Atonement

« to him, the eternal Son of God become man is at once human priest and victim, who perfects and replaces the OldTestament institutions of animal sacrifice.

The author takes seriously the (atoning) purpose of those replacedinstitutions, and, while expounding the moral inadequacy of animal sacrifice (a view anticipated in the OldTestament prophets), theologizes the doctrine by centring atonement on the representative human achievement ofthe saviour.

The effect of this metaphorical transformation of the language of the cult was recognized by laterChristian writers who argued that Christ's death as a universal sacrifice renders all animal sacrifice obsolete.

TheJohannine tradition likewise assimilates various aspects of the sacrificial tradition to Jesus ('the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world' (John 1: 29)), but also fuses it with the military language of victory (seeparticularly Revelation 5).

For the purposes of this entry, the military imagery will be left to one side because the characteristic philosophical problems associated with atonement theology centre on legal and sacrificial notions,particularly those of representation, substitution and the forgiveness of sins.

The notion of substitutionencapsulates the claim made in some theologies that Jesus suffers in place of the human sinner in relation to God; that of representation the claim that Jesus acts on behalf of either the human race or (in some traditions) those elect for whom he is said to have died.

However these are to be understood, it can be argued that the New Testament concepts, which in different ways encourage both interpretations, come together in the expression oftentranslated as 'reconciliation' ( katallage and cognates).

God in Christ is primarily the active subject of this verb (2 Corinthians 5: 18-20); believers are claimed (factually) to have been reconciled to God (Romans 5: 10-), but are also urged to 'be reconciled to God' (2 Corinthians 5: 20).

The chief reference appears to be to a past, completeddivine act which both determines the status of believers (and, possibly, everyone) and requires an appropriate religious and ethical response; in the Letter to the Ephesians, this is the reconciliation in one church of the onceestranged Jews and Gentiles.

While the notion of substitution has little prominence in early theology, the notion ofexchange (suggested by the primary meaning of katallage , which in turn is deeply indebted to the Old Testament - see Isaiah 52-3) prepares the way for later discussion.

The anonymous (probably second-century) Letter to Diognetus celebrates the matter with no suggestion of the theological and moral difficulties that are later to arise: 'O sweetest exchange! O unfathomable work of God!….

The sinfulness of many is hidden in the Righteous One, whilethe righteousness of the One justifies the many that are sinners' ( 9.5 ).

The foundations of the classical doctrine of the atonement were later laid by the patristic writers, for example Athanasius, who in On the Incarnation (c.316- 18) employed forensic, sacrificial and military imagery in his account of the saving significance of Jesus.

But,although this is manifestly a theology of atonement, there was little systematic articulation of the problems in theearly period.

Three generalizations are useful for an understanding of the later debates.

First, the early writers, andthe Eastern Orthodox tradition until today, tend to speak of redemption by Christ's self-sacrifice rather than atonement, and exposition is rather in terms of a wealth of images than of a systematic working out of a theology.Second, Orthodox theology tends to speak more of an ontological change brought about in the believer as a result of the self-giving sacrifice of Christ and the life of the church than of a moral or legal reconciliation concentratingon Christ's death.

Third, theology in the West until the Middle Ages was very much shaped by Gregory of Nyssa'scelebrated image of redemption: on the cross, Jesus cheats the devil of his human prey, deceiving him into thinkingthat here is but a man.

The devil swallows his victim, only to be caught on the hook of his hidden divinity.

Gregory'sway of speaking was the catalyst for the critique of Christian theology which drew a definitive response fromAnselm of Canterbury. 3 The doctrine of satisfaction The doctrine of satisfaction has its origins in the rather juridical conception of the human relation to God developed in the West.

In the first instance, it was used of the human response to God, withfew overtones of atonement theology.

For Tertullian, the human calling was conceived in terms of satisfying the just demands of God, the sovereign of the moral order.

The concept was adopted and developed as a metaphor toexpress the atoning act of the Son of God by Anselm of Canterbury (§8) in his Cur Deus homo (Why God Became a Man) (completed in 1098).

In response to criticisms of the irrationality of Christian atonement teaching made by opponents (probably Jewish and Muslim thinkers), he rejected the then reigning theology of atonement, which washeavily influenced by Gregory of Nyssa and according to which the death of Jesus on the cross had freed humankindfrom the legal power of the devil.

Anselm's rejection was based on a conception of the sovereignty of God wherebyGod has no need to bargain with one who is his own creature.

His own theory attempted to establish the necessity of the atonement understood in terms of satisfaction.

The assumption underlying Anselm's argument - and it isprobably a necessary assumption for Christian theologies of atonement - is a belief in universal moral order andGod's responsibility for upholding it.

The human breach of this moral order has led, on the one hand, to human moralincapacity to atone, because of the infinite weight of accumulated offence; on the other, it has led to a situation in which God must either punish or provide some alternative (such as satisfaction) if his purposes in creation are notto be frustrated.

Anything else (for example, the mere remission of sins) would involve an offence against universalorder, and so be unjust, even (or especially) for God.

Punishment would consist in annihilating the human race andso would involve an abandonment of God's purposes in creation; satisfaction requires a counterbalancing act ofrestitution which maintains that order.

Satisfaction is provided by the gift to God the Father of the God-man's life, offered by means of his free human obedience; as the life of God it outweighs even the infinity of human offence.This notion of satisfaction provides the basis of all claims for the universal significance of the particular historical act of Jesus.

Because it is the act of God in the context of universal human fallenness - at one level, a gift by Godto God; at another, an act of human reparation - it is of universal significance.

Recent commentators (such asSteindl), in line with a long tradition of biblical theology of salvation, have emphasized that satisfaction, as analternative to punishment, represents not the infliction of a penalty on a human Jesus in place of the actualoffenders, but a creative act whereby God, by a new initiative, overcomes evil by good.

Anselm's aim was thelimited one of establishing the rationality and necessity of the God-man, so there is a measure of injustice ininsisting that he should have done things that he never set out to do.

But subsequent theology has criticized him. »