At One Ment by Propitiation 87 no reference whatever to the miraculous words or marvel lous works of Jesus, but significantly passes by them all to focus the confession of the Church upon the great purpose and achievement of the Incarnation; His suffering as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. As regards the writers of the post-apostolic age, Clement of Rome, Origen, and Athanasius, may be referred to as outstanding exponents of the Church’s thought in the first four centuries. Of the first and third it may be said that they simply amplified the language of the New Testament. There is no trace of the attitude of the modernist, with its brilliant attempts to ex plain away the obvious. Their doctrine of the atonement is entirely free, as has been said, from the incrusting difficulties of spurious explanation. There were no attempts at phil osophy or sophistry, though, as was to be expected, there was more or less of the embroidery of the oriental imagination, and a plethora of metaphor. (Justin Martyr, Chrysostom, and Augustine, may be mentioned also here.) Origen, following possibly Irenaeus, is accredited with the theory that the atonement was a ransom paid to Satan. This was the theory of Gregory of Nyssa, Leo Magnus, and Gregory the Great. It was a weird theory, involving some strange con clusions, and evoked the antagonism of Gregory Nazianzen and John of Damascus. THE MEDIAEVAL VIEW As we pass into the mediaeval period (broadly speaking, from 500 to 1500 A. D .), we find that, with one or two excep tions, the ransom-paid-to-the-devil hypothesis held sway. It was not a thinking era, and the imprisonment of the Bible meant the reign of ignorance. In the eleventh century, Anselm appeared. He was an Italian by birth, a Norman by training, and Archbishop of Canterbury by office. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo is probably the greatest work on the atonement that has ever been written. - -
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker