does seek to atone — for the sin of another. (On the application to redemption, cf. Ro b^-^-.) — (3) The Biblical view of the infinite evil and hate- fulness of sin. Sin is direct contrariety to the holiness of God. Eternally, therefore, holiness must react against it in condemnation and punish- ment (cf. Ro 118). It follows that, even in forgiving sin, God cannot tamper with the condemning testi- mony of His law against it, but must provide for the vindication of His righteousness in the passing of it by (cf. Ro 3^5^ He 9i5).— (4) The Biblical truth of ChrisVs essential and peculiar relation to our race. This lies at the foundation of everything that is declared of Christ's redeem- ing activity. He is the 'Son of God,' standing in a quite peculiar relation to both God and humanity. That relation to our race is grounded (a) in His general relation to creation (Jn 1^-^, 1 Co 8^, Col 115 17 etc.), and (6) in His condescending grace in becoming man — in His incarnation (Ph 23ft'-, He 2i* etc.). — (5) In this relation also account is to be taken of ChrisVs perfect sinlessness (2 Co S'^^i, 1 V 2^^, 1 Jn 3^ etc.), and of His complete identification of Himself with our race in sympathy and love. Here already the substitutionary forces of love come into fullest play. — (6) The Biblical assertion that, in this identification, Christ made Himself one with us in our whole position of responsibility and riiin under the broken and dishonoured law of God (Ro 8^, Gal 4* etc.). In this position it is im- possible but that Christ should take cognizance of the relation in which sin has placed the world, not only to the commanding, but also to the con- demning and punishing will of (Jod, and should desire, as man's Redeemer, to do the highest honour to that, as to all else in God's relation to sin. — (7) Historically, it is certain that Jesus did enter, in the fullest way possible to a sinless being, into what may be called the penal evil of our state; into the experience of the deepest meaning of that evil ; above all, into death, the culminating form of that evil. When even a Bushnell can speak of Jesus as ' incarnated into the curse ' of our condition (cf. Forgiveness and Law, pp. 150, 155, 158); can describe Him as ' doing all that He does and suffers, in a way to honour the precept, enforce the penalty, and sanctify the justice of law ; the precept as right, the penalty as righteous, the justice as the fit vindication of the righteous- ness of God ' ; and declares that ' no moral account of His gospel, separated from this, can be any- thing but a feeble abortion' (Vic. Sac. pt. iii. ch. vi.), it may be felt that there is no supreme difficulty in believing that Christ, in our name and nature, may, in His acceptance of suffering and death, have rendered that acknowledgment of the righteousness of God in His condemnation of sin, which holiness demands, in order that sin may be righteously forgiven.
ii. Ecclesiastical development. — In a brief sketch of the ideas and theories which have pre- vailed in the Church on the subject of redemption, only leading points can be indicated. It was only to be expected that, in the multitude of aspects under which redemption is represented in Scripture, much diversity would appear in the manner in which the doctrine was apprehended by different minds in the Church. And this is what we find.
1. In the immediately post-Apostolic age, little was done to elucidate the connexion of Christ's suffering and death with redemption. The Fathers of that age, while profuse in their allusions to redemption through the blood of Christ, content themselves, mostly, with the repetition of the Apostolic phrases, and offer no theological inter- pretation. The age of the Apologists which suc- ceeded was, if possible, even more barren in this
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direction. Still, even in this earliest period, it would not be difficult to show that the essential fact of redemption by Christ was never lost sight of. Clement of Rome (Ep. 49), as later Irenaeus (v. xvii. 3), lays stress on Christ's givinsr His flesh for our flesh, and His soul for our souls ; and sometimes, as in Polycarp and the Epistle to Diugnetus, a remarkably clear and evangelical note is struck. Reflexion on the mode of redemp- tion may be said properly to begin with the old Catholic Fathers — Iremeus, TertuUian, Origen, etc. A leading idea in Irenaeus is that of the recapitu- latio of the whole of humanity in Jesus Christ. Jesus, i.e., sums up all history, all stages and experiences of human life, in Himself, and so can represent humanity as its Redeemer. He enters as a new Head into our race ; retracts the dis- obedience of the Fall by His own obedience ; gains a complete victory over Satan ; and honours the justice of God by His submission to death for our sins (ii. xxii. 4, iii. xviii. 6, xxi. 10, v. ii. 1, etc.). This Father is sometimes credited with the idea of a ransom paid to Satan, but any allusion of this kind in him hardly gets beyond a rhetorical figure (v. i. 1). He teaches explicitly that Christ by His death has reconciled us to God, and procured for us forgiveness (iii. xvi. 9, v. xvi. 3, etc.). Origen, as Harnack (Hist. Doijm. ii. 367) observes, regarded Christ's redemption from many points of view (victory over Satan, expiation offered to God, ransom paid to Satan). The grotesque theory of a ransom paid to Satan — the devil, however, being deceived in the transaction, as he found he could not hold the soul of Jesus — is, in Origen also, hardly more than rhetoric (on Mt 16^) ; but the idea took hold, and, sometimes alone, sometimes along with other conceptions, was propounded by subsequent theo- logians, and in the Middle Ages, as far down as Bernard and the Schoolmen, as a serious theory of redemption. Other prominent teachers, however, as Gregory of Nazianzus, Athanasius, Anselm, would have nothing to do with it (see Ransom). Athanasius takes a further step, and in his treatise on The Incarnation of the Word, makes a brief, reasoned attempt at the rationale of salva- tion. God had ordained death as the penalty of sin, and, as it was impossible for God to lie, it was necessary that this penalty should be inflicted (Incar. 6, 8, 9, etc.). But it was not fitting that God should allow His creation to perish ; the Logos, therefore, Creator of the world, having assumed our nature, endured this penalty in our stead, and brought into our race anew a prin- ciple of incorruption {ib. 8, 9). The Latin Church naturally (Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine) gave more prominence than the Greek Church to the idea of satisfaction to law or justice, but in Greek writers also (Cyril, Chrysostom, etc.) this idea is not wanting. It is important to observe that Augus- tine, and the Fathers generally, never lose sight of the fact that it is God's love T/hich is the cause of Christ's reconciliation ; not Christ's death, as an appeasement of justice, which is the cause of the love (Aug. on Jn 1721-20 ; Calvin endorses this view, Instil. 11. xvi. 3, 4).