Johann
Active Member
I can prove you wrong right here-the DID teach PSA-but not as in-depth as in this century.
Dogmatic History of the Doctrine of the Atonement
Embroiled as they were in debates concerning the person of
Christ, the Church Fathers devoted little time to reflection upon
what later theologians were to call the work of Christ (e.g., his
achieving atonement). No ecumenical council ever pronounced
on the subject of the atonement, leaving the Church without
conciliar guidance. When the Church Fathers did mention the
atonement, their comments were brief and for the most part
unincisive.
The remarks of the Fathers on the atonement tend to reflect the
multiplicity and diversity of the NT motifs that they had inherited
from the biblical authors (Mitros 1967). Eusebius, for example,
wrote:
The Lamb of God ... was chastised on our behalf, and suffered
a penalty He did not owe, but which we owed because of the
multitude of our sins; and so He became the cause of the forgiveness
of our sins, because He received death for us, and transferred to
Himself the scourging, the insults, and the dishonour, which were
due to us, and drew down on Himself the apportioned curse, being
made a curse for us. And what is that but the price of our souls? And
so the oracle says in our person: “By his stripes we were healed,” and
“The Lord delivered him for our sins.”
(Demonstration of the Gospel 10.1)
Echoing Isaiah 53 and Gal 3.13, Eusebius employs the motifs of
sacrifice, vicarious suffering, penal substitution, satisfaction of
divine justice, and ransom price. Similar sentiments were
expressed by Origen, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, Cyril
of Alexandria, and others (Rivière 1909).
At the same time, the Fathers portrayed Christ’s death as
a tremendous victory won over Satan, a view of the atonement
that has come to be known as the Christus Victor theory (Aulén
1969). Modern scholars have tended to focus on this facet of the
Fathers’ teaching, doubtless because of its peculiarity and
curiosity.
2.1 Christus Victor Theory
The so-called Christus Victor theory of the atonement persisted for
about 900 years, from Irenaeus and Origen until the time of
Anselm. According to this viewpoint, the sacrifice of Christ’s life
served to deliver mankind from bondage to Satan and from the
corruption and death that are the consequences of sin. The Fathers
sometimes interpreted Jesus’s ransom saying very literally to mean
that Christ’s life was a payment in exchange for which human
beings were set free from bondage. Such an interpretation naturally raised the question as to whom the ransom was paid.
The obvious answer was the devil, since it was he who held men
in bondage (II Tim 2.26; I Jn 5.19). God agreed to give His Son over
to Satan’s power in exchange for the human beings he held captive.
Origen, for example, asked,
But to whom did Christ give his soul for ransom? Surely not to God.
Could it then be to the Evil One? For he had us in his power until the
ransom for us should be given to him, even the life of Christ. The Evil
One had been deceived and led to suppose that he was capable of
mastering the soul and did not see that to hold him involved a trial
of strength greater than he could successfully undertake ... . Hence
it was not with gold or with perishable money that we were
redeemed, but with the precious blood of Christ.
(Commentary on Matthew xvi.8)
Typically, this arrangement between God and Satan was thought to
be a clever trick on God’s part. As the second person of the Trinity,
the Son could not possibly be held captive by Satan. But by his
incarnation the Son appeared weak and vulnerable like any other
human being under Satan’s sway. Only after the captives had been
freed did the Son manifest his divine power by rising from the
dead, breaking the bonds of death and hell, and escaping from
Satan’s power. Gregory of Nyssa offered a popular illustration of
God’s clever deception of Satan: “In order to secure that the ransom in our behalf might be easily accepted by him who required it,
the Deity was hidden under the veil of our nature, that so, as with
ravenous fish, the hook of the Deity might be gulped down along
with the bait of flesh” (Catechetical Oration 24).
But not everyone agreed with Origen’s ransom model. Gregory
Nazianzus, for example, sharply denounced the ransom model for
making Satan the object of Christ’s atoning death (Oration 45.22).
A different version of the Christus Victor theory emerged, especially
among the Latin Fathers, according to which Christ was not given
as a ransom to Satan but rather was the victim of Satan’s deadly
attack. Often confused with the ransom model, this so-called political model of Christus Victor attributes Satan’s undoing to an
overreach of authority on the devil’s part. As on the ransom
model, Satan was conceived to have, by God’s permission, right
of bondage over sinners. Thinking Christ to be vulnerable human
flesh, Satan attacked and killed Christ. But unlike the sinners under
Satan’s authority, Christ was entirely guiltless and therefore undeserving of death. Satan had thus overstepped his authority in
claiming Christ, so that God was justified in liberating those held
captive by him (Augustine On the Trinity 4.13.17).
--and on and on I can go.
