especially his death, as a ransom for our sins, by which we are redeemed from the bondage of sin, and obtain forgiveness, and eternal life and peace with God. Christ is therefore the Mediator between God and man, having made peace through the blood of his cross; the propitiation for our sins; and our high-priest who offers himself a sacrifice to reconcile us with God. Moreover, we are also taught that God has in Christ reconciled the world with himself.
In accordance with this full and explicit teaching of Holy Scripture, we find that the sufferings and death of Christ were ever regarded as of primary and essential importance in his work of redemption; but notwithstanding this, we look in vain throughout the early centuries of the Christian Church for anything like a systematic development of the doctrine of the atonement. The germs of the doctrine existed, but without any logical connection or clearness. The early church fathers dwell with a sort of inspired devotion upon those facts of the gospel which represent Christ as the sacrifice for our sins, as the ransom paid for our redemption, as our deliverer from the power of Satan, as the restorer to mankind of whatever was lost by the fall of Adam; but they seldom attempt to show how these results connect themselves with the sufferings and death of Christ; neither do they show in what manner the atonement has objectively been made, nor how it is brought to the experience of its individual subjects. Throughout the whole earlier age of the church down to the time of Anselm, the belief was generally prevalent that Christ was offered by God, as a ransom for his people, to Satan, who held them by the power of conquest; this was specially emphasised by Origen and Irenæus, but a view similar to that of Anselm was also maintained by many, though with vagueness and inconsistency. Baur maintains that the former mode of considering the death of Christ was transplanted from the gnostics to the church by simply converting the person of the demiurge into that of the devil. Gregory of Nyssa explained that the devil consented to receive Jesus as a ransom, because he regarded him as more than an equivalent for all those under his power; but that, notwithstanding his subtlety, he was outwitted, for, owing to the humiliation in which Christ was veiled, he did not recognise him as the Son of God, and consequently was himself deceived. But having consented to receive him as a ransom for mankind, he was righteously deprived of his dominion over man, whilst he could not retain Jesus when he discovered him to be the Holy One of God. St Augustine modified the doctrine essentially by pointing out that the devil, who had overstepped his power, was conquered in the struggle. He had overstepped his power in this, that he thought he could treat the sinless Jesus as a slave, like the other sons of Adam, which last, in fact, belonged to him as prisoners. Now he lost his right to the latter so far as they belong to Christ.
The idea of a penalty endured on the part of
God gained the predominance after its advocacy by Athanasius. He argued that as God had threatened to punish transgressors with death, he could but execute his threat. But then it was not becoming the character of God to allow his purpose in the creation of man to be frustrated by an imposition practised upon him by the devil. The only expedient, therefore, which remained for man's deliverance from death was the incarnation and sacrifice of the Logos in his stead, by which the justice and veracity of God would be maintained, man delivered, the law fulfilled, and the power of the devil broken.
But the doctrine of the atonement was not presented in its final form until the acute and subtle genius of Anselm reduced the more or less confused conceptions of the early fathers to strict dogmatic definitions, and for the first time adjusted the apparent contradiction between divine love on the one hand, and divine justice and holiness on the other. To his clear intellect is due that statement of the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction, which, under various modifications, has ever since continued to be held as the orthodox doctrine of the church. The infinite guilt which man had contracted, by the dishonour of his sin against the infinitely great God, could be atoned for by no mere creature; only the God-man Christ Jesus could render to God the infinite satisfaction required. God only can satisfy himself. The human nature of Christ enables him to incur, the infinity of his divine nature to pay, this debt. But it was incumbent upon Christ as a man to order his life according to the law of God; the obedience of his life, therefore, was not able to render satisfaction for our guilt. But although he was under obligation to live in obedience to the law, as the Holy One he was under no obligation to die. Seeing, then, that he nevertheless voluntarily surrendered his infinitely precious life to the honour of God, a recompense from God became his due, and his recompense consists in the forgiveness of the sins of his brethren. In this form of the doctrine we are taught the necessity of an active vicarious satisfaction; but Anselm nowhere teaches the passive satisfaction, he nowhere says that Christ endured the punishment of men. Nor do we find in his writings the development of the subjective side of the doctrine—namely, how the satisfaction rendered to God mediates the atonement in the experience of the believer. According to Anselm, the satisfaction rendered by Christ was greater than the guilt for which he atoned; and it needed to be greater, for the payment of the debt due to God gave men no claim to the favour of God. Abelard attached principal importance to the moral aspect of the doctrine, and declared the love of Christ the redeeming principle, inasmuch as it calls forth love on our part. Thomas Aquinas and his followers maintained Augustine's opinion of the infinite value of the blood of Christ rendering it more than sufficient; while the Scotists maintained that it was sufficient only because God was pleased to regard it as sufficient.
Protestants and Roman Catholics alike accept the doctrine of the atonement as given in Anselm's Satisfaction theory, in ascribing to the sufferings or merits of Christ an infinite objective value, but the former give the preference to that aspect of this theory presented by Thomas Aquinas; the latter, to that of Duns Scotus. The Protestant theologians, however, extended the idea of vicarious suffering, so as to make it include the divine curse, an opinion against which Bellarmine protested as 'a new unheard-of heresy,' while, on the other hand, they insisted on the active obedience of Christ, together with the passive, referring the former to the complete obedience which he yielded to the law.
Both opinions were intimately connected with the Protestant dogma of justification. With the Roman Catholic theologians, satisfaction is made by the death of Jesus only for guilt contracted before baptism, and only the eternal punishment due to mortal sins committed after baptism is remitted; so that Christians have themselves to make satisfaction for venial sins by temporal punishments. They also asserted that the merits of Christ were supererogatory, while Protestants thought they were equivalent to the penalties to be inflicted upon men. And lastly, according to Roman Catholics, Christ by his sufferings obtained merit for himself. Among the Protestants themselves, the Reformed Church approximated more nearly to the Scotist acceptilatio than did the Lutherans. The following is an outline of the Lutheran doctrine, as laid down in the Concordienformel: It is alone by faith we can receive the blessings presented to us in the gospel by the Holy Ghost. Faith justifies, because it appropriates the merit of Christ. Therefore, the righteousness which is imputed to the believer, simply by the grace of God, is the obedience, the suffering, and the resurrection of Christ, by which he has satisfied the claims of the law, and atoned for our sins. For as Christ is not merely man, but God and man in one person, he was, as Lord of the law, no more subject to it than he was subject to suffering and death. For this reason, his twofold obedience—that which he rendered, on the one hand, by his suffering and death; and, on the other, by his righteous fulfilment of the law on our behalf—is imputed to us, and God acquits us of our sins, and regards us as just, in view of his complete obedience in what he did and suffered. This obedience embraces the entire existence of Christ upon earth, and is so complete that it fully covers the disobedience of men, so that it is not reckoned against them for condemnation.
According to Calvin, if it is asked how Christ has reconciled us with God, and purchased a righteousness which made him favourable to us, it may be answered generally, that he accomplished this by the whole course of his obedience. But although the life of Christ is to be regarded as paying the price necessary for our deliverance, the Scriptures ascribe our redemption especially to his death. Calvin attached great importance to the particular mode of his death—any other mode of death would not have rendered the same satisfaction to God. He, however, says little or nothing about Christ's fulfilling the law for us, but dwells upon his delivering us from its curse. He does not, therefore, exhibit his active obedience separated, as an essential part of his satisfaction for sin, from his passive obedience. The importance attached to the obedience of his life arises from its natural and necessary connection with his suffering and death. And the great importance attached to his death is drawn rather from the view of its subjective necessity, than from the idea of the divine righteousness—namely, that without such a death there would have been no sufficient ground for the subjective realisation of deliverance from sin and guilt. Calvin's view differs from that of the Lutheran Concordienformel in that he does not regard the relationship of God to man so much through the negative notion of a Redeemer from guilt and punishment, but looks upon Christ as the highest Mediator, through whom the nature of God is communicated to man.
'Modern Calvinism' represents the atonement as that satisfaction for sin which was rendered to God, in his public character as moral governor of the world, by the perfect obedience unto death of our Lord Jesus Christ. The nature of this satisfaction was a moral, not a pecuniary satisfaction.
It preserves to the moral government of God its authority, whilst its tendency is to secure the forgiveness of sin. The value of the sufferings of Christ consists in their tendency to uphold the divine moral government unimpaired, whilst pardon is extended to those who have violated it. There was a moral necessity for Christ's sufferings and death—obstacles to the bestowment of pardon had to be removed—the influence of the Holy Spirit had to be secured. The whole contents of Christ's earthly existence, embracing both his active and passive obedience, must be regarded as contributing to the atonement which he made. As to the 'extent' of the atonement, there is a broad distinction to be made between the sufficiency of the atonement and its efficiency. It may be true that Jehovah did not intend to exercise that influence of the Holy Spirit upon all, which is necessary to secure the salvation of any one; but as the atonement was to become the basis of moral government, it was necessary that it should be one of infinite worth, and so in itself adequate to the salvation of all. The Universalists (q.v.) hold both the sufficiency and ultimate efficiency of this great event.
The foregoing represents the modified view of the doctrine as advocated by Dr Payne, and as held, in all essential respects, by such men as Pye Smith, Wardlaw, and many others. This view in its earlier form, and as found in the writings of Owen and Edwards, maintains that the atonement was made only for the elect; and that its necessity with respect to them arose out of the eternal justice of God, which required that every individual should receive his due desert; and, consequently, that the sufferings of Christ were the endurance of punishment equivalent in amount of suffering, if not identical in nature—as Owen maintains—with that to which the elect were exposed; and, moreover, that the meritorious obedience of Christ in fulfilling the law, imputes a righteousness to those for whom the atonement secures salvation, which gives them a claim to the reward of righteousness.
The teaching of Socinus is a re-statement of the Moral Influence theory first distinctly taught by Abelard. It represents man as attaining to oneness with himself and with God by his own moral energy. It rejects that idea of the righteousness of God which makes it impossible for him to forgive sin without a satisfaction, as imposing finite limitations upon the divine Being; disapproves the doctrine of satisfaction, on the ground that satisfaction for sin and forgiveness of sin are incompatible with each other; and objects that sin and punishment are of so personal a nature as not to allow of their being transferred. The doctrine it sought to establish was that man is reconciled to God by repentance and reformation. Only from an act of man changing his disposition, and not from an act of God changing his relation to man, follows his reconciliation with God. God is in himself ever the same towards man—reconciled from all eternity; man alone has to assume a new relation; as soon as he does this, he is immediately reconciled; by this act of his will, he is at one with God. In this purely subjective theory, repentance occupies the place of faith in the orthodox doctrine, and faith becomes identical with obedience. The sufferings of Christ were necessary in order that he might become our example, and be better fitted to render us help; that we might have a pledge and guarantee of the divine forgiveness; and as conditioning his resurrection and ascension to glory.
The Arminians endeavoured to take an intermediate position between the theory of Socinus and the satisfaction theory of Anselm. They asserted that the design of Christ was to render a sacrificial oblation in behalf of all men indiscriminately, by which 'sufficient grace' is meritoriously secured for each, and their sins rendered remissible upon condition of faith. They maintained that the doctrine that Christ satisfies in our behalf the preceptive demands of the law by his active obedience, as well as the penal demands by his passive obedience, leads to Antinomianism.
Grotius drew a subtle distinction between satisfaction and solutio, and taught that God, by inflicting death on Christ, had given in an arbitrary way an example of punishment. His atonement theory is known as the Governmental theory. According to it God's justice is not vindicatory, but may be referred to a general governmental rectitude based on a benevolent regard for the well-being of the subjects of his moral government. Law is a product of the divine will, and therefore relaxable. God's sovereign prerogative includes the right of pardon. God so conditions the pardon of human sinners, by selecting such an example of suffering that man may not think he can sin with impunity. Christ's sufferings, then, were not punishment, but an example of a determination to punish hereafter. They were not to satisfy divine justice, but to impress the mind of the moral universe with a sin-deterring motive. This view is substantially the same as that held by the younger Edwards in America. After Grotius, Limboreh emphasised the idea of a sacrifice, as set forth in the Old Testament, which the theologians previous to Anselm had generally adopted. This theory was introduced into the Arminian works on theology, and approved by the Socinians of the next period. The Quakers admitted that redemption has once been made by the death of Christ, but connected with it the idea of a second redemption realised internally. This second reconciliation they regarded as the essential redeeming principle.
According to what is often called the Mystical theory, the reconciliation effected by Christ was brought about by the mysterious union of God and man, accomplished by the incarnation, rather than by his sacrificial death. This view was not confined to the Platonising fathers or the disciples of Scotus Erigena, but was held by Osiander and Schwenkfeld at the Reformation, and by the school of Schleiermacher, the most spiritual among modern theologians. The last connected the doctrine of the vicarious sufferings and perfect obedience of Christ with his sinlessness and the doctrine of his priestly office, but separated the substitution and the satisfaction so as to represent Christ's sufferings as only vicarious, but not as making satisfaction; and his obedience as making satisfaction, but not as vicarious. The redeeming and atoning principle is not the single fact that Christ died, but a vital union with him. By means of this we appropriate to ourselves Christ's righteousness (his obedience unto death); this appropriation, however, is not to be confounded with the mere external theory of vicarious satisfaction. Christ's passive obedience is merely the crown of his active obedience.
The following are the statements of three modern representative English theologians: (1) J. J. Tayler, as representing the view of modern Unitarianism, which has followed naturally from the 'moral influence' theory of Socinus and earlier of Abelard; (2) Dr J. McLeod Campbell, whose 'sympathy theory' was a spiritual outgrowth from Calvinism; (3) F. D. Maurice, the representative of the modern 'Broad Church' School, which approximates to the 'moral influence' theory in its attitude to the atonement question.
(1) Dr Tayler says: There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. This can only refer to unrivalled pre-eminence, not to exclusive function. For all higher minds do, in fact, mediate between their less gifted fellow-creatures and the great realities of the invisible world. This 'one' is a human mediator, 'the man Christ Jesus'—not a being from another sphere, an angel or a God—but a brother from the bosom of our own human family. 'He gave himself a ransom for all' who embrace his offers and will hearken to his voice. He brings from God a general summons to repent; and with that he conveys, through faith, a spiritual power to shake off the bondage of sin, and put on the freedom of a new heart and a new life. He is a deliverer from the power of sin and the fear of death. This is the end of His mediation. This is the redemption of which he paid the price. His death, cheerfully met in the inevitable sequence of faithful duty, was only one among many links in the chain of instrumentalities by which that deliverance was effected. It was a proof, such as could be given in no other way, of trust in God and immortality, of fidelity to duty, and of love for mankind. In those who earnestly contemplated it, and saw all that it implied, it awoke a tender response of gratitude and confidence, which softened the obdurate heart, and opened it to serious impressions and the quickening influences of a religious spirit.
(2) Dr John M'Leod Campbell says: The work of the Son of God who came to do and did the will of his Father must, in view of the deliverance which he wrought, be regarded as twofold: first, as dealing with man on behalf of God, and second, as dealing with God on behalf of man. In dealing with man on behalf of God, Christ revealed to us the Father in his relation to a sinful world, showed us what our sins were to God, vindicated in the world the Father's name, and witnessed to the excellency of that will against which we were rebelling. In thus revealing the will of the Father towards sinful men, he necessarily became a man of sorrow and suffering, but these arose naturally out of what he was, and the relation in which he stood to those for whom he suffered; and to the holiness and love of his very nature must we refer their awful intensity and immeasurable amount. He suffered what he suffered just through seeing sin and sinners with God's eyes, and feeling in reference to them with God's heart. By what he suffered, he condemned sin, and revealed the wrath of God against it. His holiness and love taking the form of suffering, compose the very essence and adequacy of his sacrifice for sin.
Again, in dealing with God on behalf of man, the oneness of mind with the Father which towards man took the form of condemnation of sin, became in his dealing with the Father in relation to us a perfect confession of our sins, which was a perfect Amen in humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man. Such an Amen was due in the truth of all things, due on our behalf, though we could not render it, due from him as in our nature and our true brother. He who was the truth, could not be in humanity and not utter it. This confession of our sins by him who, as the Son of God and the son of man in one person, could perfectly realise the evil of man's alienation—this Amen from the depths of the humanity of Christ to the divine condemnation of sin, has all the elements of a perfect repentance in humanity, for all the sin of man—all except the personal consciousness of sin; and by that perfect response or Amen to the mind of God, in relation to sin, is the wrath of God rightly met, and that is awarded to divine justice which is its due, and could alone satisfy it. This confession of the world's sin by the Head and Representative of humanity, was followed up by his intercession as a part of the full response of the mind of the Son to the mind of the Father. 'He bore the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.'
(3) F. D. Maurice professed to hold a purely biblical theology, as opposed to the theologies of consciousness, which he repudiated. His doctrine of the atonement is the answer which the Bible gives to the demands of a sin-smitten conscience. A sinner requires, and is content to be told on the authority of Scripture, that the Son of God has taken away sin. This message from God is the gospel for all men. The sinner wants to be assured that God has spoken, that he has declared himself the Reconciler, and desires to be shown how and in whom he has accomplished that work on his behalf.
To this question—How and in whom the work of reconciliation has been accomplished—Maurice replied as follows: The will of God is set forth in the Bible to be a will which is good to all, and the ground of all that is right, true, just, and gracious; the Bible also sets forth the Son of God as being one in will, purpose, and substance with the Father, and shows that his whole life on earth was an exhibition of, and submission to his Father's will. The Son of God was Lord of men, the Root and Head of humanity, and the source of all light and righteousness in man. Being thus one with God and one with man, he brought the will of God into our nature, and fulfilled it in our nature perfectly. In the fulfilment of this will in our nature, as its head, he shared its sufferings, enduring that wrath or punishment which proceeded from Holy Love; thus realising, on the one hand, the sins of the world, and on the other, the consuming fury of the holiness of the love of God, with an anguish which only a perfectly pure and holy Being, who is also a perfectly sympathising and gracious Being, can feel. The man Christ Jesus was for this reason the object of his Father's continual complacency—a complacency fully drawn out by the death of the cross—which so perfectly brought out to view the uttermost power of self-sacrifice which lay hidden in the divine love, and consequently he exhibited humanity, in its head, atoned for, reconciled.
The reader is referred for further and fuller information on this subject to the following works: Baur, Die Christliche Lehre von der Versöhnung (1838), and Vorlesungen über die Christliche Dogmengeschichte (3 vols. 1865-67); the Dogmengeschichte of Neander, of Gieseler, and of Hagenbach; Calvin's Institutes; the relevant works of Edwards, of Owen, of Archbishop Magee, of Dale, and of Professor Crawford; Campbell (John M'Leod), Nature of the Atonement; Thomson's Bampton Lecture (1853); H. N. Oxenham's Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement (2d ed. 1869); Tayler (J. J.), Christian Aspects of Faith and Duty; Maurice, Theological Essays; the great work of Ritschl, Die Christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (3 vols. 2d ed. 1870-74); and Dr G. Jamieson's Discussions on the Atonement. Is it Vicarious? (1887). See also the articles ELECTION, PREDESTINATION, SACRIFICE, &c. in this work.