The teaching of the New Testament, and the agree- ment of the statements of Christ with those of his apostles on this subject, are thus set forth (without re- gard to theological distinctions) by Dr. Thomson, bish- op 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 ser- vant 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 man- ifestation of divine justice. The effect of the atone- ment thus wrought is that man is placed in a new po- sition, freed from the dominion of sin, and able to fol- low 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 obe- dience. Of the four great writers of the New Testa- ment, 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 gra- cious,' we must not rest satisfied with a contemplation of oar redeemed state, but must live a life worthy of it. Xo one. can well doubt, who reads the two epis- tles, that the love of God and Christ, and the justice of Cod, and the duties thereby laid on us, all have their value in them; but the love is loss 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 t lie 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 pre- sented 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 compre- hend 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 Storr and Flatt, Biblical Theology, § G5-70).
II. History of the Doctrine.— (1.) The Fathers.— Tn the earl j' 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 primi- tive fathers. But it is one thing to admit that the atonement was not sti:ntifira.l!y apprehended, and quite another thing to assert that it was not realty 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 ofmetaphys- ico-theological inquiry, and it was not until after this was settled by the general prevalence of the Nicene Creed that anthropological and soteriological ques- tions come up into decided prominence. Baur (in whose Yersbhnungslehre this subject is treated with am- ple 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 re- demptive 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 Isa. liii and I'sa. xxii, 7, 0, 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 Ig- natius and Polycarp, and stronger still in the Epist. ad Diognet. ch. ix. (See citations in Shedd, History of Doctrines, bk. v, ch. i: Hagenbach, Hist, of Doctrines, §08; Thomson, Hampton Lectures, 1853, Lect. vi). In the second century Justin Martyr (A.I). 147) says that "the Father willed that bis Christ should take upon himself the curses of all for the whole race of man" (Dial. c. Tryjh. 95). " In Justin may be found the idea of satisfaction rendered by ( 'hrist through suffer- ing, at least lying at the bottom, if not clearly grasped in tin' form of conscious thought" (Dial. c. Tryph. c. 30; Neander, Ch. History, i, 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 Re- deemer was, in the Marcionitc and Ophitic systems, essentially hostile, so the death of Jesus was a contri- vance of the Demiurge, -which failed of its purpose and disappointed him." Baur asserts that Irenseus (A.D. 180) borrowed this idea from Gnosticism, only