Atonement

VIEW:55 DATA:01-04-2020

ATONEMENT.—The word ‘atonement’ (at-onement), in English, denotes the making to be at one, or reconciling, of persons who have been at variance. In OT usage it signifies that by which sin is ‘covered’ or ‘expiated,’ or the wrath of God averted. Thus, in EV [Note: English Version.] , of the Levitical sacrifices (Lev_1:4; Lev_4:21; Lev_4:26; Lev_4:31; Lev_4:35 etc.), of the half-shekel of ransom-money (Exo_30:15-16), of the intercession of Moses (Exo_32:30), of the zeal of Phinehas (Num_25:13), etc. In the NT the word occurs once in AV [Note: Authorized Version.] as tr. [Note: translate or translation.] of the Gr. word katallagç, ordinarily and in RV [Note: Revised Version.] rendered ‘reconciliation’ (Rom_5:11). The ‘reconciliation’ here intended, however, as the expression ‘received,’ and also Rom_5:10 (‘reconciled to God through the death of his Son’) show, is that made by the death of Christ on behalf of sinners (cf. Col_1:20 ‘having made peace through the blood of his cross’). In both OT and NT the implication is that the ‘reconciliation’ or ‘making-at-one’ of mankind and God is effected through expiation or propitiation. In its theological use, therefore, the word ‘atonement’ has come to denote, not the actual state of reconciliation into which believers are introduced through Christ, whose work is the means to this end, but the reconciling act itself—the work accomplished by Christ in His sufferings and death for the salvation of the world.
i. In the Old Testament.—In tracing the Scripture teaching on the subject of atonement, it is desirable to begin with the OT, in which the foundations of the NT doctrine are laid. Here several lines of preparation are to be distinguished, which, as OT revelation draws to its close, tend to unite.
1. The most general, but indispensable, preparation in the OT lies in its doctrines of the holiness, righteousness, and grace of God; also, of the sin and guilt of man. God’s holiness (including in this His ethical purity, His awful elevation above the creature, and His zeal for His own honour) is the background of every doctrine of atonement. As holy, God abhors sin, and cannot but in righteousness eternally react against it. His grace shows itself in forgiveness (Exo_34:6-7); but even forgiveness must be bestowed in such a way, and on such conditions, that the interest of holiness shall not be compromised, but shall be upheld and magnified. Hence the bestowal of forgiveness in connexion with intercession (Moses, etc.), with sacrificial atonements, with signal vindications of the Divine righteousness (Phinehas). On man’s side sin is viewed as voluntary, as infinitely heinous, as entailing a Divine condemnation that needs to be removed. All the world has gone astray from God, and the connexion in which each individual stands with his family, nation, and race entails on him a corporate as well as an individual responsibility.
2. A second important line of preparation in the OT is in the doctrine of sacrifice. Whatever the origins or ethnic associations of sacrifice, it is indisputable that sacrifice in the OT has a peculiar meaning, in accordance with the ideas of God and His holiness above indicated. From the beginning, sacrifice was the appointed means of approach to God. Whether, in the earliest narrative, the difference in the sacrifices of Cain and Abel had to do with the fact that the one was bloodless and the other an animal sacrifice (Gen_4:3-5), or lay solely in the disposition of the offerers (Gen_4:7), is not clear. Probably, however, from the commencement, a mystic virtue was attached to the shedding and presentation of the sacred element of the blood. Up to the Exodus, we have only the generic type of the burnt-offering; the Exodus itself gave birth to the Passover, in which blood sprinkled gave protection from destruction; at the ratification of the Covenant, peace-offerings appear with burnt-offerings (Exo_20:24; Exo_24:5); finally, the Levitical ritual provided a cultus in which the idea of atonement had a leading place. Critical questions as to the age of this legislation need not detain us, for there is an increasing tendency to recognize that, whatever the date of the final codification of the Levitical laws, the bulk of these laws rest on older usages. That the propitiatory idea in sacrifice goes back to early times may be seen in such pictures of patriarchal piety as Job_1:5; Job_42:7-8; while an atoning virtue is expressly assumed as belonging to sacrifice in 1Sa_3:14. Cf. also allusions to sin- and guilt-offerings, and to propitiatory rites in so old a stratum of laws as the ‘Law of Holiness’ (Lev_19:21-22; Lev_23:19), and in Hos_4:8, Mic_6:6-7, Eze_40:39; Eze_42:13 etc.
It is in the Levitical system that all the ideas involved in OT sacrifice come to clearest expression. The Epistle to the Hebrews admirably seizes the idea of the system. It has absolutely nothing to do with the ideas that underlay heathen rites, but rests on a basis of its own. It provides a means by which the people, notwithstanding their sin, maintain their fellowship with God, and enjoy His favour. It rests in all its parts on the idea of the holiness of God, and is designed throughout to impress on the mind of the worshipper the sense of the separation which sin has made between him and God. Even with sacrifice the people could not approach God directly, but only through the priesthood. The priests alone could enter the sacred enclosure; into the Most Holy Place even the priests were not permitted to enter, but only the high priest, and he but once a year, and then only with blood of sacrifice, offered first for himself and then for the people; all this signifying that ‘the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest’ (Heb_9:7-8).
The details of the sacrificial ritual must be sought elsewhere (see Sacrifice). It is to be noted generally that the animal sacrifices were of four kinds—the burnt-offering, the sin-offering, the guilt-offering (a species of sin-offering which included a money-compensation to the person injured), the peace-offering. The victims must be unblemished; the presentation was accompanied by imposition of hands (on meaning, cf. Lev_16:21); the blood, after the victim was killed, was sprinkled on and about the altar: on the Day of Atonement it was taken also within the veil. The burnt-offering was wholly consumed; in the case of the peace-offering a feast was held with part of the flesh. No sacrifice was permitted for sins done ‘presumptuously,’ or with ‘a high hand’ (Num_15:30).
The design of all these sacrifices (even of the peace-offering, as features of the ritual show) was ‘to make atonement’ for the sin of the offerer, or of the congregation (Lev_1:4; Lev_4:20; Lev_4:26; Lev_4:31; Lev_5:6; Lev_17:11 etc.). The word so translated means primarily ‘to cover,’ then ‘to propitiate’ or ‘expiate.’ The atoning virtue is declared in Lev_17:11 to reside in the blood, as the vehicle of the soul or life. The effect of the offering was to ‘cover’ the person or offence from the eyes of a holy God, i.e. to annul guilt and procure forgiveness. It ‘cleansed’ from moral and ceremonial pollution.
From this point theories take their origin as to the precise signification of sacrificial atonement. (1) Was the act purely symbolical—an expression of penitence, confession, prayer, consecration, surrender of one’s life to God? Hardly; for if, in one way, the victim is identified with the offerer, in another it is distinguished from him as a creature through whose blood-shedding expiation is made for his sin. (2) Is the idea, then, as many hold, that the blood represents a pure life put between the sinful soul and God—an innocent life covering a polluted one? In this case the death is held to be immaterial, and the manipulation of the blood, regarded as still fresh and living, is the one thing of importance. The theory comes short in not recognizing that, in any case, there is in the act the acknowledgment of God’s righteous sentence upon sin—else why bring sacrifice of atonement at all? It is true that the blood represents the life, but it is surely not as life simply, but as life taken—life given up in death—that the blood is presented on the altar as a covering for sin. It would be hard otherwise to explain how in the NT so much stress is always laid on death, or the shedding of the blood, as the means of redemption. (3) There remains the view that the victim is regarded as expiating the guilt of the offerer by itself dying in his room—yielding up its life in his stead in acknowledgment of the judgment of God on his sin. This, which is the older view, is probably still the truer. The theory of Ritschl, that the sacrifices had nothing to do with sin, but were simply a protection against the terrible ‘majesty’ of God, is generally allowed to be untenable.
3. There is yet a third line of preparation for this doctrine in the OT, viz.: the prophetic. The prophets, at first sight, seem to take up a position altogether antagonistic to sacrifices. Seeing, however, that in many indirect ways they recognize its legitimacy, and even include it in their pictures of a restored theocracy (cf. Isa_56:6-7; Isa_60:7; Isa_66:23, Jer_17:24-27; Jer_33:17-18 etc.), their polemic must be regarded as against the abuse rather than the use. The proper prophetic preparation, however, lay along a different line from the sacrificial. The basis of it is in the idea of the Righteous Sufferer, which is seen shaping itself in the Prophets and the Psalms (cf. Psa_22:1-31). The righteous man, both through the persecutions he sustains and the national calamities arising from the people’s sins which he shares, is a living exemplification of the law of the innocent suffering for the guilty. Such suffering, however, while giving weight to intercession, is not in itself atoning. But in the picture of the Servant of Jehovah in Is 53 a new idea emerges. The sufferings arising from the people’s sins have, in this Holy One, become, through the spirit in which they are borne, and the Divine purpose in permitting them, sufferings for sin—vicarious, healing, expiatory. Their expiatory character is affirmed in the strongest manner in the successive verses, and sacrificial language is freely taken over upon the sufferer (Isa_53:5-6; Isa_53:8; Isa_53:10-12). Here at length the ideas of prophecy and those of sacrificial law coincide, and, though there is no second instance of like clear and detailed portraiture, it is not difficult to recognize the recurrence of the same ideas in later prophecies, e.g., in Zec_3:9; Zec_12:10; Zec_13:1; Zec_13:7, Dan_9:24-26. With such predictions on its lips OT prophecy closes, awaiting the time when, in Malachi’s words, the Lord, whom men sought, would come suddenly to His Temple (Mal_3:1).
ii. In the New Testament.—The period between the OT and the NT affords little for our purpose. It is certain that, in the time of our Lord, even if, as some think, there were partial exceptions, the great mass of the Jewish people had no idea of a suffering Messiah, or thought of any connexion between the Messiah and the sacrifices. If atonement was needed, it was to be sought for, apart from the sacrifices, in almsgiving and other good deeds; and the virtues of the righteous were regarded as in some degree availing for the wicked. It was a new departure when Jesus taught that ‘the Christ should suffer’ (cf. Mar_9:12, Luk_24:46). Yet in His own suffering and death He claimed to be fulfilling the Law and the Prophets (Luk_22:37; Luk_24:46).
1. Life and Teaching of Jesus.—The main task of Jesus on earth was to reveal the Father, to disclose the true nature of the Kingdom of God and its righteousness, in opposition to false ideals, to lead men to the recognition of His Messiahship, to recover the lost, to attach a few faithful souls to Himself as the foundation of His new Kingdom, and prepare their minds for His death and resurrection, and for the after duty of spreading His gospel among mankind. The dependence of the Messianic salvation on His Person and activity is everywhere presupposed; but it was only in fragmentary and partial utterances that He was able for a time to speak of its connexion with His death. Alike in the Synoptics and in John we see how this dénouement is gradually led up to. At His birth it is declared of Him that ‘he shall save his people from their sins’ (Mat_1:21); He is the promised ‘Saviour’ of the house of David (Luk_1:31-33; Luk_2:11); the Baptist announced Him, with probable reference to Is 53, as ‘the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world’ (Joh_1:29, cf. Joh_1:36). From the hour of His definite acceptance of His vocation of Messiahship in His baptism, and at the Temptation, combined as this was with the clear consciousness of a break with the ideals of His nation, Jesus could not but have been aware that His mission would cost Him His life. He who recalled the fate of all past prophets, and sent forth His disciples with predictions of persecutions and death (Mat_10:1-42), could be under no delusions as to His own fate at the hands of scribes and Pharisees (cf. Mat_9:15). But it was not simply as a ‘fate’ that Jesus recognized the inevitableness of His death; there is abundant attestation that He saw in it a Divine ordination, the necessary fulfilment of prophecy, and an essential means to the salvation of the world. As early as the Judæan ministry, accordingly, we find Him speaking to Nicodemus of the Son of Man being lifted up, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish (Joh_3:14 f.). He sets Himself forth in the discourse at Capernaum as the Bread of Life, in terms which imply the surrender of His body to death for the life of the world (Joh_6:32 ff.). Later, He repeatedly speaks of the voluntary surrender of His life for His sheep (Joh_10:11; Joh_10:15; Joh_10:17-18 etc.). After Peter’s great confession, He makes full announcement of His approaching sufferings and death, always coupling this with His after resurrection (Mat_16:21; Mat_17:22-23; Mat_20:18-19 ||). He dwells on the necessity of His death for the fulfilment of the Divine purpose, and is straitened till it is accomplished (Mar_10:32, Luk_9:51; Luk_12:50). It was the subject of converse at the Transfiguration (Luk_9:31). Yet clearer intimations were given. There is first the well-known announcement to the disciples, called forth by their disputes about pre-eminence: ‘The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many’ (Mat_20:28 ||). Here Christ announces that His death was the purpose of His coming, and, further, that it was of the nature of a saving ransom. His life was given to redeem the lives of others. To the same effect are the solemn words at the Last Supper. Here Christ declares that His body, symbolized by the broken bread, and His blood, symbolized by the poured-out wine, are given for His disciples for the remission of sins and the making of a New Covenant, and they are invited to eat and drink of the spiritual food thus provided (Mat_26:26 ff. ||, 1Co_11:23 ff.). It is reasonable to infer from these utterances that Jesus attached a supreme importance and saving efficacy to His death, and that His death was a deliberate and voluntary surrender of Himself for the end of the salvation of the world.
If we inquire, next, as to the nature of this connexion of Christ’s death with human salvation, we can scarcely err if we assume Jesus to have understood it in the light of the great prophecy which we know to have been often in His thoughts (Is 53). Already at the commencement of His Galilæan ministry He publicly identified Himself with the Servant of Jehovah (Luk_4:13 ff.); the words of Isa_53:12 were present to His mind as the last hour drew near (Luk_22:37). What prophecy of all He studied could be more instructive to Him as to the meaning of His sufferings and death? This yields the key to His utterances quoted above, and confirms the view we have taken of their meaning. Then came the crisis-hour itself. All the Evangelists dwell minutely on the scenes of the betrayal, Gethsemane, the trial, the mocking and scourging, the crucifixion. But how mysterious are many of the elements in these sufferings (e.g. Mar_14:33 ff; Mar_15:34, Joh_12:27); how strange to see them submitted to by the Prince of Life; how awful the horror of great darkness in which the Christ passed away! Can we explain it on the hypothesis of a simple martyrdom? Do we not need the solution which the other passages suggest of a sin-bearing Redeemer? Finally, there is the crowning attestation to His Messiahship, and seal upon His work, in the Resurrection, and the commission given to the disciples to preach remission of sins in His name to all nations—a clear proof that through His death and resurrection a fundamental change had been wrought in the relations of God to humanity (Mat_28:18-20, Luk_24:47, Joh_20:21-23).
2. The Apostolic teaching.—The OT had spoken; the Son of Man had come and yielded up His life a ransom for many. He was now exalted, and had shed forth the Holy Spirit (Act_2:32-33). There remained the task of putting these things together, and of definitely interpreting the work Christ had accomplished, in the light of the prophecies and symbols of the Old Covenant. This was the task of the Apostles, guided by the same Spirit that had inspired the prophets; and from it arose the Apostolic doctrine of the atonement. Varied in standpoints and in modes of representation, the Apostolic writings are singularly consentient in their testimony to the central fact of the propitiatory and redeeming efficacy of Christ’s death. St. Paul states it as the common doctrine of the Church ‘how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures’ (1Co_15:3-4). St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John, the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Book of Revelation, are at one here. The class of expressions in which this idea is set forth is familiar: Christ ‘bore our sins,’ ‘died for our sins,’ ‘suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous,’ ‘was made sin for us,’ was ‘the propitiation for our sins,’ was ‘a sin-offering,’ ‘reconciled us to God in the body of his flesh through death,’ was our ‘ransom,’ procured for us ‘forgiveness of sins through his blood,’ etc. (cf. 1Pe_1:2; 1Pe_1:18-19; 1Pe_2:21; 1Pe_2:24; 1Pe_3:18, Rom_3:24-25; Rom_5:8-11; Rom_8:34, 2Co_5:21, Gal_1:4; Gal_3:13; Gal_4:4-5, Eph_1:7; Eph_2:13-17; Eph_2:20; Eph_5:2, Col_1:14; Col_1:20-22, 1Ti_2:5; 1Ti_2:8, Tit_2:14, Heb_1:3; Heb_2:17; Heb_7:26; Heb_9:24-28; Heb_10:10-14, 1Jn_1:7; 1Jn_2:2; 1Jn_3:5; 1Jn_4:10, Rev_1:5; Rev_5:9 etc.). It is customary to speak of the sacrificial terms employed as ‘figures’ borrowed from the older dispensation. The NT point of view rather is that the sacrifices of the Old Covenant are the figures, and Christ’s perfect offering of Himself to God, once for all, for man’s redemption, is the reality of which the earlier sacrifices were the shadows and types (Heb_10:1 ff.).
Several things stand out clearly in the Apostolic doctrine of the atonement; each of them in harmony with what we have learned from our study of the subject in the OT. The presuppositions are the same—“the holiness, righteousness, and grace of God, and the sin and guilt of man, entailing on the individual and the race a Divine condemnation and exposure to wrath which man is unable of himself to remove (wrought out most fully by St. Paul, Rom_1:17; Rom_3:9; Rom_3:19-23, Gal_2:16 etc.). The atonement itself is represented (1) as the fruit, and not the cause of God’s love (Rom_5:8, 1Jn_4:10 etc.); (2) as a necessity for human salvation (Rom_3:19 ff., Heb_9:22); (3) as realizing perfectly what the ancient sacrifices did imperfectly and typically (Heb_9:10); as an expiation, purging from guilt and cancelling condemnation (Rom_8:1; Rom_8:32-33, Heb_1:3; Heb_9:11-14, 1Jn_1:7, Rev_1:5 etc.), and at the same time a ‘propitiation,’ averting wrath, and opening the way for a display of mercy (Rom_3:25, Heb_2:17, 1Jn_2:2; 1Jn_4:10); (4) as containing in itself the most powerful ethical motive—to repentance, a new life, active godliness, Christian service, etc. (Rom_6:1 ff., 1Co_6:20, 2Co_5:14-15, Gal_2:20; Gal_6:14, Eph_5:1-2, 1Pe_1:21-22, 1Jn_4:11 etc.; with this is connected the work of the Holy Spirit, which operates these sanctifying changes in the soul); (5) as, therefore, effecting a true ‘redemption,’ both in respect of the magnitude of the price at which our salvation is bought (Rom_8:32, 1Ti_2:6, Heb_10:29, 1Pe_1:18-19 etc.), and the completeness of the deliverance accomplished—from wrath (Rom_5:9, 1Th_1:10), from the power of indwelling sin (Rom_6:6; Rom_6:12-14; Rom_8:2 etc.), from bondage to Satan (Eph_2:2-3; Eph_6:12, Heb_2:14-15 etc.), from the tyranny of the evil world (Gal_1:4; Gal_6:14, Tit_2:14, 1Pe_1:18 etc.), finally, from the effects of sin in death and all other evils (Rom_8:23, 1Co_15:20 ff. etc.).
In the NT teaching, therefore, the sacrifice of Christ fulfils all that was prefigurative in the OT doctrine of atonement; yet, as the true and perfect sacrifice, it infinitely transcends, while it supersedes, all OT pre-figurations. The relation of the Christian atonement to that of the Law is, accordingly, as much one of contrast as of fulfilment. This is the thesis wrought out in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but its truth is recognized in all parts of the NT. The sacrifices of the OT were, in their very nature, incapable of really removing sin (Heb_10:4). Their imperfection was shown in the irrational character of the victims, in their frequent repetition, in their multiplication, etc. (Heb_9:10). In Jesus, however, every character meets, qualifying Him to make atonement for humanity—Himself at once perfect priest and perfect sacrifice: Divine dignity as Son of God (Rom_1:4; Rom_8:32, Heb_1:2-3 etc.); a perfect participation in human nature (Rom_1:3; Rom_8:3, Gal_4:4, Heb_2:14-18 etc.); absolute sinlessness (2Co_5:21, Heb_4:15, 1Pe_1:19; 1Pe_2:22, 1Jn_3:5 etc.); entire human sympathy (Rom_8:34, Heb_2:17; Heb_4:14-16); as regards God, undeviating obedience and surrender to the will of the Father (Php_2:7-8, Heb_4:8-9; Heb_10:8-10). He is ‘Jesus Christ the righteous’ (1Jn_2:1), and His sacrificial death is the culmination of His obedience (Rom_5:19, Php_2:8, Heb_10:9-10).
iii. Rationale of the Atonement.—The way is now open to our last question—How was atonement for sin by Christ possible? And in what did Christ’s atonement consist? The NT does not develop a theology of the atonement; yet a theology would not be possible if the NT did not yield the principles, and lay down the lines, of at least a partial solution of this problem.
A chief clue to an answer to the above questions lies in what is taught (1) of Christ’s original, essential relation to the creation (cf. Joh_1:3-4, 1Co_8:5, Eph_1:19, Col_1:15-20, Heb_1:2, Rev_1:11; Rev_3:14); and (2), as arising out of that, of His archetypal, representative relation to the race He came to save (cf. Joh_1:4; Joh_1:8-14, Rom_5:12 ff., 1Co_15:21-22; 1Co_15:45-47). This connects itself with what is said of Christ’s Divine dignity. Deeper even than the value His Divine Sonship gives to His sacrifice is the original relation to humanity of the Creative Word which renders His unique representative relation to the race possible. It is not going beyond the representations of the NT to say, with Maurice and others, that He is the ‘root of humanity.’ In Him it is grounded; by Him it is sustained; from Him it derives all the powers of its development. While He condescends to take on Him the nature of created humanity, His personality is above humanity. Hence His generic relation to the race—‘Son of God’—‘Son of Man.’ In this ‘mystery of godliness’ (1Ti_3:16) lies the possibility of a representative atonement for the race.
For this is the next point in the solution of our problem; Christ’s identification of Himself with the race He came to save is complete. It is not merely ‘federal’ or ‘legal’; it is vital, and this in every respect. His love is unbounded; His sympathy is complete; His purpose and desire to save are unfaltering. He identifies Himself with humanity, with a perfect consciousness (1) of what He is; (2) of what the race He came to save is and needs; (3) of what a perfect atonement involves (cf. Joh_8:14 ff.). Himself holy, the well-beloved Son, He knows with unerring clearness what sin is, and what the mind of God is about sin. He does not shrink from anything His identification with a sinful race entails upon Him, but freely accepts its position and responsibilities as His own. He is ‘made under the law’ (Gal_4:4); a law not merely preceptive, but broken and violated, and entailing ‘curse.’ Identifying Himself thus perfectly with the race of men as under sin on the one hand, and with the mind of God about sin on the other, He is the natural mediator between God and man, and is alone in the position to render to God whatever is necessary as atonement for sin.
But what is necessary, and how did Christ render it? Here come in the ‘theories’ of atonement; most of them ‘broken lights’; all needed to do full justice to the Divine reality. We would dismiss as infra-Scriptural all theories which affirm that atonement—reparation to the violated law of righteousness—is not necessary. Christ’s work, while bringing forgiveness, conserves holiness, magnifies law, vindicates righteousness (Rom_3:21-31). Also defective are theories which seek the sole explanation of atonement in the ethical motive; purely moral theories. Atonement is taken here in the sense only of ‘reconciliation’—the reconciliation of man to God. Scripture recognizes obstacles to salvation on the side of righteousness in God as well as in man’s unwillingness, and atonement aims at the removal of both. It has the aspect of propitiation, of expiation, of restitutio in integrum, as well as of moral influence. It is an act of reconciliation, embracing God’s relation to the world equally with the world’s relation to God (cf. Rom_3:25; Rom_5:11; Rom_5:10, 2Co_5:18-21).
There remain two views, one finding the essence of Christ’s atonement in the surrender of a holy will to God—in the obedience of Christ unto death, even the death of the Cross (Maurice and others). This assuredly is a vital element in atonement, but is it the whole? Does Scripture not recognize also the submission of Christ to the endurance of the actual penal evil of sin—specially to death—as that rests in the judgment of God upon our race? All that has preceded necessitates the answer that it does. The other,—the legal or forensic view,—accordingly, puts the essence of atonement in this penal endurance; in the substitutionary submission of Christ to the penalty due to us for sin. But this also is one-sided and unethical, if divorced from the other, and from the recognition of the fact that not simply endurance of evil, but the spirit in which the evil is endured, and the response made to the Divine mind in it, is the one acceptable thing to God (cf. J. M‘Leod Campbell). It is here, therefore, that we must seek the inmost secret of atonement. The innocent suffering with and for the guilty is a law from which Jesus did not withdraw Himself. In His consciousness of solidarity with mankind, He freely submitted to those evils (shame, ignominy, suffering, temptation, death) which express the judgment of God on the sin of the world, and in the experience of them—peculiarly in the yielding up of His life—did such honour to all the principles of righteousness involved, rendered so inward and spiritual a response to the whole mind of God in His attitude to the sin of the world, as constituted a perfect atonement for that sin for such as believingly accept it, and make its spirit their own. ‘By the which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all’ (Heb_10:10). See Propitiation, Reconciliation, Redemption.
James Orr.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909

(See RECONCILIATION.) Literally, the being at one, after having been at variance. Tyndale explains "One Mediator" (1Ti_2:5): "at one maker between God and man." To made atonement is to give or do that whereby alienation ceases and reconciliation ensues. "Reconciliation" is the equivalent term given for the same Hebrew word, kopher, in Dan_9:24; Lev_8:15; Eze_45:15. In the New Testament KJV once only "atonement" is used (Rom_5:11): "by whom (Christ) we have received the atonement" (katallage), where the reconciliation or atonement must be on God's part toward us, for it could not well be said, "We have received the reconciliation on our part toward Him."
Elsewhere the same Greek is translated "reconciliation" (2Co_5:18-19). A kindred term expressing a different aspect of the same truth is "propitiation" (hilasmos) (1Jn_2:2), the verb of which is in Heb_2:17 translated "to make reconciliation." Also "ransom," or payment for redeeming a captive (Job_33:24), kopher, "an atonement," Mat_20:28. Heb_9:12; Christ, "having obtained eternal redemption for us" (lutrosis, the deliverance bought for us by His bloodshedding, the price: 1Pe_1:18).
The verb kipper 'al, "to cover upon," expresses the removing utterly out of sight the guilt of person or thing by a ransom, satisfaction, or substituted victim. The use of the word and the noun kopher, throughout the Old Testament, proves that, as applied to the atonement or reconciliation between God and man, it implies not merely what is man's part in finding acceptance with God, but, in the first instance, what God's justice required on His part, and what His love provided, to justify His entering into reconciliation with man. In Lev_1:4; Lev_4:26; Lev_5:1; Lev_5:16-18; Lev_5:16; Lev_17:11, the truth is established that the guilt is transferred from the sinful upon the innocent substitute, in order to make amends to violated justice, and to cover (atone: kipper' al) or put out of sight the guilt (compare Mic_7:19 end), and to save the sinner from the wages of sin which is death.
On the great day of atonement the high priest made "atonement for the sanctuary, the tabernacle, and the altar" also, as well as for the priests and all the people; but it was the people's sin that defiled the places so as to make them unfit for the presence of the Holy One. Unless the atonement was made the soul "bore its iniquity," i.e. was under the penalty of death. The exceptions of atonement made with fine flour by one not able to afford the animal sacrifice (Lev_5:11), and by Aaron with incense on a sudden emergency (Num_16:47), confirm the rule. The blood was the medium of atonement, because it had the life or soul (nephesh) in it. The soul of the offered victim atoned for the soul of the sinful offerer.
The guiltless blood was given by God to be shed to atone for the forfeited blood of the guilty. The innocent victim pays the penalty of the offerer's sin, death (Rom_6:28). This atonement was merely typical in the Old Testament sacrifices; real in the one only New Testament sacrifice, Christ Jesus. Kaphar and kopher is in Gen_6:14, "Thou shalt pitch the ark with pitch," the instrument of covering the saved from the destroying flood outside, as Jesus' blood interposes between believers and the flood of wrath that swallows up the lost. Jacob uses the same verb (Gen_32:20), "I will appease Esau with the present," i.e., cover out of sight or turn away his wrath.
The "mercy-seat" whereat God meets man (being reconciled through the blood there sprinkled, and so man can meet God) is called kapporeth, i.e. flee lid of the ark, covering the law inside, which is fulfilled in Messiah who is called by the corresponding Greek term, hilasterion, "the propitiatory" or mercy-seat, "whom God hath set forth to be a propitiatory through faith in His blood" (Rom_3:23). God Himself made a coat (singular in Heb.) of skin, and clothed Adam and his wife (Gen_3:21). The animal cannot have been slain for food, for animal food was not permitted to man until after the flood (Gen_9:3); nor for clothing, for the fleece would afford that, without the needless killing of the animal. It must have been for sacrifice, the institution of which is presumed in the preference given to Abel's sacrifice, above Cain's offering of firstfruits, in Genesis 4.
Typically; God taught that the clothing for the soul must, be from the Victim whom God's love provided to cover our guilt forever out of sight (Psalms 32:D (not kaphar, but kasah) (Rom_4:17; Isa_61:10), the same Hebrew (labash) as in Gen_3:21, "clothed." The universal prevalence of propitiatory sacrifices over the pagan world implies a primitive revelation of the need of expiatory atonement, and of the inefficacy of repentance alone to remove guilt. This is the more remarkable in Hindostan, where it is considered criminal to take away the life of any animal. God's righteous character and government interposed a barrier to sinful man's pardon and reception into favor. The sinner's mere desire for these blessings does not remove the barrier out of the way. Something needed to be done for him, not by him.
It was for God, against whom man sinned, to appoint the means for removing the barrier. The sinless Jesus' sacrifice for, and instead of, us sinners was the mean so appointed. The sinner has simply by faith to embrace the means. And as the means, the vicarious atonement by Christ, is of God, it must be efficacious for salvation. Not that Jesus' death induced God to love us; but because God loved us He gave Jesus to reconcile the claims of justice and mercy, "that God might be just and at the same time the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus" (Rom_3:26; 2Co_5:18-21). Jesus is, it is true, not said in Scripture to reconcile God to the sinner, because the reconciliation in the first instance emanated from God Himself. God reconciled us to Himself, i.e. restored us to His favor, by satisfying the claims of justice against us.
Christ's atonement makes a change, not in God's character as if God's love was produced by it, but in our position judicially considered in the eye of the divine law. Christ's sacrifice was the provision of God's love, not its moving cause (Rom_8:32). Christ's blood was the ransom paid at the expense of God Himself, to reconcile the exercise of mercy and justice, not as separate, but as the eternally harmonious attributes in the same God. God reconciles the world unto Himself, in the first instance, by satisfying His own just enmity against sin (Psa_7:11; Isa_12:1, compare 1Sa_29:4; "reconcile himself unto his master," not remove his own anger against his master, but his master's anger against him). Men's reconciliation to God by laying aside their enmity is the after consequence of their believing that He has laid aside His judicial enmity against their sin.
Penal and vicarious satisfaction for our guilt to God's law by Christ's sacrificial death is taught Mat_20:28; "the Son of man came to give His life a ransom for (anti) many" (anti implies vicarious satisfaction in Mat_5:28; Mar_10:45). 1Ti_2:6; "who gave Himself a ransom for (antilutron, an equivalent payment in substitution for) all." Eph_5:25; 1Pe_2:24; 1Pe_3:15; "the Just for the unjust ... suffered for us." Joh_1:29; "the Lamb of God taketh away the sin of the world." 1Co_5:7; 1Pe_1:19; Joh_10:15; Rom_4:25; "He was delivered on account of (dia) our offenses, and raised again for the sake of (dia) our justification." (Rev_1:5; Heb_9:13-14.) Conscience feels instinctively the penal claims of violated divine justice, and can only find peace when by faith it has realized that those claims have been fully met by our sacrificed substitute (Heb_9:9; Heb_10:1-2; Heb_10:22; 1Pe_3:21).
The conscience reflects the law and will of God, though that law condemns the man. Opponents of the doctrine of vicarious atonement say, "it exhibits God as less willing to forgive than His creatures are bound to be;" but man's justice, which is the faint reflex of God's, binds the judge, however lamenting the painful duty, to sentence the criminal to death as a satisfaction to outraged law. Also, "as taking delight in executing vengeance on sin, or yielding to the extremity of suffering what He withheld on considerations of mercy." But the claim of God's righteousness is not pressed apart from that of God's love; both move in beautiful unity; the atonement is at once the brightest exhibition of His love and of His justice; it does not render God merciful, but opens a channel whereby love can flow in perfect harmony with His righteous law, yea "magnifying the law and making it honorable" (Isa_42:21).
At the same time it is a true remark of Macdonell (Donellan Lectures): "Christ's work of redemption springs from an intimate relationship to those whom He redeems. It is not only because He suffers what they ought to have suffered that mercy becomes possible; but because He who suffered bore some mysterious relation to the spirits of those for whom He suffered; so that every pang He felt, and every act He did. vibrated to the extremities of that body of which He is the head, and placed not their acts, but the actors. themselves, in a new relation to the divine government and to the fountain of holiness and life." It is only as Representative Head of humanity, that the Son of man, the second Adam, made full and adequate satisfaction for the whole race whose nature He took. He died sufficiently for all men; efficiently for the elect alone (Heb_2:9-15; 1Jn_2:2; Act_20:28; 2Pe_2:1; 1Ti_4:10).
Anything short of an adequate satisfaction would be so far an abatement; of divine justice; and if part of the sin might be forgiven without the satisfaction, why not all? If God can dispense with the claims of justice in part, He can as well do it altogether. A partial satisfaction would be almost more dishonoring to God's righteousness than a gratuitous forgiveness without any satisfaction whatever. With God alone it rested to determine what is adequate satisfaction, and how it is to become available to each man, without injury to the cause of righteousness.
God has determined it, that in Christ's infinite dignity of person and holiness above that of any creature, there is ensured the adequateness of the satisfaction, made by His obedience and suffering, to meet the claims of justice against those whose nature He voluntarily assumed; nay more, to set forth God's glory more brightly than ever; also God has revealed that by believing the sinner becomes one with the Redeemer, and so rightly shares in the redemption wrought by Him the Head of the redeemed. No motive has ever been found so powerful as the sinner's realization of the atonement, to create love in the human heart, constraining the accepted believer henceforth to shun all sin and press after all holiness in order to please God, who first loved him (Rom_8:1-3; 2Co_5:14-15; 1Jn_4:19).
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
By Andrew Robert Fausset, co-Author of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown's 1888.

the satisfaction offered to divine justice by the death of Christ for the sins of mankind, by virtue of which all true penitents who believe in Christ are personally reconciled to God, are freed from the penalty of their sins, and entitled to eternal life. The atonement for sin made by the death of Christ, is represented in the Christian system as the means by which mankind may be delivered from the awful catastrophe of eternal death; from judicial inflictions of the displeasure of a Governor, whose authority has been contemned, and whose will has been resisted, which shall know no mitigation in their degree, nor bound to their duration.
This end it professes to accomplish by means which, with respect to the Supreme Governor himself, preserve his character from mistake, and maintain the authority of his government; and with respect to man, give him the strongest possible reason for hope, and render more favourable the condition of his earthly probation. These are considerations which so manifestly show, from its own internal constitution, the superlative importance and excellence of Christianity, that it would be exceedingly criminal to overlook them.
How sin may be forgiven without leading to such misconceptions of the divine character as would encourage disobedience, and thereby weaken the influence of the divine government, must be considered as a problem of very difficult solution. A government which admitted no forgiveness, would sink the guilty to despair; a government which never punishes offence, is a contradiction,—it cannot exist. Not to punish the guilty, is to dissolve authority; to punish without mercy, is to destroy, and where all are guilty, to make the destruction universal. That we cannot sin with impunity, is a matter determined. The Ruler of the world is not careless of the conduct of his creatures; for that penal consequences are attached to the offence, is not a subject of argument, but is matter of fact evident by daily observation of the events and circumstances of the present life. It is a principle therefore already laid down, that the authority of God must be preserved; but it ought to be remarked, that in that kind of administration which restrains evil by penalty, and encourages obedience by favour and hope, we and all moral creatures are the interested parties, and not the divine Governor himself, whom, because of his independent and all- sufficient nature, our transgressions cannot injure. The reasons, therefore, which compel him to maintain his authority do not terminate in himself. If he treats offenders with severity, it is for our sake, and for the sake of the moral order of the universe, to which sin, if encouraged by a negligent administration, or by an entire or frequent impunity, would be the source of endless disorder and misery; and if the granting of pardon to offence be strongly and even severely guarded, so that no less a satisfaction could be accepted than the death of God's own Son, we are to refer this to the moral necessity of the case as arising out of the general welfare of accountable creatures, liable to the deep evil of sin, and not to any reluctance on the part of our Maker to forgive, much less to any thing vindictive in his nature,—charges which have been most inconsiderately and unfairly said to be implied in the doctrine of Christ's vicarious sufferings. If it then be true, that the release of offending man from future punishment, and his restoration to the divine favour, ought, for the interests of mankind themselves, and for the instruction and caution of other beings, to be so bestowed, that no license shall be given to offence;—
that God himself, whilst he manifests his compassion, should not appear less just, less holy, than he really is;—that his authority should be felt to be as compelling, and that disobedience should as truly, though not unconditionally, subject us to the deserved penalty, as though no hope of forgiveness had been exhibited;—we ask, On what scheme, save that which is developed in the New Testament, are these necessary conditions provided for? Necessary they are, unless we contend for a license and an impunity which shall annul all good government in the universe, a point for which no reasonable man will contend; and if so, then we must allow that there is strong internal evidence of the truth of the doctrine of Scripture, when it makes the offer of pardon consequent only upon the securities we have before mentioned. If it be said, that sin may be pardoned in the exercise of the divine prerogative, the reply is, that if this prerogative were exercised toward a part of mankind only, the passing by of the rest would be with difficulty reconciled to the divine character; and if the benefit were extended to all, government would be at an end. This scheme of bringing men within the exercise of a merciful prerogative, does not therefore meet the obvious difficulty of the case; nor is it improved by confining the act of grace only to repentant criminals. For in the immediate view of danger, what offender, surrounded with the wreck of former enjoyments, feeling the vanity of guilty pleasures, now past for ever, and beholding the approach of the delayed penal visitation, but would repent? Were the principle of granting pardon to repentance to regulate human governments, every criminal would escape, and judicial forms would become a subject for ridicule. Nor is it recognised by the divine Being in his conduct to men in the present state, although in this world punishments are not final and absolute. Repentance does not restore health injured by intemperance; property, wasted by profusion; or character, once stained by dishonourable practices. If repentance alone could secure pardon, then all must be pardoned, and government dissolved, as in the case of forgiveness by the exercise of mere prerogative; but if an arbitrary selection be made, then different and discordant principles of government are introduced into the divine administration, which is a derogatory supposition.
The question proposed abstractedly, How may mercy be extended to offending creatures, the subjects of the divine government, without encouraging vice, by lowering the righteous and holy character of God, and the authority of his government, in the maintenance of which the whole universe of beings are interested? is, therefore, at once one of the most important and one of the most difficult that can employ the human mind. None of the theories which have been opposed, to Christianity affords a satisfactory solution of the problem. They assume principles either destructive of moral government, or which cannot, in the circumstances of man, be acted upon. The only answer is found in the Holy Scriptures. They alone show, and, indeed, they alone profess to show, how God may be “just,” and yet the “justifier” of the ungodly. Other schemes show how he may be merciful; but the difficulty does not lie there. The Gospel meets it, by declaring “the righteousness of God,” at the same time that it proclaims his mercy. The voluntary sufferings of the Divine Son of God “for us,” that is, in our room and stead, magnify the justice of God; display his hatred to sin; proclaim “the exceeding sinfulness” of transgression, by the deep and painful manner in which they were inflicted upon the Substitute; warn the persevering offender of the terribleness, as well as the certainty, of his punishment; and open the gates of salvation to every penitent. It is a part of the same divine plan also to engage the influence of the Holy Spirit, to awaken penitence in man, and to lead the wanderer back to himself; to renew our fallen nature in righteousness, at the moment we are justified through faith, and to place us in circumstances in which we may henceforth “walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” All the ends of government are here answered—no license is given to offence,—the moral law is unrepealed,—a day of judgment is still appointed,—future and eternal punishments still display their awful sanctions,—a new and singular display of the awful purity of the divine character is afforded,—yet pardon is offered to all who seek it; and the whole world may be saved.
With such evidence of suitableness to the case of mankind, under such lofty views of connection with the principles and ends of moral government, does the doctrine of the atonement present itself. But other important considerations are not wanting to mark the united wisdom and goodness of that method of extending mercy to the guilty which Christianity teaches us to have been actually and exclusively adopted. It is rendered, indeed, “worthy of all acceptation,” by the circumstance of its meeting the difficulties we have just dwelt upon,—difficulties which could not otherwise have failed to make a gloomy impression upon every offender awakened to a sense of his spiritual danger; but it must be very inattentively considered, if it does not farther commend itself to us, by not only removing the apprehensions we might feel as to the severity of the divine Lawgiver, but as exalting him in our esteem as “the righteous Lord, who loveth righteousness,” who surrendered his beloved Son to suffering and death, that the influence of moral goodness might not be weakened in the hearts of his creatures; and as a God of love, affording in this instance a view of the tenderness and benignity of his nature infinitely more impressive and affecting than any abstract description could convey, or than any act of creating and providential power and grace could exhibit, and, therefore, most suitable to subdue that enmity which had unnaturally grown up in the hearts of his creatures, and which, when corrupt, they so easily transfer from a law which restrains their inclination to the Lawgiver himself. If it be important to us to know the extent and reality of our danger, by the death of Christ it is displayed, not in description, but in the most impressive action; if it be important that we should have an assurance of the divine placability toward us, it here receives a demonstration incapable of being heightened; if gratitude be the most powerful motive of future obedience, and one which renders command on the one part, and active service on the other, “not grievous but joyous,” the recollection of such obligations as those which the “love of Christ” has laid us under, is a perpetual spring to this energetic affection, and will be the means of raising it to higher and more delightful activity for ever. All that can most powerfully illustrate the united tenderness and awful majesty of God, and the odiousness of sin; all that can win back the heart of man to his Maker and Lord, and render future obedience a matter of affection and delight as well as duty; all that can extinguish the angry and malignant passions of man to man; all that can inspire a mutual benevolence, and dispose to a self-denying charity for the benefit of others; all that can arouse by hope, or tranquillize by faith; is to be found in the vicarious death of Christ, and the principles and purposes for which it was endured.
The first declaration, on this subject, after the appearance of Christ, is that of John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus coming unto him, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world;” where it is obvious, that when John called our Lord, “the Lamb of God,” he spoke of him under a sacrificial character, and of the effect of that sacrifice as an atonement for the sins of mankind. This was said of our Lord, even before he entered on his public office; but if any doubt should exist respecting the meaning of the Baptist's expression, it is removed by other passages, in which a similar allusion is adopted, and in which it is specifically applied to the death of Christ, as an atonement for sin. In the Acts of the Apostles, the following words of Isaiah are, by Philip the evangelist, distinctly applied to Christ, and to his death: “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth. in his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth.” This particular part of the prophecy being applied to our Lord's death, the whole must relate to the same subject; for it is undoubtedly one entire prophecy, and the other expressions in it are still stronger: “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed: the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” In the First Epistle of Peter, is also a strong and very apposite text, in which the application of the term “lamb” to our Lord, and the sense in which it is applied, can admit of no doubt: “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,” 1Pe_1:18-19. It is therefore evident that the Prophet Isaiah, six hundred years before the birth of Jesus; that John the Baptist, on the commencement of his ministry; and that St. Peter, his friend, companion, and Apostle, subsequent to the transaction; speak of Christ's death as an atonement for sin, under the figure of a lamb sacrificed.
The passages that follow, plainly and distinctly declare the atoning efficacy of Christ's death: “Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” “Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.” Heb_9:26; Heb_9:28. “This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin, for ever sat down on the right hand of God; for by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified,” Heb_10:12. It is observable, that nothing similar is said of the death of any other person, and that no such efficacy is imputed to any other martyrdom. “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us; much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him: for if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life,” Rom_5:8-10. The words, “reconciled to God by the death of his Son,” show that his death had an efficacy in our reconciliation; but reconciliation is only preparatory to salvation. “He has reconciled us to his Father in his cross, and in the body of his flesh through death,”
Col_1:20; Col_1:22. What is said of reconciliation in these texts, is in some others spoken of sanctification which is also preparatory to salvation. “We are sanctified,”—how? “by the offering of the body of Christ once for all,” Heb_10:10. In the same epistle, the blood of Jesus is called “the blood of the covenant by which we are sanctified.” In these and many other passages that occur in different parts of the New Testament, it is therefore asserted that the death of Christ had an efficacy in the procuring of human salvation. Such expressions are used concerning no other person, and the death of no other person; and it is therefore evident that Christ's death included something more than a confirmation of his preaching; something more than a pattern of a holy and patient martyrdom; something more than a necessary antecedent to his resurrection, by which he gave a grand and clear proof of our resurrection from the dead. Christ's death was all these, but it was something more. It was an atonement for the sins of mankind; and in this way only it became the accomplishment of our eternal redemption. See DAY OF EXPIATION.
Biblical and Theological Dictionary by Richard Watson
PRINTER 1849.

Atonement may be defined as that act of dealing with sin whereby sin’s penalty is paid and sinners are brought into a right relation with God. In the Old Testament the word is used mainly in connection with the offering of sacrifices for sin. The word does not occur in most versions of the New Testament, but it is used broadly in the language of theology in relation to the sacrificial death of Christ.
One result of universal human sin is that all people are under God’s judgment. They are guilty, the penalty is death, and they cannot, by their own efforts, escape this penalty. They are cut off from God and there is no way they can bring themselves back to God (Psa_14:3; Isa_59:2; Rom_1:18; Rom_3:20; Rom_3:23; Rom_6:23; see SIN). God, however, gives them a way by which they may obtain forgiveness and be brought back to God. This is through the blood of a sacrifice, where blood is symbolic of the life of the innocent victim laid down as substitute for the guilty sinner (Lev_17:11; Heb_9:22; 1Jn_4:10; see BLOOD).
Atonement is therefore not something that people can achieve by their own efforts, but something that God provides. Whether in Old or New Testament times, forgiveness is solely by God’s grace and sinners receive it by faith (Psa_32:5; Psa_51:17; Mic_7:18; Eph_2:8). The Old Testament sacrifices were not a way of salvation. They were a means by which repentant sinners could demonstrate their faith in God and at the same time see what their atonement involved. The sacrifices showed them how it was possible for God to act rightly in punishing sin while forgiving repentant sinners. (See JUSTIFICATION; PROPITIATION; RECONCILIATION; REDEMPTION; SACRIFICE; SANCTIFICATION.)
The sacrifices of the Old Testament pointed to the one great sacrifice that is the only basis on which God can forgive a person’s sins, the death of Christ. Through that death God is able justly to forgive the sins of all who turn to him in faith, no matter what era they might have lived in (Mat_26:28; Rom_3:25-26; Rom_4:25; Heb_9:15; 1Pe_2:24). (See also DAY OF ATONEMENT.)
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.

a-tōn?ment: Translates כּפר, kāphar; חטא, ḥāṭā'; רצה, rācāh, the last employed only of human relations (1Sa_29:4); translates the following Greek stems hilas-, simple and compounded with various prepositions; allag- in composition only, but with numerous prepositions and even two at a time, e.g. Mat_5:24; lip- rarely (Dan_9:24).
I. Terms Employed
1. Hebrew and Greek Words
The root meanings of the Hebrew words, taking them in the order cited above, are, to ?cover,? hence expiate, condone, cancel, placate; to ?offer,? or ?receive a sin offering,? hence, make atonement, appease, propitiate; ?effect reconciliation,? i.e. by some conduct, or course of action. Of the Greek words the meanings, in order, are ?to be,? or ?cause to be, friendly?; ?to render other,? hence to restore; ?to leave? and with preposition to leave off, i.e. enmity, or evil, etc.; ?to render holy,? ?to set apart for?; hence, of the Deity, to appropriate or accept for Himself.
2. The English Word
It is obvious that the English word ?atonement? does not correspond etymologically with any Hebrew or Greek word which it translates. Furthermore, the Greek words in both Septuagint and New Testament do not correspond exactly to the Hebrew words; especially is it true that the root idea of the most frequently employed Hebrew word, ?cover,? is not found in any of the Greek words employed. These remarks apply to both verbs and substantives The English word is derived from the phrase ?at one,? and signifies, etymologically, harmony of relationship or unity of life, etc. It is a rare instance of an AS theological term; and, like all purely English terms employed in theology, takes its meaning, not from its origin, but from theological content of the thinking of the Continental and Latin-speaking Schoolmen who employed such English terms as seemed most nearly to convey to the hearers and readers their ideas. Not only was no effort made to convey the original Hebrew and Greek meanings by means of English words, but no effort was made toward uniformity in translating of Hebrew and Greek words by their English equivalents.
3. Not to Be Settled by Lexicon Merely
It is at once clear that no mere word-study can determine the Bible teaching concerning atonement. Even when first employed for expressing Hebrew and Christian thought, these terms, like all other religious terms, already had a content that had grown up with their use, and it is by no means easy to tell how far heathen conceptions might be imported into our theology by a rigidly etymological study of terms employed. In any case such a study could only yield a dictionary of terms, whereas what we seek is a body of teaching, a circle of ideas, whatever words and phrases, or combinations of words and phrases, have been employed to express the teaching.
4. Not Chiefly a Study in Theology
There is even greater danger of making the study of the Atonement a study in dogmatic theology. The frequent employment of the expression ?the Atonement? shows this tendency. The work of Christ in reconciling the world to God has occupied so central a place in Christian dogmatics that the very term atonement has come to have a theological rather than a practical atmosphere, and it is by no means easy for the student, or even for the seeker after the saving relation with God, to pass beyond the accumulated interpretation of the Atonement and learn of atonement.
5. Notes on Use of Terms
The history of the explanation of the Atonement and the terms of preaching atonement cannot, of course, be ignored. Nor can the original meaning of the terms employed and the manner of their use be neglected. There are significant features in the use of terms, and we have to take account of the history of interpretation. Only we must not bind ourselves nor the word of God in such forms.
(1) The most frequently employed Hebrew word, kāphar, is found in the Prophets only in the priestly section (Eze_45:15, Eze_45:20; Dan_9:24) where English Versions of the Bible have ?make reconciliation,? margin, ?purge away.? Furthermore, it is not found in Deuteronomy, which is the prophetic book of the Pentateuch (Hexateuch). This indicates that it is an essentially priestly conception. The same term is frequently translated by ?reconcile,? construed as equivalent to ?make atonement? (Lev_6:30; Lev_8:15; Lev_16:20; 1Sa_29:4; Eze_45:15, Eze_45:20; Dan_9:24). In this latter sense it connects itself with ḥāṭā'̌. In 2Ch_29:24 both words are used: the priests make a sin offering ḥāṭā' to effect an atonement kāphař. But the first word is frequently used by metonymy to include, at least suggestively, the end in view, the reconciliation; and, on the other hand, the latter word is so used as to involve, also, doing that by which atonement is realized.
(2) Of the Greek words employed hiláskesthai means ?to make propitious? (Heb_2:17; Lev_6:30; Lev_16:20; Eze_45:20); alláttein, used however only in composition with preposition, means ?to render other,? ?to restore? to another (former?) condition of harmony (compare Mat_5:24 = ?to be reconciled? to a fellow-man as a condition of making an acceptable sacrifice to God).
(3) In the English New Testament the word ?atonement? is found only at Rom_5:11 and the American Standard Revised Version changes this to ?reconciliation.? While in strict etymology this word need signify only the active or conscious exercise of unity of life or harmony of relations, the causative idea probably belongs to the original use of the term, as it certainly is present in all current Christian use of the term. As employed in Christian theology, both practical and technical, the term includes with more or less distinctness: (a) The fact of union with God, and this always looked upon as (b) a broken union to be restored or an ideal union to be realized, (c) The procuring cause of atonement, variously defined, (d) the crucial act wherein the union is effected, the work of God and the response of the soul in which the union becomes actual. Inasmuch as the reconciliation between man and God is always conceived of as effected through Jesus Christ (2Co_5:18-21) the expression, ?the Atonement of Christ,? is one of the most frequent in Christian theology. Questions and controversies have turned mainly on the procuring cause of atonement, (c) above, and at this point have arisen the various ?theories of the Atonement.?
II. Bible Teaching Concerning Atonement in General
The Atonement of Christ must be interpreted in connection with the conception of atonement in general in the Scriptures. This idea of atonement is, moreover, part of the general circle of fundamental ideas of the religion of Yahweh and Jesus. Theories of the Atonement root themselves in conceptions of the nature and character of God, His holiness, love, grace, mercy, etc.; of man, his nature, disposition and capacities; of sin and guilt.
1. Primary Assumption of Unity of God and Man
The basal conception for the Bible doctrine of atonement is the assumption that God and man are ideally one in life and interests, so far as man's true life and interest may be conceived as corresponding with those of God. Hence, it is everywhere assumed that God and man should be in all respects in harmonious relations, ?at-one.? Such is the ideal picture of Adam and Eve in Eden. Such is the assumption in the parable of the Prodigal Son; man ought to be at home with God, at peace in the Father's house (Lk 15). Such also is the ideal of Jesus as seen especially in Jn 14 through 17; compare particularly Joh_17:21; compare also Eph_2:11-22; 1Co_15:28. This is quite possibly the underlying idea of all those offerings in which the priests - God's representatives - and the people joined in eating at a common meal parts of what had been presented to God. The prohibition of the use of blood in food or drink is grounded on the statement that the life is in the blood (Lev_17:10 f) or is the blood (Gen_9:4; Deu_12:23). Blood was used in the consecration of tabernacle, temple, vessels, altars, priests; all things and persons set apart for Yahweh. Then blood was required in offerings made to atone for sin and uncleanness. The reason for all this is not easy to see; but if we seek an explanation that will account for all the facts on a single principle, shall we not find it in the idea that in the life-principle of the blood God's own life was present? Through this life from God all living beings shared God's life. The blood passing out of any living being must therefore return to God and not be consumed. In sprinkling blood, the life-element, or certainly the life-symbol, over persons and things set apart for God they were, so to say, visibly taken up into the life of God, and His life extending over them made them essentially of His own person. Finally the blood of sacrifices was the returning to God of the life of the man for whom the beasts stood. And this blood was not burned with the dead sacrifice but poured out beside the holy altar. The now dead sin offering was burned, but the blood, the life, returned to God. In peace-offerings of various sorts there was the common meal in which the common life was typified.
In the claim of the first-fruits of all crops, of all flocks and of all increase, God emphasized the common life in production; asserted His claim to the total life of His people and their products. God claimed the lives of all as belonging essentially to Himself and a man must recognize this by paying a ransom price (Exo_30:12). This did not purchase for the man a right to his own life in separation from God, for it was in no sense an equivalent in value to the man's time. It the rather committed the man to living the common life with God, without which recognition the man was not fit to live at all. And the use of this recognition-money by the priests in the temple was regarded as placing the man who paid his money in a sort of continuous worshipful service in the tabernacle (or temple) itself (Ech 30:11-16).
2. The Breach in the Unity
In both Old Testament and New Testament the assumption of unity between God and man stands over against the contrasted fact that there is a radical breach in this unity. This breach is recognized in all God's relations to men; and even when healed it is always subject to new failures which must be provided for, by the daily oblations in the Old Testament, by the continuous intercession of the Christ (Heb_7:25; Heb_9:24) in the New Testament. Even when there is no conscious breach, man is taught to recognize that it may exist and he must avail himself of the appointed means for its healing, e.g. daily sacrifices. This breach is universally attributed to some behavior on man's part. This may be moral or ceremonial uncleanness on man's part. He may have broken with God fundamentally in character or conduct and so by committing sin have incurred guilt; or he may have neglected the fitting recognition that his life is in common with God and so by his disregard have incurred uncleanness. After the first breach between God and man it is always necessary that man shall approach God on the assumption that this breach needs healing, and so always come with an offering. In human nature the sin breach is rooted and universal (Rom_3:9-19; Rom_5:12-14).
3. Means for Expressing, Restoring and Maintaining
Numerous and various means were employed for expressing this essential unity of life, for restoring it since it was broken off in sin, and for maintaining it. These means were primarily spiritual and ethical but made extensive use of material substances, physical acts and symbolical ceremonials; and these tended always to obscure and supplant the spiritual and ethical qualities which it was their function to exhibit. The prophet came to the rescue of the spiritual and ethical and reached his highest insight and function in the doctrine of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh through whom God was to be united with a redeemed race (compare among many passages, Isa_49:1-7; Isa_66:18; Y 22:27ff).
Atonement is conceived in both Old Testament and New Testament as partly personal and partly social, extending to the universal conception. The acts and attitudes by which it is procured, restored and maintained are partly those of the individual alone (Y 51), partly those in which the individual secures the assistance of the priest or the priestly body, and partly such as the priest performs for the whole people on his own account. This involves the distinction that in Israel atonement was both personal and social, as also were both sin and uncleanness. Atonement was made for the group by the priest without specific participation by the people although they were, originally at least, to take cognizance of the fact and at the time. At all the great feasts, especially upon the DAY OF ATONEMENT (which see) the whole group was receptively to take conscious part in the work of atonement (Num_29:7-11).
The various sacrifices and offerings by means of which atonement was effected in the life and worship of Israel will be found to be discussed under the proper words and are to be spoken of here only summarily. The series of offerings, guilt-offerings, burnt-offerings, sin-offerings, peace-offerings, reveal a sense of the breach with God, a conviction of the sin making the breach and an ethical appreciation of the holiness of God entirely unique among religions of ancient or modern times, and this fact must never be overlooked in interpreting the New Testament Christian doctrine of the Atonement. In the Old Testament there are sins and sinful circumstances for which no atonement is possible. Many passages, indeed, almost seem to provide against atonement for any voluntary wrongdoing (e.g. Lev_4:2, Lev_4:13, Lev_4:22, Lev_4:27; Lev_5:14). This is, no doubt, an extreme interpretation, out of harmony with the general spirit of the Old Testament, but it does show how seriously sin ought to be taken under the Old Testament r?gime. No atonement for murder could make possible the residence of the murderer again in that section of the land where the murder was done (Num_35:33), although the land was not by the murder rendered unfit for occupation by others. When Israel sinned in making the golden calf, God refused to accept any atonement (Exo_32:20) until there had been a great loss of life from among the sinners. No repentance could find atonement for the refusal to follow Yahweh's lead at Kadesh-barnea (Num_14:20-25), and complete atonement was effected only when all the unbelieving generation had died in the wilderness (Num_26:65; Num_32:10); i.e. no atonement was possible, but the people died in that sin, outside the Land of Promise, although the sin was not allowed to cut off finally from Yahweh (Num_14:29 f).
Permanent uncleanness or confirmed disease of an unclean sort caused permanent separation from the temple and the people of Yahweh (e.g. Lev_7:20 f), and every uncleanness must be properly removed (Lev_5:2; Lev_17:15; Lev_22:2-8; Deu_23:10 f). A house in which an unclean disease was found must be cleansed - have atonement made for it (Lev_14:53), and in extreme cases must be utterly destroyed (Lev_14:43).
After childbirth (Lev_12:7 f) and in all cases of hemorrhage (compare Lev_15:30) atonement must be effected by prescribed offerings, a loss, diminution, or pollution of blood, wherein is the life, having been suffered. All this elaborate application of the principle of atonement shows the comprehensiveness with which it was sought by the religious teachers to impress the people with the unity of all life in the perfectly holy and majestic God whom they were called upon to serve. Not only must the priests be clean who bear the vessels of the Lord (Isa_52:11), but all the people must be clean also from all defilement of flesh and spirit, seeking perfect holiness in the fear of their God (compare 2Co_7:1).
III. The Atonement of Jesus Christ
1. Preparation for New Testament Doctrine
All the symbols, doctrine and examples of atonement in the Old Testament among the Hebrews find their counterpart, fulfillment and complete explanation in the new covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ (Mat_26:28; Heb_12:24). By interpreting the inner spirit of the sacrificial system, by insisting on the unity and holiness of God, by passionate pleas for purity in the people, and especially by teaching the principle of vicarious suffering for sin, the Prophets laid the foundation in thought-forms and in religious atmosphere for such a doctrine of atonement as is presented in the life and teaching of Jesus and as is unfolded in the teaching of His apostles.
The personal, parabolic sufferings of Hosea, the remarkable elaboration of the redemption of spiritual Israel through a Suffering Servant of Yahweh and the extension of that redemption to all mankind as presented in Isa 40 through 66, and the same element in such psalms as Ps 22, constitute a key to the understanding of the work of the Christ that unifies the entire revelation of God's righteousness in passing over human sins (Rom_3:24 f). Yet it is remarkable that such a conception of the way of atonement was as far as possible from the general and average Jewish mind when Jesus came. In no sense can the New Testament doctrine of the Atonement be said to be the product of the thought and spirit of the times.
2. The One Clear Fact
However much theologians may disagree as to the rationale of the Atonement, there is, as there can be, no question that Jesus and all His interpreters in the New Testament represent the Atonement between God and men as somehow accomplished through Jesus Christ. It is also an agreed fact in exegesis that Jesus and His apostles understood His death to be radically connected with this Atonement.
(1) Jesus Himself teaches that He has come to reveal the Father (Joh_14:9), to recover the lost (Luk_19:10), to give life to men (Joh_6:33; Joh_10:10), to disclose and establish the kingdom of heaven (or of God), gathering a few faithful followers through whom His work will be perpetuated (Joh_17:2; Mat_16:13); that salvation, personal and social, is dependent upon His person (Joh_6:53; Joh_14:6). He cannot give full teaching concerning His death but He does clearly connect His sufferings with the salvation He seeks to give. He shows in Luk_4:16 and Luk_22:37 that He understands Isa 52 through 53 as realized in Himself; He is giving Himself (and His blood) a ransom for men (Mat_20:28; Mat_26:26; compare 1Co_11:23). He was not a mere martyr but gave Himself up willingly, and voluntarily (Joh_10:17 f; Gal_2:20), in accordance with the purpose of God (Act_2:23), as the Redeemer of the world, and expected that by His lifting up all men would be drawn to Him (Joh_12:31-33). It is possible to explain the attention which the Evangelists give to the death of Jesus only by supposing that they are reflecting the importance which they recall Jesus Himself to have attached to His death.
(2) All the New Testament writers agree in making Jesus the center of their idea of the way of salvation and that His death is an essential element in His saving power. This they do by combining Old Testament teaching with the facts of the life and death of the Lord, confirming their conclusion by appeal to the Resurrection. Paul represents himself as holding the common doctrine of Christianity at the time, and from the beginning, when in 1Co_15:3 he sums up his teaching that salvation is secured through the death and resurrection of Jesus according to the Scriptures. Elsewhere (Eph_2:16, Eph_2:18; 1Ti_2:5; compare Act_4:12) in all his writings he emfasizes his belief that Jesus Christ is the one Mediator between God and man, by the blood of His cross (Col_1:20; 1Co_2:2), removing the sin barrier between God and men. Peter, during the life of Jesus so full of the current Jewish notion that God accepted the Jews de facto, in his later ministry makes Jesus in His death the one way to God (Act_4:12; 1Pe_1:2, 1Pe_1:18, 1Pe_1:19; 1Pe_2:21, 1Pe_2:24; 1Pe_3:18).
John has this element so prominent in his Gospel that radical critical opinion questions its authorship partly on that account, while the epistles of John and the Revelation are, on the same ground, attributed to later Greek thought (compare 1Jo_1:7; 1Jo_2:2; 1Jo_3:5; 1Jo_4:10; Rev_1:5; Rev_5:9). The Epistle to the Hebrews finds in Jesus the fulfillment and extension of all the sacrificial system of Judaism and holds that the shedding of blood seems essential to the very idea of remission of sins (Heb_9:22; compare Heb_2:17; Heb_7:26 f; Heb_9:24-28).
3. How Shall We Understand the Atonement?
When we come to systematize the teaching concerning the Atonement we find, as in all doctrine, that definite system is not offered us in the New Testament, but all system, if it is to have any value for Christianity, must find its materials and principles in the New Testament. Proceeding in this way some features may be stated positively and finally, while others must be presented interrogatively, recognizing that interpretations may differ.
(1) An initial consideration is that the Atonement originates with God who ?was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself? (2Co_5:19), and whose love gave Jesus to redeem sinful men (Joh_3:16; Rom_5:8, etc.). In all atonement in Old Testament and New Testament the initiative is of God who not only devises and reveals the way to reconciliation, but by means of angels, Prophets, priests and ultimately His only begotten Son applies the means of atonement and persuades men to accept the proffered reconciliation. Nothing in the speculation concerning the Atonement can be more false to its true nature than making a breach between God and His Christ in their attitude toward sinful men.
(2) It follows that atonement is fundamental in the nature of God in His relations to men, and that redemption is in the heart of God's dealing in history. The ?Lamb slain from the foundation of the world? (Rev_13:8 the King James Version and the English Revised Version; compare Rev_5:5-7) is the interpreter of the seven-sealed book of God's providence in history. In Jesus we behold the Lamb of God taking away the sin of the world (Joh_1:29).
(3) The question will arise in the analysis of the doctrine: How does the death of Christ save us? No specific answer has ever been generally satisfactory. We have numerous theories of the Atonement. We have already intimated that the answer to this question will depend upon our idea of the nature of God, the nature of sin, the content of salvation, the nature of man, and our idea of Satan and evil spirits. We ought at once to dismiss all merely quantitative and commercial conceptions of exchange of merit. There is no longer any question that the doctrines of imputation, both of Adam's sin and of Christ's righteousness, were overwrought and applied by the early theologians with a fatal exclusiveness, without warrant in the Word of God. On the other hand no theory can hold much weight that presupposes that sin is a thing of light consequence in the nature of man and in the economy of God. Unless one is prepared to resist unto blood striving against sin (Heb_12:2-4), he cannot know the meaning of the Christ. Again, it may be said that the notion that the death of Christ is to be considered apart from His life, eternal and incarnate life, as the atoning work, is far too narrow to express the teaching of the Bible and far too shallow to meet the demands of an ethical conscience.
It would serve clearness if we reminded ourselves that the question of how in the Atonement may involve various elements. We may inquire: (a) for the ground on which God may righteously receive the sinner; (b) for the means by which God places the restoration within the reach of the sinner; (c) for the influence by which the sinner is persuaded to accept the reconciliation; (d) for the attitude or exercise of the sinner toward God in Christ wherein he actually enters the state of restored union with God. The various theories have seemed to be exclusive, or at least mutually antagonistic, largely because they have taken partial views of the whole subject and have emphasized some one feature of the whole content. All serious theories partly express the truth and all together are inadequate fully to declare how the Daystar from on high doth guide our feet into the way of peace (Luk_1:79).
(4) Another question over which theologians have sorely vexed themselves and each other concerns the extent of the Atonement, whether it is available for all men or only for certain particular, elect ones. That controversy may now be passed by. It is no longer possible to read the Bible and suppose that God relates himself sympathetically with only a part of the race. All segregated passages of Scripture formerly employed in support of such a view have now taken their place in the progressive self-interpretation of God to men through Christ who is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world (1Jo_2:2). No man cometh unto the Father but by Him (Joh_14:6): but whosoever does thus call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Joe_2:32; Act_2:21). See also ATONEMENT, DAY OF; PROPITIATION; RECONCILIATION; SACRIFICE.
Literature
In the vast literature on this subject the following is suggested: Articles by Orr in HDB; by Mackenzie in Standard Bible Dictionary; in the Catholic Encyclopedia; in Jewish Encyclopedia; by Simyon in Hastings, DCG; J. McLeod Campbell, The Nature of the Atonement; John Champion, The Living Atonement; W. M. Clow, The Cross in Christian Experience; T. J. Crawford, The Doctrine of Holy Scripture Respecting the Atonement; R. W. Dale, The Atonement; J. Denney, The Death of Christ: Its Place and Interpretation in the New Testament, and The Atonement and the Modern Mind; W. P. DuBose, The Soteriology of the New Testament; P. T. Forsyth, The Cruciality of the Cross; J. Scott Lidgett, The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement; Ochenham, The Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement; A. Ritschl, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, I, II; Riviere, Le dogme de la r?demption; D. W. Simon, Reconciliation by Incarnation; W. L. Walker, The Cross and the Kingdom; various writers, The Atonement and Modern Religious Thought.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.

Atonement (see Rom_11:15; 2Co_5:18-19). In ecclesiastical writers, and in the canons of Councils, the word rendered atonement is employed to signify the reconciliation of offenders to the Church after a due course of penitence. Of this there are said to have been two kinds: the one consisting merely in the remission of punishment; the other, in the restoration of the penitent to all the rights and privileges of communion. For the doctrine of Atonement, see articles Sacrifices.
The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.

Exo_29:36 (b) The word literally means "to cover up." The blood of the sacrifices in the Old Testament did cover up the sins of the believers, but not until CHRIST shed His Blood were the sins blotted out. (See also Rom_3:25).
Wilson's Dictionary of Bible Types
press 1957.

Atonement
(expressed in Hebrews by כָּפִר, kaphar', to cover over sin, hence to forgive; Gr. καταλλαγή, reconciliation, as usually rendered), the satisfaction offered to divine justice for the sins of mankind by the death of Jesus Christ, by virtue of which all penitent believers in Christ are reconciled to God, and freed from the penalties of sin.
I. Scripture Doctrine. —
1. The words used to describe Christ's work. — The redeeming work of Christ, in its several aspects, is denoted in Scripture by various terms, namely, reconciliation, propitiation, expiation, atonement, redemption, satisfaction, substitution, and salvation. The following summary of the uses and meanings of these terms is taken, with slight modifications, from Angus, Bible Hand-book, § 329.
(a.) Looking into the English N.T., we find “reconciliation” and “reconcile” in several passages, in all of which (except one) the Greek word is some form of ἀλλάσσω, “to produce a change between parties” (when, for example, they have been at variance); in turning to the Sept. we find this word never used in this sense at all, nor have the many passages in the O.T., which speak of “making reconciliation,” any verbal reference to these passages in the N.T. The idea is involved in several passages, but it is never expressed by this word, nor by any single word. “To turn away anger,” “to restore to favor,” “to accept,” are the common expressions, generally forms of רָצָהand δεκτός (Isa_56:7; Isa_60:7; Jer_6:20; Lev_19:7). Hence the conclusion, that in the word of the N.T. translated “reconcile” there is reference only to the change or effect produced by some measure of mercy, and not to the nature of that measure itself: it describes merely the change produced in our relation to God; his moral sentiment of displeasure against sin (called his “wrath”) is appeased, and the sinner's enmity and misgivings are removed. That there is this double change may be gathered from the following passages: Heb_10:26-27; Rom_5:9; Heb_9:26; Heb_9:28; 2Co_5:18-20; Eph_2:16; 1Co_7:11; Col_1:20-21.
(b.) In one passage, however (Heb_2:17), we have in Greek another word, ἱλάσκομαι, translated also “make reconciliation.” Its meaning may be gathered from the passages in the O.T. in which it occurs. It is, in fact, the constant rendering of a word translated in the English version “to make reconciliation” or “to atone for” (Lev_6:30; Lev_8:15; Eze_45:20; Dan_9:24, etc.).
(c.) But it would excite surprise if this were the only passage in the N.T. where this phrase is found. It occurs again, in fact, in Rom_3:25; 1Jn_2:2; 1Jn_4:10; but in each of these passages it is translated PROPITIATION, a word which does not occur in the O.T. EXPIATION, again, does not occur in the N.T., and but once in the O.T. (Num_35:33, marg.); it is the same word, however, as is translated elsewhere “to make reconciliation” or “to atone for.” ATONEMENT itself does not occur in the N.T., except in Rom_5:2, and there it has no connection with the O.T. phrase, but is the same word as is translated “reconciliation” in the first sense above indicated; a change, that is, of state between parties previously at variance.
(d.) Thus far, therefore, the result is clear. Reconciliation and atonement are, in all the N.T., except Heb_2:17, translations of the same word, and mean the state of friendship and acceptance into which the Gospel introduces us. “Reconciliation” in the sense in which it is used in Heb_2:17, and “atonement” in the uniform sense of the Old Testament, “propitiation” in the New Testament, and “expiation” in the Old, are all different renderings of one and the same Hebrew and Greek words כָּפִר, kaphar (in the Piel form כַּפֵּר) and ἐξιλάσκομαι, in some of their forms. These words, which may be regarded as one, have two senses, each involving the other. They mean to appease, pacify, or propitiate (Gen_33:20; Pro_16:14; Eze_16:63); and also to clear from guilt (1Sa_3:14; Psa_65:3; Pro_16:6; Isa_6:7, etc.). In propitiation, we have prominence given to the first idea; in expiation, to the second; in atonement, we have a distinct reference to both.
(e.) The thing which atones, propitiates, or expiates is called in Greek ὶλασμός, ἐξιλασμός, and λύτρον, all translations of two derivatives of the Hebrew word כָּפִר( כְּפֻרַיםand כֹּפֶר), i.e. price or covering.
(f.) The use of λύτρον for כֹּפֶרintroduces another form of expression, “redemption.” This word, as a noun, always represents in the N.T. λύτρωσις or ἀπολύτρωσις. Both are descriptive of the act of procuring the liberation of another by paying some λύτρον or ἄποινα, i.e. “ransom” or “forfeit,” and hence always in the N.T. of the state of being ransomed in this way. These words mean (1) to buy back, by paying the price, what has been sold (Lev_25:25), and (2) to redeem what has been devoted by substituting something else in its place (Lev_27:27; Exo_13:13; Psa_72:14; Psa_130:8; Isa_63:9). The price paid is called λύτρον
(Mat_20:28; Mar_10:45), ἀντίλυτρον (1Ti_2:6), the Hebrew terms being גְּאֻלָּהand פַּדְיוֹן, answering precisely to
λύτρον, and כֹּפֶר, which again answers to ἱλασμός. In 1Ti_2:6, this ransom is said to be Christ himself. “Redemption,” therefore, is generally a state of deliverance by means of ransom. Hence it is used to indicate deliverance from punishment or guilt (Eph_1:7; Col_1:14); sanctification, which is deliverance from the dominion of sin (1Pe_1:18); the resurrection, which is the actual deliverance of the body from the grave, the consequence of sin (Rom_8:23); completed salvation, which is actual deliverance from all evil (Eph_1:14; Eph_4:30; 1Co_1:30; Tit_2:14). Once it is used without reference to sin (Hebrews). 11:35), and perhaps in Luk_21:28.
(g.) Another word, translated “redemption” (ἀγοράζω, Gal_3:13; Gal_4:5; Rev_5:9; Rev_14:3-4), means, as it is everywhere else translated, to buy, referring to a purchase made in the market. What is paid in this case is called τηεή (price), and this price is said to he Christ (Gal_3:13), or his blood (Rom_5:9). In Act_20:28, the word rendered “purchase” (περιποιεῖσθαι) has no reference to redemption or to price, but means simply “acquired for himself:” the following words, however, indicate that the sense is not materially different from purchasing, as that term is used elsewhere.
(h.) The word “satisfaction” is not found in the N.T., but it occurs twice in the Old (Num_35:31-32). It is there a translation of כֹּפֶרor λύτρον, “that which expiates” or “ransoms.” The use of these terms, in reference to the N.T. doctrine, implies that what was done and paid in the death of our Lord satisfied the claims of justice, and answered all the moral purposes which God deemed necessary, under a system of holy law.. (i.) The word “substitution” is not to be found in either Testament, but the idea is frequently expressed in both: “it shall be accepted FOR him” (Lev_1:4; Lev_7:18) is the O.T. phrase, and the New corresponds. There we find in frequent use ὑπέρ and ἀντί, the former meaning “on behalf of,” “for,” and “instead,” and the latter meaning undoubtedly “instead of.” Much stress ought not to be laid upon the first of these terms, as it is frequently used where it may mean “for the advantage of” (Rom_8:26; Rom_8:31; 2Co_1:2); yet in Joh_15:13, and 1Jn_3:16, it seems to mean “instead of;” and this is certainly the meaning of ἀντί (Mat_20:28; Mar_10:45; see Mat_2:22, “in the room of”). Apart, however, from particular prepositions, three sets of phrases clearly teach this doctrine. (1) Christ was made a curse for us (Gal_3:13); so a similar phrase (2Co_5:21). (2)He gave himself as a sacrifice for our sins (1 Corinthians 15; Eph_5:2; Gal_1:4; 1Ti_2:6; 1Ti_2:14; Heb_7:27; Heb_5:1; Heb_5:3; Heb_10:12; Rom_5:6-8; 1Co_1:13; 1Co_5:7; 1Co_11:24; 1Pe_3:18; 1Pe_4:1). (3) Christ gave his life for our life, or we live by his death (Gal_2:20; Rom_14:15; 2Co_5:15. Compare Rom_16:4; Isaiah 53:45). The idea of substitution is in all these passages, and the phrase, though not scriptural, is a convenient summary of them all.
(j.) “Salvation” is everywhere in the N.T. the representative of σωτηρία or σωτήριον; σωτηρία is always translated “salvation” except in three passages (Act_7:25; Act_27:34, and Heb_11:7, where it refers to temporal deliverance), and the idea included in the term is whatever blessings redemption includes, but without any reference to λύτρον, or anything else as the ground of them. It includes present deliverance (Luk_19:9) or future (Php_1:19; Rom_13:11). “Salvation,” therefore, is the state into which the Gospel introduces all who believe, and without reference to the means used. On turning to the Sept., however, we find that the idea of propitiation is involved even here; σωτήριον is very frequently the translation of שֶׁלֶם(זֶבֻח), peace-offering, θυσία σωτηρίου (Lev_3:1-3; Lev_4:10; Lev_7:20; Lev_11:4; Jdg_20:26; Jdg_21:4). שֶׁלֶםis the sacrifice or retribution restoring peace, and thus the meaning of σωτήριον touches upon the meaning of propitiation. “From this comparison, therefore, of the N.T.. the Sept., and the Hebrew, we gather the following conclusions: Propitiation, giving prominence to the secondary meaning of כָּפִר, kaphar, and the primary meaning of ἐξιλάσκομαι, is an act prompting to the exercise of mercy, and providing for its exercise in a way consistent with justice; Expiation, giving prominence to the primary meaning of כָּפִרand the secondary meaning of ἐξιλάσκομαι, is an act which provides for the removal of sin, and cancels the obligation to punishment; Atonement, giving prominence to both, and meaning expiation and propitiation combined. Christ's atonement is said to be by substitution, for he suffered in our stead, and he bears our sin; and it is by satisfaction, for the broken law is vindicated, all the purposes of punishment are answered with honor to the Lawgiver, and eventual holiness to the Christian. Its result is reconciliation (καταλλαγή); the moral sentiment of justice in God is reconciled to the sinner, and provision is made for the removal of our enmity; and it is redemption, or actual deliverance for a price from sin in its guilt and dominion, from all misery and from death. Salvation is also actual deliverance, but without a discinct reference to a price paid. Atonement, therefore, is something offered to God; redemption or salvation is something bestowed upon man; atonement is the ground of redemption, and redemption is the result of atonement (Isa_53:4-10; Isa_53:12). The design of the first is to satisfy God's justice, the design of the second to make man blessed; the first was finished upon the cross, the second is in daily operation, and will not be completed in the case of the whole church till the consummation of all things (Dan_9:24; Eph_4:30).”
2. The Scripture doctrine of the vicarious sacrifice of Christ is taught in the passages above cited, and indeed seems to underlie the whole “gospel” of salvation contained in the teaching of Christ and his apostles. It may be stated further
(1) that the sacrifices of the O.T. were (at least many of them) expiatory [see this shown under EXPIATION SEE EXPIATION ], and the terms used by Christ and his apostles (ransom, sacrifice, offering, etc.) were necessarily understood by their hearers in the sense which they had been accustomed for ages to attach to them.
(2) If this be so, then nothing could “be more misleading, and even absurd, than to employ those terms which, both among Jews and .Gentiles, were in use to express the various processes and means of atonement and piacular propitiation, if the apostles and Christ himself did not intend to represent his death strictly as an expiation for sin; misleading, because such would be the natural and necessary inference from the terms themselves, which had acquired this as their established meaning; and absurd, because if, as Socinians say, they used them metaphorically, there was not even an ideal resemblance between the figures and that which it was intended to illustrate. So totally irrelevant, indeed, will those terms appear to any notion entertained of the death of Christ which excludes its expiatory character, that to assume that our Lord and his apostles used them as metaphors is profanely to assume them to be such writers as would not in any other case be tolerated; writers wholly unacquainted with the commonest rules of language, and, therefore, wholly unfit to be teachers of others, and that not only in religion, but in things of inferior importance” (Watson, Dict. s.v. Expiation).
Immediately upon the first public manifestation of Christ, John the Baptist declares, when he sees Jesus coming to him, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (Joh_1:29); where it is obvious that, when John called our Lord “the Lamb of God,” he spoke of him under a sacrificial character, and of the effect of that sacrifice as an atonement for the sins of mankind. This was said of our Lord even before he entered on his public office; but if any doubt should exist respecting the meaning of the Baptist's expression, it is removed by other passages, in which a similar allusion is adopted, and in which it is specifically applied to the death of Christ as an atonement for sin. In the Acts (Act_8:32) the following words of Isaiah (Isa_53:7) are by Philip the Evangelist distinctly applied to Christ and to his death: “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth: in his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth.” This particular part of the prophecy being applied to our Lord's death, the whole must relate to the same subject, for it is undoubtedly one entire prophecy; and the other expressions in it are still stronger: “He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed: the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” In the First Epistle of Peter is also a strong and very apposite text, in which the application of the term “lamb” to our Lord, and the sense in which it is applied, can admit of no doubt:
“Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1Pe_1:18-19). It is therefore evident that the prophet Isaiah, seven hundred years before the birth of Jesus; that John the Baptist, at the commencement of Christ's ministry; and that Peter, his companion and apostle, subsequent to the transaction, speak of Christ's death as an atonement for sin under the figure of a lamb sacrificed. The passages that follow plainly and distinctly declare the atoning efficacy of Christ's death: “Now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” “Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Heb_9:26; Heb_9:28). “This man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin, forever sat down on the right hand of God; for by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified” (Heb_10:12). It is observable that nothing similar is said of the death of any other person, and that no such efficacy is imputed to any other martyrdom. “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us; much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him; for if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” (Rom_5:8-10). The words “reconciled to God by the death of his Son” show that his death had an efficacy in our reconciliation; but reconciliation is only preparatory to salvation. “He has reconciled us to his Father in his cross, and in the body of his flesh through death” (Col_1:20; Col_1:22). What is said of reconciliation in these texts is in some others spoken of sanctification, which is also preparatory to salvation. “‘We are sanctified” — how? “by the offering of the body of Christ once for all” (Heb_10:10). In the same epistle (Heb_10:29), the blood of Jesus is called “the blood of the covenant by which we are sanctified.” In these and many other passages that occur in different parts of the New Testament, it is therefore asserted that the death of Christ was efficacious in the procuring of human salvation. Such expressions are used concerning no other person, and the death of no other person; and it is therefore evident that Christ's death included something more than a confirmation of his preaching; something more than a pattern of a holy and patient martyrdom; something more than a necessary antecedent to his resurrection, by which he gave a grand and clear proof of our resurrection from the dead. Christ's death was all these, but it was much more. It was an atonenment for the sins of mankind, and in this way only it became the accomplishment of our eternal redemption. The teaching of the New Testament, and the agreement of the statements of Christ with those of his apostles on this subject, are thus set forth (without regard to theological distinctions) by Dr. Thomson, bishop of Gloucester: “God sent his Son into the world to redeem lost and ruined man from sin and death, and the Son willingly took upon him the form of a servant for this purpose; and thus the Father and the Son manifested their love for us. God the Father laid upon his Son the weight of the sins of the whole world, so that he bare in his own body the wrath which men must else have borne, because there was no other way of escape for them; and thus the atonement was a manifestation of divine justice. The effect of the atonement thus wrought is that man is placed in a new position, freed from the dominion of sin, and able to follow holiness, and thus the doctrine of the atonement ought to work in all the hearers a sense of love, of obedience, and of self-sacrifice. In shorter words, the sacrifice of the death of Christ is a proof of divine love and of divine justice, and is for us a document of obedience. Of the four great writers of the New Testament, Peter, Paul, and John set forth every one of these points.
Peter, the ‘witness of the sufferings of Christ,' tells us that we were ‘redeemed with the blood of Jesus, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot;' says that ‘Christ bare our sins in his own body on the tree.' If we ‘have tasted that the Lord is gracious,' we must not rest satisfied with a contemplation of our redeemed state, but must live a life worthy of it. No one can well doubt, who reads the two epistles, that the love of God and Christ, and the justice of God, and the duties thereby laid on us, all have their value in them; but the love is less dwelt on than the justice, while the most prominent idea of all is the moral and practical working of the cross of Christ upon the lives of men. With St. John, again, all three points find place: that Jesus willingly laid down his life for us, and is an advocate with the Father; that He is also the propitiation, the suffering sacrifice for our sins; and that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin, for that whoever is born of God doth not commit sin: all are put forward. The death of Christ is both justice and love — both a propitiation and an act of loving self-surrender; but the moral effect upon us is more prominent even than these. In the epistles of Paul the three elements are all present: in such expressions as a ransom, a propitiation who was ‘made sin-for us,' the wrath of God against sin, and the mode in which it was turned away, are presented to us. Yet not wrath alone: ‘The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead; and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again.' Love in him begets love in us; and, in our reconciled state, the holiness which we could not practice before becomes easy. Now in which of these points is there the semblance of contradiction between the apostles and their Master? In none of them. In the gospels, as in the epistles, Jesus is held up as the sacrifice and victim, quaffing a cup from which his human nature shrank, feeling in him a sense of desolation such as we fail utterly to comprehend on a theory of human-motives. Yet no one takes from him his precious redeeming life; he lays it down of-himself out of his great love for men; but men are to deny themselves, and take up their cross, and tread in his steps. They are his friends only if they keep his commands and follow his footsteps” (Aids to Faith, p. 337. See also Starr and Flatt, Biblical Theology, § 65-70).
II. History of the Doctrine. —
1. The Fathers. — In the early ages of the church the atoning work of Christ was spoken of generally in the words of Scripture. The value of the sufferings and death of Christ, in the work of redemption, was from the beginning both held in Christian faith, and also plainly set forth, but the doctrine was not scientifically developed by the primitive fathers. But it is one thing to admit that the atonement was not scientifically apprehended, and quite another thing to assert that it was not really held at all in the sense of vicarious sacrifice. The relation between the death of Christ and the remission of sins was not a matter of much dispute in that early period. The person of Christ was the great topic of metaphysico-theological inquiry, and it was not until after this was settled by the general prevalence of the Nicene Creed that anthropological and soteriological questions come up into decided prominence. Baur (in whose Versohnungslehre this subject is treated with ample learning, though often with dogmatic assertion of conclusions arrived at hastily and without just ground) admits that in the writings of the apostolical fathers there is abundant recognition of the sacrificial and redemptive death of Christ. Thus Barnabas: “The Lord condescended to deliver his body to death, that, by remission of our sins, we might be sanctified, and this is effected by the shedding of his blood” (c. v). So also Clement quotes Isaiah 53 and Psa_22:7; Psa_22:9, adding,
“His blood was shed for our salvation; by the will of God he has given his body for our body, his soul for our soul.” Similar passages exist in Ignatius and Polycarp, and stronger still in the Epist. ad Diognet. ch. 9. (See citations in Shedd, History of Doctrines, bk. 5, ch. 1; Hagenbach, Hist. of Doctrines, § 68; Thomson, Bampton Lectures, 1853, Lect. 6). In the second century Justin Martyr (A.D. 147) says that “the Father willed that his Christ should take upon himself the curses of all for the whole race of man” (Dial. c. Tryph. 95). “In Justin may be found the idea of satisfaction rendered by Christ through suffering, at least lying at the bottom, if not clearly grasped in the form of conscious thought” (Dial. c. Tryph. c. 30; Neander, Ch. History, 1, 642). The victory of the death of Christ over the power of the devil begins now to play a prominent part in the idea of the atonement. Baur maintains that this was really due to Gnostic ideas taken up into the line of Christian thought; “that as the relation between the Demiurge and Redeemer was, in the Marcionite and Ophitic systems, essentially hostile, so the death of Jesus was a contrivance of the Demiurge, which failed of its purpose and disappointed him.” Baur asserts that Irenaeus (A.D. 180) borrowed this idea from Gnosticism, only substituting Satan for the Demiurge. But Dorner shows clearly that Irenseus, with entire knowledge of Gnosticism, repelled all its ideas, and that Baur's charge rests upon a misinterpretation of a passage (adv. Hoer. v. 1, 1) in which, although the Satanic idea is prominent, it is far removed from Gnosticism (Dorner, Person of Christ, 1, 463; see also Shedd, Hist. of Doctrines, 2, 213). Baur's theory that the foundations of the doctrine of vicarious satisfaction were laid in the notion that it was the claims of Satan, and not of God, that were satisfied, falls to the ground; for “if this theory can be found in any of the fathers, it is in Irenaeus” (Shedd, 1. c.). Nevertheless, it is true (though not in the Gnostic spirit) that Irenaeus represents the sufferings of Christ as made necessary by the hold of Satan on man, and in order to a rightful deliverance from that bondage. Tertullian (A.D. 200) uses the word satisfactio, but not with reference to the vicarious sufferings of Christ, yet in several of his writings he assumes the efficacious work of Christ's sufferings for salvation. In the Alexandrian fathers we find, as might be expected, the Gnostic influence more obvious, and the idea of ransom paid to the devil comes out fully in Origen (A.D. 230). Yet it is going quite too far to say that Origen does not recognize the vicarious suffering of Christ; so (Hom. 24 on Numbers) he says that “the entrance of sin into the world made a propitiation necessary, and there can be no propitiation without a sacrificial offering.” Dr. Shedd finds the general doctrine of the Alexandrian school inconsistent with vicarious atonement, and interprets the special passages which imply it accordingly; but in this he differs from Thomasius (Origenes, Nurnb. 1837) and Thomson (Bampton Lectures). Origen doubtless held the vicarious atonement, though it was mixed up with speculations as to the value of the blood of the martyrs, and debased by his fanciful views of the relation of Christ's work to the devil. This was carried to a greater extent by later fathers, e.g. Gregory of Nyssa (A.D. 370), who says in substance that the devil was cheated in the transaction by a just retaliation for his deception of men: “Men have come under the dominion of the devil by sin. Jesus offered himself to the devil as the ransom for which he should release all others. The crafty devil assented, because he cared more for the one Jesus, who was so much superior to him, than for all the rest. But, notwithstanding his craft, he was deceived, since he could not retain Jesus in his power. It was, as it were, a deception on the part of God (ἀπάτη τίς ἐστι τρόπον τινά), that Jesus veiled his divine nature, which the devil would have feared, by means of his humanity, and thus deceived the devil by the appearance of flesh” (Orat. Catech. 22-26). Athanasius (A.D. 370), on the other hand, not only maintained the expiation of Christ, but rejected the fanciful Satan theory (De Incarn. Erbi, 6, et al.). Cyril of Jerusalem (A.D. 350) (Catech. 12, § 33) enters more deeply into this doctrine, developing a theory to show why it was necessary that Jesus should die for man. Similar views were expressed by Eusebius of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzen, Cyril of Alexandria, and Chrysostom (see Giescler, Dogmengeschichte, p. 383). Several of these fathers also maintain that Christ, by his death, did more than would have been necessary for the redemption of men. They undertook to show that Christ alone was able to achieve redemption, and discussed the qualities which were necessary for his redemptive character. These discussions are especially met with in the writings against the Arians and the Nestorians. Augustine (A.D. 398) was occupied more, in all his controversies, with anthropology than with soteriology, but the vicarious atonement is clearly taught or implied in his De Peccat. Meritis, 1, 56, and in other places; but he called those dolts (stuli) who maintained that God could provide no other means of redemption (De Agone Christ. c. 10). Gregory the Great (A.D. 590) taught the doctrine with great clearness, and approached the scientific precision of a later age (Moralia, 17, 46). Little is to be added to these statements up to the time of Anselm. Enough has been said to show that, although the earlier view may have been incomplete and mingled with error, it is wrong to assert, as Baur and his English followers (Jowett, Garden, etc.) do, that the “doctrine of substitution is not in the fathers, and lay dormant till the voice of Anselm woke it; or that Anselm was the inventor of the doctrine.” (Comp. Brit. and For Ex. Review, Jani. 1861, p. 48.)
2. The Scholastic Period. — Nevertheless, Anselm (t 1109) undoubtedly gave the doctrine a more scientific form thy giving the central position to the idea of satisfaction to the divine justice (Cur Dens homo? transl. in Bibliotheca Sacra, vols. 11, 12). Nicholas of Methone (11th or 12th century?), in the Greek Church, developed the necessity of vicarious satisfaction from the nature of God and his relations to man, but it is not certain that he had not seen Anselm's writings. Anselm's view is, in substance, as follows: “‘The infinite guilt which man had contracted by the dishonor of his sin against the infinitely great God could be atoned for by no mere creature; only the God-man Christ Jesus could render to God the infinite satisfaction required. God only can satisfy himself. The human nature of Christ enables him to incur, the infinity of his divine nature to pay this debt. But it was incumbent upon Christ as a man to order his life according to the law of God; the obedience of his life, therefore, was not able to render satisfaction for our guilt. But, although he was under obligation to live in obedience to the law, as the Holy One he was under no obligation to die. Seeing, then, that he nevertheless voluntarily surrendered his infinitely precious life to the honor of God, a recompense from God became his due, and his recompense consists in the forgiveness of the sins of his brethren” (Chambers, Encycl. s.v.; Neander, Hist. of Dogmas, Bohn's ed. 2:517). Anselm rejects entirely the claims of Satan, and places the necessity of atonement entirely in the justice of God. His theory is defective with regard to the appropriation of the merits of Christ by the believer; but, on the whole, it is substantially that in which the Christian Church has rested from that time forward. His doctrine was opposed by Abelard, who treated the atonement in its relation to the love of God, and not to his justice, giving it moral rather than legal significance. Peter Lombard seems confusedly to blend Abelard's views and Anselm's. Thomas Aquinas developed Anselm's theory, and brought out also the superabundant merit of his death, while he does not clearly affirm the absolute necessity of the death of Christ (Hagenbach, Hist. of Doctrines, § 181). SEE AQUINAS.
Bernard of Clairvaux, in opposition to Abelard, brought up again the idea of the claims of Satan. Duns Scotus, in opposition to Anselm, denied the necessity of Christ's death, and denied also that the satisfaction rendered was an equivalent for the claims of justice, holding that God accepted Christ's sacrifice as sufficient. SEE ACCEPTILATIO. On the whole, the scholastic period left two streams of thought closely allied, yet with an element of difference afterward fully developed, viz. the Anselmic, of the satisfaction of divine justice, absolutely considered; and that of Aquinas, that this satisfaction was relative, and also superabundant. The Romish doctrine of supererogation and indulgence doubtless grew out of this.
3. From the Reformation — All the great confessions — Greek, Roman, Lutheran, Reformed, and Methodist — agree in placing the salvation of the sinner in the mediatorial work of Christ. But there are various modes of apprehending the doctrine in this period ‘(see Winer, Comparat. Darstellung, ch. 7). The Council of Trent confounds justification with sanctification, and hence denies that the satisfaction of Christ is the sole ground of the remission of sin (Canones, De Justificatione, 7, 8). The Romanist writers generally adopt the “acceptilation” theory of Scotus rather than that of Anselm, and hold that the death of Christ made satisfaction only for sins before baptism, while as to sins after baptism only the eternal punishment due to them is remitted; so that, for the temporal punishment due to them, satisfaction is still required by penance and purgatory. Luther does not treat of satisfaction in any special treatise; he was occupied rather with the appropriation of salvation by faith alone, though he held fast the doctrine of expiation through Christ. So, in Melancthon's Loci, and in the Augsburg Confession (A.D. 1530), the atoning work of Christ is fully stated, but under the head of justifying faith. “Men are justified gratuitously for Christ's sake through faith when they believe that they are received into favor, and that their sins are remitted on account of Christ, who made satisfaction for our transgressions by his death. This faith God imputes to us as righteousness” (Augsburg Confession, art. 4). The distinction between the active and passive obedience of Christ came later; its first clear statement in the Lutheran Church is in the Formula of Concord (1576): “That righteousness which is imputed to the believer simply by the grace of God is the obedience, the suffering, and the resurrection of Christ, by which he has satisfied the claims of the law and atoned for our sins. For as Christ is not merely man, but God and man in one person, he was, as Lord of the law, no more subject to it than he was subject to suffering death; hence not only his obedience to God the Father, as exhibited in his sufferings and death, but also by his righteous fulfillment of the law on our behalf, is imputed to us, and God acquits us of our sins, and regards us as just in view of his complete obedience in what he did and suffered, in life and in death” (Francke, Lib. Symb. 685). Nor did this distinction appear early among the Calvinists any more than among the Lutherans. Calvin joins them together (Institutes, bk. 2, § 16, 5). None of the reformed confessions distinguish between the active and passive obedience before the Formula Consensus Helvetica (1675; comp. Guericke, Symbolik, § 47).
The Socinians deny the vicarious atonement entirely. They assert that satisfaction and forgiveness are incompatible ideas; that the work of atonement is subjective, i.e. the repentance and moral renovation of the sinner; that God needs no reconciliation with man. Christ suffered, not to satisfy the divine justice, but as a martyr to his truth and an example to his followers. Socinus did, however, admit that the death of Christ affords a pledge of divine forgiveness, and of man's resurrection as following Christ's (see Winer, Comp. Darstellung, 7, 1; and comp. Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, § 268; Shedd, Hist. of Doctrines, bk. 5).
In opposition to Socinus, Grotius wrote his Defensio fidei Cathol. de Satisfactione (1617), which forms an epoch in the history of the doctrine. He deduced the necessity of satisfaction from the administrative or rectoral justice of God, and not from his retributive justice. He taught that the prerogative of punishing is to be ascribed to God, not as an injured party, but as moral governor of the world. So the prerogative of substitution, in place of punishment, belongs to God as moral governor. If, by any other means than punishment, he can vindicate the claims of justice, he is at liberty, as moral governor, to use those means. The atonement does thus satisfy justice; and through Christ's voluntary offering, the sinner can be pardoned and the law vindicated. The defect of this theory lies in its not referring the work of Christ sufficiently to the nature of God, contemplating it rather in its moral aspects as an exhibition of the evil of sin. The Dutch Arminian divines bring out more prominently the idea of sacrifice in the death of Christ. The Methodist theology asserts the doctrine of satisfaction strongly, e.g. Watson: Satisfaction [by the death of Christ] by Christ is not to be regarded as a merely fit and wise expedient of government (to which Grotius leans too much), for this may imply that it was one of many other possible expedients, though the best; whereas we have seen that it is everywhere in Scripture represented as necessary to human salvation, and that it is to be concluded that no alternative existed but that of exchanging a righteous government for one careless and relaxed, to the dishonor of the divine attributes, and the sanctioning of moral disorder, or the upholding of such government by the personal and extreme punishment of every offender, or else the acceptance of the vicarious death of an infinitely dignified and glorious being, through whom pardon should be offered, and in whose hands a process for the moral restoration of the lapsed should be placed. The humiliation, sufferings, and death of such a being did most obviously demonstrate the righteous character and administration of God; and if the greatest means we can conceive was employed for this end, then we may safely conclude that the righteousness of God in the forgiveness of sin could not have been demonstrated by inferior means; and as God cannot cease to be a righteous governor, man in that case could have had no hope” (Watson, Theol. Institutes, vol. 2, pt. 2, ch. 20). The Arminian theology did nevertheless maintain that God is free, not necessitated as moral governor, and that the satisfaction of Christ has reference to the general justice of God, and not to his distributive justice. The Methodist theology also brings out prominently the love of God, which is organic and eternal in him — his essential nature — as the source of redemption, and holds that the free manifestation of the divine love is under no law of necessity. Even Ebrard, one of the most eminent modern writers of the Reformed Church, sets this forth as a great service rendered to theology by the Arminians (Ebrard, Lehre der stellvero tretenden Genugthuung, Konigsb. 1857, p. 25; compare also Warren, in Methodist Quarterly, July, 1866, 390 sq.; and, on the other side, Shedd, History of Doctrines, bk. 5, ch. 5; and his Discourses and Essays, 294). Hill (Calvinist), in his Lectures on Divinity (bk. 4, ch. 3), appears to adopt the Grotian theory.
Extent of the Atonement. — One of the most important questions in the modern Church with regard to the atonement is that of its extent, viz. whether the benefits of Christ's death were intended by God to extend to the whole human race, or only to a part. The former view is called universal or general atonement; the latter, particular, or limited. What is called the strict school of Calvinists holds the latter doctrine, as stated in the Westminster Confession. “As God hath appointed the elect unto glory, so hath he, by the eternal and most free purpose of his will, foreordained all the means thereunto. Wherefore they who are elected, being fallen in Adam, are redeemed by Christ; are effectually called unto faith in Christ by his Spirit working in due season; are justified, adopted, sanctified, and kept by his power through faith unto salvation. Neither are any other redeemed by Christ, effectually called, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved, but the elect only” (ch. 3, § 6; comp. also ch. 8, §§ 5 and 8). The so-called moderate (or modern) Calvinists, the Arminians, the Church of England, and the Methodist Episcopal Church, adopt the doctrine of general or universal atonement. SEE CALVINISM.
The advocates of a limited atonement maintain that the atonement cannot properly be considered apart from its actual application, or from the intention of the author in regard to its application; that in strictness of speech, the death of Christ is not an atonement to any until it be applied; that the sufferings of the Lamb of God are therefore truly vicarious, or, in other words, that Christ, in suffering, became a real substitute for his people, was charged with their sins, and bore the punishment of them, and thus has made a full and complete satisfaction to divine justice in behalf of all who shall ever believe on him; that this atonement will eventually be applied to all for whom in the divine intention it was made, or to all to whom God in his sovereignty has been pleased to decree its application. But they believe that although the atonement is to be properly considered as exactly commensurate with its intended application, yet that the Lord Jesus Christ did offer a sacrifice sufficient in its intrinsic value to expiate the sins of the whole world, and that, if it had been the pleasure of God to apply it to every individual, the whole human race would have been saved by its immeasurable worth. They hold, therefore, that, on the ground of the infinite value of the atonement, the offer of salvation can be consistently and sincerely made to all who hear the Gospel, assuring them that if they will believe they shall be saved; whereas, if they willfully reject the overtures of mercy, they will increase their guilt and aggravate their damnation. At the same time, as they believe, the Scriptures plainly teach that the will and disposition to comply with this condition depends upon the sovereign gift of God, and that the actual compliance is secured to those only for whom, in the divine counsels, the atonement was specifically intended. The doctrine, on the other hand, that Christ died for all men, so as to make salvation attainable by all men, is maintained, first and chiefly, on scriptural ground, viz. that, according to the whole tenor of Scripture, the atonenment of Christ was made for all men. The advocates of this view adduce,
(1.) Passages which expressly declare the doctrine.
[a] Those which say that Christ died “for all men,” and speak of his death as an atonement for the sins of the whole world.
[b] Those which attribute an equal extent to the death of Christ as to the effects of the fall.
(2.) Passages which necessarily imply the doctrine, viz. [a] Those which declare that Christ died not only for those that are saved, but for those who do or may perish.
[b] Those which make it the duty of men to believe the Gospel, and place them under guilt and the penalty of death for rejecting it.
[c] Those in which men's failure to obtain salvation is placed to the account of their own opposing wills, and made wholly their own fault. (See the argument in full on the Arminian side, in Watson, Theol. Institutes, 2, 284 sq.; Storr and Flatt, Bibl. Theology, bk. 4, pt. 2; Fletcher, Works, 2, 63 et al.)
The Arminian doctrine is summed up in the declaration that Christ “obtained (impetravit) for all men by his death reconciliation and the forgiveness of sins, but upon this condition, that none actually possess and enjoy this forgiveness of sins except believers” (Acta Synod. Remonst. pt. ii, p. 280; Nicholls, Arminianism and Calvinism, p. 114 sq.). It has been asserted (e.g. by Amyraut, q.v.) that Calvin himself held to general redemption; and certainly his language in his Comm. in Job_3:15-16, and in 1Ti_2:5, seems fairly to assert the doctrine. Comp. Fletcher, Works (N. Y. ed. 2:71); but see also Cunningham, The Reformers (Essay 7). As to the variations of the Calvinistic confessions, see Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, § 249. In the French Reformed Church, the divines of Saumur, Camero, Amyraldus, and Placaeus maintained universal grace (see the articles on these names). The English divines who attended the Synod of Dort (Hall, Hales, Davenant) all advocated general atonement, in which they were followed by Baxter (Universal Redemption; Methodus Theologias; Orme, Life of Baxter, 2, 64). The most able advocate of universal grace in the 17th century was John Goodwin, Redemption Redeemed, 1650 (see Jackson, Life of Goodwin, 1828).
On the other hand, Owen, the so-called strict Calvinists of England, and the Old-School Presbyterian Church in America, adhere to the Westminster Confession, interpreting it as maintaining limited atonement. Their doctrine on the whole subject in substance is, that the atonement was made and intended only for the elect; and that its necessity with respect to them arose out of the eternal justice of God, which required that every individual should receive his due desert; and, consequently, that the sufferings of Christ were the endurance of punishment equivalent in amount of suffering, if not identical in nature (as Owen maintains) with that to which the elect were exposed; and, moreover, that the Meritorious obedience of Christ in fulfilling the law imputes a righteousness to those for whom the atonement secures salvation, which gives them a claim to the reward of righteousness in everlasting life. The differences of view in the two divisions of the Presbyterian Church in America are thus stated by Dr. Duffield: “Old- School Presbyterians regard the satisfaction rendered to the justice of God by the obedience and death of Christ as explicable upon principles of justice recognized among men in strict judiciary procedures. While they concede that there is grace on the part of God in its application to the believer, inasmuch as he has provided in Christ a substitute for him, they nevertheless insist that he is pardoned and justified of God as judge, and as matter of right and strict justice in the eye of the law, inasmuch as his claims against him have all been met and satisfied by his surety. The obligations in the bond having been discharged by. his security, the judge, according to this view, is bound to give sentence of release and acquittal to the original failing party, the grace shown being in the acceptance of the substitute. Their ideas of the nature of the divine justice, exercised in the pardon and justification of the sinner because of the righteousness of Christ, are all taken from the transactions of a court of law. New-School Presbyterians, equally with the Old, concede the grace of God in the substitution of Christ, the whole work of his redemption to be the development of ‘the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Jesus Christ;' but they prefer to regard and speak of the atonement of Christ, his obedience and death, by which he satisfied the justice of God for our sins, as the great expedient and governmental procedure adopted by the great God of heaven and of earth in his character of chief executive, the governor of the universe, in order to magnify his law and make it honorable, rather than as a juridical plea to obtain a sentence in court for discharging an accused party on trial” (Bibliotheca Sacra, 20, 618).
The doctrine of Payne, Wardlaw, Pye Smith, and other so-called moderate Calvinists in England, and of many in America, is in substance that the atonement consists in “that satisfaction for sin which was rendered to God as moral governor of the world by the obedience unto death of his son Jesus Christ. This satisfaction preserves the authority of the moral government of God, and yet enables him to forgive sinners. That this forgiveness could not be given by God without atonement constitutes its necessity. The whole contents of Christ's earthly existence, embracing both his active and passive obedience-a distinction which is unsupported by the Word of God-must be regarded as contributing to the atonement which he made. As to the ‘extent' of the atonement, there is a broad distinction to be made between the sufficiency of the atonement and its efficiency. It may be true that Jehovah did not intend to exercise that influence of the Holy Spirit upon all which is necessary to secure the salvation of any one; but as the atonement was to become the basis of moral government, it was necessary that it should be one of infinite worth, and so in itself adequate to the salvation of all.” In New England the younger Edwards († 1801) modified the Calvinistic doctrine of the atonement, representing it, as the Arminians do, as a satisfaction to the general justice, and not to the distributive justice of God. Among American Calvinistic divines Dr. E. D. Griffin holds a very high place. His “Humble Attempt to reconcile the Differences of Christians” was republished by Dr. E. A. Park in 1859. in a volume of essays on the atonement by eminent New England divines. A summary of it is given in the Bibliotheca Sacra for Jan. 1858, and is noticed in the Methodist Quarterly, April, 1858, p. 311. “Dr. Griffin held that the atonement was not a literal suffering of the penalty, nor a literal satisfaction of the distributive justice of God, nor a literal removal of our desert of eternal death, nor a literal surplusage of Christ's meritorious personal obedience becoming our imputed obedience. On the other hand, the atonement was a divine method by which the literal suffering of the penalty might be dispensed with, by which government could be sustained and honored without inflicting distributive justice, by which the acceptors of the work might be saved, without the removal of their intrinsic desert of hell; and all this without imputing Christ's personal obedience as our personal obedience, but by Christ obtaining a meritorious right to save us, as his own exceeding great reward from God.” The article named in the Bibliotheca Sacra contains a valuable sketch of the rise of the “Edwardean theory of the atonement,” and sums up that theory itself as follows:
“1. Our Lord suffered pains which were substituted for the penalty of the law, and may be called punishment in the more general sense of that word, but were not, strictly and literally, the penalty which the law had threatened.
2. The sufferings of our Lord satisfied the general justice of God, but did not satisfy his distributive justice.
3. The humiliation, pains, and death of our Redeemer were equivalent in meaning to the punishment threatened in the moral law, and thus they satisfied Him who is determined to maintain the honor of this law, but they did not satisfy the demands of the law itself for our punishment.
4. The active obedience, viewed as the holiness of Christ, was honorable to the law, but was not a work of supererogation performed by our substitute, and then transferred and imputed to us, so as to satisfy the requisitions of the law for our own active obedience. The last three statements are sometimes comprehended in the more general proposition that the atonement was equal, in the meaning and spirit of it, to the payment of our debts; but it was not literally the payment of either our debt of obedience or our debt of punishment, or any other debt which we owed to law or distributive justice. Therefore,
5. The law and the distributive justice of God, although honored by the life and death of Christ, will yet eternally demand tie punishment of every one who has sinned.
6. The atonement rendered it consistent and desirable for God to save all who exercise evangelical faith, yet it did not render it obligatory in him, in distributive justice, to save them.
7. The atonement was designed for the welfare of all men, to make the eternal salvation of all men possible, to remove all the obstacles which the honor of the law and of distributive justice presented against the salvation of the non-elect as well as the elect.
8. The atonement does not constitute the reason why some men are regenerated and others not, but this reason is found only in the sovereign, electing will of God: ‘Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.'
9. The atonement is useful on men's account, and in order to furnish new motives to holiness; but it is necessary on God's account, and in order to enable him, as a consistent ruler, to pardon any, even the smallest sin, and therefore to bestow on sinners any, even the smallest favor.” That this so- called “Edwardean theory” is in substance the Arminian theory, is shown by Dr. Warren in the Methodist Quarterly for July, 1860. See also Fiske, The New England Theology (Bibliotheca Sacra, 1865, p. 577).
As to minor forms of opinion we must be very brief. The orthodox Quakers admit the doctrine of the atoning death of Christ, but not the full Anselmic doctrine of satisfaction; thus W. Penn: “We cannot say the sufferings and death of Christ were a strict and rigid satisfaction for that eternal death and misery due to man for sin and transgression. As Christ died for sin, so we must die to sin, or we cannot be saved by the death and sufferings of Christ.” Barclay treats redemption as twofold: one wrought out in the body of Christ upon the cross, the other wrought in man by the spirit of Christ (Apol. Thes. 7, 3). Zinzendorf and the Moravians made the doctrine of atonement, in its more internal connection with the Christian life, the essence of Christianity, but at the same time gave to it a certain sensuous aspect. On mystical grounds, the doctrine of atonement was altogether rejected by Swedenborg. Kant assigned to the death of Christ only a symbolico-moral significance: “Man must, after all, deliver himself. A substitution, in the proper sense of the word, cannot take place; moral liabilities are not transmissible like debts. The sinner who reforms suffers,: as does the impenitent; but the former suffers willingly for the sake of virtue. Now what takes place internally in the repentant sinner takes place in Christ, as the personification of the idea of suffering for sin. In the death which he suffered once for all, he represents for all mankind what the new man takes upon himself while the old man is dying” (Religion innerhalb d. Grenzen d. blossen Vernunft, p. 87, cited by Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, § 300). The Rationalists of Germany lost sight even of the symbolical in the merely moral, but De Wette made the symbolical more prominent. Schleiermacher represented the sufferings of Christ as vicarious, but not as making satisfaction; and his obedience as making satisfaction, but not as vicarious. He held that “the redeeming and atoning principle is not the single fact that Christ died, but the vital union of man with Christ. By means of this vital union, man appropriates the righteousness of Christ” (Schleieirmacher, Christ. Glaube, 2, 103, 128, cited by Hagenbach, 1. c.). The Hegelian speculative school of German theology regards the death of the God-man as “the cessation of being another (Aufheben des Anderssein), and the necessary return of the life of God, which had assumed a finite form, into the sphere of the infinite.” Some of the strict supernaturalists (e.g. Stier) find fault with the theory of Anselm, and endeavor to substitute for it one which they regard as more scriptural; and in 1856, even among the strict Lutherans of Germany, a controversy arose on this doctrine which is at present (1866) not yet ended; Prof. Hofiann, in Erlangen, rejects the idea of vicarious satisfaction, which is defended by Prof. Philippi and others. Schneider, in Stud. u. Krit. Sept. 1860, shows clearly that Anselm's doctrine is that of the Lutheran as well as of the Reformed Church, in opposition to Hofmann, who maintains that his view accords with the church doctrine as well as with Scripture. See also Smith's Hagenbach, Hist. of Doctrines, § 300, and the references there given. The modern Unitarian view may perhaps be safely gathered, in its best form, from the following statement of one of its ablest writers: “‘There is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.' This can only refer to unrivalled pre-eminence, not to exclusive function. For all higher minds do, in fact, mediate between their less gifted fellow-creatures and the great realities of the invisible world. This ‘one' is a human mediator, ‘the man Christ Jesus;' not a being from another sphere, an angel, or a God, but a brother from the boson of our own human family.
‘He gave himself a ransom for all' who embrace his offers and will hearken to his voice. He brings from God a general summons to repent, and with that he conveys, through faith, a spiritual power to shake off the bondage of sin, and put on the freedom of a new heart and a new life. He is a deliverer from the power of sin and the fear of death. This is the end of his mediation. This is the redemption of which he paid the price. His death, cheerfully met in the inevitable sequence of faithful duty, was only one among many links in the chain of instrumentalities by which that deliverance was effected. It was a proof such as could be given in no other way of trust in God and immortality, of fidelity to duty, and of love for mankind. In those who-earnestly contemplated it and saw all that it implied, it awoke a tender response of gratitude and confidence which softened the obdurate heart, and opened it to serious impressions and the quickening influences of a religious spirit'” (Tayler, Christian Aspects of Faith and Duty).
The semi-infidelity which has recently sprung up in high places in the Church of England, so far as it refers to the atonement, may be represented by Jowett as follows: “The only sacrifice, atonement, or satisfaction with which the Christian has to do is a moral and spiritual one; not the pouring out of blood upon the earth, but the living sacrifice ‘to do thy will, O God;' in which the believer has part as well as his Lord; about the meaning of which there can be no more question in our day than there was in the first ages.” “Heathen and Jewish sacrifices rather show us what the sacrifice of Christ was not, than what it was. They are the dim, vague, rude, almost barbarous expression of that want in human nature which has received satisfaction in him only. Men are afraid of something; they wish to give away something; they feel themselves bound by something; the fear is done away, the gift offered, the obligation fulfilled in Christ. Such fears and desires can no more occupy their souls; they are free to lead a better life; they are at the end of the old world, and at the beginning of a new one. The work of Christ is set forth in Scripture under many different figures, lest we should rest in one only. His death, for instance, is described as a ransom. He will set the captives free. Ransom is deliverance to the captive.
‘Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.' Christ delivers from sin.
‘If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.' To whom? for what was the ransom paid? are questions about which Scripture is silent, to which reason refuses to answer” (Jowett, On St. Paul's Epistles, 2, 568). See also Essays and Reviews; Replies to Essays and Reviews; Aids to Faith (all republished in New York). Maurice (Theological Essays; Doctrine of Sacrifice; Tracts for Priests and People) is uncertain and obscure in this, as in other points of theology (see Rigg, Anglican Theology; and Bibliotheca Sacra, 1865, 659). The so-called Broad School, in the Church of England, tends to eviscerate the atonement of all meaning except as a moral illustration or example. Dr. Bushnell (of Hartford) has set forth some of the old heresies in very attractive style in his God in Christ (1849), and Vicarious Sacrifice (1865). In the former work he distinguishes three forms of the doctrine of atonement — “the Protestant form, which takes the ritualistic (objective) side of the Gospel, but turns it into a human dogma; the speculative, or philosophic form, identifying atonement with reconciliation of men unto God, one of the varieties of which is the Unitarian doctrine, which ‘pumps out' the contents of these holy forms; and the Romish form, which passes beyond the ritual, objective view, and Judaizes or paganizes it by dealing with blood as a real and miraculous entity.” In the later work he makes “the sacrifice and cross of Christ his simple duty, and not any superlative, optional kind of good, outside of all the common principles of virtue ... It is only just as good as it ought to be, or the highest law of right required it to be.” He holds that Christ did not satisfy, by his own suffering, the violated justice of God. Christ did not come to the world to die, but died simply because he was here; there was nothing penal in the agony and the cross; the importance of the physical sufferings of Christ consists to us not in what they are, but in what they express or morally signify; Christ is not a ground, but a power of justification; and the Hebrew sacrifices were not types of Christ to them who worshiped in them, but were only necessary as types of Christian language (see Methodist Quarterly, Jan. 1851, p. 114; American Presbyt. Review, Jan. 1866, p. 162). A view somewhat similar to Bushnell's is given by Schultz, Begriff d. stellvertretenden Leidens (Basel, 1864). See N. Brit. Rev. June, 1867, art. 3. III. Literature. — For the history of the doctrine of atonement, see Ziegler, Hist. dogm. de Redempiionc (Getting. 1791); Baur, Lehre v. d. Versohnung (Tubing. 1828, 8vo); Thomasius, Hist. dogm. de Obed. Christi Activa (Erlanz. 1845); Cotta, De Hist. Doct. de Redempt. (in Gerhard's Loci, t. 4, p. 105 sq.); Hagenbach, History of Doctrines; Shedd, History of Doctrines, bk. 5; Neander, Planating and Training, bk. 6, ch. 1; Ibid. History of Doctrines; Cunningham, Historical Theology, vol. 2, ch. 24; Beck, Dogmengeschichte, p. 199 sq.; Knapp, Theology, § 110-116; Hase, Dogmatik, § 149; Wilson, Historical Sketch of Opinions on the Atonenent (Philadel. 1817); Gass, Geschichte d. Prot. Dogmatik (Berlin, 1854-66, 3 vols.); Heppe, Dogmatik d. Evang. Ref. Kirche, loc. 18; Weber, Vom Zorne Gottes, 1862 (with preface by Delitzsch, containing a good condensed history of the doctrine of atonement). — On the doctrine of atonement, besides the books on systematic theology and the works named in the course of this article, see Leblanc, Genugthuung Christi (Giessen, 1733 8vo); Loffler, Die kirchl. Genugthuungslehre (1796, 8vo; opposes vicarious atonement); Tholuck, Lehre v. d. Sinde und v. Versohner; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, t. 3; Sykes, Scriptural Doctrine of Redemption (Lond. 1756, 8vo); Kienlen, De Christi Satisfact. Vicaria (Argent. 1839); Edwards, Necessity of Satisfaction for Sin (Works, vol. 2); Baur, On Grotian Theory, transl. in Bibliotheca Sacra, 9, 259; Coleridge, Aids to Reflection, and review in Am. Bib. Repos. July, 1844; Baxter, Universal Redemption (1650); Goodwin, Redemption Redeemed (1650, 8vo); and in Dunn, Goodwin's Theology (Lond. 1836, 12mo; also in Goodwin's Exposition of Romans 9, 1663, 8vo); Owen, Works, vol. 5, 6 (reply to Goodwin); Horne, Extent of the Death of Christ (reply to Owen, 1650); Barrow, Works (N. Y. ed. 2, 77 sq.); Stillingfleet, On Christ's Satisfaction (maintains the view of Grotius; Works, vol. 3); Magee, On Atonement and Sacrifice (Lond. 1832, 5th ed. 3 vols. 8vo); J. Pye Smith, On the Sacrifice of Christ (Lond. 1813, 8vo); Jenkyn, On the Extent of the Atonement (Lond. 1842, 3d ed. 8vo; Boston, 12mo); Symington, On Atonement and Intercession (New York, 12mo); Shinn, On Salvation (Philadel. 8vo); Trench, Hulsean Lectures (1846), and Five Sermons; Gilbert, The Christian Atonement (London, 1852, 8vo); Wardlaw, Discourses on the Atonement; Marshall, Catholic Doctrine of Redemption, in answer to Wardlaw (Glasgow, 1844, 8vo); Beman, Christ the only Sacrifice (N. Y. 1844, 12mo); reviewed in Princeton Rev. 17, 84, and Meth. Quarterly, 7, 379; Penrose, Moral Principle of the Atonement (Londo
CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.

FACEBOOK

Participe de nossa rede facebook.com/osreformadoresdasaude

Novidades, e respostas das perguntas de nossos colaboradores