10 Gfrorer, Gesehichte des Urchristenthums, abth. ii. pp. 187 190.
11 Mosheim, Commentaries on Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Eng. trans., vol. ii. pp. 162-163.
from the Talmud: "The death of the just is the redemption of sinners."12 The blood of any righteous man was a little atonement; that of Christ was a vast one. The former all Protestants call a heathen error. So they should the latter, because it sprung from the same source and is the same in principle. If, then, there are any scriptural texts which imply that the mere death of Christ had a vicarious, expiatory efficacy, they are, so far forth, the reflection of heathen and Jewish errors yet lingering in the minds of the writers, and not the inspired revelation of an isolated, arbitrary after expedient contrived in the secret counsels of God and wonderfully interpolated into the providential history of the world. But, if there are any such passages, they are few and unimportant. The great mass of the scriptural language on this subject is fairly and fully explained by the historical theory whose outlines we have sketched. The root of the matter is the resurrection of Christ out from among the dead and his ascent into heaven.
It has not been our purpose in this chapter, or in the preceding chapters, to present the history of the Christian doctrine of the atonement, either in its intrinsic significance or in its relations to subjective religious experience. We have only sought to explain it, according to the original understanding of it, in its objective relations to the fate of men in the future life. The importance of the subject, its difficulty, and the profound prejudices connected with it, are so great as not only to excuse, but even to require, much explanatory repetition to make the truth clear and to recommend it, in many lights, with various methods, and by accumulated authorities. Those who wish to see the whole subject of the atonement treated with consummate fulness and ability, leaving nothing to be desired from the historical point of view, have only to read the masterly work of Baur.13
In leaving this part of our subject here, we would submit the following considerations to the candid judgment of the reader. Admitting the truth of the common doctrine of the atonement, why did Christ die? It does not appear how there could be any particular efficacy in mere death. The expiation of sin which he had undertaken required only a certain amount of suffering. It did not as far as we can see on the theory of satisfaction by an equivalent substituted suffering require death. It seems as if local and physical ideas must have been associated with the thought of his death. And we find the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews thus replying to the question, Why did Christ die? "That through death he might destroy him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." Now, plainly, this end was accomplished by his resurrection bursting asunder the bonds of Hades and showing that it was no longer the hopeless prison of the dead. The justice of this explanation appears from the logical necessity of the series of ideas, the internal coherence and harmony of thought. It has been ably shown that substantially this view is the accurate interpretation of the New Testament doctrine by
12 Comm. de Morte Christi Expiatoria, cap. iii.: Qua Judaorum Recentiorum Christologia de Passione ac Morte Messia docet.
13 Die Christliche Lehre von der Versohnung in ihrer Geschichtlichen Entwicklung von der Alteaten Zeit bis auf die Neueste.
Steinbart,14 Schott,15 Bretschneider,16 Klaiber,17 and others. The gradual deviations from this early view can be historically traced, step by step, through the refining speculations of theologians. First, in ecclesiastical history, after the New Testament times, it is thought the devil has a right over all souls in consequence of sin. Christ is a ransom offered to the devil to offset his claim. Sometimes this is represented as a fair bargain, sometimes as a deception practised on the devil, sometimes as a battle waged with him. Next, it is conceived that the devil has no right over human souls, that it is God who has doomed them to the infernal prison and holds them there for their sin. Accordingly, the sacrifice of Christ for their ransom is offered not to the tyrannical devil but to the offended God. Finally, in the progress of culture, the satisfaction theory appears; and now the suffering of Christ is neither to buy souls from the devil nor to appease God and soften his anger into forgiveness; but it is to meet the inexorable exigencies of the abstract law of infinite justice and deliver sinners by bearing for them the penalty of sin. The whole course of thought, once commenced, is natural, inevitable; but the starting point is from an error, and the pausing places are at false goals.
The view which we have asserted to be the scriptural view prevailed as the orthodox doctrine of the Church throughout the first three centuries, as Bahr has proved in his valuable treatise on the subject.18 He shows that during that period Christ's death was regarded as a revelation of God's love, a victory over the devil, (through his resurrection,) a means of obtaining salvation for men, but not as a punitive sacrifice, not as a vindication of God's justice, not as a vicarious satisfaction of the law.19 If the leading theologians of Christendom, such as Anselm, Calvin, and Grotius, have so thoroughly repudiated the original Christian and patristic doctrine of the atonement, and built another doctrine upon their own uninspired speculations, why should our modern sects defer so slavishly to them, and, instead of freely investigating the subject for themselves from the first sources of Scripture and spiritual philosophy, timidly cling to the results reached by these biassed, morbid, and over sharp thinkers? In proportion as scholarly, unfettered minds engage in such a criticism, we believe the exposition given in the foregoing pages will be recognised as scriptural. Without involving this whole theory, how can any one explain the unquestionable fact that during the first four centuries the entire orthodox Church believed that Christ at his resurrection from the under world delivered Adam from his imprisonment there?20 All acknowledge that the phrase "redemption by the blood of Christ" is a metaphor. The only question is, what meaning was it intended to convey? We maintain its meaning to be that
14 System der Reinen Philosophie, oder Gluckseligkeitslehre des Christenthums, u.s.f.