§ 6. The three principal Views of the Atonement—warlike, legal, and governmental.
Three principal views on this subject have prevailed in the Christian Church as Orthodox. The first may be called the warlike view of Christ's work, the second may be called the legal view, and the third the governmental view. The first was the prevailing Orthodox view from the earliest times till the middle ages, and is based on the idea of a conflict or war between Christ and the Devil for the soul of man. The Devil had gained possession of the human race in consequence of its sin. The right of the Devil over men was fully admitted. Augustine considered it as the right of property, Leo the Great as the right of a conqueror. Christ gave his own life to the Devil as a ransom, which was adequate to redeem the whole race. This theory rested on the literal interpretation of the words “ransom” and “redemption.” If Christ's death was a ransom, if he came “to give his life a ransom for many,” the question naturally arose, “From whose power were men redeemed, and to whom was the ransom paid?” Certainly, men were not redeemed from the power of God. The ransom could not have been paid to God, but to some enemy who held us as his prisoners. The only possible answer, therefore, is, that the ransom was paid to the Devil. The Devil was the cruel tyrant who had enslaved us. He had a right to do so; for we had become his slaves through our sin. But he had no right over Christ, for Christ had committed no sin; so that the death of Christ was a free offering to the Devil to redeem the race. According to this view, therefore, the atonement was made to the Devil.
But in the middle ages another view of the atonement became Orthodox, founded not upon the idea of a ransom, but on that of a debt. According to this view the divine law requires that the debt which man owes to God, which is perfect obedience, shall be paid, either by himself or by some one else. Anselm, the founder of this theory, defined sin “as not giving to God his due.” Man cannot pay this debt himself, and therefore Christ pays it for him. This is the legal view of the atonement, or perhaps we might rather call it the commercial view.
But this theory, after having endured as Orthodox for some five hundred years, gave place to a third, based not on the idea of a ransom or of a debt, but of a state necessity. It would not do for God, as a moral Governor, to forgive sin, unless by some great example an impression could be made of the evil of sin. This impression is produced by the death of Christ, who therefore died not to atone for past sin, but to prevent future sin, or, in other words, to make a moral impression on the human mind. This is the popular theory of the atonement held by the Orthodox at the present time. But it is very much mixed up with the others. The different views held by modern Orthodoxy range all the way from the old Calvinism of Princeton, through the various shades of New England theology, to the latest form expressed by Dr. Horace Bushnell in his recent work on “Vicarious Sacrifice.”