THE CROSS HAD TO BE CARRIED and endured before it could be preached. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not clarify the concept of sacrifice. He did not come to teach about the cross, but to be nailed to it. He came that there might be a gospel to preach.
Christianity proclaims not merely that Christ died, but that his death had significance for the otherwise apparently absurd course of human history. The Christian teaching of the cross asks what his death meant, what effect it had, how it worked for us and our salvation. This subject matter is called atonement.
The Atonement Embodied in One Person
Sin dug a gulf in a relationship. The cross bridged it. Sin resulted in estrangement. The cross reconciled it. Sin made war. The cross made peace. Sin broke fellowship. The cross repaired and restored it (2 Cor. 5:18–21; Hilary, Trin. 8.51).
A Death, Not a Concept
To atone is to reconcile a broken relationship on behalf of another. Atonement is viewed in Christianity not as a conceptual problem for human speculation, but an actual event in the history of divine-human covenant. The Christian teaching of atonement is not just about the general idea of dying for others, but about an actual, terrible, sacrificial death. It happened to a man from Nazareth on a particular hill on a particular day (Augustine, Harmony of the Gospels 3.14–23).
The significance of that death is not merely an expression of human violence and hatred, or of Jesus’ moral courage. It accomplished an incomparable work of divine mercy for humanity.
The word the cross speaks is not a word we say to ourselves. It is a word that God speaks to us through an inescapably concrete, irreversible, disturbing event.
The heart of its meaning is confessed in the creed: he died for us (pro nobis, huper hemon; Creed of 150 Fathers). “He died” is a fact. “For us” is the meaning of that fact.
Mapping the Trajectory of the Study of the Cross
The teaching of salvation began by inquiring into the unique identity of the Savior. That identity could not be adequately clarified without setting forth major events of his earthly ministry, all of which foreshadowed his last days and finally came to focus intensely upon the events surrounding his death (Chrysostom, Hom. on Rom. 11; Ambrose, Letter 16). While the inquiry into the person of Christ focuses upon the personal union of deity and humanity, the work of Christ focuses upon what this incomparable person did. In sum, he served as a ransom for the sins of humanity (Mark 10:45; Gregory of Nazianzus, Theol. Orat. 4.20).
The pivotal principle that integrates the study of Christ is: what the work of salvation required, the person of the Mediator supplied. This is the economy of salvation.
Salvation requires a Savior. This unique work can only be done by this unique person. This salvation can only be accomplished by this Savior—not just anyone dying on any cross. This principle holds together the varied parts of this study. Its key question: What did the Savior (soter) do to bring about salvation (soteria)?
Admittedly it is more important to the believer to know that he is saved by the cross than precisely how. Yet the recipient of saving grace is at some point compelled to ask how and why, to whatever degree it is possible (Ambrose, Of Christian Faith 2.11). We will follow the centrist classic Christian consensus on the meaning of Jesus’ death. It was thought through thoroughly over the earliest centuries of Christian study of Scripture.
The Crossroad of Christian Reflection
No Cross, No Christianity
To preach is to announce the cross. To worship is to come to the cross. To believe is to trust in the One crucified (Rom. 5:6–11; Origen, Comm. on Rom. 5.6; Cyril of Alex, Expl. of Rom. 6.5).
It is impossible to imagine Christianity without a cross. Christian worship is spatially ordered around it. The history of Western art and architecture holds the cross before us constantly. In death the graves of Christians are marked by a cross (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 13.33).
A flood of impressions and images collide and meld in the portrayal of the rugged power and meaning of the cross. In a burst of ecstasy, many of these are amassed in a single passage by John of Damascus. In Jesus death,
death has been brought low, the sin of our first parent destroyed, hell plundered, resurrection bestowed, the power given us to scorn the things of this world and even death itself, the road back to the former blessedness made smooth, the gates of paradise opened, our nature seated at the right hand of God, and we made children and heirs of God. By the cross all things have been set aright…. It is a raising up for those who lie fallen, a support for those who stand, a staff for the infirm, a crook for the shepherded, a guide for the wandering, a perfecting of the advanced, salvation for soul and body, an averter of all evils, a cause of all good things, a destruction of sin, a plant of resurrection, and a tree of eternal life (John of Damascus, OF 4.11).
All these are implied in the death of Christ. But how do such diverse pictures cohere? The point of cohesion is the divine-human reconciliation. It happened on the cross, where “all things are reconciled” (Col. 1.20).
The Crimson Thread of Scripture: The Atoning Death
The reconciliation of God and humanity is among the most basic themes of Scripture. It is the scarlet thread running throughout the whole of Scripture (Clement of Rome, Corinth 12). So central is this theme that it is no exaggeration to say that the events surrounding the cross constitute the central interest of New Testament proclamation (Chysostom, Hom. on Col. 3; F. Turretin, On the Atonement of Christ; Berkouwer, The Work of Christ). Christ’s death makes our salvation possible. Hence the cross is called the procuring cause of salvation.
At the heart of the divine-human reconciliation is Christ’s death (Rom. 5:10; Phil. 2:8; Heb. 2:9–14), which means the cross (Eph. 2:16; Col. 1:20), which means the giving of the lifeblood of Christ (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Eph. 1:7; 2:13; Col. 1:14; Heb. 9:12, 15; 1 John 1:7). Christ’s atoning work is grounded in the Father’s love (John 3:16). It manifests God’s righteousness (Rom. 3:25; 2 Cor. 5:21). It forms the basis of our reconciliation with God and neighbor (Rom. 5:11; 2 Cor. 5:18–19; Chrysostom, Hom. on Cor. 11.5).
“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Col. 1:19–20; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 13.33). On this basis it is possible to speak summarily of the whole work of Christ simply as a “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18) or peacemaking (Rom. 10:15; Eph. 2:14–17; Chrysostom, Hom. on Eph. 5.2.13; Clare of Assisi, Letter to Ermentrude, CWS: 107–108; Deotis Roberts, Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology).
The Divine Plan Leads to the Cross
The cross occurred by divine ordering and foreknowing. According to the eternal wisdom of God’s oikonomia (arrangement or plan), which the Father had ordained, God the Son would come to save humanity from sin by means of his sacrificial death (Eph. 1:1–10; Marius Victorinus, Epis. to Eph. 1.1.9; Pearson, EC 1: 612–13).
The plan of salvation is familiar to believers, and can be simply summarized in traditional language: “The eternal Son of God took what is ours into personal union with what was His, and completed His human equipment as our Redeemer by a life of painful and exemplary obedience to the Father’s will. Thus equipped, He redeemed mankind by His death and resurrection, and was thereby consecrated for a heavenly priesthood, in which He has become the Author of salvation. This salvation is accomplished through His mystical body, to which His Holy Spirit has imparted life, and in which He operates so as to enable men to work out their salvation” (Hall, DT 7:112–13; Eph. 1; Rom. 5; 2 Cor. 5).
The triune God arranged this great plan or economy (oikonomia) for our restoration through which the Father would be rightly brought near (propitiated) to sinners, the Son himself being the means of this reconciliation, and the Holy Spirit would enkindle the heart to receive this good news (Leo I, Serm. 77.2). Lacking the cross, the pivotal event of the entire narrative would be missing.
The Cross Uniquely Joins Holiness and Love
The heart of atonement teaching is: Christ suffered in our place to satisfy the requirement of the holiness of God, so as to remove the obstacle to the pardon and reconciliation of the guilty. What the holiness of God required, the love of God provided in the cross.
The Holiness and Love of God Are Intrinsically Related by Being Personally Embodied
God is holy. God’s holiness constrains, orders, and conditions God’s love. God’s love infuses, empowers, constrains, and complements God’s holiness.
God would not be as holy as God is without being incomparably loving. God would not be as loving as God is without being incomparably holy. God’s holiness without God’s love would be unbearable. God’s love without God’s holiness would be unjust. God’s wisdom found a way to bring them congruently together. It involved a cross (John 3:15–18; Gregory of Nazianzus, Poem 2; Hilary, Trin. 6.40; Watson, TI 2, 19, 20, 25; Miley, Syst. Theol. 2:65–239; N. Burwash, Manual of Christian Theology 2:147–90).
The Discord Between Holiness and Evil
The holy God rigorously opposes evil. Whatever is freely chosen by responsible moral agents, yet causes unnecessary harm, God resists. The resistance comes from the author of human freedom through conscience.
Conscience is given universally to humanity to attest to the “ought” in all that is. Conscience witnesses within us, however imperfectly, of God’s own revulsion at moral evil (Rom. 2:15; 2 Cor. 1:12).
God has created a universe governed by moral law in which the consequences of sin are guilt, loss, pain, and death. These consequences always occur in specific interpersonal communities where each person’s decisions impact others (1 Cor. 8:7–12; Chrysostom, Hom. on Cor. 20.8–10).
The consequences of righteousness are freedom, happiness, well-being, and life. Sin tends inexorably to result in suffering, though often indirectly, intergenerationally, obliquely, ricocheting socially, and lacking in full awareness of its causes. Righteousness tends in the long run toward happiness. Human happiness consists in refracting God’s holy love within the limits of human finitude (1 Tim. 6:11; Ambrose, Duties, 1.36.185; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q26; Wesley, WJW 6:431, 443). This refraction has become radically distorted by the history of sin (R. Niebuhr, NDM 1; Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: 265–76).
The Radical Seriousness of Sin
The holiness of God required a penalty for sin, just as promised, otherwise there would be no way to count on the moral reliability of God’s word. Lacking penalty for sin, the moral order is jeopardized. There is no approach to the mystery of the cross without this premise. The just God does not lightly say to humanity: “when you eat of it you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17), only to set aside the penalty after the transgression (Pope, Compend. 2:253–316).
A massive disruption has occurred with the history of sin. It is not merely that unholy humanity can no longer find its way back to God, but more profoundly that the Holy One is offended and estranged by the outrageous injustices of willed human sin (Rom. 2:1–16, 3:9–20; Origen, Comm. on Rom. 2, 3).
The Gospel breaks through the impasse. The good news is that God through Christ has done what the law could not do: sent his Son as an offering for sin. Christ expiated sin by his own sacrificial death. The Lord laid upon him the iniquity of us all (Isa. 53:6). This is the life-giving way that the incomparably wise, holy and loving God chose to deal with the death-laden estrangement caused by sin (1 John 2:2; Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q46–51).
How God’s Incomparable Love Answers the Requirement of God’s Incomparable Holiness in a Sinful World
God’s holiness made a penalty for sin necessary. God’s love endured that penalty for the transgressor and made payment of the penalty viable.
It is God’s holiness that manifests God’s love on the cross. It is God’s love that sustains and embodies God’s holiness on the cross. There the holiness of the love of God is once for all clarified, and the love of the holy God is fully embodied (Chrysostom, Hom. on Rom., Hom. 9).
It is only in the cross that Christianity finds the proper balance of God’s holiness and love. There holiness opposes sin. There God’s love provides a ransom for the history of sin (Baxter, PW 15:218–19; Aulen, FCC: 102–30).
Love was the divine motive; holiness the divine requirement. “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). This love was so great that God “did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32; Ambrosiaster, Comm. on Paul’s Epis, Rom. 8:31–32).
The Imbalance Caused by Neglect of Either God’s Holiness or Love
Suppose a plan of salvation in which God’s holiness would be stressed but God’s love neglected. If God’s holiness should remain unmitigated by God’s love, the supposed “salvation” could easily turn into a distorted picture of God as angry avenger who unmercifully permits the slaying of his own Son to even the score for the divine honor. Anselm’s view is sometimes perceived (unfairly I think) as tending in the direction of this excess.
The seemingly conflicting divine attributes are brought into proper equilibrium in the mission of the Son. “In the love of the Triune God is found its source, in the justice of the Triune God its necessity, and in the wisdom of the Triune God its method” (Tillett, PS: 100). It is finally on the cross that “Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs forth from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven” (Ps. 85:10–11; cf. Francis of Assisi, Letters, CWS: 53–57, 68–71).
The Lord says: “Be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44). Leo the Great explained: That means “choose me and keep away from what displeases me. Do what I love; love what I do. If what I order seems difficult, come back to me who ordered it, so that from where the command was given help might be offered. I who furnish the desire will not refuse support” (Leo I, Sermon 94.2, italics added).
The Reversal: God’s Own Sacrifice
Atonement is defined as the satisfaction made for sin by the death of Christ that makes possible the salvation of humanity (1 John 2:2; Rom. 3:25; Baxter, PW 6:511–18). The Hebrew root words that convey the atoning deed (kaphar, kippurim) carried nuances of “purge, cleanse, expiate, purify, cross out, cover, spread over, or forgive.” These words ordinarily denote the satisfaction made for sin by sacrificial offerings. One atones by providing a fitting expiation for an injury or offense (Bede, On 1 John 2.2).
Human Propitiatory Acts Saturate the History of Religions
Much of the history of religions is intensely concerned with expiation. The history of religions amply demonstrates that human beings from time immemorial have been aware of their guilt. Conscience sees to that, with as much variability as persistence.
Expiatory acts sought to remove this guilt through conciliatory actions offered to God. The expiations so commonly found in the history of religions focus upon the restoration of the damaged divine-human relationship by means of propitiatory actions initiated by penitents. Classic Christianity shows that God himself has made the reconciliation by sending his Son (Cyprian, Epist. 51).
The Reversal of All Expiatory Initiatives in the Cross
In Christianity it is not humans who come to God with a compensatory gift, but rather God who comes to humanity in self-giving in order to overcome the divine-human alienation. This is a very different idea of satisfaction than is common in the history of religions (1 John 2:1–17; Origen, OFP 2.7.4).
It is not that human beings conciliate God, but that “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:19). God does not passively wait to be reconciled but actively goes out and humbly suffers for sinners to reconcile them. God does not wait for humanity to approach but approaches humanity (Ambrose, On the Sacrament of the Incarnation 6.59). The saving event is not about God receiving our gifts, but God giving his own Gift, his Son, in order to offer us the benefit of salvation (Augustine, CG 22.22). The Word tabernacled in our nature (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Comm. on John 1.1.14). Our humanity is enriched by his coming to dwell with us (Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John 1.9).
In Christianity It Is God Who Sacrifices, Not Humanity
The particular sacrifice of which Christianity speaks involves a once-for-all reversal: Sacrifice does not focus primarily upon our giving God what God would not have without us, but upon our becoming totally receptive to the radical divine gift (Oecumenius, Comm. on 1 John 2:1–17), which implies a radical human task: being for others as God is for us (Maximos, Philokal. 2:245–49). Viewed schematically:
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The Reversal | ||
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Preparation for the gospel |
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The gospel |
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History of religions |
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The reversal of religions |
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Humanity approaches God |
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God approaches humanity |
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Humans suffer for God |
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God suffers for humanity |
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God receives human gifts |
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God gives God’s own self |
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Sinners attempt conciliation |
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God reconciles sinners |
This is why Christian worship and ethics focus so intently upon gratitude. The beginning point is thankful acceptance of the divine gift. Worship centers on thanksgiving (eucharistia). Counter to ordinary human expectations, the Christian life consists in taking the risk of allowing ourselves to be endowed with gifts from God.
The Finished Work: Reconciliation
The atonement is a finished work. This means that in the cross the saving act has decisively occurred (John 19:30). It is a work that is objectively done and complete, a once-for-all accomplished redemption. It does not require some further sacrificial work on the part of the crucified Lord.
Reconciliation as an Objective Event
Reconciliation is not merely an attitudinal change on our part to welcome God back into congenial human company. Rather the cross is the central event of salvation history that has once for all changed the divine-human relationship. In it an unmerited divine gift is actually offered. “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” for “when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son” (Rom. 5:8–10; Origen, Comm. on Rom. 5.6).
The means by which the sin/death syndrome is broken is Christ’s atoning death and resurrection. The end result and purpose of its having been broken is reconciliation with God. Both of these meanings inhere in the old English term “at-one-ment:” “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Cor. 5:19). The means is Christ, the end is not counting sins (Ambrosiaster, Comm. on Paul’s Epis. 2 Cor. 5).
Justification pronounces a word of acquittal from guilt to the offender. Reconciliation is the restoration of the justified to communion with God (Rom. 5:1–11; Chrysostom, Hom. on Rom. 9).
The Call for Human Responsiveness
Divine-human reconciliation is meant to be subjectively received by its beneficiaries. Though from God’s side atonement is a finished act, from our side communion with God cannot be said to have come full circle until those beloved of God receive the reconciling event already accomplished, and thus become reconciled to God (Rom. 5:10) God makes his appeal through us. “Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20; Chrysostom, Hom. on Cor. 11.5).
For this cause, Paul pleads with the Corinthians: “We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:21). The reception requires a behavioral reversal. “As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain” (2 Cor. 6:1). This is not an offer for us to reconcile ourselves to God, but simply to receive God’s reconciling act. Until that occurs through repentance and faith, the sinner remains behaviorally unreconciled to God, even though God offers it already as a gift (Augustine, Enchiridion 18–20). Though the divine-human reconciliation is an objective, finished act, yet at the same time the indicative implies an imperative (Rom. 12:1–8; Origen, Comm. on Rom. 12). This gift implies a task (Leo I, Serm. 77). The Holy Spirit works to apply this finished gift to believers. This is the subject of sanctification to be treated later.
Classic exegetes concluded that Jesus’ atoning death was necessary, there being no salvation except through the meritorious death of Christ. It is both unlimited and conditional: it is unlimited in extent since it avails for all sinners and for all sin. It is conditional in its application, since it is efficacious only for the penitent and believing sinner. “The universality of the atonement is of God; its limitation is of man” (Tillett, PS: 110).
The atoning work may be viewed from different vantage points: first as a doctrine of God’s own righteousness; second, as an act of reconciliation between God and humanity; third, as the full and finished redemption of humanity. Each constitutes a different angle of vision upon a single event: the cross (Origen, Comm. on Rom. 5).
From the viewpoint of God’s righteousness, atonement is the revelation of the justice of God. It is God’s own surprising and radical way of making things right, namely, through the cross. From the perspective of reconciliation the cross is the peacemaking event in the divine-human relationship. From the third perspective of redemption, atonement is the resulting liberation from bondage to sin (Rom. 3:22–24; Ambrosiaster, Comm. on Paul’s Epis. Rom. 3.24).
Four Biblical Word Pictures of Atonement
Four familiar word pictures help us in understanding God’s atoning action: the loss of a family member, the sacrifice offered at the Temple, the liberation of slaves through ransom, and fair procedures in a just courtroom.
The family metaphor speaks of a generous father who is willing to give his only son for the deliverance of the whole family—in this case the human family.
The most important sphere from which atonement metaphors were derived is the context of Temple sacrifice, referring to a priestly mediation through which God and humanity are reconciled through a sin offering for transgressors as a propitiation of violated divine holiness.
The diplomatic metaphor speaks of a ransom being paid, a price of exchange made for those imprisoned and completely unable to help themselves.
The court metaphor speaks of a bar of fair judgment under the law that has imposed a fair penalty due to disobedience of law, yet a substitute penalty has been offered by an advocate or friend of the court.
These four metaphorical spheres intensely mesh, combine, and interlace:
In the family (patria, Eph. 3:15) of God, the Son (huios, John 1:18; 3:16) is sent to save the whole human family. Christ is the Son whom the Father gives for the benefit of all. “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4–5; Ambrose, On the Chr. Faith 1.14)
In the holy temple (hieron, 1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Cor. 6:16) the sacrificial death of the Savior readies the sinner for meeting with God. Christ is our priest (hiereus, Heb. 7) in the temple, himself serving as the only sacrifice that God accepts, since it comes on God’s own terms.
In the court or judgment seat (bema, 2 Cor. 5:10) of righteousness, Christ’s perfect obedience to law discharges the duty owed to the court and fully pays the debt (Acts 13:38). Christ is our advocate (parakletos, 1 John 2:1) in court, by doing what the law demands (his active obedience) and paying the penalty for us (his passive obedience through his death).
In the diplomatic arena, those who are enslaved by an alien power are liberated through the suffering and death of another. Christ is liberator of those sold into a dark hell-hole of bondage (Gal. 4:4.22–30).
In the family, love is the central motif. In the temple, holiness is required.
In the court, righteousness or justice is required. In ransoming slaves, what is most needed is a sufficient ransom payment.
The interweaving logic of these four word-pictures will help resolve confusions and problems of atonement texts:
Christ’s Obedience: Active and Passive
The uniting principle of his life work is: through his work his identity is revealed. His work is active in his life and passive in his death. What Christ did and suffered gradually becomes the revelation of who Christ is as eternal Son. His identity is freely made known not through deductive reasoning but through the events of his acting and suffering.
What He Did Distinguished from What He Suffered
The means by which Christ rendered satisfaction was twofold: his active obedience to the law and his obedient suffering unto death (Book of Concord: 541). Christ’s obedience is often analyzed in terms of his active obedience by which he fulfilled and obeyed the law through his life, and his passive obedience by which he passively endured suffering unto death (Calvin, Inst. 2.16).
Jesus’ obedience countermands and amends Adam’s disobedience. “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19). It is a single obedience, with both passive and active phases, by which “we have been both set free from punishment because he passively bore punishment for us, and given the privilege of eternal life, because he actively fulfilled the law for us” (Wollebius, CTC 18).
Luther summarized: “In a twofold manner Christ put Himself under the Law. First, He put Himself under the works of the Law. He was circumcised, presented, and purified in the temple. He became subject to father and mother, and the like; yet He was not obliged to do this, for He was Lord of all laws. But He did so willingly, not fearing or seeking anything for Himself in it,” Luther wrote in order to sum up his active obedience. And, “In the second place, He also put himself under the penalty and punishment of the Law willingly” (Luther, Serm. on Gal. 4:1–7, italics added), fulfilling his passive obedience through his death.
In Life and in Death
His obedience is “not only in suffering and dying, but also that he in our stead was voluntarily subject to the Law.” His obedience is imputed [i.e., reckoned vicariously] to us for righteousness, so that, on account of this complete obedience, which, by deed and by suffering, in life and in death, He rendered to His heavenly Father for us, God forgives our sins” (Formula of Concord, Sol. Dec. 3, 14).
Viewed schematically, Christ’s substitutionary act involved a twofold obedience:
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Christ’s Obedience |
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Active |
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Passive |
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a vicarious obedience |
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a vicarious punishment |
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his life under the law |
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his death on the cross |
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for righteousness |
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for sin |
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fulfilling the righteousness required of humanity |
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enduring the punishment deserved by humanity |
Those who take time to ponder this graphic will save time later in grasping the dynamics of the atonement.`
By His Active Obedience (His Life) He Fulfilled the Law for Us
By his active obedience, Christ enacted and embodied the righteousness required for eternal life. He was “born under law, to redeem those under law” (Gal. 4:4; 1 Cor. 1:30). He came not “to abolish the Law or the Prophets,” “but to fulfill them” (Matt. 5:17).
According to God’s reckoning, the faithful are viewed as if Christ’s righteousness had become theirs (Gal. 4:4–5; Rom. 5:8; 8:3; 10:4; Matt. 5:17). He fulfilled the law for us, so that the righteousness demanded by the law and rendered by Christ might become ours through faith. On this basis, “Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes” (Rom. 10:4). The faithful person is “found in him, not having a righteousness of my own” (Phil. 3:9; Augustine, On Grace and Free Will 26).
Sinners would not have been ready to come before the holy God had not some fitting way been found by which it could truthfully be said that sinners had satisfied the requirement of the law—a seemingly impossible requirement. Christ provided this way by fulfilling the law in our place, in order that sinners who repent and receive by faith this vicarious fulfillment of the law might be accounted righteous before God (Schmid: DT 352; Menno Simons, True Christian Faith, CWMS: 341).
By Passive Obedience (His Death) He Paid the Penalty for Others
The quintessential act of atonement was Jesus’ obedience unto death, the sacrifice of his life in utter, unreserved obedience. Uniting the themes of obedience and sacrifice, the Letter to Hebrews states: “We have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Heb. 10:10, commenting upon Psalm 40:6–8).
Passive obedience means Christ’s willingness to suffer and die. He bore the guilt of others and paid their penalties. By his suffering and death, Christ removed the discord between God and humanity (Augustine, Enchiridion 41). By this means he rendered a satisfaction fully sufficient for and available to all who have faith. Merit sufficient to salvation flowed from the satisfaction rendered (Anselm, Cur Deus Homo 1.19–2.6).
He learned obedience through the things that he suffered (Heb. 5:8). It is ironic that God “should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering” (Heb. 2:10; Chrysostom, Hom. on Heb. 4.4). The risen Christ chided the travelers on the road to Emmaus: “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” (Luke 24:26; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on Luke 24).
As his passive obedience was necessary for the expiation of sin, his active obedience was necessary for the guidance of faith toward life eternal (Baxter, PW 21:337–41; Brandenburg-Nürnberg Articles of 1533). One without the other would be lacking either in pardon or righteousness. “Thus he honors obedience by his action, and proves it experimentally by his Passion” (Gregory Nazianzus, 30.6). These two modes of obedience must be held closely together—“What He did for us, what He suffered on account of us” (Augustine, The Creed 3.6).
Christ “gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2; Chrysostom, Hom. on Eph. 17.4.32–5.2). The death of Christ was a true sacrifice in the ancient Hebraic sense. Sacrifice formed the core of Levitical worship and ritual. In ancient Jewish tradition, the sacrificial destruction or transformation ordinarily occurred by the death of a living animal or sometimes by the burning of foods or pouring out of fluids. By sacrificing some valued creature for one’s sins and offering it up unreservedly to God, the supplicant acknowledged God’s rightful lordship over his own life, which was symbolically being offered up and destroyed (Ps. 27:6; Phil. 4:18; Pohle-Preuss, DT 5:113).
Sacrifices ritually acknowledged the holiness and sovereignty of God and sought to draw offenders nearer to God’s holiness, however keenly aware of sin they were. A sacrifice is defined in scholastic theology as “the external offering up of a visible gift, which is destroyed, or at least submitted to an appropriate transformation, by a lawful minister in recognition of the sovereignty of God” in order to conciliate God’s holy rejection of sin (Pohle-Preuss, DT 5:111; Tho. Aq., ST 1–3 Q85.2).
Biblical Motifs of Sacrifice
The sacrifices of the Old Testament formed an anticipatory type of the self-offering Christ was to make. The sacrifices of Abel and Abraham were key Old Testament types that were reinterpreted in the New Testament.
The practice of sacrifice dates back to earliest human narratives—of Abel, who “kept flocks,” who “brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering” (Gen. 4:2–5; Ambrose, The Prayer of Job and David; Augustine, CG 15.15–17).
Abel’s Costly Sacrifice
The apostles preached that it was “by faith” that Abel offered this blood sacrifice. It was distinguished from the disapproved plant offerings of Cain. The sacrifice of Abel had powerful significance for early Christian belief, for “by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead” (Heb. 11:4).
Why was Abel’s offering “better” than Cain’s (Heb. 11:4)? Because it occurred by faith in God’s promise, however dimly its fulfillment was perceived. It con tained an implicit acknowledgment of sin and an anticipatory faith in a coming sacrifice more fitting. And it was a costly act, as was Christ’s. For the offering of this sacrifice was the indirect cause of Abel’s own death at the hands of his brother. The New Testament did not miss this striking reversal: through Abel’s offering he himself was made a sacrifice (Ephrem, Comm. on Heb. 11.4).
The Offering of Isaac (Gen. 22)
The ram offered by Abraham was the prototypical vicarious offering through which another was spared—that of the only beloved son (Isaac) through whom the divine promise was to be fulfilled (Ambrose, Isaac, FC 65:10–12). The life of the ram in the thicket would be offered for the life of another. The Epistle to the Hebrews comments on its weighty significance as a figurative resurrection: “By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking he did receive Isaac back from death” (Heb. 11:17–19).
The dilemma was that the very one through whom humanity was promised to be blessed (Isaac as the one and only bearer of Abraham’s seed and promise) was according to God’s command to be sacrificed. It took unreserved faith in God for Abraham to proceed to Mount Moriah (Augustine, CG 16.24; Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling: 27–37). This faith prefigured the resurrection faith in the sacrifice of the one and only Son. The word rendered “figuratively” (Heb. 11:19) is parabole, a parable or figure or type. Abraham believed God could raise the dead (Ephrem, Comm. on Heb. 11.17). Abraham’s willingness to offer his only son and the salvation of his son were viewed parabolically as anticipatory of the Father-Son relation in the cross and resurrection of Jesus (“Hence he did get him back, by what was a parable of the resurrection” Heb. 11:19, Moffatt tr.).
The Levitical System of Sacrifices Prescribed Under Mosaic Law
In the Old Testament, sacrifice was regarded as mercifully instituted by God as an expression of covenant, enabling the wayward people to draw near to God (Lev. 17:11). It was not merely a rational invention of human ingenuity or social identification. Rather, the sacrificial system was a divinely provided means of enabling the approach of sinners to God.
The blood of sacrifice symbolized both the life and the death of the victim. It usually involved the violent death of a victim sacrificed in order to make the approach of reconciliation. It offered a covering over of sin and thus the removing of defilement.
The Passover Lamb
The blood of the Passover lamb was given for others and put on the doorframes of the houses of the Israelites. “The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you” (Exod. 12:13). Hence the life of the people was preserved by the death of the victim. “And when your children ask you, “What does this ceremony mean to you?” then tell them, “It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians’” (Exod. 12:26–27). The blood of the lamb was the life of Israel (Chrysostom, Hom. on John 17; Augustine, Comm. on John 55).
John the Baptist said of Jesus: “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29), pointing toward a sacrificial victim whose self-offering would be in the place of another (Augustine, Sermon 19.3). Luther’s language concerning Christ as lamb is particularly vivid: “He permits Himself, as the Pascal Lamb, to be killed and roasted on the tree of the cross that He may sprinkle us with His blood and that the angel of death, who had received power over us because of sin, should pass us by and do us no harm. Thus Paul well says: ‘Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us’ (Luther, Serm. on John 19:25–37, quoting 1 Cor. 5:7). “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power,” sang the angelic hosts of the book of Revelation, “ten thousand times ten thousand,” encircling the heavenly throne (Rev. 5:11–12).
No Remission Without Shedding of Blood
Blood was symbolic of the offerer’s own soul or life. Blood symbolized the dedication of a life wherein the one who offered life substituted for the indebted life of another (Augustine, EDQ 49).
Wherever there is blood, there is life. Life is in blood. Yet blood means more than simply physical life. It means life poured out sacrificially for others (Clement of Alex., Instructor 1.6). It is not the blood itself that makes atonement, but the life or animate creation or soul in the blood that is offered as a prayer for atonement (John 6:52–59; Augustine, Tractate on John 26.17–18).
The sacrificed victim implies not merely a death, but a death that enables life. Hence the sacrifice is not meaningless. The offering of blood was viewed as the offering and enabling of life, not death. This connection was clearly set forth in Levitical law: “For the life of the creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar” (Lev. 17:11; 16:9, 20–22; Isa. 53:4–10). The atoning lifeblood of the victim covers the guilt of the penitent.
The original meaning of holocaust (holos, “whole,” and kaustos, “burnt”) is a sacrifice wholly consumed by fire, a complete offering, unreservedly dedicated (Mark 12:33; Hilary, Trin. 9.24). The offerer could not actually surrender his own human life—Yahweh abhorred both suicide and human sacrifice. Hence the supplicant offered up his own life symbolically by presenting in place of his life some valued, unblemished creature. The supplicant was implicitly confessing that he was unable to stand in the presence of the Holy One as sinner—so radically that he deserved to die.
No Jew, however negligent, could have failed to grasp the central point that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Heb. 9:22). The offerer of sacrifice, by the laying on of hands, designated the animal to be for him (or for the covenant people) a means of atonement, thanksgiving, or petition. The imposition of hands on the head of the victim symbolized that the sins of the people were being heaped upon it (Lev. 4:13–20). The atoning virtue, or power to cover sins, was assumed to reside in the shed blood (Chrysostom, Hom. on Heb. 16.3–4).
Vicarious Sacrifice in the Temple as Preparation for the Gospel
Essentially the sacrifice was a human gift to God, presented by those aware of their sins and hoping that the severity of divine holiness might be turned to clemency. In this sense sacrifice was something like a protective covering enshrouding the sinner in the presence of God. The idea of covering is the root idea of the Hebrew kaphar, “to make atonement” (Exod. 29:36–37; Num. 5:8; Leo I, Sermon 59.5).
Through the death of animal brute creatures who were not culpable, rational creatures who were culpable were saved from death. The death of the victim was vicarious, in the place of the people, and expiatory, ceremonially removing their sins as an obstacle to the divine-human relationship so as to bring God nearer (hence it was called propitiatory). The virtue of the sacrifice was not determined by cost or economic value, but by the inward sincerity of the contrition that accompanied it. “A broken and a contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Ps. 51:17).
The prophets protested the abuses of this sacrificial system without rejecting the system itself. They were concerned that too often it tended to neglect justice to the needy and mercy to the poor (Amos 5:21ff.; Isa. 1:11; Mic. 6:7; Jer. 7:22). They repeatedly rejected the presumption that the clemency of God could be bought or traded. The Temple sacrifice system would continue in later Judaism until the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, when it came to an abrupt end and Judaism became transmuted in the Diaspora.
The classic Christian exegetes drew this overarching conclusion: through this sacrificial system, the people of Israel were being prepared for the incomparable act of sacrifice that was to come in Jesus Christ (Arnobius, Ag. the Heathen 7). They sensed that “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming” (Heb. 10:1).
The Sacrificial Offering of Christ
God the Son offers himself “as a sacrifice of atonement” in order “to demonstrate his justice” (Rom 3:25), so as to be both “just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).
Only the One Mediator Could Suffice
No blood less than that of the incarnate Son of God would have been sufficient to enable a declaration that the sins of all humanity have been forgiven (Gregory Nazianzus, Second Orat. on Easter). No one except the God-man could be at once just and Justifier (Rom. 3:26; 1 Tim. 2:5–6).
The law in itself did not accomplish the deliverance of humanity from sin (Rom. 8:3). Only by identifying with the sinner, by becoming an offering for sin, did the Son deliver from sin. “And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us” (Rom. 8:4; Cyril of Alex., Expl. of Rom. 8.4).
Both Priest and Sacrifice Once for All
To whom did Christ offer this sacrifice? “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Cor. 5:19; Augustine, Enchiridion 13.41). It was God who was both offering reconciliation and receiving the reconciled.
Augustine parsed the perplexing distinction in this precise way: “The man Christ Jesus, though in the form of God He received sacrifice together with the Father with whom He is one God, yet in the form of a servant, He chose rather to be than to receive a sacrifice, that not even by this instance any one might have occasion to suppose that sacrifice should be rendered to any creature. Thus He is both the Priest who offers and the Sacrifice offered” (Augustine, CG 10.20, italics added; On the Trinity, 4.14.1[19]).
It became a key point of classic atonement teaching that Christ is both priest and sacrifice: “Priest and victim, then, are one” (Ambrose, On the Christian Faith 3.11). “For us he became to thee both Victor and Victim; and Victor because he was the Victim: For us, he was to thee both Priest and Sacrifice, and Priest because he was the Sacrifice” (Augustine, Confessions 10, 43). He is “both the offerer and the offering” (Augustine, Trin. 3.14).
The sacrifice of the incarnate Lord on the cross was a once for all occurrence, never needing to be repeated. “Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself” (Heb. 7:27). This conclusive act of self-offering is contrasted with the repetition of the Aaronic priestly rituals (Heb. 8:3; 9:26; 10:12; Gregory Nazianzus, On the Theophany). Through his death sin is removed, and the approach of humanity to God made possible. Christ “has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Heb. 9:26). Christ as representative Mediator “sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him” (Heb. 9:27–28).
Christ Our Eucharist
When he took the cup at the first Lord’s Supper, he said to his disciples: “This is my blood of the covenant…. I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it anew in the kingdom of God” (Mark 14:24–25). This signaled that his death decisively marked the coming of the kingdom of God.
Jesus’ death becomes our once for all Passover lamb. Jesus died during the time that the pascal lambs were being slain. Paul had received the Jerusalem kerygma that had already made the decisive connection between Jesus’ death and the lambs sacrificed for the Passover feast. He delivered to his hearers “as of first importance” the gospel he had received: “that Christ died for our sins” (1 Cor. 15:3–4; Gregory Nazianzus, Second Orat. on Easter). He understood Christ as “our Passover lamb” who “has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7). In the words of institution for the Lord’s Supper as reported by Paul—“This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25)—Christ’s lifeblood sealed the new covenant, as sacrifice had sealed the old covenant.
The Supper remains a perpetual reminder of the Son’s own self-offering on our behalf (Jeremias, Eucharistic Words of Jesus: 150–53). It celebrates both Christ’s death and coming again: “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26; Ambrose, Sacra. 4.6.29).
The Eucharist celebrates Christ’s effectual and acceptable sacrifice to God. The assumption is that the once-for-all sacrifice of the cross is the energizing grace of every Eucharist, there being in reality only one sacrifice, the cross (Apostolic Constitutions 2.7–8). The liturgy points in the indicative case to the reality that the finished sacrifice of Jesus is complete and sufficient for all. The indicative implies this imperative: in the lives of believers this grace is still in the process of being given and looks toward being made complete in glory: “By one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb. 10:14).
The Unique Conditions Required for the Salvation of Humanity
Why Vicarious Atonement Was Both Necessary and Sufficient
That which is necessary for salvation must exist as its indispensable condition. Christ’s atoning death is considered an essential requisite to the salvation of humanity.
That the cross is sufficient for salvation means that Christ’s death has provided all that is needful for redemption from sin. The cross is considered both necessary and sufficient for salvation.
How did the ecumenical consensus establish that the sacrifice of Christ was both necessary and sufficient?
A Moral Necessity, Not Externally Necessitated
In speaking of the necessity of the cross, there is no intended implication that God is under an external necessity to resolve the dilemma caused by the history of sin. The moral necessity of atonement is an implication of God’s moral will. It is necessitated only by the sovereign freedom of the holy God to love rightly.
The cross presupposes a chronic history of sin. The cross is the remedy for this vast human malady. The need for the cross is circumvented only if it is fantasized that no such malady exists, and that there is after all no controversy between God’s holiness and human sin.
Atonement is intrinsically connected with the premise that all humanity is trapped in the death grip of otherwise irreversible syndromes of sin. These syndromes manifest symptoms of the desperate condition of human freedom: anxiety toward the future, guilt toward the past, and boredom in the present. These are intensified by idolatry that makes that anxiety, guilt, and boredom harder to bear and easier to transmit (Oden, SA, parts 1–3). These universal ailments make atonement necessary.
Why Couldn’t God Have Found a Better Way to Save from Sin?
It is zealous exaggeration to say that God could not have redeemed humanity in any other way than Christ’s crucifixion (Luke 1:37; Tho. Aq., ST 3 Q46.2). But it is difficult to imagine any alternative way of salvation that more fully satisfies the rigorous requirements set by the confluence of God’s holiness, justice, and love amid the wretched conditions requiring reparation for the history of sin (Anselm, Cur Deus Homo 12–14). There was no easy or cost-free way for one man to become a substitute for the whole history of sin.
God does not characteristically waste precious resources. Had there been a less costly way to reconcile sinners that could have avoided the death of his beloved Son, that way would have been chosen (Athanasius, Incarn. of the Word 1–5). But given the chronic history of sin, it was necessary that Christ be “born under law, to redeem those under law” (Gal. 4:4–5).
The Apostles do not permit the hubris of our second-guessing God’s justice. God’s motives are by definition good exceeding all human wisdoms. The way God found was the best way, given the facts of human alienation.
The Cross Was Consistent with God’s Goodness and Human Freedom
But why this particularly harsh, narrow, difficult way of salvation. Why an ugly cross and not another, milder, easier way?
If God were merely saving rocks or plants, the plan would have been different—for they do not have freedom to respond and resist. The plan of salvation had to be worthy of the character of the holy and loving God and fitting to the conditions of human freedom so radically fallen into distortion and self-alienation.
The plan had to be consistent with the extraordinary gifts the Creator had already bestowed upon humanity: reason, imagination, language, the capacity for justice and love, and self-determining intelligence. Any design short of all these conditions would have displayed less than the incomparable wisdom of God and would have been inconsistent with all that is known of the divine character (Baxter, PW 9:35; 20, pref.).
The way of salvation had to be also consistent with the original purpose of God in creation. God could have created or not created human beings, but he in fact decided to create. God could have created companionate rational creatures with vastly different native capacities and powers but did not. Given the assumption that human beings had already vastly skewed the original purpose of their creation, God’s plan of redemption had to be consistent with the nature and destiny of human creation (Origen, OFP 2.9; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q47).
One option was thereby crossed off the list of possibilities—annihilation. It would have been less fitting if God had simply started over by obliterating or demolishing the whole botched history of human freedom. But it was more fitting and more consistent with the character of God that God should carry on through with the original divine plan, overcoming the fallenness of free accountable beings (Gregory Nazianzus, Orat. 38).
Fallen Human Freedom to Be Redeemed, Not Merely Inorganic Matter, Plants, or Beasts
It is more complex to redeem fallen human freedom than inorganic or organic matter. The plan of salvation had to pertain to the specific conditions of historically-chosen, self-alienated human freedom, not simply the less complicated situation of inorganic objects or plant or animal life.
The natural law suited to lifeless matter (under orderly natural causation) assumes that there is no capacity for response or subtle communication in mere air, or earth or fire or water. The conditions of renewal of inorganic life would be different from the botanic laws pertinent for plant life, which assume capacities (for life, growth, and reproduction) in plants that rocks do not have (although plants must live in the same orderly world with rocks, air, and water). The zoological laws pertinent for animal life assume capacities (mobility) that are not present in plants (although the laws pertinent to plant life also largely pertain to animal life, for animals must live in the same world with plants on whom their lives depend).
The moral laws that pertain to human life assume capacities (language, reason, imagination, conscience) that have shaped the history of fallen freedom. These capacities are not so fully present in animals or inorganic matter (Gen. 1:24–27; Basil, Hexaemeron, 9.2–3).
This means that the problem of sin cannot be prematurely or blithely solved by having prideful human beings pretend to instruct and demand of God to flatly or absolutely decree salvation apart from any interaction between grace and freedom. A theology of absolute divine decrees that neglects human freedom might seem a simpler conceptual idea. It might appear to be more consistent. But it is lacking in the interactive complexity of the grace-freedom interface that is constantly assumed in Scripture (Gregory of Nyssa, Origin of Man).
Rejected Options
Therefore three options have been consistently rejected in the attempt of classic Christianity to make sense out of the biblical wisdom that leads to the cross: The first is to avoid divine coercion. The God who created freedom would not act simply by fiat. If human freedom is to be honored and transformed, it cannot merely be coerced by decree but rather must be reshaped by persuasion and drawn by a convincing demonstration of unconditional love.
Secondly, there must be no idea of pardon without repentance or reparation. The idea that God could have pardoned without exacting any measures to repair the damage done by human freedom is morally insufficient and inconsistent with divine holiness.
Third, the prospect of no redemption at all is theoretically conceivable, but hardly consistent with the incomparable love of God attested in Scripture. The notion that God might simply have left humanity forever mired in its own fallen history might be arguable on the grounds of God’s absolute holiness, but it fails to recognize the depths of divine compassion for the lost. If humanity had remained forever lost in sin, then the very purpose for which humanity had been created would have been absurdly brought to nothing (Augustine, Grace and Free Will; Epis. 167.19; Grace and Orig. Sin, 1.18–21).
Penalty as a Consequence of Law
To the above constraints must be joined another pivotal moral consideration.
The Moral Necessity of Penalty
Only the fair and rightful execution of penalty guarantees the continuity and intelligibility of a reliable moral order. God does not forgive without atonement or expiation for past guilt. To do this would be to treat God’s own moral order flippantly. This is why atonement was necessary.
It was necessary that the penalty be applied if violated, for to establish a just penalty for a violation of law and then to permit the violation to pass with impunity is to mock justice. Pardon without atonement nullifies justice (Ursinus, CHC: 220–21). Absolute impunity mocks fairness. A law without penalty is morally unserious, even dangerous. Withhold from your child all negative feedback and see what happens (Heb. 1:8; Oecumenius, Fragments on Heb. 12.9). That takes uncommonly optimistic assumptions about humanity to assume that all negative reinforcement can be taken away without human harm. Suppose a legislature passed a law against theft with a specific reasonable penalty yet the executive refused ever to enforce the law and no penalty was ever administered. Would that not have the effect of making void the law, making it a mere matter of words, thereby risking the increase of theft? Suppose God had ordered the moral universe in this way—issuing commands or requirements with penalties that were never administered—would not that end in a morally ruinous situation repugnant to moral order and law? (Anselm, CDH; Grotius, DCF).
The Command: The Soul that Sins Shall Die
Recall the original command of God to the first human partners: “When you eat of it [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you will surely die” (Gen. 2:17; Chrysostom, Hom. on Gen. 14). In Ezekiel the same formula appears slightly reworded: “The soul who sins is the one who will die” (Ezek. 18:4, 20; Origen, OFP 2.9). Paul rejoins: “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).
The Heidelberg Catechism summarizes the valid options: “God wills that his righteousness be satisfied; therefore, payment in full must be made to his righteousness, either by ourselves or by another. Can we make this payment ourselves? By no means. On the contrary, we increase our debt each day” (2, Q 12–13).
Repentance Without Grace is Fruitless
Throughout the history of covenant, God has promised mercy to those who are sincerely penitent. Yet divine mercy is not premised merely upon human repentance as such, but rather upon atoning sacrifice accompanied by repentance and good willing, as attested in both Testaments (Augustine, Conf. 4.16).
“Repentance does not of itself heal this breach; nor is true repentance naturally possible for sinners, because of the blinding, hardening and weakening effect of sin upon our minds, hearts and wills” (Hall, DT 7:132). Sinful men and women, unable to save themselves or pay this moral indebtedness, are left in their natural condition in effect “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12; Jerome, Epis. to Eph. 1.2.12).
This is why atonement was required, and why it was necessary that the Son of Man come “to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:10).
Whether Christ’s Sacrifice Was Voluntary
Despite normal human resistances to death, the Gethsemene narrative indicates that the Son voluntarily laid down his life (Augustine, Trin., FC 45:150–52), willingly submitting his will to the Father’s will in order to show the extent and depth of God’s love for humanity. “I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:17–18).
The animal victim, on the other hand, had no choice, being under the power of the one making the sacrifice. The Epistle to the Hebrews contrasts the moral efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice with the morally problematic nature of animal sacrifice. “He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12). “How much more, then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God” (Heb. 9:14; Chrysostom, Hom. on Heb. 15.5).
It would be unjust if the innocent one were compelled involuntarily to suffer for what the guilty had done voluntarily. But this reasoning does not apply if the innocent one has voluntarily consented and benevolently willed to suffer out of the compassionate motive of love toward sinners (John 10:17–18; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:2; Heb 9:14; 10:7–9).
The voluntary submission is a crucial factor in distinguishing Christ’s death from suicide. Christ did not kill himself as do those who commit suicide (as if death were preferred to life). He willingly exposed himself to death only when that became the necessary implication of the way he lived his life in mission (Augustine, CG 1.17–27).
Jesus’ Death Was Vicariously Offered in Place of Sinners’
Isaiah’s vision of the suffering Servant of the Lord formed the prophetic prototype of vicarious suffering. The exchange theme is portrayed with no less than eleven different metaphors of substitution in one chapter (53):
“Surely he took up our infirmities” (v. 4)
“He carried our sorrows” (v. 4)
“But he was pierced for our transgressions” (v. 5)
“He was crushed for our iniquities” (v. 5)
“The punishment that brought us peace was upon him” (v. 5)
“By his wounds we are healed” (v. 5)
“The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (v. 6)
“He was led like a lamb to the slaughter” (v. 7)
“For the transgression of my people he was stricken” (v. 8)
“The Lord makes his life a guilt offering” (v. 10)
“He will bear their iniquities” (v. 12).
He was “delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Rom. 4:25); the good shepherd “lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11). Christ was punished for what sinners should have suffered. Though sinless, he died the sinner’s death. Substitutionary penal theories of the atonement are based upon those clear passages of the New Testament featuring the exchange metaphor (Romans 3:21–26; Galatians 3:13; and 2 Corinthians 5:21).
Luther employed a wedding metaphor to speak of substitution: “For it behooves Him, if He is a bridegroom, to take upon Himself the things which are His bride’s, and to bestow upon her the things that are His. For if He gives her His body and His very self, how shall He not give her all that is His? And if He takes the body of the bride, how shall He not take all that is hers?…He by the wedding-ring of faith shares in the sins, death and pains of hell which are His bride’s, nay, makes them His own, and acts as if they were His own, and as if He Himself had sinned” (Luther, Christian Liberty, WML 2:320).
Substitution: The Exchange Metaphor
Substitution occurs when one takes the place of another. Christ took the place of sinners, suffering the penalty of sin that was due them (Matt. 20:28; 2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 2:20; 1 Pet. 3:18).
The language is specific: Christ died not only for me (vicariously) but in my stead, in place of me (as a substitute for me, or as a substitutionary sacrifice). Only because he took my place, I shall not die. Because he died in my place, I now live and may live eternally through him (Chrysostom, Hom. on Gal. 2.20–21).
The crucial substitutionary terms are huper, which means “for” or “on behalf of” another, “on account of,” “for the advantage of” another, or “for the benefit of,” and anti, which means “in place of” or “instead of” another, a preposition of price, transaction, or exchange.
He “gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:2; Barth, CD 4/4: 158; Baxter, PW 12:204–206). The exchange metaphor appears frequently in the earliest tradition: “O the sweet exchange, O the inscrutable creation, O the unexpected benefits that the wickedness of many should be concealed in the one righteous, and the righteousness of the one should make righteous many wicked” (Letter to Diognetus 9). The substitution theme echoes down the centuries all the way to the hymns of nineteenth century evangelical revival.
“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:7–8). The vicarious act did not depend upon any merit in the offending party. The full weight of human sin is therefore transferred to and deposited on the crucified One. In Luther’s muscular terms: “We are called Christians because we may look at the Christ and say: Dear Lord, You took all my sins upon Yourself. You became Martin, Peter, and Paul, and thus You crushed and destroyed my sin. There (on the cross) I must and will seek my sin. You have directed me to find it there. On Good Friday I still clearly see my sin, but on the Day of Easter no sin is any longer to be seen” (Easter Serm. 1530).
The believer participates in Jesus’ death, that being dead to sin, he may have newness of life (Rom. 6:1–11; Gal. 2:20). “He died for us” that “we may live together with him” (1 Thess. 5:10). He did what we could not do for ourselves. Since he has freely given his life for us, we can freely receive our lives from God (Calvin, Inst. 2.17.4). He died for all “that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Cor. 5:15).
One Died for All, Therefore All Have Died
The indicative that Christ died for sin, was cursed for us, and bore our iniquities, implies an imperative, that we die to sin. On the cross and in the history of the saints and martyrs, love is known by its willingness to die for others: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16). Therefore “we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers,” being willing to give up what we have for those in need (1 John 3:16–17). Those who live in Christ are called to live for others.
As Adam represented all the human family in its previous history, Christ represented the whole of humanity in its future history under the new covenant. “We are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died” (2 Cor. 5:14; Augustine, Ag. Julian 6.15.48; Ursinus, CHC: 221–25).
There is a special sense in which the death of Christ implies the symbolic death of all humanity before God—namely, the end of their judgment for sin. The consequence of the death of Christ belongs to them all, just as if each person had already died for his or her own sins (1 Tim. 2:6), except that another has performed the substitution for all. All are heirs, as if offered a title claim by virtue of his representative death for them (Rom. 5:12–21; Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3.22.3). But sadly, not all receive this great gift.
Athanasius reasoned that just as a whole city is secured from banditry by the presence of a single just and powerful ruler, so the presence of the Word in human history checks “the whole conspiracy of the enemy” against humanity, and puts away death (Incarn. of the Word 8–9).
If one asks for evidence of the efficacy of his death, wrote Athanasius, just look at the course of history since his death. There one will find empirical evidence in the courage of the martyrs. This is most notable in the case of women martyrs, who “scoff at death, jesting at death and saying what has been written of old: ‘O death, where is thy victory? O grave, where is thy sting?’” (Athanasius, Incarn. of the Word 27).
All humanity has been affected. “As there never was, is or will be any man whose nature was not assumed by our Lord Jesus Christ, so there never was, is or will be any man for whom He has not suffered; though not all are redeemed by the mystery of His passion” (Council of Quiersy, 853, SCD 319).
A Ransom for Slaves
The atoning significance of Jesus’ death was best summarized by Jesus himself: The Son of Man came “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). A ransom (lutron) was a price paid to redeem prisoners from servitude. “There is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all” (antilutron huper pantōn, 1 Tim. 2:6). Antilutron is a substitutionary ransom—something happened to Christ, which, as a result of his action, need not happen to sinners. “Christ ransomed us from the curse pronounced in the Law, by taking the curse on himself for us” (Gal. 3:13; Chrysostom, Hom. on Gal. 3.13).
Luther thought that “redemption was not possible without a ransom of such incalculable worth as to atone for sin, to assume the guilt, pay the price of wrath and thus abolish sin. This no creature was able to do. There was no remedy except for God’s only Son to step into our distress and himself become man” (Epist. Serm., 24th Sunday After Trinity, 43, 44, SML 8:376). The term redemption refers to the payment of a price by which one becomes freed. From this it came to be used as a synonym for deliverance or liberation (Luke 12:28; Rom. 8:23; Eph. 4:30).
Made to Be Sin for Us—Treated As If a Sinner
The substitution did not make Christ a sinner but caused him to be viewed and dealt with as such. Christ was willing to be regarded as a sinner for our sakes. If the Son was to reconcile with the Father those who had been cursed by sin, he had to become a “curse for us.” It is not that he was a curse, but that “for my sake He was called a curse,” wrote Gregory Nazianzus (Orat. 30.5).
This is why Christ was treated as if a sinner. He was numbered with the transgressors: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21). The meaning of this perplexing phrase is that God made him who was sinless to become a sacrifice for sin (Eleventh Council of Toledo, SCD 286). “So, was the Lord turned into sin? Not so, but, since He assumed our sins, He is called sin (Ambrose, Incarn. of Our Lord 6.60).
God came personally to condemn sin in the flesh. “For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3, 4; Augustine on Romans, 48; CG 10.22).
Few points of ecumenical teaching have received such wide consensus as the premise that Christ’s death was a sacrifice for the sin of others. For ecumenical discussions of Christ as sacrifice, see Athanasius (On the Incarn. of the Word 20); Gregory Nazianzus (Orat. 30); Gregory of Nyssa (ARI 23); Basil (Hom. on Ps. 48:3–4); Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. Lect. 13.33); Cyril of Alexandria (Ag. Nestorius 3.2); Leo I (Serm. 44.3; 58.3); Augustine (Trin. 13.15; Confessions 10.69; Serm. 115.4–5); Gregory I (Moralia 17.46); and John of Damascus (OF 3.27). God “did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all” (Rom. 8:32; 5:6; Matt. 26:28; Jerome, Comm. on Matt. 4.26.29)
Penal Substitution as Sufficient Vicarious Satisfaction
A vicarious satisfaction requires a surrogate or substituted bondsman, by which someone else is substituted in the place of the debtor, and a payment of penalty, whereby the debtor may be declared free (BOC: 205, 292). Penal substitution is comparable to an attorney in a murder trial willing to become a substitute for you, taking your penalty upon himself, ready to die for you. Penal substitution is a much more radical form of identification than verbal counsel or advocacy. It means taking the penalty for another. The mediatorial work could not take effect unless the Son actually bore the penalty for those he was sent to redeem.
God-incarnate renders full satisfaction for the entire enormity of the history of human sin. Christ’s satisfaction, being infinite (Council of Quiersy, SCD 319), was abundantly sufficient (Fifth Lateran Council, SCD 740). The sufficiency of the sacrifice is attested in eucharistic prayer: “Thou, of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption; who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world” (BCP).
What Could Qualify as an Adequate Substitution for Humanity’s Sin?
No finite creature can render adequate satisfaction for grievous sin against infinite majesty. Infinite satisfaction is rendered only by one infinite in majesty, hence no human other than God-incarnate (Calvin, Inst. 2.17).
In classic Christian reasoning, four conditions have qualified Christ as the uniquely sufficient sacrificial victim:
his sinlessness, that the sacrifice might be spotless and undefiled;
his humanity, that he shared fully our human condition;
his deity as only beloved Son, that he might merit ransom for all;
his federal headship of humanity and identification with sinners, that he might be a fitting substitute for all.
Only one who fulfilled all these conditions could be offered up for the sins of all human history. Only this one could be a ransom “for all” (1 Tim. 2:6).
The classical exegetes argued that it was not the intensity or precisely equivalent extent of his suffering and dying, but the dignity of his person that made his suffering sufficient for all (Gregory of Nyssa, ARI 17–28). His sufferings were finite, but his sacrifice had infinite value due to his Sonship (Athanasius, Four Discourses Ag. Arians 2.14–18).
His Death Is Sufficient Sacrifice for the Whole History of Sin
It is not the atonement that is limited, but our receptivity to it. Our unwillingness to allow the Spirit to apply it to us is the limiting factor.
The atonement is addressed to all humanity, intended for all, sufficient for all, yet it is effectively received by those who respond to it in faith (Hilary of Arles, Introductory Comm. on 1 John; Wollebius, CTC 18). “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men” (Titus 2:11).
Even though only some are consciously receptive to this salvation, it nonetheless is given on the cross for all and sufficient for all. Scriptures that assume universal sufficiency are John 1:29; 3:16; 6:51; 12:47; and 1 John 2:2; 2 Cor. 5:14–15; Heb. 2:9; 6:4–6; 1 Cor. 8:11; 2 Pet. 2:1; 3:9. But the universal sufficiency of saving grace does not intrude on human freedom to coerce a response. God primordially willed the salvation of all. The reason that some who have heard it do not share in his grace must be found in their own self-determining will (Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John, 4.2).
Sufficient for All, Effective Through Faith
As to sufficiency, the cross is for all—for the world. As to efficacy, the cross becomes effective for some—for those who share in it by faith. From this derives the distinction of universal sufficiency and conditional efficacy: as to sufficiency it is universal; as to efficacy it is limited to those who accept God’s offer of salvation through Christ. “For his part, he offered himself as a sacrifice strictly for all, and obtained for all grace and salvation; but this benefits only those of us who, for their parts, of their own free will, have fellowship in his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death…through a lively and hearty faith, through the Sacraments…and, lastly, through the crucifixion of our flesh with its affections and lusts” (Russian Catechism, COC 2:476).
It is by faith that one becomes a conscious partaker in the atoning deed (Hilary of Arles, Intro. Comm. on 1 Pet., 4.1–19; Clement of Alex., Strom.). There is “no other sacrifice for sin” required or sufficient (Scots Confession 10, BOC 3.09). In the Thirty-nine Articles the sacrificial death of Christ is defined as the “perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual” (Thirty-nine Articles, Article 31).
The atonement encompasses all sins whatever, original as well as actual, past and future, great or small, in time or eternity (Titus 2:14; 1 John 1:7; 2:2; Heb. 1:3). It further embraces all the penalties of sins (Gal. 3:13; Rom. 5:8–9; Heb. 2:14–15). The satisfaction is rendered, quite simply, for the sin of the world (John 1:20). To say “For all” means that the atonement is antecedently willed for all; yet respecting and not coercing human freedom it means that Christ represents all who freely come to God by him. The propitiation given for all becomes effectively accepted only when the penitent responds in faith (Gal. 3:26).
Paul does not speak of an effective reconciliation without faith, but that “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood” (Rom. 3:25; Ambrosiaster, Comm. on Paul, Rom. 3.25). The atoning work is done and completed quite independently of our acceptance of it but calls for our acceptance of it (Barth, CD 4/3: 517ff.). It is not as though we must add something to Christ’s sacrifice to make it sufficient, but that it is received for what it is when we have faith in it.
A Time of Forbearance to Allow for Repentance
Christ’s atoning death provided for a delay in the end time execution of the sentence against sin, a time in which God’s kindness is intended to lead to repentance (Rom. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9), a time characterized by the continuing grace of God in the common life and God’s continued guidance of history (Clement of Rome, Corinth 7).
Since repentance can occur only to the living, this forbearance is limited in duration. “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed” (Acts 17:30–31). The urgency of preaching hinges on the limited time of repentance. No hearer has unlimited time to decide, nor can history guarantee continuance without end (Chrysostom, Hom. on Acts, Hom. 38).
The patriarchs were saved by faith in the promise of God’s coming. They trusted in God’s mercy even when they could not see the further working out of salvation history. Of them Jesus said that “many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 8:11).
Some have held that neonates and retarded innocents will be saved by this atonement insofar as they are judged to be incapable of refusing it and that those who do not know right from wrong cannot be said to have consented to the Adamic history of distortion (Hugh of St. Victor, OSCF, 2.17). Reformed theology has generally held that elect children will be saved “by Christ through the Spirit, who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth” (Westminster Confession 10). The details are left to the mystery of God.
Vicarious Expiation and Propitiation
Christ is a propitiatory covering, sacrifice, or atonement for our sin effective through faith (Rom. 3:25; 1 John 2:2; 4:10; Heb. 2:17). This means that the death of Christ is the sacrificial means by which God is brought nearer or rendered propitious to one having that trust in God’s promises by which God becomes favorably disposed to sinners (Augustine, Spirit and Letter 44).
To expiate is to make satisfaction. Christ is said to be the living expiation or “the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 2:2), enabling God and humanity to draw nearer or be made propitious or favorable. Propitiation has a different root, deriving from prope, “near.” That is propitious which brings God nearer. Propitiation is an act that enables sinners to approach God’s holiness (BOC: 118, 191). Propitiation (hilasmos, hilasterion) is the means by which another is rendered propitious or favorable to one’s cause or willing to listen to one’s plea (1 John 4:10; Origen, Comm. on Rom. 3.25–26). That is propitious which renders one favorably disposed toward another who has been previously alienated.
The focus of expiation is upon the removal of obstacles to the relationship. The focus of propitiation is slightly different: upon the welcoming attitude of the Holy One for whom these obstacles are removed (Eleventh Council of Toledo, SCD 286; BOC: 253, 259).
Through the cross, God is brought near and conciliated, made propitious, or favorable to our hearing and plea. Those who have been without hope in the world have been “brought near through the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13). It is Christ’s work both to expiate sin and to enable God to draw nearer to sinners (Ambrosiaster, Epis. To Eph. 2.13). He became like us in every way except sin “in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people” (Heb. 2:17).
Note the context in which the idea of propitiation characteristically occurs: it is only after having been found guilty, having been sentenced by the judge, and bound over to the court for execution of sentence, that there is any need or opportunity to ask for clemency. In such cases the prisoner is better off if the aggrieved judge is rendered propitious or is disposed to show favor (Chrysostom, Hom. on Heb., Hom. 5).
The Wrath of God Conciliated
The wrath of God is a recurrent phrase that indicates the continuing revulsion of the holiness of God against sin. The holy God cannot abide injustice, pride, deception, and willful diminution of the good (Tertullian, Ag. Marcion 5.13). God’s righteous wrath is directed against sin (John 3:36; Rom. 1:18; 5:9; Col. 3:6; Ambrosiaster, Comm. on Paul’s Epis., Rom. 1.18; 5.9).
What happened in Christ was an act of substitution by which God demonstrated that his wrath had been turned aside. This enabled an entirely new relationship with humanity, not yielding to sin, but binding it up so as to make a new start (Marius Victorinus, Epis. To Eph. 1.2.1–15).
This is quite different from the prevailing forms of conciliatory rituals in the history of religions, where supplicants offer sacrifices to try to change a god’s attitude from wrath to friendship (Arnobius, Ag. the Heathen 7). Oppositely, here it is God who is taking the initiative to change the broken relationship with humanity. The picture of a human being placating an angry deity is not characteristic of New Testament teaching. More characteristic is the picture of God’s quiet, costly approach to alienated humanity to overcome sin through sacrificial suffering (Jerome, Letter to Pammachius, 27; Liturgy of St. James).
The way of salvation had to be consistent with the wisdom, majesty, and holiness of God. The cross constituted this “victory” (nike, 1 Cor. 15:54–57, 1 John 5:4). But this forces the extraordinary question as to how the cross could under any circumstances be considered a victory.
Gregory Nazianzus knew that “the method of our new creation” must be one that would honor freedom without reinforcing pride. “All violent remedies were disapproved as not likely to persuade us, and as quite possibly tending to add to the plague through our chronic pride; but God disposed things to our restoration by a gentle and kindly method of cure,” just as a sapling must be slowly bent (Orat. 45.12).
The Cross Demonstrates God’s Matchless Way of Absorbing Violence
In no other way could we have learned, wrote Irenaeus, of God’s way of redeeming humanity from sin and evil than by the death of the mediator on the cross. In a single packed sentence (among the most influential in early Christian teaching of salvation), Irenaeus distinguished between the violence of the Deceiver and the nonviolence of the Redeemer: “Since the apostasy tyrannized over us unjustly, and though we were by nature the property of the omnipotent God, alienated us contrary to nature, rendering us its own disciples, the Word of God, powerful in all things, and not defective with regard to His own justice, did righteously turn against the apostasy, and redeem from it His own property, not by violent means (as the Deceiver had obtained dominion over us at the beginning, when he insatiably snatched away what was not his own), but by means of persuasion, as befits a God of counsel, who does not use violent means to obtain what He desires; so that neither should justice be infringed upon, nor the ancient handiwork of God go to destruction” (Ag. Her. 5.1.1, italics and parentheses added; D. Browning, Atonement and Psychotherapy).
Augustine argued that there was no other more suitable way of freeing humanity from sin than incarnation and atonement. Other means were not lacking to God, but no other means were more fitting to God (Trin. 13.10; 13.15.19).
The Deceiver Caught by His Own Deceit
Demonic power is trapped by its own lust for power. Since the devil had become “a lover of power,” wrote Augustine, “it pleased God that for the sake of rescuing men from the power of the devil, the devil should be overcome not by power but by justice” (Trin. 13.13).
On the cross, Christ held back what was possible to him (conquering by power), in order that He might first do what was fitting (conquering by powerlessness). “Hence it was necessary that He should be both man and God. For unless He had been man, He could not have been slain; unless He had been God, men would not have believed that He would not do what He could, but that He could not do what He would” (Augustine, Trin. 30.14; CG 20.7).
Viewed schematically the opposing ways demonstrated in the atonement are:
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The Way of the Deceiver |
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The Way of the Son |
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Snatching power |
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Persuading freedom |
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Through the fall |
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Through the cross |
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Unjust means of bondage |
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Just means of redemption |
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By absolute violence |
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By absolute powerlessness |
Redemption could only occur through an actual history that exhibited God’s wisdom through the way of the Son (Gregory of Nyssa, ARI 20).
Gregory of Nyssa observed that “the sick do not dictate to their physicians the measures for recovery” (Great Catech. 17). He provided an influential explanation of the atonement, grounded in the premise that all the divine attributes must be seen in their intrinsic interconnectedness. The divine goodness pitied human fallenness. The divine omniscience knew the best means of rectifying it. Those means had to be completely just. “His goodness is evident in his choosing to save one who was lost. His wisdom and justice are to be seen in the way he saved us. His power is clear in this: that he came in the likeness of man” (Gregory of Nyssa, ARI 24, italics added).
The Irony of Defeated Demonic Deception
What method could be rightly chosen, given the severe obstacles? The Enemy, who held humanity in bondage, suffered from an intense desire to rule. It was by Satan’s own inordinate pride and desire rather than God’s sheer coercive power that the means of redemption were determined.
The most famous metaphor was provided by Gregory of Nyssa. It may seem grotesque, but it carried the point through with force: “The Deity was hidden under the veil of our nature that so, as with ravenous fish the hook of the Deity might be gulped down along with the bait of flesh; and thus, life being introduced into the house of death, and light shining in darkness, that which is diametrically opposed to life and light might vanish” (Great Catech. 24). Satan would not have been transfixed upon the hook of deity had it not been for Satan’s inordinate desire to corrupt all flesh.
On these grounds, Gregory argued that God’s atoning action was not primarily an act of deception, but an act of justice, by bringing wisdom, righteousness, and love together in an unprecedented way. Justice means rendering to each his or her due, and “due recompense” was rendered to the Deceiver. In this case “the deceiver reaps the harvest of the seeds he sowed with his own free will (Gregory of Nyssa, ARI 26). Christ “shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Heb. 2:14–15).
The Value of Christ’s Death for Us
Objections to Classic Atonement Teaching
Standard objections to classic Christian reasoning about the cross are:
These chief objections have tended either to misplace the human problem (the depth of the predicament of sin), or the gracious character of God (his willingness to forgive), or the imperative that is embedded in the indicative of God’s merciful action (how grace requires free response).
The ironic question arose very early in the second century as to whom, if a ransom metaphor is employed, would the ransom be paid? Some argued that the devil had temporarily acquired a right over the souls of free beings who had fallen into demonic syndromes not unwillingly but of their own choice. Hence it was asked whether, when God freed the captives, would it not be just and reasonable that such a temporary right be paid off? Out of the ongoing struggle to answer these three objections, several prototypical theories of atonement have developed and contended for consensual legitimacy in Christian history.
Reconciling the Theories of Reconciliation
The purpose of theories of atonement is to set forth rightly the connection between the death of Christ and the salvation of humanity. All major theories attempt this. The essential points of the atonement were all securely embedded in Scripture texts, which were scrupulously studied, quoted, and interpreted by patristic and Reformation writers.
Through this lengthy history, four essential types of atonement exegesis have persistently waxed and waned through the traditions of interpretation. These four traditions are not pure or exclusive types but amalgamations of overlapping biblical themes that tend to cohere and repeat in a series of interpreters. The four are the exemplary, governor, exchange, and victor motifs. They are best viewed as complementary tendencies rather than as cohesive schools of thought represented by a single theorist. All four are to be found in classical Christian writings. Various features of all four have been voiced by the most authoritative and representative classical consensual interpreters. Each approach stresses a constellation of related texts.
The Exemplary or Moral Influence Motif
Moral Aspects of Atonement in Classical Christianity
Several aspects of the example theory are well integrated into classical Christian teaching. The death of Christ is viewed in the New Testament as a demonstration of the love of God, which seeks to elicit responses of love from humanity. “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Cor. 5:14–15).
Thus as a complement to vicarious, substitutionary, and victorious motifs, Christ’s death also exercises a moral influence upon believing humanity. “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Eph. 5:1–2; Chrysostom, Hom. on Eph. 18).
As Christ became obedient unto death for others, so the faithful are called to “Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” and “became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Phil. 2:5–8). The cross is commended as a pattern of mind to have “among yourselves.” “Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example” (1 Pet. 2:21; Augustine, Sermons 284.6).
Nowhere is the deep nature and malignity of sin more truly revealed than in the cross. Also revealed there is the pattern of righteousness—the sinless life given for others—which the Christian is enabled to follow by grace. The cross reveals the love of God for sinners and makes a challenging appeal for a loving response, eliciting repentance for sin (Ignatius, Eph. 1). These aspects of the exemplary theory of atonement are thoroughly integrated into the most consensual, classical views of the cross (Augustine, Trin. 1.6–13; Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ; Isaac Watts, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” HPEC: 136). “To those who are rescued from the prisoners’ yoke, Redemption further procures the power of following the way of the cross by imitation” (Leo I, Serm. 72.1). In the best consensual expressions of this motif, the cross is not reduced to moral example, but has exemplary power.
The Cross in the Pelagian-Abelardian-Socinian Tradition
The tradition of Abelard and Socinus, anticipated by Pelagius, is not a consensual tradition, but a distortion that reappears in heavier or lighter tones periodically. Without denying objective aspects of the atonement altogether, this tradition has overstressed the subjective appropriation of the cross, holding that the central intent of the death of Christ was to serve as supreme example of divine love eliciting and enabling a loving human response, so as to draw humanity toward the love of the Father (J. S. Lidgett, The Spiritual Principles of the Atonement: 460–61). The moral responsibility of man is encouraged by the example of Jesus’ death as a martyr. By his death he confirmed the sincerity of his teaching.
Abelard taught that the principal value of Christ’s death was its exemplary effect through the responses of love that the cross elicits. Christ’s death was significant because it was thought to move the beholder to repentance and faith (Abelard, Epitome of Christian Theology; Comm. on Rom.). The Council of Sens (1141) rejected Abelard’s tendency to give attention largely to its subjective appropriation while neglecting the objective change in the divine-human relationship (SCD 150–51; Bernard of Clairvaux, On the Errors of Abelard, 22).
Similar but more radically nonconsensual was Socinus, who viewed Christ as a prophet and teacher who saved his pupils by instruction from evil defined as ignorance and blessed them with the benefits of knowledge. His death was viewed as a final act of moral heroism, a unique example of suffering patience, eliciting repentance and faith (F. Socinus, Praelectiones Theologicae, xv-xxix; Mozley, Atonement: 147–51; Stevens, CDS: 157–61).
The Power of His God-Consciousness Demonstrated on the Cross
According to Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of liberal theology, Christ’s perfect God-consciousness is the basis for the divine-human reconciliation. Deeply compassionate for humanity, Christ identified with the lowly and exposed himself to the suffering that comes from sin, and this happened most impressively upon the cross. As faith was elicited from others who beheld this self-giving, they were drawn into the circle of influence of his God-consciousness, sharing in his sense of sonship, relieved of the sense of God’s anger, aware of God’s good will (ChrF: 100–104; Sheldon, EC: 389). His redemptive activity consists in the moral influence he has on believers, whom he raises up into the power of his God-consciousness (ChrF: 425). Avoiding expiatory language and resisting the premise of divine wrath toward sin, the pivotal event of Schleiermacher’s atonement was “His sympathy with sin, which was strong enough to stimulate a redemptive activity sufficient for the assumption of all men into His vital fellowship” (ChrF: 462). Seeking to free atonement theory from objectivism, he overstressed the subjective side, tending “to make our poor experience the measure of what God is” (Cave, DWC: 227).
Similar in tone is the Congregationalist theologian Horace Bushnell, who argued that Christ’s death was offered not for the purpose of satisfying divine justice, but to reveal God’s love. His moral influence elicits repentance. The value of Christ’s death for us lies in the influence that death exerts on human persons and through them upon the fabric of human society and history. Christ’s life, teaching, works, and death serve the purpose of influencing the moral quality of life of persons and societies (Bushnell, The Vicarious Sacrifice; Schleiermacher, ChrF; Ritschl, CDJR; B. Jowett, Comm. on Epist. of St. Paul, 2d ed., 1859; Hastings Rashdall, The Idea of Atonement). Many more recent attempts to “reform” the doctrine of atonement by rejecting the classic consensual language of vicarious sacrifice are tired repetitions of the tradition of Schleiermacher, Bushnell, and Ritschl parading in new clothes.
Classic Objections to the Exemplary Concentration
Though the ethical emphasis has at times been somewhat neglected and has repeatedly required some form of recovery, it is prone to being overstated. Several perennial objections have been raised.
This approach to atonement tends to view the death of Christ as little more than the death of a noble martyr. What redeems is finally his human example of faithfulness to duty, eliciting moral responses. “To be sure, the example is precious but far too high for us; we cannot follow,” wrote Luther. “It is as if I were to come to some river bank where roads and highways end. I see nothing but water before me and am unable to get across…. There it would not help me if someone were to point out to me the goal which I must attain” (Expos. of St. John 14:6).
Humanity does not need merely to be instructed by example but by an actual historical event of redemption from sin acceptable to God. According to classic Christianity, we are not only ignorant but corrupt; not merely finite but sinners; not merely those who feel guilty but who are guilty. Christ’s death means more than mere instruction. It involves the good news that the prisoner is released and can go home free since another has paid his penalty, dying in his place. “Those err who hold that Christ is a Legislator who forms moral habits and, as a sort of Socrates, proposes perfect examples of moral conduct. For although Christ does indeed give direction to actions, He first prepares and renews a man within and thereupon controls also the body, the hands and feet. For works follow faith just as the shadow follows the body” (Luther, Lectures on Isaiah, 52:7).
The exemplary view does not say enough about who the teacher was. In the New Testament the efficacy of his work depends upon the theandric identity of his person. Classical Christianity affirms that Jesus engaged in prophetic teaching, but the crucial premise of this teaching is that he was “a teacher come from God” (John 3:2; John 12:44–5; Cyril of Alex. Comm. on John, 8). He taught them not as the scribes, but as one having authority in his own person (Mark 1:22; Strong, Syst. Theol.: 728–40; Hodge, Syst. Theol. 2:566–73; Hall, DT 7:33–34).
Exemplary theory has too optimistically assumed that the will is not radically bound by sin and that no punishment for sin is required. The theory is based upon a weakened, diluted conception of the nature of sin. The exemplary view of atonement is likely to go hand in glove with optimistic Pelagian anthropology.
More seriously, the exemplary view misses the point that finally it is not humanity only that needs to be reconciled, but primarily the holiness of God. The only necessity for reconciliation it discovers is found in the moral nature of humanity, the will to follow a good example. It fails to grasp why the righteousness of God necessarily requires punishment of sin.
The Grotian View of Atonement
Arminian Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius sought to show that Christ’s death paid the penalties due for our sins without demeaning divine righteousness. The death of Christ demonstrates the lengths to which God will go to uphold the moral order of the universe.
This theory focused not upon the substitutionary satisfaction offered to God, but on the moral necessities intrinsic to God’s government of the universe, for God’s government cannot be maintained if sin is not punished. Pardoned offenders must be reminded of the high value God places upon the law and the high price of violating it. The necessity for atonement lies in a governmental necessity of God to punish sin or provide a substitute for such punishment compatible with God’s righteous governance. If God had simply forgiven humanity by fiat without the cross, that would not have had moral efficacy for humanity.
God is moved to make humanity happy and blessed and chooses this as his best means. While Grotius is its chief representative (On the Truth of the Christian Religion; DCF; LWHG), this view is also found in Joseph Bellamy, Samuel Hopkins, R. W. Dale, Thomas Ralston and John Miley.
Imputation Diluted or Disputed
Later advocates of this approach have often resisted the biblical teaching of imputation. This view has little regard for those texts of Scripture that show that our sins were directly imputed (logizomai, accounted, reckoned) to Christ or that the righteousness of God was unilaterally imputed without further requirement upon unmeriting believers. The moral governance advocates objected to an uncritical view of absolute substitution of merit for demerit that might neglect human moral responsiveness (Denny, Studies in Theology: 74–99; Miley, Syst. Theol. 1:441–530).
The emphasis here is upon God’s compassion, not penal substitution. Since God is love, it is sometimes held that there is no need for his “wrath” to be propitiated. Sin is viewed as a challenge to the human moral order, as a hurdle to be overcome morally, rather than primarily as an outrage against God’s holiness. The strength of this view is its sturdy resistance to unethical neglect of the moral order. The weakness is its neglect of scriptural teaching on sacrifice and the priestly office of the Mediator.
The crucial texts challenging this view are found in Romans 4 (see ACCS NT 6:105–121); 2 Corinthians 5:19 (“not counting their sins against them” Ambrosiaster, Comm. on Paul’s Epis. 2 Cor. 5:19); Luke 22:37 (“For I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘and he was reckoned among the transgressors’” Cyril of Alexandria, Comm. on Luke, Hom. 145); and Gal. 3:13 (“taking the curse on himself for us” Chrysostom, Hom. on Gal. 3.13).
Exaggerated expressions of this view do not adequately account for these scriptural passages that view the cross as propitiating God himself, as the revelation of God’s righteousness, and as an execution of the penalty of law. Critics argue that this view does not adequately account for the fact that God has already actually and objectively purged sin in the cross, and failing to see the cross as the finished work of salvation. It is prone to add repentance as a necessary human good work to God’s own saving work (Hodge, Syst. Theol. 2: 578–81; Strong, Syst. Theol.: 740–41). There is a tendency to represent repentance itself as the atoning act.
The Exchange or Satisfaction Motif
Since the exchange motif appears frequently in Scripture and the classic consensual teachers, it was thoroughly commented upon before Anselm in the twelfth century. But Anselm has become the principal voice in the Latin West to give it stark clarity and definition. His inquiry began by asking why God became human. The answer must lie in the necessity of the incarnation to solve the dispute between God and humanity.
The Offense Is Against God’s Holiness
Anselm emphasized the need for making reparation to God for sin, especially by use of analogies from the medieval penitential system to the idea of satisfaction in describing the Godward effect of Christ’s death.
Sin is no minor offense, for God had firmly declared that the sinner must die. The penalty must be executed. God would be less than holy if sin were permitted to go unpunished. It is in keeping with God’s justice that sin not be cheaply remitted, but must be punished, or some satisfaction offered. Since sin is infinitely offensive against divine holiness, the agent of satisfaction for sin must be infinitely holy. Either satisfaction or punishment was required by God’s very nature.
The necessity for the punishment of sin lies the nature of God’s justice. It is not simply a residue of the moral nature of humanity.
No finite being could make a sufficient satisfaction. Only one mediator who is both truly God and truly human could, by taking the place of sinners, make a complete satisfaction to divine justice. In this way the death of Christ becomes understood as a debt sufficiently paid to the Father. The death of Christ is the equivalent of all the demands of retributive justice against all for whom Christ died (Anselm, CDH).
Rather than rely upon Anselm alone to express this view, it is better to rely upon the patristic sources upon which he himself relied: Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria, as shown above.
Protestant Developments in Substitutionary Atonement Teaching
The Reformed tradition has shared much of the Anselmic language and assumptions, focusing upon the themes of penal substitution and the sacrificial efficacy of the cross. Christ takes our place. Calvin argued that Christ “took upon himself and suffered the punishment that, from God’s righteous judgment threatened all sinners; that he purged with his blood those evils which had rendered sinners hateful to God; that by this expiation he made satisfaction and sacrifice duly to God the Father; that as intercessor he has appeased God’s wrath; that on this foundation rests the peace of God with men” (Calvin, Inst. 22.16.2).
The core of the substitutionary view of atonement is concisely expressed in the Westminster Confession: “The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience and sacrifice of himself, which he through the eternal Spirit once offered up unto God, hath fully satisfied the justice of his Father, and purchased not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven, for all those whom the Father hath given unto him.”
Some forms of the exchange motif disproportionally focus upon medieval commercial analogies (ransom, payment, debt) to the neglect of other moral, social, and familial analogies. In some of its expressions, this view may fail to emphasize adequately the active obedience of Christ in his entire life under the law and focuses primarily upon the passive obedience of Christ in his suffering and death. Some expressions tend to exalt God’s majesty or honor above God’s holiness or love. Critics argue that the New Testament rather views the death of Christ not as a substituted penalty, but a substitute for a penalty (Raymond, Syst. Theol. 2: 257).
This view stresses those biblical texts that speak of reconciliation under metaphors of victory over demonic powers (Mark 3:27; Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 5.21.3). The predicament is that sinners have chosen (through a long post-Adamic collective history) to belong to the demonic order because of their sin. The Son pays the price of their redemption from bondage. In his resurrection he broke the power of demonic sin, guilt, and death, leaving Satan broken, though continuing to rage in history. Where sin and death had reigned, righteousness and life now reign. The atonement is constituted by the fact that Christ has broken the power of evil (Augustine, Trin. 13.15).
The keynote of the cross is victory, Christ’s victory over the powers of sin, guilt, pride, inordinate sensuality (the flesh), the devil, wrath, and death (1 Cor. 15:54–57, 1 John 5:4). He took away the curse of the law, “nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Col. 2:14–15). The victory has cosmic significance (Col. 1:15–23; Aulen, CV: 120–31; Rom. 8:18–21).
The Johannine tradition provides prime textual ground for this view, wherein “the whole world” as fallen is assumed to be “under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19); “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8; Didymus the Blind, Comm. on 1 John); “Now the prince of this world will be driven out” (John 12:31). When the prince of the world is bound, all that he held in captivity is released” (Leo I, Serm. 22.4).
This view, prominent among early Christian writers, was to some degree displaced by Anselm, then returned to centrality with Luther and Protestantism, and is well expressed in Luther’s “Ein feste Burg”:
And though this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us;
The Prince of Darkness grim,
We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure,
For lo, his doom is sure;
One little word shall fell him
(MH 1964, 20)
Gustaf Aulen’s influential account of this view downplays the substitution and satisfaction motifs in Scripture (Gal. 1:4; 1 Cor. 15:3; 2 Cor. 5:21); is selective in his use of sources; “establishes his point only by ignoring other facets of their accounts” focuses inordinately upon the conflict within God; and “gives little notice to what it [salvation] cost God” (McDonald, ADC: 263–65).
Comparison and Integration of the Complementary Tendencies
The differences between these four motifs correspond generally to what is perceived to be the deepest predicament of humanity—ignorance, misery, sin, or the bound will.
|
Ignorance |
|
Misery |
|
Sin |
|
Bound Will |
|
Then the atonement is likely to be viewed as: |
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|
Moral illumination and influence |
|
Inauguration of a reign of happiness |
|
Salvation by Christ in our place |
|
Redemption from curse of sin |
|
The corresponding social predicament is viewed as: |
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|
Lack of education |
|
Poverty or neurosis |
|
Willful rebellion |
|
Demonic captivity |
|
The predicament of the psychosomatic interface centers more particularly, in each case, upon the: |
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|
Ignorant mind |
|
Sensate experience |
|
Lost soul |
|
Bound will |
|
These theories of atonement have been principally formed in these four related, complementary traditions: |
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|
Pelagian-Abelardian |
|
Grotian-Arminian |
|
Augustinian-Anselmian |
|
Irenaean-Cappadocian |
|
Symbolic focus becomes trained upon: |
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|
Moral example |
|
Executive clemency |
|
Sacrifice |
|
Victory |
|
Each is ordinarily called by its key phrase: |
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|
Moral influence |
|
Rectoral governance |
|
Substitution |
|
Christus Victor |
|
Sometimes expressed by the summary term: |
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|
Marturial |
|
Rectoral |
|
Commercial |
|
Dramatic |
|
The prevailing tendency is: |
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|
Experiential-subjectivist |
|
Legal-administrative |
|
Penal-substitutional |
|
Ransom-doxological |
|
Each has a special locus of influence within Protestantism without denying the others: |
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|
Liberal |
|
Arminian |
|
Calvinist |
|
Lutheran |
|
Key advocates of each tradition in the modern period are: |
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|
Schleiermache |
|
Miley |
|
Hodge |
|
|
|
Each motif gives resistance to some theme regarded as potentially excessive: |
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|
Resists original sin |
|
Resists imputation |
|
Resists works-righteousness |
|
Resists commercial metaphors |
|
The potential problematic issue latent in the theory: |
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|
Pelagian optimism |
|
Legalistic synergism |
|
Predestinarian decrees |
|
Antinomianism |
|
Thematic focus: |
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|
The subject self |
|
Moral reliability |
|
Exchange |
|
Conflict |
|
Primary setting: |
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|
Intrapsychic awareness |
|
Public order |
|
Transactional exchange |
|
Demonic conflict overcome |
|
Recent inheritors include: |
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|
Unitarianism |
|
Liberation theology |
|
Neo-evangelical theology |
|
Neoclassical orthodoxy |
This graphic provides more detail than some non-professionals will desire, but it will help lay persons understand where to go for more information about each of these options.
The satisfaction and victory themes come closer to being consensual approaches (in the tradition of Irenaeus, the Cappadocians, Augustine, Anselm, and Calvin) than the others. All four need some corrective voices from the others to form an adequate teaching. They are best viewed as complementary. The scriptural and classic ecumenical teaching of atonement requires a good balance of the moral nature of man, moral government of God, the substitution of Christ for us in our place, and the consequent victory of Christ over demonic powers (J. K. Mozley, The Doctrine of Atonement; R. S. Franks, The History of the Doctrine of the Work of Christ; L. W. Grensted, A Short History of the Doctrine of the Atonement; L. Morris, The Atonement of the Death of Christ). To miss the profound complementarity of these approaches is to miss their power to change behavior. All are in Scripture for a good reason.
The Meaning of Daily Suffering in the Light of the Cross
Anyone who understands that God suffers for humanity has come close to the heart of Christianity. The story of Jesus is essentially that of God suffering for us (Cyril of Alex, Comm. on Luke 24:25–27).
Classic Christian teaching speaks of daily suffering to underscore that suffering is endemic to the human situation. Suffering invariably accompanies freedom, for freedom is perennially prone to anxiety, guilt, and boredom (Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety; Niebuhr, NDM 1; Oden, SA 1–3). Suffering doggedly tracks the heels of human freedom. The suffering of Christ for us is primarily directed to that suffering that results from sin, from which every human suffers daily.
Gospel as Theodicy
The recollection of Christ’s suffering is itself an act by which faith participates in God’s own humbling (Peter of Damascus, Treasury, Philokal. I, 234–39). A high Christology is the key to a deep-going theodicy.
Theodicy is the attempt to speak rightly of God’s justice (theos-dikē) under conditions of suffering and evil. Theodicy is an intellectual discipline that seeks to clarify the hidden aspect of God’s goodness despite apparent contradictions of that goodness in history. Its task is to vindicate the divine attributes of omnipotence, love, justice, and holiness in relation to the continuing existence of evil in history (Augustine, EDQ 21).
Just being a human being is enough to qualify anyone to ask the question: “Why do I suffer?” Human existence seems to make it inevitable (Gregory I, Morals on Job 13.28–37).
If this profound problem finds a place anywhere in the university curriculum, it falls in the lap of theology. But fewer universities than ever have curricula in theology, and when they do, they often want it taught as if it were psychology or politics. Though theodicy is treated sporadically in literature and philosophy, it is not widely treated in psychology or sociology or even biblical exegesis. Universities do not appoint professors of theodicy, yet everyone suffers. The meaning of suffering was a central concern of the ancient Christian writers (Polycarp, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Augustine, Gregory I). Without seeking it, they all had their share of suffering.
The Inherent Difficulty of the Question
No theological question is more difficult or recurrent than why bad things happen to good people. But there is one even deeper perplexity for Christians—why the absolutely just One has suffered so absolutely.
Regardless of what theory one may have of suffering, the theory never ends the suffering. The best theorists continue to suffer and even to inflict suffering upon others by means of their theories. Yet caring persons cannot simply reply with silence to the exasperating fact of suffering. In order not to say nothing, we must say something (Job 17:14; Gregory I, Morals on Job 27.59–60).
For classic Christian teaching, the wisest theodicy flows out of a deep reflection upon the cross (Bede, On 1 Pet. 2:19–20). There the profound problem of human suffering becomes transmuted by the even deeper mystery of God’s suffering for humanity (Ambrosiaster, Comm. on Paul, 2 Cor. 1.5–7). As a problem in the sequence of classic Christian teaching, theodicy belongs just after atonement, hence we focus on it at this point.
There can be little persuasive talk of the goodness and power of God if the evil of the world is never in any way decisively overcome, sooner or later. The alleged almightiness of God would be thrown into question if evil were never conceivably overcome. For how could one think of God either as incomparably good or mighty if evil were more or equally powerful?
Those who cannot provide inquirers with some plausible understanding of suffering and evil in relation to God’s saving activity are ill-prepared to minister to them. It is just at this point that clarity about the cross becomes a pastoral necessity (Augustine, CG 1.10; for a summary of classic views, see Oden, “A Theodicy for Pastoral Practice,” Pastoral Theology: 223–48).
The gospel of salvation is intricately connected with the interweaving problems of evil and suffering. If there were no problem of evil, there would be no felt or experienced need for the gospel of salvation. The gospel is good news precisely about evil’s defeat (Chrysostom, Catena, 1 John 3:8, CEC: 123).
Doctrines of Evil Correlated with Teachings of Salvation
There are several (at least eight) main views of salvation that have offered alternative explanations of that pivotal form of evil that defines and shapes other evils. Christianity has interacted with all these views. Summarily, these may be schematized in this way:
|
The Prime Evil Viewed As |
|
The Sphere of its Evidences |
|
Its Prototype |
|
Salvation Found in |
|
1. The tyranny of passion |
|
The cosmos |
|
Stoic compliance |
|
Reason |
|
2. The inability to enjoy |
|
The passions |
|
Epicureanism pleasure |
|
Hedonic enjoyment |
|
3. Death |
|
The intrinsic vulnerability of life |
|
Hellenism |
|
Immortality |
|
4. Pain |
|
The feelings |
|
Buddhism |
|
Nirvana |
|
5. Ignorance |
|
The intellect |
|
Platonism |
|
Philosophy |
|
6. Property |
|
Class alienation |
|
Marxism |
|
Revolution |
|
7. Emotive Repression |
|
Neurosis |
|
Freudianism |
|
Psycho-analysis |
|
8. Sin |
|
The will |
|
Classic Christianity |
|
The Cross |
It cannot be our purpose here to review comparative views of evil in various developing historic periods or cultures, however important that subject may be. But it is our purpose to show that Christian theodicy exists in the context of the all-too-familiar human problem of suffering—a problem dealt with in all classic Christian traditions—and that the cross of Christ stands as the decisive event illuminating Christian theodicy. In what follows we explore the fourth column above, since this study focuses on classic Christianity.
Christianity: The Evil of the Bound Will Makes Other Evils Evil
Christianity views the pivotal evil that shapes and penetrates all other evils to be the evil of the will, especially as manifested in transgenerational sin. Christ offers forgiveness of sin as a binding up of the evil that creates and elicits other evils.
The good news of God’s atoning work on the cross assumes that the radical evil in the world is not finally death, pain, ignorance, class conflict, or libido repression, but sin. The deepest root of evil lies in freedom, in the distortions of moral self-determination.
Suffering: Surveying the Human Predicament
It may seem absurd that so much of human history and acculturation have so often been formed around the seemingly odd premise that suffering is a punishment. But that correlation appears virtually everywhere in the history of human experience, and especially in morality and religion. The logic is unsparing: if we receive the due reward of our deeds, and if we suffer, the thought suggests itself that we suffer because of our evil deeds.
The Common Experience of Suffering for Others: The Social Nature of Suffering
The deeper level of the perplexity of suffering is not when people suffer for their own sins—that has a ring of justice. It is rather when they suffer for the sins of others—that seems unjust.
Your neighbor may have to suffer innocently for something you have done (even inadvertently). Who does not know how it feels to suffer from something someone else has done? Sad but true, there appears to be universally experienced a profoundly vicarious aspect to human suffering. It is as if all humanity had become mixed in a transgenerational stew where one person’s willed evil causes others to suffer. No one comes out unhurt. One generation hurts another. One member of a family system hurts another.
The premise of individualism does not help toward a solution of an enigma that is intrinsically social: there is an inexorable, ever-changing relational interweaving of human beings in covenant histories: the histories of tribes, cultures, languages, associations, and nations.
It is odd that the most profound forms of human intimacy are revealed in suffering. We are cursed by others, yet no one discerns exactly from whose voice the curse came. We are blessed by others, yet often these blessings seem to come from nowhere.
The Consequences of Sin Are Socially Transmitted in Subsequent History
Why has it recurred so convincingly within so many cultures that human beings are cursed and punished by their own or other’s bad choices, which Jews and Christians call “sin”? The consequences of sin, like all self-determined historical acts, become locked into causal chains. These consequences cannot be simply stopped. It does no good to say: “Stop the world, I want to get off.” To pretend that the consequences of sin could be suddenly halted would be to suspend the present natural order of cause and effect, where one person’s bad choice causes another to suffer. To change that would require the redesigning of the world totally, and no one is up to that.
This is why Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Augustine argued that evil is not substantially or originally existent in our created nature, but that it has emerged out of an unnecessitated history, a result of human freedom—self-chosen and abused. Its history is basically self-determined by will, not necessitated. That is not our created nature, but our fallen nature. It has a history—everything east of Eden. If so, the view that evil is natural to humanity needs correction, as does the mistaken view that evil is as old as God (Athanasius, Contra Gentis 2–7, Augustine, Questions).
Consequent Innocent Suffering
Sufferings for the most part appear to be the inevitable consequences of the corporate sins of humanity working intergenerationally to affect persons mostly but not wholly innocent of their own original acts of wrong-doing. Each individual then places his or her own distinctive stamp upon the history of sin. My flawed choices are added to a history of flawed choices. When we make wrong uses of good creaturely gifts (like sex and power and wealth and influence), when we choose the lesser good above the greater, it is often the case that others who did not make our choices have to suffer the consequences of our bad choices.
These causal chains flow like all natural ordering flows, from person to person, mother to daughter, family to family, neighbor to neighbor, seller to buyer, nation to nation (Jer. 31:29–30). What we sow will somehow be reaped, if not by us, by others who may suffer from our choices. Our choices propel unwelcome and unintended reverberations into others’ futures.
That all sin stands under the penalty of death is proven by this empirical fact: There has never yet been a sinner who has not in time died.
In the late Judaic apocalyptic tradition, grossly unfair distributions of rewards and punishments were viewed as proof of the anticipated end of history, the final resurrection of the just and unjust. Jesus’ resurrection meant the beginning of that end time. We leap ahead of our story by referring to the resurrection, but only a little, since it comes immediately after the cross, our current subject. The resurrection would provide a way by which the faithful may come to participate already in the end time, when all wrongs shall be righted (Jerome, Epis. to Eph. 1.2.1–9).
Much of the Old Testament viewed prosperity as a sign of God’s favor, and adversity as an indication of divine displeasure over sin. But such a view was inadequate to explain innocent suffering, such as that of Job. Finally lacking a formal solution to his urgent queries, Job submitted himself to the infinite majesty of God, confessing that “no plan of yours can be thwarted” “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42:3; Olympiodorus, Comm. on Job 42.1–4). In this way the evil of suffering led to the good of repentance. “When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me—till I entered the sanctuary of God. Then I understood their final destiny. Surely you place them on slippery ground” (Ps. 73:4–18).
How Does Christ’s Death Impinge upon Human Suffering?
Christ’s Death Negated Neither Our Freedom Nor Natural Causality
Christ’s death did not change the way the world is put together as a natural order of cause and effect. Causality was not banished and the chance that I might harm you was not taken away. That would have paid too high a price for freedom from sin, namely freedom from freedom, a parade of automatons, causal chains without self-determination in a nonhistory lacking freedom (Augustine, Freedom of the Will 3.3.8).
Christ’s death does not reduce the freedom that risks causing evil and suffering. Rather Christ’s death is proclaimed as the birth of a new freedom amid the complexities of causal chains (Augustine, Conf. 2.4–8).
This can be celebrated without attempting to pronounce in detail upon the eternal destiny of each individual. We do well to trust God to care rightly for those who have not heard adequately of divine mercy. The promise is that “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).
God Personally Knows the Suffering from Which We Are Saved
But what is meant by punishment for sin? Above all, God knows. For God has felt the full brunt of human violence (Leo I, Serm. 58; Catherine of Genoa, CSW: 7285). Christians know that this has happened as an actual event in human history. God knows fully what we know partially—that sin cannot finally endure in God’s world, that it must be atoned for, paid for, and has been transcended and bound up by God’s love (Bede, Hom. on Gospels 11.9; H. W. Robinson, Suffering Human and Divine). The cross is the actual event in which that ransom or payment was made once for all. From the moment of Christ’s last earthly breath, the world is redeemed from sin and reconciled to God, and the divine-human account is paid up—a reality in which faith may share.
This does not imply that everyone necessarily wills to share in the freedom Christ offers: “If any soul were finally and forever to put aside Him Who has vicariously borne the punishment of sin, it must bear its own punishment, for it places itself under those conditions which brought from Christ’s lips the cry ‘Forsaken.’…The alternative is this: to meet the future alone, because forsaken, or to be saved in Him Who was ‘forsaken’” (C. C. Hall, Does God Send Trouble?: 540).
The Absurdity of Continued Bondage
How is it possible that one might now continue to remain in bondage to sin, Paul asked in Romans, chapter 6? If actually freed by God from sin, how could one absurdly continue to believe that God is now punishing us for sins already atoned for? To say that is to disbelieve that God has effectively taken punishment for our sins.
The cross has become for Christians a mirror through which humanity may behold both its own sin and God’s willingness to share the suffering that sin creates. Through the cross, suffering is, first of all, faced and borne and, secondly, transcended by the awareness that God confronted, bore, and transcended it. This is Christian theodicy. It is called the good news.
The Mystery of Human Suffering Viewed in the Light of the Cross
The faithful stand in the lively awareness that each of us was there—at the cross. All humanity was there. All sins were representatively being atoned and reconciled. “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” the black evangelical tradition asks. Each one must finally answer yes or no.
Of the boy who is the main character in the novel Bevis, Richard Jefferies writes: “The crucifixion hurt his feelings very much: the cruel nails, the unfeeling spear: he looked at the picture a long time, and then turned over the page saying, ‘If God had been there He would not have let them do it.’” But the whole point of the cross, as J. S. Whale points out, is that God was there! For it was God who was on the cross (PT: 45)!
Evil Does Not Disappear
There is never an adequate theoretical answer to the riddle of suffering because actual suffering wishes most to be solved in practice not in theory. But the cross points to an event in relation to which suffering is transformed from absurdity to renewed meaning.
Even then, suffering remains a continuing mystery even to the faithful, as it did to Job. Paul’s thorn does not go away. The daughters of Eve labor with pain. Rachel weeps. Mary wept.
Christianity does not promise an end of pain, but a word that God shares it with us.
Why the Cross Remains a Meaningful Disgrace
Yet the cross remains repulsive. We turn our eyes away from a public execution. How could it have happened that Christianity could be such an aesthetic and beautiful religion and have such an ugly central symbol?
The answer is that only there do we most fully discover how far God has gone to reach out for us. Before beholding the cross, we were unaware that God was searching for us, reading our hearts, seeking us out, desiring to atone for our sins, ready for reconciliation. The cross is evidence that God the Son comes far out to look for us and is willing to suffer for us so as to reconcile us to the Father (Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:18–19; Tertullian, On Patience 12).
The cross hardly looks like a place where evil is being overcome. Rather it appears to be history’s most massive example of injustice. This is one aspect of the cross that is unavoidable: the brutality of sin. This world is just such a place where such things can and do happen. The innocent do suffer. This we learn from the cross, where the most undeserved suffering and the most deserving goodness meet with devastating irony.
The cross reveals the meaning of history, specially at those points in history where it least appears as though God is truly righteous or where it appears that God may be indifferent to human suffering. The meaning: God suffers for sinners, wiping away their sin.
One of the most amazing facts about the New Testament is that it was written under conditions of radical social dislocation, oppression, injustice, war, written by people who were suffering from torture and persecution, and written to people whose lives were constantly endangered because of their faith and made more complicated because of their baptism. Yet no book is so filled with hope and joy and mutual support and encouragement. It is virtually free from the bitterness that so prevails in human life. Whatever they had to suffer, they suffered in the awareness of their sharing in the dying and rising Word of life.
The Christian life is a continuing spiritual warfare whose crucial victory is already known and experienced, but whose ancillary battles continue in human history until the last day.
The warfare is deep in the human spirit, appearing in the subtle forms of pride, seduction, greed, and envy. This is not something that can be done away with by means of another march on the capitol, a more searching docudrama, stalwart investigative reporting, a revolution, or a committee for neighborhood improvement, however important those might be. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God” so that “you may be able to stand your ground,” with the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, with prayer, with feet prepared for running, and with “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:12–18; Jerome, Epis. To Eph. 3.6.11–13).
Whom the Lord Loves, He Disciplines
It is because parents love children that they discipline them. Lacking discipline they would be unprepared for the world ahead. Caring parents at times must punish children out of love and not as an end in itself, as an occasional and incomplete, but necessary corrective means (Heb. 12:7–10; Chrysostom, Hom. on Heb. 29.2).
In the Christian tradition suffering is indeed sometimes viewed as educative, sometimes as a trial of faith, sometimes as a purifying agent or means by which God’s righteousness is vindicated. The context for learning about punishment for sins is not in a law book but a cross, where God is known as willing to bear our punishment (Oecumenius, Fragments on Epis. To Heb. 12.9).
The Mystery Unfolds
The Christian way is narrow. It says, “Take up your cross.” “Share in his death and resurrection.”
Gnosticism was an early competitor of Christianity that appeared to offer simpler nostrums—an instant means of escape from evil, a quick key to the secrets of the cosmos. “Mystery” for such religions meant something to be understood by a knowledge elite. Once understood, it would no longer be a mystery.
The mystery of the cross for Christian believers is quite the opposite: the more one knows of it the further out it extends as a mystery. The mystery of holy, sacrificial love is to be beheld, savored, and embraced—not resolved. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1).
Christianity ironically intensifies the problems of evil and suffering when viewed as philosophical problems to be intellectually resolved. For Christians proclaim that God is all-powerful and all-good, and more so that this is no where more evident than on the cross! Suffering is not for Christians merely a conceptual problem to be solved, but rather a personal challenge to be met (Chrysostom, Hom. on Heb. 30.1).
There is never a neat or satisfactory conceptual answer for the father whose only son is brutally, senselessly killed. But Christianity points to an actual event in which the eternal Father lost his only Son in a brutal, violent death.
God’s Suffering With and For Us
This is Christ’s way of transforming the dilemma of theodicy. Instead of solving the riddle of suffering conceptually, Christianity speaks of God’s actual suffering with us and for us. It is a narrative of an event that occurred in history.
This removes from our suffering our tendency to despair over its meaninglessness. “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body” (2 Cor. 4:7–11; Origen, On Prayer, 29, 30).
The most profound Christian theodicy does not reason deductively but tells the story of God’s suffering for us. No argument can convince the sufferer (1 Pet. 2:21; Andreas, Catena CEC: 57–58). Only the actual history of God’s own coming to suffering humanity could make a difference.
God’s way of coming to humanity is almost entirely unexpected, except for prophetic utterances. It is a foolish method—the cross. Christianity alone among world religions speaks of God on a cross.
Christianity is the religion of the cross. The cross is Christianity’s most accurate visual summary.