7 In Gen. lib. ix. cap. 10, 11: "Parents would have yielded to children not by death, but by translation, and would have become as the angels."
in his life, and brought to a focus in his martyr death? Certainly this was too plainly and prominently a part of the mission of Christ ever to be wholly overlooked. And yet one acquainted with the writings of the Fathers can hardly mistake so widely as to think that they esteemed this the principal element in Christ's redemptive work. Was the essence of that work, then, the making of a vicarious atonement, according to the Calvinistic interpretation of that phrase, the offering of a substitutional anguish sufficient to satisfy the claims of inexorable justice, so that the guilty might be pardoned? No. The modern doctrine of the atonement the satisfaction theory, as it is called was unknown to the Fathers. It was developed, step by step, after many centuries.8 It did not receive its acknowledged form until it came from the mind of the great Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, as late as the twelfth century. No scholar will question this confessed fact. What, then, were the essence and method of Christ's redemptive mission according to the Fathers? In brief, they were these. He was, as they believed, a superangelic being, the only begotten Son of God, possessing a nature, powers, and credentials transcending those delegated to any other being below God himself. He became flesh, to seek and to save the lost. This saving work was done not by his mortal sufferings alone, but by the totality of labors extending through the whole period of his incarnation. The subjective or moral part of his redemptive mission was to regenerate the characters of men and fit them for heaven by his teachings and example; the objective or physical part was to deliver their souls from the fatal confinement of the under world and secure for them the gracious freedom of the sky, by descending himself as the suppressing conqueror of death and then ascending as the beckoning pioneer of his followers. The Fathers did not select the one point or act of Christ's death as the pivot of human redemption; but they regarded that redemption as wrought out by the whole of his humiliation, instruction, example, suffering, and triumph, as the resultant of all the combined acts of his incarnate drama. Run over the relevant writings of Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Lactantius, Cyril, Ambrose, Augustine himself, Jerome, Chrysostom, and the rest of the prominent authors of the first ten centuries, and you cannot fail to be struck with the fact that they invariably speak of redemption, not in connection with Christ's death alone, but emphatically in connection with the group of ideas, his incarnation, death, descent, resurrection, and ascension! For the most part, they received it by tradition as a fact, without much philosophizing, that, in consequence of the sin of Adam, all men were doomed to die, that is, to leave their bodies and descend into the shadowy realm of death. They also accepted it as a fact, without much attempt at theoretical explanation, that when Christ, the sinless and resistless Son of God, died and went thither, before his immaculate Divinity the walls fell, the devils fled, the prisoners' chains snapped, and the power of Satan was broken. They received it as a fact that through the mediation of Christ the original boon forfeited by Adam was to be restored, and that men, instead of undergoing death and banishment to Hades, should be translated to heaven. So far as they had a theory about the cause, it turned on two simple points: first, the free grace and love of God; second, the self sacrifice and sufficient power of
8 Hagenbach, Dogmengeschichte, sect. 68.
Christ. In the progressive course of dogmatic controversy, metaphysical speculation, and desire for system, explanations have been devised in a hundred different forms, from that of Aquinas to that of Calvin; from that of Anselm to that of Grotius; from that of Socinus to that of Bushnell. Tertullian describes the profound abyss beneath the grave, in the bowels of the earth, where, he says, all the dead are detained unto the day of judgment, and where Christ in his descent made the patriarchs and prophets his companions.9 Augustine says that nearly the whole Church agreed in believing that Christ delivered Adam from the under world when he rose thence himself.10 One must be very ignorant on the subject to doubt that the Fathers attributed unrivalled importance to the literal descent of Christ into the abode of the departed.11
Thirdly, after the advent of Christ, what were the conditions proposed for the actual attainment of personal salvation? It was the orthodox belief that Christ led up into Paradise with him the ancient saints who were awaiting his appearance in the under world:12 but with this exception it was not supposed that he saved any outright: he only put it in their power to save themselves, removing the previously insuperable obstacles. In the faith of those who accepted the dogma of predestination, of course, the presupposed condition of actual personal salvation was that the given individual should become one of the elect number. But it seems to have been usually believed that baptism was indispensable to give final efficacy to the decree of election in each individual case.13 Augustine says, "All are born under the power of the devil, held in chains by him as a jailer: baptism alone, through the force of Christ's redemptive work, breaks these chains and secures heaven." In regard to this necessity of baptism Pelagius agreed with his great adversary, saving an unessential modification, as we have seen before. The same may be said of Cyprian, Tertullian, and many other leading Fathers. Again, the so called Athanasian Creed, which shows the prevalent opinion of the Church in the fifth and sixth centuries, asserts that whoso believes not in the Trinity and kindred dogmas as therein laid down "without doubt shall perish everlastingly." In other words, assent of mind to the established creed of the Church is a vital condition of salvation. Finally, in the writings of nearly all of the Fathers we find frequent declarations of the necessity of moral virtue, righteous conduct, and piety, as a condition of admission into the kingdom of heaven. For example, Augustine says, "Such as have been baptized, partaken of the sacraments, and remained always in the catholic faith, but have led wicked lives, can have no hope of escaping eternal damnation." 14 These points were not sharply defined, authoritatively established, and consistently adhered to; and yet there was a pretty general agreement among the body of the Fathers that for actual salvation there were three practical necessary conditions, baptism, a sound faith, a good life.
9 De Anima, sects. 7 et 55.
10 Epist. CLXIV.
11 Huidekoper, Belief of the First Three Centuries concerning Christ's Mission to the Under World.
12 Augustine, De Civ. Del. lib. xx. cap. xv. Wiedenfeld, De Exorcismi Origine, Mutatione, deque hujus Actus peragendi Ratione Neander, Church History, vol. i. p. 3
13 Torrey's trans.