writers held in common the fundamental idea that it was by an ottering in His blood which Christ made in His death that He fulfilled a function ana- logous to, but infinitely tran.scending, that to which the terra ' propitiation ' was applied in the OT. liy this means the grace of God was expressed towards man, and became etticacious through the removal of the obstacle raised liy the sin that hindered tlie freeilom and confidence of his access to God. But the jiropitiation was always of God's providing, as it was also His setting forth. St. Paul in liis use of the term is specially concerned to make clear ' the setting forth ' of the propitiati<m in relation to the law of God's righteousness ; the Johannine writer uses it to declare the source of an actual clean.sing from the defilement of sin, whilst the writer to the Hebrews chooses it to express the resultant privilege of the propitiation revealed in direct access to God in the sanctuary of His holi- ness. But this illustrative use of the term by these three apostolic writers, whilst it contributes figuratively to a legal, ethical, and ceremonial in- terpretation of the one reality of a common spirit- ual experience of redemption in Christ's blood, involves no essential divergence in their respective teaching. Each writer selected a particular phase of the import of propitiation. This he did rather to meet the exigencies of the occasion for his writ- ing than to indicate a difference of view respecting the historical fact or the spiritual experience in- volved ; these last were central to all apostolic teaching. Consequently the several applications of ' propitiation ' exhibit a diversity in unity. It seems improbable that practically the same term was used within nearly the same period in the primitive apostolic community with any essential ditt'erenee of meaning, especially when we consider the common stock of OT and later Jewish ideas from which the term was taken over by each sepa- rate writer. Moreover, sin, whether regarded with St. Paul as guilt, with the Johannine writer as moral defilement, or with the writer to the Hebrews as a religious hindrance in access to God, is the one reality which is the occasion of 'propitiation.'
(1) The Pauline use. — The Pauline use (Ro 3=°) states the propitiation in relation to a Divine righteousness expressed in ' a wrath of God re- vealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold down the truth in unrighteousness' (1'*) ; its purpose is to show God's righteousness to be consistent with the fact of His forbearance ' in the passing over of sins done aforetime' : for there has never been a time under any dispensation when God has not dealt graciously with sinful men ; He is always God the Saviour, ' whose property is alwaj'S to have mercy.' But lest the persistent exercise of Divine grace in the forgiveness of sins should be considered as a challenge of God's righteous opposition to sin. He set forth Christ .lesus a propitiation by His blood that He ' might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus' (3=^). In this propitiation something is done by God in Christ which demonstrates the consistency and inviola- bility of His righteousness in the presence of His mercy. What that something is St. Paul does not further define ; he simply asserts the efficiency of the propitiation for the ethical situation implied. His chosen word (VKaaTrjpiov) has caused his com- mentators great trouble, but the great majority of all schools agree that the view here expressed is in substance St. Paul's teaching. The opinion, formerly influentially supported (e.g. by Luther, Calvin, Ritschl, Cremer, Bruce), that iKa.aTi]piov signifies ' the mercy-seat,' ' the lid of the ark,' as in He 9'', is now generally rejected as fanciful and inadequate (for reasons see Deissmann, Blhcl- studien, Marburg, 1895, p. 121 f., Eng. tr., BMe
PROPITIATION
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124 ff. ; Stevens, Its inter- f
S/udics, Edinburgh, 1901, p. C/irisfian Doctrine of Salrrition, p. 61). Its inter pretalion as 'a propitiatory ollerinf;' — a means o: reniloiing God consistently favouralile towards sin fnl men and the means of reeoneiUatiou between God and man — is the most natural, and is in- deed the only meaning suitable to the context of Ro 3 ; other I'anline passages harmonize with it better than with any other meaning (cf. Ro 5",
1 Co 6™ 7"^, Gal 3'^ 4").
It is evident that St. Paul regarded the pro- pitiation as essential to the manifestation of the Divine nature in love and righteousness ; it was not an arbitrary appointment dependent simply on God's mere good pleasure ; it implied a rational and ethical necessity in His being. Judging from the affinities of St. Paul's thouglit generally, it is probable that he may have regarded propitiation less in the light of a Levitical sacrificial ottering than in that of the prophetical ideal of vicarious suffering, or possibly even after the analogy of human sacrifice — one man dying for another (cf. Ro 5' ;_ see Bruce, St. Paul's Conception of Christi- anity, p. 167 ti'.). St. Paul certainly held that the propitiation was provided by God ; he expounded it as exhibiting the love rather than the wrath of God. Although such phrases as ' propitiating God ' or God ' being propitiated ' are foreign to apostolic teaching, the Pauline view relates the propitiation to God as recipient. The propitiation being thus provided by God and received by Him, the question lias arisen. Does St. Paul teach that it is also ottered by God— that is, that God propitiates Him- self? Probably the best answer is that St. Paul constantly conceives of the propitiation as the work of God in Christ (cf. 2 Co 5""-);. it is not something done outside God, but 'God-in-Christ' stands for St. Paul's conceijtion of God as Redeemer — that is, God united with human nature. It may, therefore, be the best aiiproach to the sanctuary of the unfathomable mystery of God's redeeming work to suggest that strictly He did not propiti- ate Himself. God requiring, providing, receiving the propitiation, it was offered by Christ, who was God-in-man, acting not as God, but as the Representative of man. God gave humanity in Christ the means of making propitiation (cf. H. Cremer, Bibl.-Theol. Lex?, p. 91 fi". ; HDB iv. 206). This suggestion is the more probable as it har- monizes with St. Paul's great doctrine of the self- identification of Christ with the human race, and through Him of the race with God (cf. Ro 5 and 6,