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ANSELM S THEORY

OF

THE ATONEMENT

ANSELM S THEORY

OF

THE ATONEMENT

fje 25oi)len 3lecture, 1908

BY GEORGE CADWALADER FOLEY, D.D.

Profettor of Komiletics and Pastoral Care in the Divinity School
of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia

" , T.AA^;V
X^OKOOLUQE,

Non quia reeoneiliavit amavit, sed quia amavit reconciliavit

Hoea OF ST. VICTOK

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
LONDON, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA

1909

*^ i w

COPYRIGHT, 1908
BY LONGMANS, GREEN, AND Co.

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

To MY MOTHER

THE
JOHN BOHLEN LECTURESHIP

JOHN BOHLEN, who died in this city on the twenty-
sixth day of April, 1874, bequeathed to trustees
a fund of one hundred thousand dollars, to be
distributed to religious and charitable objects in
accordance with the well-known wishes of the
testator.

By a deed of trust, executed June 2, 1875, the
trustees under the will of Mr. Bohlen transferred
and paid over to "The Rector, Church Wardens,
and Vestrymen of the Church of the Holy Trinity,
Philadelphia," in trust, a sum of money for certain
designated purposes, out of which fund the sum of
ten thousand dollars was set apart for the endow
ment of THE JOHN BOHLEN LECTURESHIP, upon the
following terms and conditions :

The money shall be invested in good substantial and safe
securities, and held in trust for a fund to be called The John
Bohlen Lectureship, and the income shall be applied annually
to the payment of a qualified person, whether clergyman or
layman, for the delivery and publication of at least one hun
dred copies of two or more lecture sermons. These Lectures
shall be delivered at such time and place, in the city of Phila
delphia, as the persons nominated to appoint the lecturer shall
from time to time determine, giving at least six months notice
to the person appointed to deliver the same, when the same

THE JOHN BOHLEN LECTURESHIP

may conveniently be done, and in no case selecting the same
person as lecturer a second time within a period of five years.
The payment shall be made to said lecturer, after the lectures
have been printed and received by the trustees, of all the
income for the year derived from said fund, after defraying
the expense of printing the lectures and the other incidental
expenses attending the same.

The subject of such lectures shall be such as is within the
terms set forth in the will of the Rev. John Bampton, for the
delivery of what are known as the " Bampton Lectures," at
Oxford, or any other subject distinctively connected with or
relating to the Christian Religion.

The lecturer shall be appointed annually in the month of
May, or as soon thereafter as can conveniently be done, by the
persons who, for the time being, shall hold the offices of Bishop
of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the Diocese in which is
the Church of the Holy Trinity ; the Rector of said Church ;
the Professor of Biblical Learning, the Professor of Sys
tematic Divinity, and the Professor of Ecclesiastical History,
in the Divinity School of the Protestant Episcopal Church in
Philadelphia.

In case either of said offices are vacant the others may nom
inate the lecturer.

Under this trust the Reverend GEORGE C. FOLEY,
D. D., Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Care in
the Divinity School of the Protestant Episcopal
Church in Philadelphia, was appointed to deliver the
lectures for the year 1908.

PREFACE

FOR a full discussion of the subject under review,
it was thought best to cast it in the form of a treatise,
from which selections were made for the lectures
required by the terms of the Bohlen foundation.
The work is not a constructive statement of the
doctrine of the Atonement ; it is a critical and
historical study of the claim that the Reformation
dogma is the Catholic doctrine. As this has long
been regarded as the test of orthodoxy, and has been
in a multitude of instances a painful obstacle to
faith, the evidence that it is absent from the ancient
and patristic teaching is offered as a useful apologetic,
which may clear the way for a simpler, more rational,
and more Scriptural expression of the redemptive
work of Christ. The general facts here presented
are familiar to the students of the history of dogma
and to the readers of modern books on the Atone
ment. But the effort has been made to bring them
together in the convenient form of an argument more
complete than any with which the writer is acquainted.
The average Christian may thereby understand how
valid are the revulsion from long dominant theories,

x PREFACE

and the attempt in our day to restate the truth of
Atonement in ethical and spiritual terms.

The traditional statement of the doctrine has
undoubtedly developed much devout and consecrated
life ; but its religious power has not lain in its crude
form, but in its emotional witness to the fundamental
reality of Incarnate love and sacrifice. It is demon-
strably not the faith of the universal Church, or the
continuous and unvarying formula of Christian
thinkers. To insist upon it as essential to Christianity
is to insist upon being " wiser than the universal
Church of Christ." As Dr. Dale has said: "The
Fathers attempted to explain why it is that through
the death of Christ we escape from the penalties of
sin, and their explanations were rejected by the
Schoolmen. The Schoolmen attempted to explain it,
and their explanations were rejected or modified by
the Reformers. The Reformers attempted to explain
it, and within a century Grotius and his successors
were attempting to explain it again." The very
diversity of the explanations proves that none of
them is necessary, as Christian life seems to have been
as well sustained under one as another ; and there is
quite as much reason and Christian propriety in
rejecting that which began with the Reformation as
in disclaiming any which preceded it. Its rejection
is not to be discredited as the desire for a " new
theology," since it is due to the recovery of earlier

PREFACE xi

and juster views which prevailed in Alexandria and
Antioch. The upholders of the Latin theology in
general, and of the Anselmic, Reformation, or Grotian
theories of Atonement in particular, are the real
neologians.

The primary purpose of this study therefore is
negative, to exhibit the lack of authority for the
theory framed by the Reformation divines. It will
be a genuine relief to many troubled minds to be
made fully aware of this ; they will then be able to
appreciate the best Greek thought which is so much
nearer the teaching of St. Paul. The whole effect
however is intended to be positive and constructive
by showing the identity of the great Christian fact
through all the mutually contradictory explanations.
The divergence of the theories is no indication of the
" discontinuity of Christian thought " ; for the con
tinuity of belief in the fact of Chrises redemption is
more essential than the persistence of any ideas about
it whatsoever. Moreover, the theories themselves,
however inadequate and open to criticism, when traced
from Origen to Moberly, are seen to illustrate what
Dr. George Harris calls " a progressive moral evolu
tion."" In a wide circle they have returned very
nearly to the simplicity and vitality of the Scriptural
conceptions.

The writer is under great obligations to the Rev.
Alex. R. DeWitt, LL. M., of Muncy, Pa., for many

xii PREFACE

scholarly and fruitful suggestions. Grateful acknowl
edgment is also made for a number of helpful refer
ences to authorities furnished by the Rev. Dr. J.
Cullen Ayer, Jr., and the Rev. Dr. Andrew D. Heffern,
of the Faculty of the Divinity School. The Rev.
Edgar Campbell, of Philadelphia, has given valued
assistance in the reading of the proofs.

THE DIVINITY SCHOOL, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

August, 1908.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION ]

II. THE PATRISTIC TEACHING l3

1. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 15

C 2. THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS 19

3. THE POST-APOSTOLIC FATHERS 25

a. Justin Martyr 26

L~b. Irenaeus 29

c. Clement of Alexandria 37

d. Origen 39

4. NlCENE AND PoST-NlCENE FATHERS .... 46

a. Eusebius of Caesarea 47

b. Athanasius 48

c. Later Greek Fathers 60

Gregory of Nyssa 60

Gregory of Nazianzus 63

Chrysostom 66

Cyril of Alexandria 68

5. THE LATIN FATHERS 75

a. Tertullian 77

b. Cyprian 82

c. Augustin 86

xiv CONTENTS

PAGE

III. THE ANSELMIC THEORY 101

1. PATRISTIC AND MEDLEVAL ANTECEDENTS . . 103

a. Antecedents affecting the substance of

the theory 103

(1) A racial characteristic . . . . 103

(2) Ecclesiastical ideas and discipline . 105

(3) German criminal law 109

(4) Feudalism 113

b. Antecedents affecting the form of the

theory 115

2. "CuR DEUS HOMO?" 120

a. Preliminary to the argument . . . . 121

6. The argument 124

c. Some valuable features of the theory . . 132

d. Defects of the theory 143

Three general defects 143

Criticism in detail 14-7

(1) The idea of Honour .... 147

(2) The idea of Satisfaction . . . 154

(3) The forensic form of the theory l6 7

(4) The latent Dualism 173

(5) The Nestorian element ... 179

(6) Satisfaction considered as Sub

stitution 181

(7) .The purpose of the^ Incarnation 187

(8) The purely objective character of

the theory 190

(9) A pernicious effect of the theory 193

CONTENTS xv

PAGE

3. ANSELM S CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS . . 19*

a. His adherents 195

Hugh of St. Victor 195

Alexander of Hales 196

Bonaveiitura 196

Thomas Aquinas 197

b. His opponents 201

Abelard 201

Bernard 206

Peter Lombard 207

Duns Scotus 209

4. ANSELM S RELATION TO REFORMATION THEOLOGY 212

a. Basis of Protestant Soteriology . . . . 212

6. Antithesis of Protestant Soteriology . . 216

(1) Passive satisfaction 216

(2) Penal satisfaction 219

(3) Endurance equivalent to eternal

death 223

(4) Imputation 226

c. The modern development and reaction . 231

IV. ESTIMATE OF THE VALUE OF THE

TREATISE 251

APPENDIX 263

INDEX 321

I

INTRODUCTION

ANSELM S

THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT

INTRODUCTION

DAVID FRIEDRICH STRAUSS said : " The true criti
cism of a dogma is its history." The unlearned are
apt to think of the dogmatic formulas with which
they have been acquainted as fixed and immutable ;
but the history of doctrine shows that they have
most of them changed their form from age to age,
and of none is this more true than of the doctrine of
redemption. The history of change in these intellec
tual forms is a legitimate and necessary occasion of
criticism. We can tell the very time when a par
ticular mode of thought first arose, and we are
obliged to consider whether it is a normal develop
ment of the conceptions of the New Testament. We
can see when the main stream was joined a long way
from its source by a tributary ; and when we perceive
the distinctly new colour given to the stream by the
outpouring into it of the washings of an apparently
diverse soil, we are able to estimate whether this

3

4 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

muddy current can fairly be called the same as the
original pure brook whence it flowed.

Not all the varying formulations of theology
can claim to express the essential and ultimate truth,
and we are forced to separate these historical varia
tions from the truth itself. In different ages, differ
ent aspects and understandings of truth come to be
emphasised and made prominent, owing sometimes
to their denial and the subsequent controversy, and
sometimes to the prevalence of ideas which inhere in
the intellectual conditions of the age. When we
discern the contemporary causes for a particular state
ment, we are led to inquire whether it be a natural
and inevitable inference from truths hitherto awaiting
coordination ; as, for example, in the Nicene defini
tions concerning the deity of our Lord. At other
times, however, we are compelled to discriminate be
tween the original and permanent essence of a truth
and the temporary and imperfect interpretation of
it. The mere systematic statement of a doctrine,
therefore, is of little value until the formula has been
subjected to the criticism based upon the history of
its successive stages. The scholastic spirit is the
exact opposite of the critical and historical spirit ;
but the latter is the spirit of our time, and its method
is our accepted method of arriving at the truth.

It is generally admitted to-day that a thinker can
be judged only by means of the ruling ideas of the

INTRODUCTION 5

age in which he lived, by the intellectual antecedents
which insensibly but inevitably have moulded his
thoughts. Even the Apostles used rabbinic thought-
forms which were convenient vehicles for the new
revelation that had come to them, but by no means
all of which are to be regarded as permanently valid.
What Sabatier says of all dogma is especially true of
the doctrine of salvation : " It is ever a product of a
blending of Christian feeling with conceptions and
phrases borrowed from the atmosphere of contem
porary culture." 1 The whole environment has to be
taken into account as affecting the angle of observa
tion from which the idea is conceived and the phrase
ology in which it is presented. The cast of theological
thought developed in the Western Church has certain
well-defined characteristics, which strikingly differen
tiate it from that of the Greek Fathers, notwith
standing their common possession of fundamental
Christian truths. It moves to a large extent in a
different realm of ideas, which are attributable to the
racial and personal conditions of its authors. Our
Soteriology has been almost exclusively Latin, and
has grievously suffered from the defects which mark
the Latin type of mind, as well as the habit of mind
belonging to a particular profession. The limitations
attending this derivation of our thoughts of redemp
tion are no discredit in themselves ; but they need to
1 A. Sabatier, The Doctrine of the Atonement, p. 199.

6 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

be remembered and to qualify our estimate of the
final product of the Latin influence. They must
themselves be tested before we can determine whether
the theories of Thomas Aquinas or of the disciples of
the Reformers are Catholic and Scriptural. When
we note that, under that influence, the later thought
got farther and farther away from the figures and
analogies of Scripture, and became more and more
juristic and speculative and abstract and transcen
dental, our suspicions are awakened that the theology
of Latin Christianity is not to be trusted as having
developed along lines which make practicable a
satisfactory explanation of the Atonement.

The principles applied so well by Canon Mozley to
the understanding of Old Testament characters must
be combined with the canon of Dr. Strauss, in order
to form a true judgment of the Cur Deus Homo and
its place and value in the development of the doctrine
concerning the work of Christ. This treatise is
selected for special study, first, because, having been
published in 1098, it stands midway in the history of
thought upon this subject, which began early in the
third century ; and secondly, because it is central to
the historical inquiry. It is contrasted with the
patristic teaching from which it is not derived, and
with the Reformation theory to which it contributed
the leading idea. It marks the turning-point at
which the legal and external and purely logical and

INTRODUCTION 7

objective conception of God s relation to us displaced
the personal and organic and biological, after which
the theology of the Atonement takes an entirely
novel direction. While it has had little force or
acceptance in itself as a consistent theory, it has
largely moulded Western thought through its most
significant word. Its influence cannot be underes
timated even by those who have departed most widely
from its thought ; while those who still hold to its
root-idea naturally esteem it of capital import. The
Catholic Encyclopaedia says : " It may be said, indeed,
that this book marks an epoch in theological literature
and doctrinal development."" - 1 And it is thus appre
ciated by an earnest advocate of the common Protes
tant position : " The Cur Deus Homo is the truest
and greatest book on the Atonement that has ever
been written." 2

In order to make the ensuing study intelligible, it
is necessary to indicate in the briefest way the three
great stages in the movement of speculation. In the

1 Art. "Atonement," II. 56.

2 Dr. James Denney, The Atonement and the Modern Mind,
p. 116. Abbe Riviere gives far more space to Anselm than to
any other author, thus indicating his sense of the importance of
the treatise (Le Dogme de la Redemption, pp. 291-324). On the
other hand, Canon Moberly, while admitting its "importance
as the first formal attempt to philosophise the whole subject,"
regards it as a conspicuous failure : * nothing could be more
simply arithmetical, or more essentially unreal " (Atonement and
Personality, pp. 367, 370, 371).

8 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

patristic period, the death of Christ was conceived
as a ransom paid to the devil, as with Origen, or as
a fulfilment of the law of holiness, as with Athanasius,
with his rich, sympathetic insight into the mysticism
of St. Paul. With Anselm, it was a satisfaction
rendered to the honour and the justice of God. With
the Reformers, it was also a satisfaction, but passive,
penal, substitutionary, and in this form it has re
mained the dogma of traditional orthodoxy to the
present time. It is found in its least objectionable
expression in the chief Anglican authors, and Bishop
Pearson may be quoted as an example : " We all had
sinned, and so offended the justice of God, and by an
act of that justice the sentence of death passed upon
us ; it was necessary therefore that Christ our surety
should die, to satisfy the justice of God, both for that
iniquity, as the propitiation for our sins, and for that
penalty, as He which was to bear our griefs. God
was offended with us, and He must die who was to
reconcile Him to us." 1

To those who have never known any other mode
of describing the work of Christ, it will seem un
settling and perilous to challenge it. But it may be
historically demonstrated that it is not Catholic
doctrine, and that it is only "imagined orthodoxy,"

1 Exposition of the Creed, Art. iv. ; see also Hooker, Laws of
Ecclesiastical Polity, bk. iv. c. v. ; Butler, Analogy of Religion,
pt. ii. c. v.

INTRODUCTION 9

a mere "provincialism in Christian theology. 1 1 Its
late rise is felt bv the modern thinker to be proof
positive that it cannot be inherent in the Christian
revelation, since it is in the highest degree unlikely
that the Church should have to wait a full millennium
before its first utterance. A recent writer says :
" But when a dogma is presented as a first principle
of Christianity, and is affirmed to be a plain and
explicit doctrine of Scripture, if not an absolutely
self-evident truth, the fact that it was first articulated
by a Schoolman of the twelfth century is at least
a presumptive argument against its claims. 1 * 2 Simi
larly, one of the pioneers in the critical reaction
against the Reformation theory said in 1860 : " I
may appeal to this fact of its being modern as an
argument that, even if true, it cannot be essential;
and that they to whom it presents insuperable diffi
culties, they who fail to find it in Scripture, and they
who feel too uncertain about it to adopt it, are not,
therefore, to be pronounced heretical, or regarded as
strangers to that vital and central truth of redemption
by the blood of Christ which may be dearer to them
than their lives." 3

The dogma, which seems so harmless and even
comforting to those who have not thought about

1 Dr. George B. Stevens, The Christian Doctrine of Salvation,
p. 252.

2 T. Vincent Tymms, The Christian Idea of Atonement, p. 38.
8 Francis Garden, in Tracts for Priests and People, I. 129 sq.

10 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

what it involves, has been a serious obstacle to the
faith of many. In its crudest form, as preached by
the Salvation Army, it revolts the conscience ; the
highest consciousness of our time finds it morally
impossible. Yet to most Christians it has been pre
sented as the very marrow of the Gospel ; and even
when modified and refined, it has come to seem too
unreal and paradoxical for acceptance, and many of
them are forced into an apparent rejection of Divine
revelation. The harm that has been wrought by the
hard, remorseless processes of cold and passionless in
tellect is incalculable. It is believed therefore to be
a useful apologetic to recover the truth of Atonement
from conceptions that are misleading and dishonouring
and inhibitive to faith. It may at least clear the way
for a simpler and more Scriptural expression of the
redemptive work of Christ.

We must discover, then, the connection of Anselnrfs
theory with the Soteriology of the Fathers, whether
by affinity or by contrast ; we must seek in the
patristic ideas for any possible antecedents and anti
cipations of it. We must trace its genesis from the
principles and practices of the centuries iipthfljliately
preceding its composition. We must indiXte its
effect upon subsequent thought, especially during the
Reformation, and finally the reaction against it in
our own day. This reaction will be seen to have
made its way through painful experiences of dis-

INTRODUCTION 11

illusionment to comparative peace, to readiness for a
new construction of thought by means of the modern
understanding of ethics and personality ; which will
probably, after all, be found to be a return to primi
tive Greek conceptions of Christ as the express
image of the Father and the mystical Sponsor and
Representative of men.

II

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING

II

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING
1. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

THERE is no necessity for a complete statement
of the doctrine of the Fathers. It will suffice to point
out those details in which their point of view is differ
ent from Anselm s, and those in which they have
been supposed to anticipate him. Mr. J. J. Lias
divides the writers in the early Church concerning
our Lord s redemptive work into two classes: those
who explained it wrongly, and those who did not
explain it at all. 1 The first is represented by those
who interpreted it as a ransom paid to the devil;
the second by the Apostolic Fathers, and others in
the patristic period who did not discuss the meaning
and reason of the death of Christ.

It is universally confessed that the Fathers gener
ally were not concerned with what we should now
call the philosophy of the Atonement. Many of
them never in any form raised the question, How
did Christ redeem us ? They accepted the fact, but
evidently had no clear, coherent theory of the process,

1 The Atonement, p. 66.

16 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

and no notion that any such theory was in any wise
necessary. Its absence from the creeds, except in
the simple expressions, "who for us men and for our
salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate
by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made
man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius
Pilate; He suffered and was buried, and the third
day He rose again," proves that they could not have
regarded any explanation of it as essential to ortho
doxy, or as the corner-stone of the Christian faith.
Its omission by the Apologists, and the fact that no
council formulated any statement of Atonement, also
indicate that the Church of the first seven centuries
believed the question of the modus of Redemption
to be infinitely less vital than it has been regarded by
the churches of the Reformation.

The patristic controversies were Christological and
anthropological; nevertheless, Soteriology occupied
the minds of the best of the Fathers, so distinctly and
intelligently, that their common mode of explanation
must be considered to unite them in a class addi
tional to those mentioned by Mr. Lias. They ex
plained the Redemption by the Incarnation, in direct
antithesis to theologians of more recent times; that
is, they made the Incarnation primary and the Re
demption secondary. 1 Their theology dealt with the

1 Dr. Littledale in The Atonement: A Clerical Symposium,
pp. 7, 8.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 17

Nature of God and the Person of Christ. Dr. George
P. Fisher says that they gave themselves so intently
to the questions relating to the Divinity of Christ,
because the significance of His saving work was
inseparably involved in them. 1 But they did not
separate the Person from the work, as was afterwards
done; on the contrary, some of them made the two
practically identical. "The quite subordinate place
allotted to the Atonement," which Dr. Fisher re
marks as such a striking phenomenon, is really due
to their definite conviction that, in essence, the Incar
nation was itself the Atonement.

Some spoke as though the very assumption of
human nature rescued man from corruption. But,
as a rule, the death of Christ was included, as bound
up with the idea and purpose of the Incarnation.
The death was not expressed as the end for which
"the Word was made flesh." The Incarnation was
not reduced to a mere means to that end; for
it was sometimes intimated that God would have
become incarnate, even if there had been no sin.
The death, however, was looked upon as the neces
sary and effective means of our rescue from the
bondage of corruption, and the resurrection as the
condition of our participation in the divine life.
Sometimes, salvation through the historic Christ
was made equivalent to a divine revelation, ac-
1 History of Christian Doctrine, p. 161.

18 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

cessible to all. Again, the Incarnation was treated
as the predestined mode of perfecting our nature
and bringing us into full communion with God.
Further, it was held that Christ renewed us by
mystical union with Himself, and that the "deifica
tion" of humanity was consequent upon the Incar
nation of Deity.

So that, although the period of the Fathers was
not an age of dogma upon this particular subject, it
is manifest that there was an attempt to explain the
Atonement by the Incarnation. Dr. Shedd laments
the absence of exact and logical formulation of this
doctrine by the Fathers: that they present "no
scientific construction" of it, that they "attempted
no rationale of the dogma" ; that they made no refer
ence to "the judicial reasons and grounds of the
death" of our Lord. 1 This simply means that he
does not find the scholastic theory in the Fathers
which is quite true; but it also indicates the happy
distinction between their theology and that introduced
by Anselm and continued by the Reformers. We
shall find in them nothing of satisfaction, active or
passive, nothing of real appeasement of the Father s
wrath (except in the Latins), nothing of substitu-
tionary suffering, nothing of the imputation of our
sins or of Christ s merits, nothing of justice as the
characteristic attribute of God s nature, nothing
1 History of Christian Doctrine, II. 204, 207, 211.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 19

legal or metaphysical or artificial in the description
of Christ s work. 1

2. THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS

The immediate successors of the Apostles confine
themselves to the language of Scripture, without
exegesis or theorising. Some apply passages of the
Old Testament to the death of Christ ; as the scarlet
thread of Rahab, Psalm xxii., and Isaiah liii. Some
make large use of sacrificial language, finding in
Christ the fulfilment of the types in the Jewish ritual. 2
Others again use analogies of a rhetorical or pictorial
kind, to describe the effect of the Saviour s work
upon us. Their frequent references to the cross have
been interpreted as indicating the ground of our for-^ j
giveness ; but they seem rather to express the means, y

The Didache has no mention of a saving work of
Christ, more than of "the knowledge and faith and
immortality made known" through Him (10). Her-
mas alludes to it only in connection with His whole

1 H. N. Oxenham, The Catholic Doctrine of Atonement, pp.
128, 129.

2 It cannot be assumed that these sacrifices connote expia
tion. Says Dr. A. A. Hodge (Schaff-Herzog, Art. "Atonement") :
"It is certain that, more or less clearly, they always held the
doctrine of expiation and satisfaction subsequently held by the
whole church." His references show merely that they employed
Scriptural phrases, and nothing can be less certain than Dr. Hodge s
st^ement.

20 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

activity. 1 Clement of Rome says that "the blood of
Christ . . . having been shed for our salvation, has
conferred upon the whole world the grace of repent
ance." 2 He says again: "On account of the love
He bore us, Jesus Christ our Lord has given His
blood for us by the will of God ; His flesh for [vtrep]
our flesh, and His soul for [virep] our souls " (xlix).
But his main thought is ethical, chapter xvi. being a
description of Christ as an example of humility, the
whole of Isaiah liii. and parts of Psalm xxii. being
quoted in illustration. He has no doctrinal explana
tion of the death of Christ, referring to it simply as
"the constraining motive to gratitude, reverence, and
self-sacrifice." 3

Barnabas regards the death of Christ as the fulfil
ment of prophecy: "The prophets prophesied con-
cerning Him. ... It was necessary that He should
suffer on the tree " (Ep. v). He also says: "The
Son of God could not have suffered except for our
sakes " (vii) ; but he dwells especially on the analogy
of the Levitical sacrifices, applying the figures of

1 Pastor, iii. Simil. v.

2 / ad Cor., vii. Lightfoot reads " vwr/veyKev, offered. "
The alternative reading, iirjveyicev, has the meaning given in
the text; although Canon Moberly prefers "won" or "rescued"
for either reading (Atonement and Personality, p. 326). The
translation in T. and T. Clark s Ante-Nicene Christian Library
evidently agrees with Lightfoot, rendering, "has set before
(I. 12).

8 J. S. Lidgett, The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, p. 41.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 21

the scape-goat and the red heifer as types. There
is no attempt beyond this to enter into the reasons
for Christ s sacrifice.

Ignatius frequently speaks of the sufferings and
death of Christ "for our sakes," 1 but connects them
specifically with forgiveness in but one passage in the
traditional formula: "the flesh of our Saviour Jesus
Christ, which suffered for our sins." 2 He dwells
upon the manifestation of love in Christ s Passion,
which has the life-giving power of making us like
Him : "be ye renewed ... in love, that is, the blood
of Jesus Christ." 3 But, above all, he thinks of the
personality of Christ as the nourishment of the soul :
"I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the
bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, . . .
and I desire the drink of God, namely His blood,
which is incorruptible love and eternal life." 4 The
symbol and means of this nourishment are the
Eucharist, which he declares to be "the flesh of our
Saviour Jesus Christ." 5

The beautiful Epistle to Diognetus, which Dr.
Fisher calls "the pearl of the Apologetic literature,"
is much more explicit in its reference to the Atone
ment than other writings of this period. It contains

Ad Smyrn., ii ; ad Polyc., iii ; ad Magn., ix ; ad Troll., ii.
Ad Smyrn., vii.
Ad Troll., viii.
Ad Rom., vii.
Ad Smyrn., vii.

22 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

some striking and unusual expressions, which have
been interpreted as conveying the later idea of sub
stitution. The author speaks of "punishment im
pending," of Christ as a "ransom for us," of His
taking the burden of our iniquities, of His covering
our sins by His righteousness; and exclaims: "O
sweet exchange ! O benefits surpassing all expecta
tion ! that the wickedness of many should be covered
by the One righteous, and the righteousness of the
One should justify many unrighteous!" (ix). Dr.
Stevens asserts that this means "a transfer of our
iniquities to Christ and of His righteousness to us."
If so, it is certainly astonishing that it should have
found so little response in the subsequent discussion,
or indeed for many centuries thereafter. But it
seems extremely unlikely that it means anything of
the sort, however familiar the language may sound.
The allusions to "punishment and death" as the
"reward" of our wickedness, and to the covering of
our sins, are Scriptural enough ; the latter being the
Hebraism rendered in our version of the Old Testa
ment by "make atonement for." The whole con
nection shows that it is a reminiscence of St. Paul in
the Epistle to the Romans: "For what else could
cover (or, make atonement for) our sins but His
righteousness ? In whom could we wicked and un
godly men be justified, save in the Son of God alone ?"
1 Op. cit., p. 137.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 23

The expressions, \vrpov virep and dvra\\ayri, cannot
be made to do service for the idea of substitution . The
Biblical words must stand or fall with their Biblical
use; VTrep means only "in behalf of," and \vrpov is
constantly used for "the condition upon which a
thing is granted." The "exchange," in a Calvinistic
statement of the Atonement, would have meant an
exchange of place, a transfer of merit and demerit.
But here it manifestly means the exchange of right
eousness for wickedness, of justification for condem
nation, an exchange of situation in the sinner him
self brought about by the love of the Father who gave
His own Son for us and by the righteousness of the
Son who willingly offered Himself. The entire
chapter is very eloquent, and is clearly rhetorical and
devotional rather than dogmatic. 1

The Epistle bases redemption, not upon God s
need of reconciliation, but upon His clemency and
kindness. "As a king sends his son, who is also a
king, so sent He Him ; as God He sent Him ; as to
men He sent Him; as a Saviour He sent Him; as

1 Archdeacon Norris understands the "exchange" to be the
inspiring fact that God became man in order that we might become
the children of God (Rudiments of Theology, p. 273). Abbe J.
Riviere interprets the Epistle as saying that the holiness of Christ
is the "compensation necessaire et efficace de nos fautes," and
calls this " le grand pr.ncipe paulinien de la substitution du Christ
a 1 humanite coupablc" (Le Dogrnc de la Redemption, p. 111). But
these ideas belong to later ages, and may not be attributed to this
author.

24 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

persuading, not as forcing ; for mere force belongeth
not to God. He sent Him as calling, not persecuting ;
as loving us, not as judging us" (vii). The whole
atmosphere is vitally different from that of the legal
theory of retributive justice and vicarious satisfaction.
Dr. Shedd claims, however, that the latter idea
"is distinctly enunciated by the Apostolic Fathers."
But again He says: they " merely repeated the Scrip
ture phraseology which contained the truth, . . .
but did not enunciate it in the exact and guarded
statements of a scientific formula." * "Taken as a
whole, the body of patristic theology exhibits but an
imperfect theoretic comprehension of the most fun
damental truth in the Christian system." 2 Now, no
inference can be built upon the connection of forgive
ness with Christ s death in the very language of the
Scriptures; for that simply remands the inquiry to
what the Scriptures themselves mean, and it is a too
common tendency to read later theories into the New
Testament writers. The abundant references to the
sufferings and death of Christ are quite indeterminate.
These earliest writers stop with attributing the fa
miliar valuation to them, but they attempt to give
no reason for their saving efficacy. The slight similar
ity of a few expressions to later formulations cannot
be regarded as in any way characteristic in an age of

1 Op. tit., II. 265, 211, 264.
8 Ibid., p. 212.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 25

"simple affirmations." Neander says of this period :
"Of a satisfaction paid by the sufferings of Christ to
the Divine justice not the slightest mention is as yet
to be found." l A French author quoted by Riviere
speaks of "the power of platitude or dullness suited
to the epoch of the Apostolic Fathers." 2 All these
candid admissions by very conservative writers are a
sufficient answer to the assertion that any theory of
satisfaction, Anselmic or Reformation, can be found
in the Apostolic Fathers.

3. THE POST- APOSTOLIC FATHERS

The conception of redemption during the second
and third centuries was partly ethical, as the obedi
ence of the new law and the entrance by faith into
eternal life through a true knowledge of God ; it was
partly idealistic and mystical, as the change wrought
in human nature by the Incarnation. The Fathers
of this period made little of the guilt of sin, but much
of its spiritual effects. The absence from them of
fear of the Divine displeasure and of the need of its
placation is remarkable, considering how universal
these ideas were among the pagans. In direct an
tithesis to Anselm and the moderns, they do not deal
with the objective effect of Christ s work upon God.

1 Church History, II. 385.
3 Op. tit., p. 105.

26 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

a. Justin Martyr (ob. 164?).

Dr. Fisher says: "It is the Incarnation rather
than the Atonement that interests him." This is
true, but he saw a redeeming and reconciling ef
ficacy in the Incarnation, in and of itself. E. g. :
"Corruption then becoming inherent in nature, it was
necessary that He who wished to save should be one
who destroyed the efficient cause of corruption. And
this could not otherwise be done than by the life
which is according to nature being united to that
which had received the corruption, and so destroying
the corruption, while preserving as immortal for the
future that which had received it. It was therefore
necessary that the Word should become possessed of
a body, that He might deliver us from the death of
natural corruption." 2 He sometimes speaks as
though we were saved by the teaching of Christ.
"Becoming man according to His will, He taught us
these things for the conversion and restoration of
the human race." 3 In the Dialogue with Trypho,
he describes his studies in philosophy with the
Peripatetics, the Stoics, the Pythagoreans, the Pla-

1 Op. cit., p. 66.

3 Fragment in Vol. II., Ante-Nicene Library, T. and T. Clark,
p. 358.

3 ApoL, I. xxiii. "It is the teaching of Christ which holds the
central place in Justin s thoughts" (Fisher, op. cit., p. 62).

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 27

tonists, and then narrates his conversion to Christ,
by means of which he learned things which Plato and
the others never knew. Hence, Christianity was to
him the divinely revealed philosophy: "I found
this philosophy alone to be safe and profitable. Thus,
and for this reason, I am a philosopher" (viii).
Redemption, to him, therefore, was the result of
perfect revelation. Irenseus quotes him as saying
in his lost work against Marcion: "summing up His
own handiwork in Himself." 1 This is the recapitu-
latio, which was so radical in Irenseus s own exposi
tion of the Atonement, and which represents Justin s
special emphasis upon the Incarnation.

Yet he also speaks of "the bloody passion of
Christ on the cross." 2 He refers many times in the
Apologies and the Dialogue to the death as the
necessary preliminary to the resurrection (as in
Apol. y I. Ixiii) ; but Professor Harnack says that he
"nowhere gives any indication of seeing in the death -
of Christ more than the mystery of the Old Testa-
ment, and the confirmation of its trustworthiness."
This is evident when any attempt is made to draw
modern inferences from his language. He says : "The
Father of all wished His Christ for the whole human
family to take upon Him the curses of all" (Dial.,

1 Adv. Haer., iv. 6, 2.

8 Ante-Nicene Library, II. 357.

3 History of Dogma, I. 220.

28 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

xcv). But he specifically denies that any "curse lies
on the Christ of God" (xciv); he speaks of "the
seeming curse" (xc), and, "as if He were accursed"
(xcv). He even says: "Our suffering and crucified
Christ was not under the curse of the law" (cxi), and
holds with Tertullian that the curse was laid on Him
by men (xcv). The "curses of all" which Christ
took upon Him, then, must refer to the evils incident
to man s sinful condition, and means no more than
the equivalent expression which Justin uses in the
following sentence: "He suffered these things in
behalf of the human family." The redemption was
by means of Christ s identification with the sufferings
of the race on account of sin.

Neander says: "In Justin Martyr may be recog
nised the idea of a satisfaction rendered by Christ
through suffering at least lying at the bottom, if
it is not clearly unfolded and held fast in the form of
conscious thought." 1 This is one of those instances
of reading into an author ideas which belong to a
much later age, from the assumption that what is now
regarded as orthodox must have been held by the
primitive writers. We look in vain for any trace of
satisfaction, or even expiation, which must have

1 Church History, I. 642. Similarly Riviere: "Nous avons
la deja 1 idee de substitution, qui sera si feconde dans la tradition
posterieure" (Le Dogme, etc., p. 115). But Riviere admits that we
are cursed for our sins; Justin regarded the curse on Christ as
having been laid on Him by men.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 29

been found in the Dialogue if he had accepted it as
Christian doctrine. 1

b. IrencBus (ob. 202).

Dr. Lindsay says, in his article on Irenseus in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica: "It is difficult to state
with any precision what Irenseus holds about the
nature of the effect of Christ s work of reconciliation
upon man. He makes great use of metaphor, and
evidently had not learned to express himself other
wise. The doctrine is still in its pictorial state in his
mind. Still, traces appear of that tendency after
wards common in the Greek Church to make the
Incarnation rather than the crucifixion and ascension
of our Lord the most important part of His work,
and to look upon the effect of that work as a trans
fusion of the Incarnation through redeemed human
ity" (XIII. 274). It may be said, however, that
amid the variety of his figures may be discerned a
consistent adherence to this root-thought which he
derived from Justin.

Occasionally, he seems to fall to a lower level.
"Propitiating God for men, . . . that exiled man
might go forth from condemnation." 2 "Propitiating

1 Riviere admits of Justin, as of his predecessors: "Pour en
expliquer la vertu, il n y a pas encore de theorie propriement dite"
(p. 115).

2 Adv. Haer., iv. 8, 2.

30 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

for us the Father against whom we had sinned,
and cancelling [consolatus] our disobedience by His
own obedience; conferring also upon us the gift of
communion with, and subjection to, our Maker." *
Yet, as Dr. Fisher admits, this is not dwelt upon or
definitely worked out (p. 86); and in any case he
makes the central and reparative element in the
work of Christ to consist in His obedience, which he
illustrates by the temptation (v. 21, 2). On the other
hand, in answer to the question, "Why did the
Saviour descend into the world ?" he says that it was
to give the knowledge of the truth; that is, He is
Redeemer as Teacher, which we have already found
in Clement and Justin (ii. 14, 7).

He views the saving work as completed in the
passion and death. 2 But elsewhere he makes Christ s
body and blood the means of our redemption, be
cause they were the means of communion between
God and man. "If the Lord became incarnate for
any other order of things, and took flesh of any other
substance, He has not then summed up human
nature in His own person, nor in that case can He be
termed flesh. ... He had Himself, therefore, flesh
and blood, recapitulating in Himself not a certain
other, but that original handiwork of the Father,

1 Adv. Haer. t v. 17, 1. See also iii. 18; xvii. 1.

2 Ibid., ii. 20, 3; iii. 16, 9: "who did by suffering reconcile us
to God."

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 31

seeking out that thing which had perished. And for
this cause the apostle, in the Epistle to the Colossians,
says, ... Ye have been reconciled in the body of
His flesh, because the righteous flesh has reconciled
that flesh which was being kept under bondage in sin,
and brought it into friendship with God. . . . For
that thing is reconciled which had formerly been in
enmity. Now, if the Lord had taken flesh from
another substance, He would not, by so doing, have
reconciled that one to God which had been inimical
through transgression. But now, by means of com
munion with Himself, the Lord has reconciled man to
God the Father, in reconciling us to Himself by the
body of His own flesh, and redeeming us by His own
blood. . . . And in every epistle the apostle plainly
testifies, that through the flesh of our Lord, and
through His blood, we have been saved " (v. 14, 2, 3).
Thus, he distinctly lays stress upon the Incarnation
itself as the Atonement, by its manifestation of God
and man actually at one in Christ, and by its resto
ration of communion between man and God. In this
connection, we have the first expression of the idea,
so often repeated in the Greek Fathers: "Our Lord
Jesus Christ became what we are, that He might
bring us to be even what He is Himself." This may
be regarded as a fundamental Greek thought, more

1 Adv. Haer., v, preface ; also, iv. 6,2: " He was made that
which we are, that He might make us completely what He is."

32 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

fully developed than any other; so that to most of
those Fathers the essence of the Atonement lay in
the Incarnation itself. With Irenseus, this is not a
mere inference; it is expressed in so many words:
"the Lord has restored us into friendship through
His Incarnation, having become the Mediator be
tween God and men" (that is, the medium of com
munication). 1

It may be said that Irenseus s characteristic word
is the one he borrowed from Justin, "recapitulatio,
am/<:e(/)aA,a/ft)cri?," which he also calls "the adoption." 2
It was to him thoroughly realistic, and seemed to be
warranted by St. Paul: "that He might sum up in
one all things in Christ" (Eph. i. 10). Sin was sep
aration from God (v. 27, 2) ; what was lost in Adam
was the image and likeness of God (iii. 18, 1) ; so
that Riviere is right in making the word include
both "resume" and " restauration " (p. 120). Christ
saved men by identification with them; "attaching

1 Adv. Haer., \. 17, 1. See iii. 18, 7: "For it was incumbent
upon the Mediator between God and men, by His relationship to
both, to bring both to friendship and concord, and present man
to God, while He revealed God to man."

2 Ibid., iii. 16, 3 and 6; 18, 1 and 7; 21, 10; 23, 1 ; iv. 38, 1 ;
v. 14, 2; 16, 2; 18, 3; 19, 1; 20, 2; 21, 1, 2. See also Hilary
(De Trin., ii. 24): "He did it that by His incarnation he might
take to Himself from the Virgin the fleshly nature, and that
through this commingling there might come into being a hallowed
Body of all humanity, that so through that Body which He was
pleased to assume all mankind might be hid in Him, and He in
return, through His unseen existence, be reproduced in all."

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 33

man to God by His own Incarnation" (ii. 20, 3).
"By His birth as man" He reunites things unnatu
rally separated, and "first and alone realises the
hitherto unaccomplished destination of humanity."
Dr. Dorner says that "the idea of substitution is com
mon to all the Fathers," and then quotes Irenseus
on recapitulation to prove it. 2 But that is the very
antipodes of substitution, which is equivalent to
putting Christ in the place of others, whereas Irenseus
thought of His solidarity with them by His mystical
reception of them into His Divine Person. 3

Irenaeus also says that Christ gave Himself as a
redemptio or ransom : 4 although he never represents
this as paid to the devil. 5 He says further: "There
fore by His own blood the Lord redeemed us, giving
His soul for [vTrep] our souls, and His flesh for [avr i\
our flesh" (v. 1, I). 6 It has been frequently asserted
that, while he may not have explicitly stated that the
ransom was paid to the devil, "the early hints of this
theory are to be found in his writings." 7 There can

1 Harnack, op. cit., II. 238-242.

2 System of Christian Doctrine, IV. 8 ; italics his.

3 "Nous sommes solidaires du second Adam comme nous
1 etions du premier solidaires jusqu a 1 id entite"( Riviere, p. 123).
"In the second Adam we were reconciled, we being made obedient
even unto death" (Adv. Haer., v. 16, 3).

4 Probably \vrpov in the lost original.

6 Contra Harnack, II. 290.

AVTI is probably the preposition of price,

7 A. V. G. Allen, Christian Institutions, p. 358.

3

34 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

be no doubt that Satan was from this time very con
spicuous in patristic thought, and that deliverance
from the fear of him was the practical import of the
ensuing doctrine. But it was Origen who first for
mulated this unfortunate theory. 1 Irenseus held that
men were God s debtors, unjustly kept in captivity
by Satan, although their having yielded themselves
to him made it unfair for them to be rescued by the
mere exercise of Divine power. This is vitally dif
ferent from Origen s recognition of the devil s right
ful claim. Moreover, the only two passages referred
to in proof of the derivation from Irenseus are Adv.
Hacr., v. 1, 1 and v. 21, 3; and neither of them will
bear out the contention.

The crucial passage is the former, especially in
the sentence: "The Word of God . . . dealt justly
even with the apostasy itself, redeeming from it His
own property, not by violent means, . . . but by
means of persuasion, as became a God persuading
and not using violence to obtain what lie desires." 2
The question is, to whom does "persuasion" (sua-
dela) refer, to the devil or man ? Many apply it to
the devil, as though God recognised certain rights

1 Harnack, III. 307; Norris, Rudiments of Theology, p. 279.

2 "Non cum vi, . . . sed secundum suadelam, quemad-
modum decebat Deum suadentem, et non vim inferentem, accipere
quae vellet." Translated : " as became a God of counsel, who does
not use violent means to obtain" (Ante-Nicene Library, IX. 56);
and: "as became God, by persuasion rather than by violence
regaining what He sought" (Norris, op. cit., p. 276).

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 35

of the "apostasy," notwithstanding the fact that it
had originally gained its mastery over us by violence
and "tyrannised over us unjustly"; among these
are Baur and Neander. 1 F. Huidekoper contrasts
the injustice of the apostate in acquiring his mastery
over us with the just behaviour of "the Word" even
to the apostate, in redeeming His own, "not by force,
but by persuasion and as became a Divine Being,
persuading him without violence to accept what he
wished." 2 Mr. Oxenham understands by "persua
sion," "a method which convinced Satan his rights
were at an end " ; and translates : "as it became God
to receive what He willed by persuasion and not by
force" (p. 132). 3

The language, however, is susceptible of a different
rendering. Dr. Shedd gives the substance thus:
"Mankind did not apostatise through compulsion,
but by persuasion (suadendo) ; consequently their
redemption must take the same course." 4 Arch
deacon Norris also applies it to man, and says its
meaning is "that Christ obliged the tyrant to surren-
der his captives not by violence, but by inducing
those captives to forsake him." 6 Dr. Tymms inter-

1 F. C. Baur, Die Christliche Lehre von der Versohnung, p. 28;
A. Neander, History of Christian Dogmas, I. 212.

3 Christ s Mission to the Underworld, p. 90.

1 Also, apparently, Simon, The Redemption of Man, p. 11.

4 Hist. Christ. Doctrine, II. 222.
8 Op. cit., pp. 274-279.

36 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

prets that Satan had no rights over us, but a forcible
snatching of man from his grasp would not be a real
redemption. Our rescue, therefore, is by the per
suasive power of Christ s death, whereby we are in
duced to forsake voluntarily the service of the Evil
One, so reversing the process by which we came into
bondage. 1

It has been happily suggested that Irenaeus was
simply repeating the familiar expression of the Epistle
to Diognetus : "o>? aw^wv eTrefjnfrev, co? nreiOwv^ ov j3ia-
foyLteyo?." 2 The twenty-first chapter of this same fifth
book, "Against Heresies," seems to render the above
conclusion certain. "The apostate angel of God
is ... vanquished by the Son of man keeping the com
mandment of God" (v. 21,3); and Section 2 applies
this, not to the passion, but to the temptation, wherein
Satan tried to persuade our Lord as he had previously
enticed man. Neither in the temptation nor in any
other relation did Christ try to persuade the devil.
On the contrary, "the Word bound him securely as
a runaway slave, and made spoil of his goods. . . .
And justly is he led captive" (Ibid.). Our Lord s

1 T. Vincent Tymms, op. cit., p. 24. A similar view is taken
by Dorner, Gieseler, and Hagenbach (see I. 83) ; Young, The
Life and Light of Men, p. 438 ; Fisher, Hist. Christ. Doct., p. 17 ;
Harnack (cf. II. 290 and III. 307) ; Allen (Christ. Instil., p. 357,
note) ; Lidgett, The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, p. 431 ;
Stevens, The Christian Doctrine of Salvation, p. 139.

2 In fact, Dorner uses this very passage to refute Bnur.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 37

relation to the devil was one of conquest ; the moral
suasion was addressed to man. The influence of
His death was on mankind, not on the devil ; so that
the idea to that extent is one of moral influence. The
concession of the devil s claim was in reality a Gnostic
heresy; and Baur applies "suadela" to Satan, be
cause he supposes that Irenseus had substituted the
devil for the Demiurge. But few will believe that the
opponent of the Gnostics should have differed from
them only nominally on this point. 1

c. Clement of Alexandria (ob. circa 216)

This Father alludes to several New Testament
figures, but lays no emphasis upon them by working
them out. He also quotes without explanation : "He
is the propitiation for our sins, as St. John says."
Some of his expressions suggest the traditional
language of later times. Thus he makes Jesus say
to the Christian soul, "I have fully paid for thy death
which thou didst owe for thy sins" ; and he recounts

1 The proofs adduced for the hints of Origen s theory in
Irenseus are wholly inadequate, and are obtained by separating
the first chapter of the Fifth Book from all the rest of the argument.
In any case, a method a 1 - "persuasion" is radically different from
one of literal " ransom," whether actual or deceptive ; the only
point of contact would be the recognition of Satan s rights over
man. As the theory had undoubted recognition for over eight
hund"ed years, it is only a question of criticism whether Ireneeus
should be freed from any sympathy with it.

3 Paed., iii. 12.

38 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

the legend of St. John saying to the chief of the
brigands: "I will render account to Christ for thee;
if need be, I will voluntarily suffer thy death, as
Christ suffered death for us; I will give my life in
exchange for thine." 1 This no doubt speaks of a
proposed substitutionary endurance of penalty; but
it refers to following the spirit of Christ, not to a
precise similarity of the two acts, and is so purely
incidental that it cannot be quoted as evidence
of a definite anticipation of the later vicarious
satisfaction.

He devotes the eighth chapter of the First Book of
The Pedagogue or Instructor to the truth, so often
forgotten afterward, and particularly by Anselm, that
justice and love are identical. His essential thought
was the indwelling God, and the natural alliance of
humanity with God. Hence, the readjustment,
made necessary by sin, is brought about by the
knowledge of the truth concerning God. The whole
treatise shows that he looked upon forgiveness, not
as the remission of penalty, but as the cure of igno
rance which is the cause of sin. 2 The very title ex
hibits Christ as the incarnation of truth, and Chris
tianity as the revealed philosophy, following Justin ;

1 Quis dives salvetur, 23, 49; P. G., IX. col. 628, 649. When
a translation is inaccessible, references are given to Migne s
Patrologia.

"It is for him a revelation rather than a restoration" (Crutt-
well, The Literary History of Early Christianity, II. 455).

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 39

and in a fragment on the First Epistle of St. John he
makes the blood of Christ equivalent to His doctrine. 1
Christ s death was an example of beneficial martyr
dom, " in imitation of whom the apostles . . . suf
fered for the churches which they founded." 2 He
went a step farther than Irenseus, and said that
Christ "became man in order that thou mayest learn
from Man, how man becomes God." 3 His point of
view is therefore as distant as possible from that of
the theory of Anselm.

d. Origen (ob. 253)

As the first great dogmatist, Origen was naturally
"the first to attempt a philosophy of the Atonement." 4
He sympathised with Clement s conception of Christ s
work as an illumination, and with other phases of
his thought. 5 He spoke of Christ s suffering on our
account in this wise : "Who bore our sins and infirm
ities, because He was able to pay for (or loose, \vaaC)

1 P. G., IX. col. 735.
8 Stromateis, iv. cap. ix.

3 Protrep., i. 8. The idea of the deification of our nature by
the Incarnation is frequently found in the writers of this period.
C/. Hippolytus: "ytyovas yap 6efc . . . 8ri efleoTrou^s, ddditaros
yei>vr)6eis" (Pkilosoph., x. 33, 34; P. G., XVI. col. 34,30-34.54 ter).

4 C. Bigg, The Christian Platonists of Alexandria, p. 210.

8 "If we inquire for the work of Christ, we find the dominant
thought to be, that Christ was physician, teacher, lawgiver, and
example" (Reinhold Seeberg, Text-Book of the History of Doctrines,
I. 153).

40 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

the sin of the whole world received into Himself, and
to consume and destroy it." 1 Again he says: "It
is clear that he actually suffered punishment"; but
this is only to prove that the sufferings were actually
"painful and distressing." 2 Dr. Harnack says that
he "propounded views as to the value of salvation
and as to the significance of Christ s death on the
cross, with a variety and detail rivalled by no theo
logian before him." 3 But his real originality lay in
his combination of propitiation and literal ransom,
of the expiatory sacrifice with the Marcionite notion
of a payment to the devil. The introduction of these
two elements into Christian theology has been rightly
characterised as "of epoch-making importance." 4
Not only are they mutually exclusive as parts of a
theory, but Origen is not consistent in his doctrine
of sacrifice. A death that is offered to the devil in
payment of his claim cannot be at the same time an
offering to God of a piacular sacrifice. Then, Dr.
Bigg emphasises the fact that Origen "held the sac
rifice of Christ to have consisted not of His Body but
of His Soul," 5 and He could not have offered His
Soul to the devil ; although Origen escapes this dif
ficulty by making the offer insincere and fraudulent.

1 In Johann., xxviii. 14; P. G., XIV. col. 720.

2 Contra Cels., ii. 23.
8 II. 367, note.

4 Ibid., III. 308.

5 Op. cit., p. 222 ; see P. G., XIII. col. 1397 ; Harnack, III. 307.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 41

Moreover, he taught that the value of the sacrifice
lay in its purity and voluntariness. And yet, com
menting upon Rom. iii. 25, he approximates the
heathen modes of thought so notably absent from
St. Paul, when he says that the Apostle "adds some
thing more sublime, and declares that God set Him
forth a propitiation, by which, indeed, He would
make God propitious to men by the offering of His
own Body"; and again: "The true High Priest,
He hath made God propitious to thee by His Blood." 1
There can be no doubt that this feature of the Atone
ment was in his mind with several others, but un
digested and inharmonious.

The Christian idea of sacrifice is a transfigura
tion of the lower idea contained in Judaism ; but the
pagan connotations were wonderfully absent even
from the Septuagint translation of the Old Testa
ment. In Origen, however, we find the pagan thought
of expiation still surviving, just as we find Gnosti
cism intruding into his interpretation of ransom. Dr.
Harnack thinks that he also regarded sacrifice as, in
the strict sense, vicarious; but the two passages
which he cites from Contra Celsum can by no means
be accepted as proof-texts (II. 367). The only sen
tence that is pertinent in vii. 17 has nothing whatever

1 In Rom., iii. 8; P. G., XIV. col. 946. Horn, in Lev., ix. 10;
P. G., XII. col. 523; see also col. 755. See Charles Hodge, Syst.
Theol, II. 566; Bigg, 211; Hagenbach, I. 186; Riviere, p. 138.

42 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

to do with what we understand by substitution.
"There is nothing absurd in a man having died, and
in his death being not only an example of death
endured for the sake of piety, but also the first blow in
the conflict which is to overthrow the power of that
evil spirit the devil." And in i. 31, his saying that
"this is analogous to the case of those who have died
for their country in order to remove pestilence, or
barrenness, or tempests," suggests the modern dis
tinction between vicarious and substitutionary the
one describing a fact of common experience, the
other a figment of theological metaphysics. 1 Too
much importance may therefore be attached to single
expressions of this unsystematic author. Riviere says
of this: "If we demand the final reason of this
mysterious and indispensable substitution ( ?), Origen
does not give it to us ; he does not dream of disclos
ing to us the indefeasible exigencies of the Divine
justice. We see that the bottom of the mystery is
not reached, and that Origen, on the whole, perceives
only the exterior face of it. ... Origen often speaks
of sacrifice and of victim ; he fails to investigate the
moral realities which these words conceal " (pp. 138,
141). Dr. Shedd recognises that his fundamental
principles are so "incompatible with the doctrine of

1 See also his explanation of Is. liii. 3 by I Cor. iv 13, making
our Lord s suffering of the same kind, but of a higher degree
(Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, I. 185).

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 43

a satisfaction of Divine justice," or "of Christ s
expiation," "that we are compelled to give these
passages a modified meaning." l

His theory of Christ as our Ransom is a misinter
pretation of a metaphor. It was natural that the
figure should be liberalised into rigid fact, owing to
the familiar custom of ransoming captives taken by
brigands or in war. 2 As soon as the question was
asked, to whom was the payment made ? the only
possible answers were Origen s and Anselm s. 3 The
theory that the ransom was paid to the devil was, of
course, not invented by him, but borrowed from
Marcion. He was the first, however, to give status
and currency to the idea that the devil had a rightful
claim upon us, which could not justly be overlooked.
He says : "If therefore we were bought with a price,
... we were bought doubtless from some one whose
slaves we were, and who demanded such a price as
he pleased for the release of those whom he held. It
was the devil, however, who held us, to whom we
had been allotted (or into whose power we had been

1 Op. cit., II. 236 sq.

* "Here all that is metaphor and illustration in St. Paul seems
to be regarded as hard scientific statement" (J. H. Wilson, The
Gospel of the Atonement, p. 67).

3 It is remarkable that the Biblical conception of a redemption
by war and victory should have been so completely lost. See
especially the uses of Xvrpovv in LXX. Here also is the first in
trusion of the commercial idea, and also of the weakness of a
Redeemer who was compelled to pay, and could not conquer.

44 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

dragged) by our sins. He therefore demanded as
our price the blood of Christ." l He also adopted
from the Basilidians the disgraceful addition of God s
intentional deception of the devil. Nothing could
show better than this the low moral ideals of the age
in which the theory was framed. He says: "To
whom did [Christ] give His soul as a ransom for
many ? Not, of course, to God. Was it then to the
Evil One? [Certainly,] for he held us in his power
until the soul of Jesus should be given him as our
ransom, he being deceived by the supposition that he
could hold it in subjection, and not perceiving that
it must be retained at the cost of torture which he
could not endure." 2 It may be noted that avra\-
\a<y/jLa, has no meaning if the price was not really
paid ; which makes this ransom very different from
the substitution taught by the Reformers.

The Divine bargain and deception are alike
mythological and dualistic. This thought was not
made so prominent as afterwards in Gregory of
Nyssa. But the general theory prevailed, with but

1 In Rom., lib. ii. 13, opp. 4; quoted in F. Huidekoper, Christ s
Mission to the Underworld, p. 88. He also quotes the following
description of the price: "The soul of the Son of man was given as
our ransom ; but not His spirit, for He had already committed that
to His Father, saying, Father, into Thy hands I commend my
spirit ; nor yet His body, for we nowhere find any such thing
written of Him." Cf. Bigg, op. tit., p. 222 : Oxenham, Cath. Doct.
of At., pp. 136, 137.

2 Op. cit., p. 91 ; P. G., XIII. col. 1397.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 45

few protests, until it was overthrown by Anselm. 1
The significance of this fact must be remarked,
because the payment of Satan s claim is wholly in
consistent with a payment to justice or a satisfaction
of the demands of God.

While the period of the Post-Apostolic Fathers
gave rise to a theory of ransom, which was more or less
prevalent for a thousand years, it cannot be said to
have contained any distinct germs of the later dog
matic teaching. The problem of redemption was
studied with little attention by the writers preceding
Athanasius, probably because the questions involved
had not yet become the subject of controversy. 2
Their emphasis was upon the Incarnation. 3 "The
Incarnation itself, the union of the Divine and human
natures, was the great saving act. Christ redeems
us by what He is, not by what He does." This,
which is Dr. Hodge s description of the mystical
theory of the Middle Ages, is involved in Justin s

1 See references in Sabatier, The Atonement, pp. 66, 145.

3 "Le probleme de la Redemption est partiellement louche a
propos d autres questions; il n est pas encore aborde pour lui-
meme" (Riviere, p. 142). "En un mot, les historiens les plus
catholiques n hesitent pas a le reconnaitre, les Peres se sont
souvent contentes sur la Redemption de vucs fragmentaires et,
pour tout dire, superficielles : ils n ont jamais fait de cette doctrine
1 objet special de leurs recherches" (Ibid., p. 101).

3 " To them it was not the Atonement, but the Incarnation,
which was the centre of Christian faith as of Christian life"
(Oxenham, p. 166).

46 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

and Irenseus s idea of Christ s recapitulation of the
race in Himself, and is more than once asserted in so
many words by the latter. 1 The point of view is so
distant from the idea of a satisfaction of justice that
Dr. Shedd expresses the contrast thus strongly, as
an adherent of the satisfaction theory : "Only a very
defective and erroneous conception of this cardinal
truth of Christianity is to be found in the Alexandrian
Soteriology." 2

4. NlCENE AND PoST-NlCENE FATHERS

The Greek Fathers of this period generally con
ceived of sin as a disease or corruption of human
nature, which was cured by Christ s incorporation
of mankind in Himself. This was a continuation of
the thought of the preceding century. They are
especially distinguished by their different views of
the meaning of "ransom." Some laid stress on the
indemnification of the rights of the devil, while
Athanasius most nearly approached the Scriptural
conception of ransom as a condition of our redemp-
v/ tion, which he considered to be the fulfilment of the
requirement of the Divine consistency. The ruling
idea of the Atonement was the restoration of human-

1 Chas. Hodge, Systematic Theology, II. 585. Among modern
authors, Archdeacon Wilson frankly accepts this interpretation
of the Atonement (Gospel of the Atonement, p. 88).

2 Hist. Doct., n. 237.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 47

ity to a Divine life. There was an increasing use of
expressions which have become familiar to us in the
later theology ; but it will appear that they are usu
ally charged with a quite different significance.

a. Eusebius of Ccesarea (ob. 340)

Some of the phrases of this writer were unusual.
In the Demonstratio Evangelica (lib. x), he speaks of
the Lamb of God as punished for us, and as paying
a penalty; l also, of "attributing to Him the sins of
us all" ; 2 and he constantly uses such common
words as avrtyvxpv and avrfavrpov, which are
interpreted together with the others referred to as
clearly substitutionary. 3

All such single words, however, must be condi
tioned by the author s fuller exposition of his thought.
Taken by themselves, they might seem to suggest
penal substitution. But they must be taken in con
nection with the universal Greek idea of Christ s
identification with our humanity. Eusebius attrib
utes the sufferings of Christ, not to the Father, but

1 KO\CL(rdeis Kal Tipupiav VTTOVXUV; P. G., XXII. col. 724. He
also says : " /cat /J.OVQS avrbv TCHS irciffLv evfj,evrj u tXewf irapx wv (Ibid.,
col. 280). "Rendering the Father propitious," is an intrusion of
a heathen notion.

2 tiriy papas , Ibid., col. 89.

8 Similar language is quoted by Riviere from Theodore of
Heraclea (p. 165). It undoubtedly contributed to the support of
literal substitution, when that thought was finally entertained.

48 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

to "those wicked men and powers of darkness";
and he thus expounds Christ s relation to us: "The
Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world
hath become a curse for us ; whom, though He knew
not sin, God made sin on our behalf, giving Him for
all of us, His life for our life" (avrl^v^ov). Mani
festly we have here no theory of substitution or impu
tation, but St. Paul s conception of mystical union ; for
he goes on to say : " But how does He appropriate our
sins, and how is He said to bear our iniquities, unless
it be by virtue of our being called His Body even
as the Apostle says, Ye are His Body, and members
in particular ? And, as, when one member suffers,
all the members suffer with it, so when the many
members suffer and sin, He, too, Himself suffers, ac
cording to the relations of sympathy in which He
stands to us. Since He was pleased, being the Word
of God, to take the form of a servant, and join Him
self to us by tabernacling in our common nature,
He gathers up into Himself the sorrows of the suffer
ing members, and makes His own our sicknesses,
and suffers pain and sorrow for us all, according to
the laws of His lovingkindness to man."

b. Athanasius (ob. 373)

The treatise De Incarnatione has been called "the
first attempt that had been made to present Chris-
1 P. G., XXII. col. 724.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 49

tianity under a scientific aspect." 1 This indicates
its importance in connection with the doctrine of the
Person of Christ; but, with reference to the Atone
ment, it is not the first theoretic statement, and it oc
cupies a far nobler point of view than that of Origen.
"The relation of the work of Christ to Satan retires
into the background." 2 The author is definitely en
gaged with Anselm s inquiry, Why did Christ be
come man ? but he answers it in a very different way.
The indwelling Logos is the natural representative
of humanity, because He reveals a vital kinship or
relation between God and man. His mere presence
in a human body was "the essential factor in our
restoration." The Incarnation itself restored to
humanity the Divine image. "He, the incorruptible
Son of God, being conjoined with all by a like nature,
naturally clothed all with incorruption, by the prom
ise of the resurrection." 3 "For the coming [pres
ence] of the Saviour in the flesh has been the ransom
and salvation of all creation." * "For the union was
of this kind, that He might unite what is man by
nature to Him who is in the nature of the Godhead,
and his salvation and deification might be sure." 5

Dictionary of Christian Biography, I. 181.
Fisher, Hist. Christ. Doct., p. 162.
De Inc., 9. 2, 3.
Ep. ad Adelph., 6.

Contra Ar., ii. 70. See Hilary, De Trin., ii. 24. On these say
ings Riviere remarks from the traditional standpoint : " On n est

4

50 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

Athanasius seems to make the Incarnation depend
ent on man s sin: "For the need of man preceded
His becoming man, apart from which He had not */
put on flesh." * He repeats the well-known patristic
audacity, by which again he makes the Incarnation
itself the Atonement, and the work of salvation to
consist in our deification: "He was made man that
we might be made God." 2

He presents also the Pauline conception of union
with the Head, by which a new principle of life is
imparted, thus making the relationship between
Redeemer and redeemed vital and organic; which
is equivalent to the recapitulation of the whole race
in Himself. 3 The cross was not central with Him,
except as the means of death, by which Christ entered

pas eloigne de croire que la condition arrive a se confondre avec
la cause efficiente" (p. 148).

1 Contra Ar., ii. 54 ; iii. 34.

a 6eoTTOL-r]9Q/^ev, De Inc., 54; and many times in the Let
ters and Discourses against the Arians, especially in this peculiar
form: "the flesh being no longer earthly, but being henceforth
made Word, by reason of God s Word who for our sake became
flesh" (iii. 33). See Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. IV. p.
386, note 1. Cf. also Gregory Nazianzen: "until He made me
God by the power of His Incarnation" (Oral., xxx. 14 ; also, xl. 45 ;
but see xlii. 17) ; Gregory Nyssen: "He was transfused through
out our nature, in order that our nature might by this transfusion
of the Divine become itself divine" (Catech. Magn., xxv) : Basil
(P. G., XXX. col. 834) ; Chrysostom (Horn, in I Tim. xi) : John
Damasc. (De Fide Orth., iii. 17) ; Hippolytus (P. G., XVI. ter in
col. 3450-3454) ; Augustin (De Trin., iv. 1 and 2; Serm., cxix. 5;
cxxi. 5 ; cxcii. 1 ; cxciv. 3) .

3 Contra Ar., ii. 21, 69. See also Justin and Irenseus.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 51

completely into the human condition. God could
have undone the curse by the word of pardon; "but
we must consider what was expedient for mankind." *
That is, the difficulty was not on the side of God, but
of man ; which is the direct contrary of the principle
of the penal theory.

Dr. Harnack intimates that Athanasius, together
with Origen, "approximates to the idea of a vicari
ous suffering of punishment" (III. 308). This is
indeed clear enough, if we keep in mind the difference
between his idea and the substitutionary penalty
which is generally understood by those words. He
says that Christ died avrl Trdvrwv (instead of all,
or as a price for all; Inc., 8. 4; 9. 1) ; that He
offered His Body for the life of all, or as a ransom
for all (avTi fyvxov, 9. 2); that "He put away death
by the offering of an equivalent" (Trpocrfyopa rov
Kara\\r }\ov, 9. 1). But the whole argument,
which will presently be summarised, shows that
this is intended to express sacramental union,
not substitution; that is, the precise opposite of
what a modern writer would mean by those terms.
Athanasius does not hold that Christ died in our
place, but that the law of corruption was repealed
because we all died in Him (Inc., 8). He asserts
also that Christ died with us, and so rescued us from

1 Confra Ar., ii. 21, 67, 68; De Inc., 7; see also Gregory
Nazianzen, Orat., 9; Augustin, De Trin., xiii. 10.

52 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

the continuance of death ; the modern would mean
that Christ suffered instead of us that we may not
suffer. Christ s death was not substituted for ours,
since His redeemed all die, and hence He did not die
physically and literally in our stead. 1 Nor did He
suffer any other penalty than other men suffer in
dying; since the only other penalty referred to by
Athanasius is the abiding for ever in corruption, and,
even in our stead, such an experience would have
been impossible to Him.

On the other hand, His death was vicarious, in
our stead, in the sense that, if He had not died, we
should have been held under the sentence of corrup
tion. That is, man was sentenced to die, and he
must and does die, and Christ does not save him
from that; but He does save him from the continu
ance of the law of corruption, in life and after death,
by incorporating humanity with Himself, by our
participation in His immortality. He illustrates by
a king dwelling in one of the houses of a large city,
and thus giving to the whole city high honour, so
that no enemy may descend upon it and subject it.

1 Athanasius represents Christ s sufferings as confined to
temporal death ; the penalty for sin extending far beyond physical
death is removed by the power of Christ s resurrection. The very
essence of the later statement is wanting in him; he nowhere
speaks as though our Lord sustained the Father s wrath or under
went the worst part of the penalty of sin the perdition of the
spiritual nature.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 53

"So has it been with the Monarch of all. For now
that He has . . . taken up His abode in one body
among His peers, henceforth the whole conspiracy of
the enemy against mankind is checked, and the cor
ruption of death which before was prevailing against
them is done away. For the race of men had gone to
ruin, had not the Lord and Saviour of all, the Son of
God, come among us to put an end to death." 1

But Dr. Hagenbach says that we find in Atha-
nasius the premises of the later theory of Anselm
(I. 348). And Dean Stanley avers that he introduced
the idea of satisfaction, though incidentally and sub-
ordinately. 2 Moreover, there are single words and
expressions which, taken out of their connection,
would appear to indorse this judgment. He speaks
of "fulfilling the obligation in His death" (eVX^pou TO
o$>eC\,ofji(-vov, 9. 2) ; using the Scriptural figure of debt
in a sense different from that of Anselm. The word
is frequently repeated : "For there was need of death,
and death must needs be suffered on behalf of all,
that the debt owing from all might be paid." 3 He

1 De Inc., 9. 4. For the justification of the above statements,
see the ensuing analysis of the argument of Athanasius. See also
Contra Ar., i. 41, 47-49; ii. 60-70; iv. 6, 7.

2 Eastern Church, p. 350.

8 De Inc., 20. 2,. 5. See also Contra Ar., ii. 66: "paying the
debt in our stead" (av9 i)/j.u>v, which makes us doubt whether
o.vrL could have had the rigid significance of "instead of").
Riviere says: "Ces deux aspects de la question [le desordre meta-
physique du pch and les consequences pratiques} ne laissent pas

54 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

speaks of God s consistency ; l and Oxenham quotes
the following from the doubtful treatise, In Passione
et Cruce Domini: "Seeing the impossibility of our
paying an equivalent penalty, He took it on Him
self" (p. 145).

Let us, however, consider what Athanasius really
says. This is the substance of his argument in sec
tions 3-10. The love of God is the source of our
redemption (3. 1-3). He graciously warned man of
the result of transgression, and death came as the
penalty of disobedience (3. 4). "But by dying ye
shall die/ what else could be meant but not dying
merely, but also abiding ever in the corruption of
death" (3. 5). As God created man for incorruption,
the same Word by whom man was created became
Incarnate in order to fulfil that purpose, notwith
standing sin and its penalty (Sections 4 and 5). All
sinners then are subject to death, according to the
law. "Death having gained upon men, and corrup
tion abiding upon them, the race of man was perish
ing. . . . For death, as I said above, gained from
that time forth a legal hold upon us, and it was im
possible to evade the law" (6. 1, 2). Here arises a

que d introduire quelque flotteraent pour ne pas dire ur
reelle incoherence dans son systeme" ; and calls his explanations
"rapides et superficielles " (p. 151). This is an acknowledgment
that the later ideas are not really found in Athanasius.

1 TO Trpos rbv debv eti\oyov, 7. 1, 3; translated, "the just claim
of God" in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. IV.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 55

dilemma between God s veracity and His goodness :
it were monstrous and unseemly that either should
fail. It would be monstrous for Him to threaten
and not to punish : that would prove Him false and
be a relaxation of His law, and His holy law must be
fulfilled and the penalty paid. But it would be un
seemly that His children "should go to ruin, and turn
again toward non-existence by the way of corruption.
For it were not worthy of God s goodness that the
things He had made should waste away, because of
the deceit practised on men by the devil. ... It
was then out of the question to leave men to the cur
rent of corruption" (6. 3-10).

He cannot let things take their course; His love
demands the rescue of the sinner. But how shall
that be made compatible with "what is reasonable
with respect to God" ? * "What possible course was
God to take?" To demand repentance "fails to
guard God s consistency," since He would be "none
the more true, if men did not remain in the grasp of
death"; and, secondly, it would not rescue them
from corruption, for "it merely stays them from acts
of sin" (7. 1-3). Only the Word can recall men to
the image of God, Who originally created them in
it. "His it was to bring back the corruptible to in-
corruption, and to maintain intact the consistency
of the Father [i. e., with respect to His laws] in behalf
1 See Dr. Robertson s translation in preceding note.

56 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

of all." He alone was "able to recreate everything,
and worthy to suffer on behalf of all, and to be the
ambassador for all with the Father" (7. 4, 5).

But why should He become Incarnate ? In order
that, as man, He might undergo man s sentence of
death, and so fulfil the law and sustain its constancy
(8). 1 Since "no otherwise could the corruption of
men be undone save by death as a necessary condi
tion," the Word "to this end takes to Himself a body
capable of death, that it, by partaking of the Word
Who is above all, might be worthy to die in the stead
of all, and might, because of the Word which was
come to dwell in it, remain incorruptible, and that
thenceforth corruption might be stayed from all by the
grace of the resurrection. 2 Whence, by offering unto
death the body He Himself had taken, as an off ei ing
and sacrifice free from any stain, straightway He put
away death from all His peers by the offering of an
equivalent," and "fulfilled the obligation" of the
law (or, "paid the debt," eVXifcou TO o^aXo^ezvoz;).
"Conjoined with all by a like nature," He "naturally
clothed all with incorruption, by the promise of the
resurrection. For the actual corruption in death has
no longer holding-ground against men, by reason of
the Word, which by His one body has come to dwell

1 See also, 25. 2.

2 Note that the resurrection is the proof that corruption had
lost its sway, because His body was incorruptible, and He was one
with man.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 57

among them" (see also 10. 5). Then follows the
illustration of the king (Section 9).

His conclusion is : Death must still be endured,
but it has wholly changed its aspect. "Now that the
common Saviour of all has died on our behalf, we no
longer die the death as before, agreeably to the warn
ing of the law; for this condemnation has ceased;
but, corruption ceasing and being put away by the
grace of the resurrection, henceforth we are only dis
solved, agreeably to our bodies mortal nature, at
the time God has fixed for each, that we may be able
to gain a better resurrection. For like the seeds
which are cast into the earth, we do not perish by
dissolution, but sown in the earth, shall rise again,
death having been brought to nought by the grace of
the Saviour" (21. 1, 2). 1

Now, does this statement contain the premises of
any theory of satisfaction ? The debt spoken of by
Athanasius is an obligation resting upon humanity
as a whole, on account of sin, and hence every man
must pay it, and Christ pays it with us, in order that
corruption may not issue in permanent death. 2
Nothing more than this can be meant by Athanasius

1 The summary has been made full, because it is such a beauti
ful and wholesome exposition of this doctrine, as compared with
many theories of later ages.

3 Here it must be noted that sin is treated chiefly under the
category of disease, and not only as debt; the objective was the
recreation of man by Him who had created him.

58 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

however different it would sound in Luther or
Calvin in Contra Ar., ii. 66 : <( di>0 i^vv rrjv o^et-
\r)i, ttTToStSou?." The translator of Athanasius, Dr.
Robertson, frankly admits that "of the forensic view
he is indeed almost clear. His reference to the debt
(/near., 20; Oral., ii. 66) which had to be paid is
connected not so much with the Anselmic idea of a
satisfaction due, as with the fact that death was by
the divine word (Gen. iii) attached to sin as its
penalty" (Prolegom., p. Ixx). The only satisfaction
he thought of was a fulfilment of the law of holiness.
The coincidence with Anselm is verbal, not substan
tial. With Anselm, the debt was owed to God s
justice; it was wholly cancelled by the obedience of
Christ, the equivalence or superabundance of whose
merit arose from the voluntariness of His death.
With Athanasius, the debt was the just claim of God s
law ; it was the necessity of death, but not the neces
sity of abiding in death for ever ; it was paid so far
as to sustain God s law, but not so as to relieve man
of its rigorous exaction just as before Christ s death.
But His death, completing His eWcrt? with humanity
enabled Him to triumph over death as a continuing
power, by permitting men to share His immortality ;
and His ability to do this arose from His being the
Incarnate Word of God. 1

1 See an admirable treatment of the whole subject in Norris,
Rudiments of Theology, pp. 282-293; and Moberly, Atonement
and Personality, pp. 349-365.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 59

Dr. Shedd says of the position of Athanasius:
"This is the strongest possible statement of the doc
trine of penal satisfaction"; l but this seems to be a
complete misunderstanding. The figures, which are
supposed to contain the premises of the later theory,
are quite incidental, and are not urged as though the
death of Christ were an equivalent of value that could
be separated from humanity and substituted for it.
The sharing of the penalty of sin with mankind is
really the opposite of penal substitution; it is the
Pauline and general patristic truth of God s self-
identification with mankind, the vital renewal of
humanity by the presence in it of the God-man and 4-
His oneness with it. It is not an act of one member
of the race for the rest, not an act external to human
ity, tyit the act of One in whom humanity is "sum
med up"; so that the dying and exaltation of Christ
were corporate and inclusive, were ideally and po
tentially ours. Here is the point of this Father s
emphasis, and not upon the idea of a substituted
punishment whose infinite value satisfied the Divine
claims upon us. 2

1 Op. cit., II. 243. It needs to be said that both Shedd and
Riviere are much given to inserting misleading words and ideas
that are foreign to the patristic authors whom they purport to
translate.

3 Riviere makes out as good a case as possible for finding
traces of the traditional view in Athanasius ; yet fairness compels
him to say: "Mais quand il s agit d expliquer pourquoi ce decret
inflexible . . . saint Athanase ne s eleve pas jusqu aux saintes

60 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

c. Later Greek Fathers

Gregory of Nyssa held the Athanasian theory that
our human nature is deified by its union with the
Logos, and this deification is completed in the resur
rection. 1 He also accepted the theory of Origen,
which was ignored by Athanasius. He not only states
it clearly, but gives the explanation which Origen
omitted, and justifies it. "It was by means of a
certain amount of deceit," he says, "that God car
ried out this scheme on our behalf. For that not by
pure Deity alone, but by Deity veiled in human
nature, God, without the knowledge of His enemy,
got within the lines of him who had man in his power,
is in some manner a fraud and a surprise. .
Whereas he, the enemy, effected his deception for the
ruin of our nature, He who is at once the just, and
good, and wise one, used His device of deception for

exigences de la justice ( ?), il s arrete au point de vue tout exterieur
de la veracite divine. . . . Athanase ne se preoccupe pas de
justifier autrement ce point d honneur obstine: c est dire qu il
effleure a peine le probleme et qu il n en donne qu une solution
insuffisante, si seulement on peut dire que e en est une." Of the
"synthese speculative" of Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa, he
says: "C est dire que leur synthese etait prematuree et sans doute
mal construite, puisqu elle n embrasse pas tous les elements
traditionnels. Mais il faut bien avouer aussi que Fidee de la
Redemption par la croix ne domine pas plus leur esprit que leur
systeme et que, s ils ne Font pas ignoree, le principal de leur
attention etait ailleurs" (pp. 151, 159).
1 Catech. Magna, xxv, xxxii.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 61

the salvation of him who had perished, and thus not
only conferred benefit on the lost one, but on him,
too, who had wrought our ruin." * This coarse and
repulsive notion is supposed to have been a misin
terpretation of I Cor. ii. 8: "which none of the
princes of this world knew; for had they known it,
they would not have crucified the Lord of glory."
The conception of the righteousness of God must
have suffered a serious degeneration before such an
idea as this could have had vogue. The method of
the deceit was the veiling of the Godhead in humanity
so that the devil was surprised into exacting a penalty
from One who had not deserved to incur it. 2 But
this entirely destroys the reality of the ransom, or
compensation to the devil. If he was himself de
frauded at the moment of his "unjust overcharge *
(Leo, Serm., xxii. 4), the price was not paid. Yet Ori-
gen s word, avrd\\ay/jLa, was insisted upon as a true
description of Christ s ransom. There was no sensi
tiveness to the imputation upon the Divine character
involved in such a transaction, or to the essential
dualism involved in the justice of Satan s claim upon
man. The theory, therefore, is logically incoherent,
and "beset with difficulties, both intellectual and
moral, of the gravest kind." 3 It involves something

1 Catech. Magna, xxvi.

2 J. J. Lias, The Atonement, p. 47.
8 Oxenham, p. 154.

62 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

of the idea of an equivalent, but nothing in the way
of a satisfaction.

In this form, it lasted until the century after
Anselm, and was accepted by most of the succeeding
Latin Fathers. Ambrose referred to the incident as
a "pious fraud." 1 Leo I. said that the Incarnation
deceived the devil by hiding the power under the
veil of weakness. Augustin called the cross a "mouse
trap," 2 in which he was followed by Peter Lombard. 3
"Isidore of Seville adopted the image of a bird caught
in a net." * Rufinus and Gregory the Great spoke of
Christ s human nature as a "bait," and of the devil
as captured on the hook of the Incarnation, as grasp
ing after the bait of the body and transfixed by the
sharp hook of the Divinity. 5 John of Damascus also
speaks of Christ s Body as a bait transfixed on the
hook of Divinity, but with reference to death, not to
the devil. 8 Even Luther seems to have been fasci
nated by the homiletical advantages of the idea, as he

1 Harnack, III. 307; Oxenham, p. 147. Also, "Fefellit ergo
pro nobis, fefellit ut vinceret"; "Oportuit igitur hanc fraudem
diabolo fieri" (P. L. XV. col. 1553, 1616).

3 "Ad pretium nostrum tetendit muscipulam crucem suam";
"muscipula diaboli" (P. L., XXXVIII. col. 726, 1210).

3 "Tetendit ei muscipulam crucem suam; posuit ibi, quasi
escam, sanguinem suum" (P. L., CXC1I. col. 796).

4 Simon, Redemption of Man, p. 406.

8 "In hamo ergo ejus Incarnationis captus est, quia, dum in
illo appetit escam corporis, transfixus est aculeo divmitatis"
(P. L., LXXVI. col. 680; Hagenbach, I. 346).

8 De Fide Orthod., iii. 27.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 63

quotes this language of Gregory with apparent ap
proval ; although his use of the figure was probably
rhetorical, while the patristic use corresponded to a
real conception, at once immoral and grotesque. 1

There is one striking difference between Gregory
Nyssen and Athanasius. The latter figured the pres
ence of God among men as similar to the residence
of a king in a city. Gregory made humanity j^vine
by Christ s intermixture with it, not with a human
individual, but with human nature (Catech. Magna,
25).

Gregory of Nazianzus indignantly repudiates the
theory that the devil had any claim upon us, or that
the precious Blood was offered to him as a ransom. 2
Nevertheless, he admits the self-deceit of the Evil
One, which implies something of the nature of an
artifice on the part of Christ: "Since the deceiver
thought that he was unconquerable in his malice,
after he had cheated us with the hope of becoming
gods, he was himself cheated by God s assumption
of our nature; so that in attacking Adam as he
thought, he should really meet with God" (xxxix. 13).

He suggests, as an alternative theory, that the
ransom was paid to God, although he puts it tenta-

1 D. W. Simon, op. cit., p. 406.

8 "I ask, to whom was this ransom offered, and for what cause ?
If to the Evil One, fie upon the shameful thought !" (Oral., xlv.

22).

64 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

lively and without entire conviction, and indicates it
as fitting rather than necessary. 1 "But if it was paid
to the Father, I ask first, how? For it was not by
Him that we were being held captive. And next, on
what principle did the Blood of His only-begotten
Son please the Father, who would not receive even
Isaac, when he was being offered by his father, but
changed the victim, putting a ram in the place of the
human sacrifice? Is it not evident that the Father
accepts it, having neither asked for it nor needed it,
but on account of the dispensation (or economy of
salvation), and because it was befitting that humanity
should be sanctified by the humanity of God (or the
human element in God), that He might deliver us
Himself, having overcome the tyrant, and draw us
to Himself through the mediation of His Son, who
also arranged this (ot /coi o/^Vai/To?) to the honour of
the Father, whom it is manifest that He obeys in all
things ?" 2 Accordingly, he did not regard this mode

1 This representation, under the terms of sacrifice instead of
ransom, is familiar in many of the Fathers.

2 OiKovo/j.ia is variously translated ; as, " 1 economie du salut,"
by Riviere and Sabatier; "the government of the universe,"
by Shedd; "that the Scriptures might be fulfilled," by Harnack;
"on account of the Incarnation," by the translators of Gregory, in
the Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. VII. Professor Gwatkin says that
oiKovo/jLia was distinguished from 6eo\oyia, the doctrine of God
being divided in two parts God in Himself, and God in relation
to men (The Knowledge of God, II. 280). On "the humanity of
God" ("du Sauveur," in Riviere, p. 178): "Have we not here
the germ of the idea, afterwards known as the Scotist, that the

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 65

of redemption as an absolute necessity: as God
had made all things by His word, He might have
saved us by His will. 1 As to the effect of the suffer
ings of Christ, he says that by them "we were all
without exception created anew, who partake of
the same Adam, and were led astray by the serpent
and slain by sin, and are saved by the heavenly
Adam and brought back by the tree of shame to
the tree of life from whence we had fallen" (Oral.,
xxxiii. 9).

He affords a good illustration of the common mis
take of attributing substitution to the Greek Fathers.
He says in the Fourth Theological Oration: "He
makes my disobedience His own as Head of the whole
body . . . He was in His own person representing
us ... That He may be as a leaven to the whole
lump, and by uniting to Himselj that which was
condemned may release it from all condemnation.
. . . Until He make me God by the power of His
Incarnation" (xxx. 5, 21, 14). Although he shrinks
from fully interpreting the ransom, because the work
of Christ is transcendent and ineffable, yet he thinks
one may make mistakes about it with impunity:

Incarnation was the purpose of God independently of the Fall,
for the perfecting of humanity; but that the Passion and death
of the Incarnate God were the direct result of the sin of man?"
(Note by the translators, ad loc.)

1 Oral., ix. This was the unanimous opinion of the Fathers
of the fourth and fifth centuries (Oxenham, p. 149).

5

66 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

"Philosophise about the world or worlds, about
matter or soul, . . . about resurrection, retribution,
or the sufferings of Christ; for in these subjects to
hit the mark is not useless, and to miss it is free from
peril * (Orat., xxvii. 9). He was no doubt referring
to speculations on these subjects; but, as all the
theories are matters of speculation, he regards them
as open to discussion, distinguishing between theory
and fact. 1

The other Greek Fathers contain very little that
is additional to what we have already considered.
Chrysostom used the expression, "How w r ilt thou be

1 It has been claimed that John of Damascus accepted the
theory of Gregory Nyssen, in the words: "Since the enemy snares
man by the hope of Godhead, he himself is snared in turn by the
screen of flesh, and so are shown at once the goodness and wisdom,
the justice and might of God. . . . The tyrant would have had a
ground of complaint, if, after he had overcome man, God should
have used force against him" (De Fide Orthod., in. 1, 18). But in
chapter 27 he says: "He makes Himself an offering to the Father
for our sakes. For we had sinned against Him, and it was meet
that He should receive the ransom for us, and that we should thus
be delivered from the condemnation. God forbid that the blood
of the Lord should be offered to the tyrant"; which certainly is
much more like Gregory Nazianzen. He evidently means that
God did not "rescue man out of the hands of the tyrant" by His
. omnipotence ; but that " He became man in order that that which
was overcome might overcome." "He wished to reveal fallen man
himself as conqueror, and became man to restore like with like."
Chapter 27 contains his real thought. See Shedd, I. 252 ; Hagen-
bach, II. 41, 42; Oxenham, p. 144; Dale, The Atonement, p. 274;
Harnack, III. 308: "John of Damascus felt scruples about
admitting God and the devil to have been partners in a legal
transaction."

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 67

able to render God propitious to thee ? " l which
Hooker takes to mean "the very same with the Latin
Fathers, when they speak of satisfying God." 2 But
Chrysostom knew nothing of this Latin use of the
word, which, with perhaps a single exception, was
long subsequent to him. 3 Dr. Harnack finds in him
an obscure trace of substitution (III. 309), and refers
to Homily x. on Rom. v. 17. In that place, he is
illustrating what St. Paul calls a "superabundance
of grace," and he says : "As then if any were to cast
a person who owed ten mites into prison, and not
the man himself only, but wife and children and ser
vants for his sake; and another were to come and
not to pay down the ten mites only, but to give also
ten thousand talents of gold, and to lead the prisoner
into the king s courts, and to the throne of the high
est power, and were to make him partaker of the
highest honour and every kind of magnificence, the
creditor would not be able to remember the ten mites ;
so hath our case been. For Christ hath paid down
far more than we owe, yea as much more as the illimit
able ocean is than a little drop." But Harnack ad
mits that "the idea is emotional, and not the starting-
point of a philosophical theory. It is different with

1 Horn. viii. on I Cor.

8 EccL PoL, bk. vi. c. v.

* He uses the unscriptural phrases, Kara\\a.y^ Ae<r7r6Tou, and
oCros KaraXXirydj 0eoD Trpbs avBp&irovs orodjcraTj (P. G., XLIX.
col. 407, 408).

68 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

the Westerns." l Apart from being a rhetorical
analogy of the abundance of grace beyond the evil
of sin, it is apparently a reference to the Athanasian
thought of Christ s death as paying the debt due to
the law, and not part of a defined theory of a literal
payment of debt. It is similar to the statement in
Horn. v. on Eph. ii. 16: "Might reconcile them both
in one body, and that His own, unto God. How is
this effected ? By Himself, he means, suffering the
due penalty." He also refers to the curse endured
by Christ, as the substitution of one kind of curse for
another. "As then both he who hanged on a tree,
and he who transgresses the law, are cursed, and as
it was necessary for him who is about to relieve from
a curse himself to be free from it, but to receive
another instead of it, therefore Christ took upon Him
such another, and therefore relieved us from the
curse. It was like an innocent man s undertaking
to die for another sentenced to death, and so rescuing
him from punishment. For Christ took upon Him
not the curse of transgression, but the other curse, in
order to remove that of others." 2

Cyril of Alexandria made a similar statement, not
affirming that Christ became a curse, but that He
endured what one burdened with a curse must suffer.
Dr. Harnack says that he "shows most clearly the

1 Loc. cit., note.

a In Gal. iii. 13. See also Horn. xi. on II Cor. v. 21.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 69

vicarious idea of the passion and death of the God-
man in connection with the whole Christological
conception": "Because all human nature was puri
fied and transfigured really and physically in Christ,
He could, regarded as an individual, be conceived as
substitute or avrikurpov ; see Cyril on John i. 29 and
Gal. iii. 13 (III. 309, note)." He would probably
refer also to Cyril s repetition of such a phrase as
el? vTrep Trdvrwv. There is a great difference between
the Pauline idea of identity or mystical union and the
Reformation idea of substitution. The Greeks are
full of the former idea ; but we see how the necessity
of exhibiting the deification of Christ s human na
ture in the Christological controversy led more and
more to language appropriate to a real substitution
of one person for others who were separate from Him,
not in union with Him. Riviere calls attention to this
expression of penal substitution : "We in the person of
Christ have fully paid (efCTerifcorcov) the penalties due
to our sins" (p. 197). It certainly contains the penal
idea, but the wide interval between the Greek and
the Reformers is shown by the phrase of mystical
identification, " we in the person of Christ have
paid." He constantly uses the adjective avrd%io<$ for
the equivalence of Christ s offering, but it is with
reference to the exaltation of His Person, and not
particularly to a theoretic statement upon the Atone
ment. "Christ would not have been equivalent

70 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

[as a sacrifice] for the whole creation, nor would
He have sufficed to redeem the world, nor have laid
down His life by way of a price for it, and poured
out for us His precious Blood, if He be not really
the Son, and God of God, but a creature." J Cyril
may be regarded as evidencing the deterioration in
thought and language of the Greek Fathers of the
fifth century.

The tendency to modes of statement unfamiliar
to the Scriptures is observable in the preceding cen
tury, as we have already seen. Basil speaks of our
Lord offering to God an expiation (ef faao-^a) for us
all. 2 Cyril of Jerusalem adds that it was more than
equivalent: "The transgression of sinners was not
so great as the righteousness of Him who died for
them ; the sin which we committed was not so great
as the righteousness which He wrought who laid
down His life for us." 3 These ideas of equivalence,
however, were not the same as those to be found in
the Latin Fathers, and were not worked up as parts
of a theory of Atonement as they would have been
in later times. They rather belong to a Christology,

1 Quoted in Liddon, The Divinity of our Lord, p. 485.

3 P. G., XXIX. col. 440.

3 Catechetical Lectures, xiii. 13. "C est, avec les termes tech
niques en moins ; la premiere affirmation theologique de 1 infinie
surabondance des satisfactions de 1 Homme-Dieu" (Riviere, p.
169). It will be observed that the technical term, satisfaction, is
absent, and it may not be assumed that Cyril meant what was
afterwards described by it.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 71

which was chiefly concerned to exalt the supreme
worth of the Person of Christ. 1

The deterioration among the later Greek Fathers
is manifest. By the fifth century, the figure of a debt
was becoming literalised, the quantitative measure-*
ment of guilt was becoming familiar, together with
the necessity for compensation for man s obligations,
and the consequent treatment of the sacrifice of Christ
as equivalent to the debt contracted by man, and as
the endurance of the very penalty merited by man.
The phraseology grows more open to objection,
although it may still be interpreted in partial agree
ment with the earlier conception of a penalty shared
with man and not borne in his stead. The lowering
of the ethical tone in such definitions is very clear,
when they are compared with the noble thought of
the restoration and deification of our nature by
Christ s presence in it. The historians of dogma
seem to think that they are not so real and precise as
similar representations among the Latins. It may
even be that by that time the Latins were beginning
to have some influence upon the ideas of the Greeks,
although their forms of thought were strikingly dif
ferent, and they were far beyond the latter in the
employment of legal categories. Some of the minor
elements of Anselm s speculation are seen to have

1 The Oriental liturgies are devoid of the idea of equivalence
(Dr. Neale, in Allen, Christ. Inst., p. 10).

72 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

been derived from this debasement of the original
high thinking upon the work of redemption. Among
these are the penalty of sin considered as a debt
which did not have to be paid by the debtor (contrary
to Athanasius), but from which he could be relieved
by another s payment ; the requirement of compensa
tion by the sinner or some one better able to render
it ; the arithmetical rather than qualitative computa
tion of both debt and payment, and the transcendent
value of what Christ offered in lieu of the claim upon
the sinner. Anselm was not directly influenced by
these Greek theologians, and he parted from them
absolutely in his omission of the idea of appeasement,*
and of any penal character in the satisfaction made
by our Lord. Yet these conceptions, which were
well-known to him through the later Latin use of
them, formed the atmosphere in which grew up his
unique and original interpretation.

When we compare the earlier and more significant
Greek theology, we discover an almost complete
absence of those forms of thought which are funda
mental to the satisfaction theory, whether of Anselm
or the Reformers. It furnishes no elements for the
construction of that theory, in the way of premises
or antecedents. The apparent points of contact are
in no instance essential ; even the notion of equiva
lence referring rather to the adequacy of Christ to
His work of redemption than to the mere equation

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 73

of debt and payment. In all vital particulars, the
point of view is antithetic. A sacrifice is offered to
God ; but, when these Fathers rigidly apply the other
Scriptural figure of ransom, they represent it as paid
to the devil. They recognise death as the punish
ment of sin, a debt which man owes to the law of
God ; and they conceive Christ to have voluntarily
shared that punishment, and to have paid that debt.
But they agree neither with Anselm who made the
satisfaction of death a substitute for punishment,
nor with the Reformers who regarded the sufferings
and death as a literal penalty visited upon Christ.
Nor do they imagine Him to have paid the debt in
our stead; on the contrary, they admit that every
one of us has to pay it, and He simply shared our
lot and paid it with us the continuance in death
not being a necessary part of the obligation. So far
from considering the Redeemer as One who per
formed a work as a substitute for ourselves, they
dwell upon His mystical recapitulation and incor
poration of all humanity in Himself, so that He was
not other than man, but all mankind was one with
Him. We must therefore look elsewhere for the
origin of the theory propounded in the Cur Deus
Homo.

It may be well to supplement these conclusions
with some admissions by competent critics, as to the
incidental character of many patristic expressions, and

74 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

their consequent failure to confirm the continuous and
Catholic authority of the idea of satisfaction. Arch
bishop Thomson says that "none of these writers
worked out into a system the doctrine of the substitu-
tive sacrifice of Christ." 1 On the failure to formu
late any coherent theory, Professor Harnack says:
"The inability of theologians to recognise, expose
and dispute the differences in their divergent con-
w ceptions is the strongest proof that they were not
clearly aware of the bearing and weight of their own
propositions" (III. 310). Riviere says even of the
eighth century: "In this resume [of John of Da
mascus] one remarks first and foremost that redemp
tion does not occupy a distinct place, which proves
/ that the Greek Church did not discover on this point
any definite theory, or, in other words, that the the
ology of the dogma was not yet developed" (p. 206).
Similarly, Dr. Shedd: "The judicial reasons and
grounds of this death of the most exalted of persona-
ages were left to be investigated and exhibited in
later ages and by other generations of theologians"
(II. 212). Abbe Riviere is confident that the idea of
satisfaction is to be found in the patristic writers;
but he refuses to "torture grammar and good sense
to ascribe to the Fathers of the Church a word which
they did not employ, solely to obtain for our dogma
an illusory identity of formulas" (p. 105). Until
1 Aids to Faith, p. 346.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 75

the time of Cyril of Alexandria, the Greek theology
"groped and fumbled" in dealing with this question
(p. 201); which, of course, he asserts from the
point of view of traditional ecclesiastical and Roman
orthodoxy.

5. THE LATIN FATHERS

In coming to the Latin Fathers, we find ourselves
in an entirely different atmosphere. Many of the
Greek ideas were of course part of the common stock
of Eastern and Western Christianity. The West,
however, never quite appreciated the theological
spirit of the East. Oriental questions never acquired
the same interest for the Western mind. To the
Cappadocians and Alexandrians, the Incarnation
was a splendid end in itself; to the Latin thinkers, it
became more and more a means to an end. To the
Nicene theologian, Christ was supremely significant;
to the Carthaginians, He was not of cosmic import,
because man could make satisfaction for his own
sins, and humanity as a whole was not redeemed.
The God-man was not a bond uniting God and man,
manifesting their essential likeness and kinship, but
a witness of their disunity and a means of creating
union. "The empire of evil weighed on the spirits
of those men as a dread reality," 1 so that redemption
was not the full and inspiring reality that it was to
1 Lidgett, op. cit., p. 430.

76 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

the Greeks. They laid great stress on the sufferings
and death of Christ, and were particularly full in
their comments on Gal. iii. 13. But they treated the
subject under such limitations, with their ideas of
personal merit and the efficacy of sacraments, espe
cially the two earliest of them, that their phraseology
eventually gave rise to a theory of the Atonement
which would have been quite congenial to them, but
which, strangely enough, never entered their minds.
The Latins, equally with the Greeks, made the
person and work of Christ central, describing the
results chiefly in the language of Scripture, but mak
ing no systematic attempt to define the process. 1
The contemporary development of the Eucharist
into an expiatory sacrifice makes the absence of any
detailed definition of the Atonement all the more
striking. The three famous Carthaginians did so
much to give theology a fatal twist, that it is fortunate
that their attention was not particularly directed to
this theme; although it must be admitted that Au-
gustin was far more ethical and evangelical in his
references than his predecessors. Tertullian and

1 "En somme, ni les Peres latins ni les Peres grecs n ont traite
directement le probleme de la Redemption ; ils y ont seulement
touche en passant, a propos des textes scripturaires ou des verites
dogmatiques connexes. ... Ils ont beaucoup parle de substitu
tion ( ?) et de sacrifice, ils en ont affirme le fait ou decrit les effets ;
ils n en ont pas cherche la nature intime ou la cause derniere.
Ce progres etait reserve au Moyen Age" (Riviere, pp. 277, 278).

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 77

Cyprian were the contemporaries of Irenseus and
Origen, although their thought moved generally on
a very different plane: it would have been most
unhappy if their logic had been more rigid, and they
had explicitly applied their penitential theories to the
sacrifice of Christ. The North African environment
was so totally different from the Egyptian and East
ern, that it had the most radical effect upon the Latin
theology. Yet it is important to realise that its
Soteriology had no vital relation to Anselm s, which
was indeed partly derived from their speculations on
quite another subject, but which was conceived under
notably different categories. After rehearsing the
special views of the most prominent Western Fathers
upon Christ s redeeming work, we shall be still further
prepared to appreciate the absolute novelty of An
selm s theory.

a. Tertullian (ob. c. 220)

In the treatise Against Marcion, the transcendent
value of the death of Christ is asserted. "Christ s
death, wherein lies the whole weight and fruit of the
Christian name, is denied, although the apostle as
serts it so strongly as undoubtedly real, making it the
very foundation of the Gospel, of our salvation, and
of his own preaching" (iii. 8). The same importance
is attached to the death in the tract, De Patientia, 3 :
"For this was the end for which He had come." In

78 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

his Answer to the Jews, he makes much of the Old
Testament types of the cross, as the means of restor
ing the lost image of God, particularly all the refer
ences to "wood" or "the tree." Thus, the bestowal
of new life is taught from the loss of the axe-head
while the sons of the prophets were cutting "wood,"
and its recovery through Elisha s casting "wood"
upon the surface of the water : "What is more mani
fest than the mystery [sacramento] of this wood . . .
that what had formerly perished through * the tree
in Adam should be restored through * the tree in
Christ? " (xiii). 1 But again, after the unsystematic
manner of the Fathers, the redemption is virtually
made the result of Christ s teaching. 2 There is there
fore nothing upon this subject additional to what
we have already found in the Greek Fathers of the
same period of the third century.

It is, however, the word, "satisfaction," which he
was the first to employ, that has made him appear to
anticipate the Cur Deus Homo. 3 The word is purely
a Latin conception, having no equivalent in Greek;
and was borrowed from the legal language of Rome.

1 A similar argument is found in Cur Deus Homo, lib. 1, c. iii.,
sub fine. It may be noted that Tertullian s exposition of Gal. iii.
13 altogether excludes the idea of Christ s vicarious satisfaction
(Adv. Praxean, xxix).

8 Adv. Marc., ii. 27; see Harnack, II. 294.

8 Dr. Fisher says that he was "the first to make the Latin
language the vehicle for theology" (op. cii., p. 38). We owe to
him also Trinitas, Persona, sacramentum, and vitium originis.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 79

He applies the expression, "satisfacere deo," solely
to men s repentances, prayers, confessions, and good
works generally. On which it may be remarked,
first, that satisfaction by man is the converse of
Anselm s satisfaction by Christ, and, secondly, that
it is significant that the idea was first applied to the
wholly unscriptural and immoral idea of penance.
He says: "Thus he who, through repentance for
sins, had begun to make satisfaction to the Lord,
will, through another repentance of his repentance,
make satisfaction to the devil." * "At fasts, more
over, and Stations, no prayer should be made without
kneeling, and the remaining customary marks of
humility; for [then] we are not only praying but
deprecating [wrath], and making satisfaction to God
our Lord." 2 "Confession is the method of satisfac
tion"; and: "By confession satisfaction is settled;
of confession repentance is born ; by repentance God
is appeased." 3 He believed that good works had a
legal claim upon God s favour, and "that what a
man s merits entitled him to from God had a fixed
and regulated value."* "All this exomologesis
(utter confession) [does], that it may enhance re-

1 De poen., 5 ; also, 7, 8, 9, 10.

8 Deorat., 23; see also de bapt ., 20 ; depudic.,Q.

De poen., 8, 9. This use of "placare" exhibits the wide
chasm between the Carthaginian and the best of the Greeks, in
their understanding of the character of God.

Harnack, III. 311.

80 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

pentance; may honour God by its fear of the [in
curred] danger; may, by itself pronouncing against
the sinner, stand in the stead of God s indignation,
and by temporal mortification (I will not say frus
trate, but) discharge eternal punishments." 1 He
uses the very words, merit and desert, thus determin
ing an unethical quality in the moral theology of the
Latin Church, and in the Soteriology which was
founded upon the idea of satisfaction. "Or how will
there be many mansions in our Father s house, if
not to accord with a variety of deserts?" 2 Yet he
once uses the cautious phrase, "so far as we can
merit" (De poen., 6). Undoubtedly, these concep
tions were the first contribution to the idea of a
"treasury of merit," which was to prove so profit
able to the Church of the Middle Ages.

As a lawyer and a Latin, he was led to contem
plate all moral relations from the legal standpoint,
and it would have been natural for him to describe
the relation of Christ to our salvation in juridical
terms. He introduced the forensic conceptions which
afterwards governed Western theology, and thus

1 De poen., 9.

2 Scorp., 6. See also, "meritum fidei" (De oral., 2); "merita
cujusque" (Ibid., 4); "merita poenitentiae" (De poen., 2); also,
the verbs, "merer!" and "promereri deum" ; as, "the catechumen
covets to merit it," i. e., baptism (De poen., 6), and the expressions,
"I shall stand with credit," "I shall deserve" (Scarp., 10). For
other illustrations, see Harnack, III. 294; V. 19, 20.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 81

prepared the way for the mediaeval theory of Atone
ment. It is remarkable, however, that he never re
ferred to the work of Christ as a satisfaction. That
he did not is the strongest possible witness that he
did not reflect upon the objective character of the
redemption, and that any theory of Christ s satis
faction was unknown to the Church of the third
century. 1 It is evident indeed that he could not have
made this application of merits and satisfaction to
Christ, because he infers from our Lord s parable
that sin is a debt which must be either paid or re
mitted and it is remitted. 2 Moreover, he makes
repentance "the price of pardon," release from
penalty being the "compensatory exchange of re
pentance." 3

Manifestly, his idea of satisfaction is not only
different from the later theory, but it is incompatible
with it. 4 Nevertheless, his use of satisfaction is a
mischievous superstition, which had most disastrous
results. The unethical and legal categories which he

1 Riviere says positively: "Tertullien n a pas applique cette
idee a la mediation de Jesus-Christ" (p. 215). Vide Harnack, V.
16. The apparent contradiction in the translation of Harnack
(cf. II. 294, note, and III. 310, where he first seems to deny, and
then to assert, that Tertullian spoke of Christ as satisfying God)
is due to a misunderstanding of " der Christ." The sentence on the
latter page, beginning, "Christ required to be obedient," should
read: "The Christian," etc.

2 De orat., 7 ; de pudicit., 2.
8 De poen., 6.

4 Hagenbach, I. 180; Lidgett, op. cit., p. 428.
6

82 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

introduced afterwards dominated Western thought.
The repellent extreme of their use in the Middle Ages
and since the Reformation may be traced back to
the fact that the first great Latin Father was a lawyer. 1
His influence was directly felt upon Cyprian, who
always spoke of him as "Master."

b. Cyprian (ob. 258)

This student of Tertullian also is said by Dr.
Norris to have been a lawyer, though he is generally
referred to as a teacher of rhetoric. 2 At any rate,
he held the same juristic ideas as his predecessor,
and developed them much further. The expressions,
"satisfacere deo," and the still more gross, "placare
deum," occur very frequently. He speaks of "the
satisfaction and deprecation of God s anger."
"The Lord must be appeased by our atonement";
"we believe that the merits of martyrs and the works
of the righteous are of great avail with the Judge."
"The remedies for propitiating God are given in the
words of God Himself; the divine instructions have

1 See Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. IV, Prolegom.,

* Rudiments of Theology, p. 861. Probably there was no
distinction. See W. E. Ball, St. Paul and the Roman Law, pp. 58,
71 sq.

* Ep., xi. 2.

4 De laps., 17.

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 83

taught what sinners ought to do, that by works of
righteousness God is satisfied (placari), that with the
deserts of mercy sins are cleansed." 1 As the effect
of baptism was retroactive, satisfaction for sins after
baptism must be made by means of meritorious
deeds. Martyrdom was an especial means of grace,
and among good works almsgiving held a chief
place. 2 " Be earnest in righteous works, whereby sins
may be purged; frequently apply yourself to alms
giving, whereby souls are freed from death." 8 "As
in the laver of saving water the fire of Gehenna is
extinguished, so by almsgiving and works of right
eousness the flame of sins is subdued." 4

There is also a more frequent use of "meritum"
and "promereri deum." "There is need of righteous
ness that one may deserve well of God the Judge;
we must obey His precepts and warnings, that our
merits may receive their reward." 5 " If he incline the
Lord to pardon of his sin by righteous and continual
works, He who expressed His mercy in these words
may pity such men (Is. xxx. 51) "; "Or if any one
move Him still more by his own atonement, if he

1 Deop.et eleemos.y 5

a Ep. t li. 22.

8 De laps., 35.

* De op. et eleemos., 2; also 1, 5, 6, 9, 18. The satisfactions
were often church penances.

6 De unit, eccles., 15. See Harnack, II. 134 for many other
references.

84 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

appease His anger, if he appease the wrath of an
indignant God by righteous entreaty, He gives arms
again whereby the vanquished may be armed *; "he
who has thus made atonement to God, . . . shall
now deserve of the Lord not only pardon, but a
crown." 1 The word, "indulgence," also occurs,
though this may not be in quite the sense of succeed
ing ages. "Man cannot be greater than God, nor
can a servant remit or forego by his indulgence what
has been committed by a greater crime against the
Lord." 2 It is probable, however, that the term was
already applied to the ecclesiastical custom, and the
connection shows that Cyprian was referring to the
action of the Church.

Dr. Harnack says that he described Christ s work
as a satisfaction to God, but I have been unable to
find any passage in which he did so. 3 It is amazing
that he did not, as he had all the elements of the
theory appeasement, ascetic practices, merits and
their transfer to sinners from saints and martyrs, and
the church system of penance. 4 But it must be ob-

1 De laps., 36.

3 De laps., 17. Similarly, Tertullian in De poen., 7.

Hist. Dogm., II. 294 note; III. 312. Per contra, Riviere,
p. 218. Dr. George P. Fisher assures me that Harnack is un
doubtedly wrong here.

4 Ambrose does once employ the word "satisfaction" with
reference to the death of the Saviour: "Suscepit enim et mortem
ut impleretur sententia, satisfieret judicato : Maledictum carnis
peccatricis usque ad mortem" (P. L., XIV. col. 618). But Riviere

THE PATRISTIC TEACHING 85

served that his mind was occupied with practical
questions of administration, and apparently not at
all with the doctrine of Atonement. His references to
it are quite commonplace, and betray no attempt to
theorise. In his Testimonies against the Jews, he
quotes texts to prove "that in the passion and the
sign of the cross is all virtue and power" (ii. 21).
And he says that "it behooved Him to suffer, not
that He might feel death, but that He might conquer
death." x It is true that he, together with Tertullian,
provided much of the material for Anselm s specula
tions, but he failed to make the application to the
work of Christ, which would have been so obvious
and inevitable if there had been a trace of the later
theory in his theology. This significant omission
exhibits in the most conclusive way the novelty of the
medioeval dogma and its consequent unimportance
to Catholic orthodoxy. 2

admits that he is not dealing here with a satisfaction in the actual
sense, "mais d une satisfaction donnee a la loi de mort divinement
portee contre le pecheur. C est une idee voisine du systeme
d Athanase" (p. 234).

1 De van. idol., 14.

8 It is needless to multiply proofs of the prevalence of the ideas
of appease tnent and satisfaction among the Western Fathers. The
following quotations may suffice. "For it is possible for him to be
brought back, and to be set free, if he repents of his actions, and,
turning to better things, makes satisfaction to God"; and again:
"Why should we despair that the mercy of God our Father may
again be appeased by repentance?" (Lactantius, Inst., vi. 24).
"This suffering . . . was freely undertaken, and was intended to

86 ANSELM ON THE ATONEMENT

c. Augustin (ob. 430)

The greatest of the Latin Fathers makes less of
merit and satisfaction than his predecessors; but he
shows traces of their influence in such statements as
this from the Enchiridion: "Almsgiving must be
used to propitiate God for past sins, not to purchase
impunity for the commission of such sins in the
future. For He has given no man license to sin,
although in His mercy He may blot out sins that are
already committed, if we do not neglect to make
proper sati