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Atonement and "Saving Faith"
By Brian A. Gerrish

IN recent years Luther's teaching on the atonement has been a subject of strong dispute. Some (mostly the Swedish interpreters) have stressed the ideas of "conflict" and "victory" in Luther's discussions of atonement, arguing for a discontinuity between the Reformer's own thinking and the "substitutionary" theory of later Protestant orthodoxy. Others have insisted that at this point Luther's teaching differs in no essentials from that of his successors. One is well advised to tread carefully on entering the field of controversy; nevertheless, I make bold to submit that the interpretation of atonement in both Luther and Calvin can be understood as turning on the central and pivotal conception of a "happy exchange," in which the believer's sins are laid upon Christ and Christ's own innocence is communicated to the believer. From this center, we may say, the Reformers' thinking moves outwards to the various other soteriological concepts, including the two about which modern opinion is chiefly divided, namely, "victory" and "substitution." First and foremost, the Christian is one who has been united with Christ so intimately that an exchange of qualities has somehow taken place.

Of course, this understanding of Luther's thought would not settle present-day controversies, for it is not incompatible with either of the two main rival theories, nor even with a combination of both. Neither is it incompatible with Calvin's threefold scheme of "Prophet, Priest, and King" (a scheme of which, in any case, he makes very little use), since Christ does not exercise these offices in any "private capacity," but rather communicates their benefits to believers. Perhaps we may say that the notion of "exchange" belongs to the presuppositions of atonement, as the Reformers understood it, whilst the detailed outworking of the doctrine demands the use of further categories.

That the notion is indeed fundamental to the Reformers' thinking could be demonstrated by many passages from the works of both.

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Luther speaks explicitly of this "happy exchange" (fröhlich Wechsel) in the German version of the Treatise on Christian Liberty.¹ The soul and Christ are united like bride and bridegroom. They become one flesh, and everything they possess is shared in common. "What Christ has is the property of the believing soul, what the soul has becomes the property of Christ." A similar passage occurs in the Larger Commentary on Galatians (though worded differently in Rörer's MS.): "So, making a happy exchange with us (feliciter commutans nobiscum) he [Christ] took upon him our sinful person, and gave us his own innocent and victorious person."² These passages can readily be matched in Calvin's Institutes: "Who could do this [i.e., win salvation for men], unless the Son of God should become also the Son of Man, and so receive what is ours as to transfer to us what is his?" And again: "He was not unwilling to take upon him what was properly ours, that he might in turn (vicissim) extend to us what was properly his."³ The same pattern of thought recurs in both the Reformers when they speak of the Lord's Supper; as, for instance, in Luther's Treatise on the Blessed Sacrament,⁴ and the fourth book of Calvin's Institutes.⁵ What exactly it is that is "exchanged" is made perfectly clear in each of these passages: namely, Christ's righteousness is exchanged for the believer's sin.

We can, then, take it that at the very least this idea of a "happy exchange" was fundamental to the thought of Luther and Calvin on the subject of atonement. The difficulties begin to arise only when we ask the further question: "How exactly does this happy exchange take place?" For here the Reformers seem to answer: "By substitution and by imputation." That is to say, our sins are transferred to Christ and punished in his death by substitution, and his righteousness is in turn transferred to us by imputation. The objection is obvious: neither righteousness nor sin (at least in its character as "guilt") can be transferred simply by being credited to another's account; nor perhaps should they, if they could.

Calvin certainly taught both penal substitution and the imputation

¹ W.A. 7.25.26ff.
² WA. 401.443.23ff. See also Luther's Letters of Spiritual Counsel (ed. and trans. by T.G. Tappert), p. 110.
³ Institutes, II.xii.2.
⁴ Eng. trans. in the Philadelphia edn., II. 13, 17-19, etc. Cf. Aulén's comment in Eucharist and Sacrifice (Philadelphia, 1958), p. 71: "What happens here is a kind of exchange. Christ receives us, takes upon himself our sins, and gives us his righteousness."
⁵ See esp. IV.xvii.2: "This is a wonderful exchange (mirifica commutatio). . . ."

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of Christ's righteousness.⁶ And I do not see how it can be denied that Luther did.⁷ But for our present purposes it does not much matter whether he did or not. For what I now wish to show in this paper is simply this: first, that, whether or not the two major Reformers use language which must imply substitution and imputation, they without doubt have a conception of faith which transcends these, and all other, "legalistic" terms; second, that this conception of faith already contains within it the main lines which a theory of atonement must follow, if the faith and the atonement are to be consistent; third, that there exists a category which fulfils this condition of consistency, namely, the category of "sacrifice."

I

"Faith," according to the Reformers, is, of course, a many-sided conception. But no description of faith which omitted the element of "trust" or "commitment" could be considered genuinely Protestant. Basically, faith is the correlate of the divine Word or Promise.⁸ Consequently, it includes credence. But because the content of the divine promise is Christ-because, in fact, Christ is the Word-faith takes on the deeper character of commitment to a person. Mere credence could not justify: the faith which justifies is a faith which "lays hold upon Christ . . . and enfolds him as the ring enfolds the precious stone."⁹ Saving or justifying faith is, in fact, a commitment Which effects a "union" with Christ. It is the bond which, in Luther's Treatise on Christian Liberty, brings about the wedding of Christ and the believing soul, making them one flesh. It is sometimes alleged that Calvin's faith is more intellectualistic than Luther's, and the formal definition in the third book of the Institutes (ch. ii) might seem to confirm this impression. But Calvin, too, speaks of a faith which "embraces" Christ (as, for instance, in

⁶ It was very important for Calvin that Christ did not endure just "any kind of death," but rather a criminal's execution. so that "this is our acquittal: the guilt which held us liable to punishment was transferred to the head of the Son of God" (Inst., II.xvi.5).Jjustification consists in forgiveness and the "imputation of the righteousness of Christ" (ibid., III.xi.2), hence we are righteous "not in reality, but by imputation" (ibid., 11). Many other references could, of course, be cited.
⁷ Luther's characteristic mode of speech is to say that our sins and Christ's righteousness meet in Christ's person, and that our sins are overcome in the consequent battle (see, e.g., W.A.401.439.13). Nevertheless, the passages cited in Seeberg's Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte should alone be sufficient to show that penal substitution was by no means foreign to Luther's thought: Eng. trans. (Grand Rapids, 1954), II.265ff. Calvin, it should be added, also on occasion uses the language of conflict and victory: e.g., Inst., II.xvi.6.
⁸ "Justifying faith must be understood correlatively" (Luther: W.A.Tr. 3, No. 3734; cf. W.A. 42.564.8). Also Calvin, Inst., III.ii.29.
⁹ Luther: W.A. 401.233.17; cf. W.A. 401.164.20, W.A. 21.488.11ff., etc.

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his Commentary on John 6: 35), and the first chapter of the same third book makes it clear that for him also "commitment" passes over into the notion of "mystical communion."

Enough, then, has been said of the nature of "saving faith," according to the Reformers, to make it perfectly plain that nothing so exaggeratedly objective as substitution or so external and artificial as imputation could possibly be found consistent with it.

Substitution I take to mean the view that Christ was punished for our sins in our stead, so that it is no longer necessary for us to be punished ourselves. On this view faith itself is unnecessary, because, if Christ bore my sins in my stead, then he bore them whether I believe it or not. There can be no sense whatever in speaking of faith as the "appropriation" of Christ's work on my behalf and in my stead, for, so far as my salvation is concerned, I do not need to appropriate Christ's work. Of course, we can argue that faith is our response to the work of Christ, and that it partakes of the nature of trustful submission. But in this case it is not "saving" faith, for it is the response of one who is already saved. Therefore, whether we interpret faith as either "belief" or "trust," it cannot, on the substitutionary theory, contribute anything to our salvation, not even as the instrumental cause or organon leptikon. It cannot, in other words, bear the least resemblance to the Reformers' appropriating faith which "lays hold upon" Christ Crucified in order to receive salvation from him alone. Every plea for a "really substitutive atonement which actually saves" (Warfield) can preserve the concept of "saving faith" only at the expense of an inconsistency-the inconsistency between the second and third books of Calvin's Institutes.¹⁰

Imputation I here take to mean the view that Christ's righteousness is reckoned to the sinner who has faith. (It is, of course, necessary to add the qualifying word "here," since imputation may be interpreted otherwise, and is, indeed, in one form a Biblical category.) Again the faith in question cannot be "saving" or "justifying" faith, as the Reformers generally intend it. For the faith required on this theory does not itself appropriate the righteousness: the righteousness is rather "reckoned" in return for the faith.

¹⁰ Paul VanBuren in his recent book, Christ in our Place (Edinburgh, 1957), shows himself aware of this tension in Calvin's thought when he raises the question, "Is the work of Christ to be understood as having gained the reality of salvation, or only as having opened up its possibility?" (p. 32, his italics). But later he seems to case the tension unwarrantably by arguing that "incorporation means the realization of substitution" (p. 97). The question is precisely whether, and in what sense, substitution needs "realizing."

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We conclude, therefore, that the conception of saving faith cannot be consistently combined with either substitution or imputation, and it is curious that the attempt has been so repeatedly made in traditional Protestant theology.

II

The kind of theory of atonement which the Reformers' conception of saving faith suggests is, I think, fairly clear. On the one hand, it will be an atonement which is begun "outside of" ourselves; on the other hand, it will be an atonement which does not fully atone, and is not fully consummated, until we make it our own. For it is the nature of justifying faith to grasp, or lay hold upon, what is objective, making it "subjective-objective."

What is wrong with the substitutionary theory is precisely that it over-objectifies. Instead of making atonement dependent upon something outside of the sinner, it makes the whole atoning act itself something "outside." And the difficulty of this position (from our point of view) I have already indicated, namely, that, whatever else faith may be, it cannot let it be saving faith.

Nevertheless, the substitutionary theory is correct in turning the sinner's gaze outwards, for true faith is concerned with an act and a Person which stand over against it. But what it lays hold upon is not a "finished work" which itself atones, but rather a "finished work" which may become atonement. For atonement, if it is really to make "at-one" God and the sinner, must, in the nature of the case, be subjective, though never purely, nor even primarily, subjective.

Luther and Calvin have a way of expressing what we may call (albeit rather clumsily) the "subjective-objective" understanding of the atonement, and I am not concerned to deny the validity of the category which they employ. Again and again Luther in particular speaks of a "mighty duel"¹¹ between the righteousness of Christ and the sins of man. When the sinner is united to Christ by faith, then the duel begins; and it can only conclude, Christ's righteousness being invincible and eternal, in sin's being vanquished. Hence, insofar as Luther thinks of the "duel" as taking place anew each time a different sinner is united with Christ, his "classic" view of atonement (as Aulén likes to call it) is genuinely subjective-objective: the "happy exchange" is not a legal transaction, but a "fröhlich Wechsel

¹¹ See especially his comments on Gal. 3: 16 (W.A. 401, pp. 432 ff.).

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und Streit" in which the believer's sin and Christ's righteousness are joined in conflict by a union of wills, the sin being finally swallowed up in the righteousness. The idea is ethical and dynamic. Our sins are not punished, by substitution, in Christ's agony: they are overcome through encountering his righteousness. Nor is his righteousness ours through imputation, but only through moral union.

Nevertheless, Luther's exposition does, so far as I can make out, suffer from the defect of wavering between two distinct ideas, namely, the believer's relating himself by faith to a past and completed victory of Christ, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the believer's occasioning by his faith a duel which is strictly new and contemporary. The distinction is important, because the former interpretation may easily relapse into a view as excessively objectified as the substitutionary theory. Thus, when Luther says that we are justified by faith because faith lays hold upon the victory of Christ,¹² he is perhaps stating the matter misleadingly; for if Christ has already overcome our sins, then we are already justified, and it is quite artificial to make a distinction between a past victory and our present experience of justification. The only way to avoid this conclusion is to insist that justification itself entails a conflict and victory which is essentially new and contemporary, even though organically related to a victory which is both past and completed. Possibly something like this is Luther's intention. Hence Carlson, interpreting Luther, writes: "What God has done historically through Christ's life, death, and resurrection, he does continually in the act of justification."¹³

III

Luther does, then, at the very least come near to an adequate understanding of the relation between objective and subjective atonement, when he uses his favorite category of Christ's "victory"; and it is arguable that Calvin's thinking follows Luther's quite closely at this point. What I now wish to maintain is that there exists in the writings of the Reformers another category which, as reinterpreted in recent theology, fulfils far more adequately the requirements of a correct correlation between objective and subjective atonement. On this other line of thought the best recent

¹² W.A. 401.444.13.
¹³ The Reinterpretation of Luther (Philadelphia, 1948), p. 59. Cf. Gordon Rupp, The Righteousness of God (London, 1953), p. 35.

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discussions known to me are, in general, those of Vincent Taylor,¹⁴ although I shall find it necessary to question his position in certain details.

What exactly are the requirements for an adequate interpretation of the atonement? We have seen already that atonement must be wholly dependent upon a work of Christ on men's behalf, but that the atonement itself cannot be something done in man's stead. As Taylor puts it,¹⁵ we need a category of representative action which will describe Christ's work as something men could never do for themselves, but yet is not something wholly external to themselves: the work of Christ for men must be "a vital factor in their approach to God because in it they can participate both by personal faith and in corporate worship." just such a category Taylor finds in the Biblical understanding of "sacrifice."

Against the idea of sacrifice there has been, since the rise of the modern critical approach to religious beliefs and practices, a widespread prejudice. The reason is not merely that sacrifice savors too much of the "beastly devices of the heathen," not merely that the ritual associated with it is inherently disgusting to the sophisticated modern,¹⁶ but rather that it has seemed to suggest, even after its baptism into the service of Christian thinking, a grossly unworthy view of Deity. For it has often been assumed that the underlying aim of Biblical sacrifices is always to placate an angry God-and to placate Him, not by executing judgment upon the guilty sinner, but upon a substituted victim.

Nor can we deny that the Old Testament affords some grounds for such a prejudice. In Gen. 8: 21 it is the smell of a "sweet savor" that decides the Lord not again to curse mankind. In I Sam. 26: 19 David is confident that if it is the Lord who has "stirred up" Saul against him, then nothing more than an offering is required to put matters right. In II Sam. 24: 25 David builds an altar and makes his offerings, and "so the Lord was intreated for the land, and the plague was stayed from Israel."¹⁷ In this last instance, in particular, the aim of the sacrifice is clear, that is, to appease and to placate, thereby inducing a change in God's purpose.

¹⁴ Jesus and His Sacrifice (London, 1937). The Atonement in New Testament Teaching (2nd edn., London, 1945), and Forgiveness and Reconciliation (2nd edn., London, 1946).
¹⁵ Atonement, p. 198.
¹⁶ Not to mention the sophisticated man of the sixteenth century! See Calvin: Inst., II.vii.1, Comm. on Isaiah 34: 6.
¹⁷ According to vv. l6f. the Lord had already "repented." This has led some scholars to believe that v. 25 represents a different-and probably very much earlier-tradition.

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However, in the light of the most recent studies into the meaning of Old Testament sacrifices, I think we can say that this prejudice is not warranted, provided we look at the Old Testament as a whole and provided we are more interested in its highest developments than in its humblest origins. C. H. Dodd has shown, I think conclusively, that in the Septuagint the word ίλάσκεσθαι and its cognates suggest not "placation" but "expiation"-in other words, that the Christian understanding of sacrifice has been too much influenced by "pagan" analogies.¹⁸ The importance of this conclusion, which I must here be allowed to presuppose without further discussion, will appear in a moment.

If sacrifice in the Old Testament is not placatory, neither is it substitutionary. The substitution-theory is, of course, only one of many attempts to interpret the meaning of sacrifice, and the arguments in its favor are wholly unconvincing. Other views which have held the field are the "gift-theory" (defended notably by G. B. Gray), the "communion-theory" (defended by Robertson Smith), the "homage-theory" of F. D. Maurice, and what we could call the "cover-theory" of Ritschl.¹⁹ But amidst the variety of conflicting theories, the important thing is to hold firmly to the basic, underlying idea of all sacrifice-namely, the idea of an offering with which the worshipper can by faith identify himself, not so much an offering which bears his punishment in his stead. The sacrificial offering is a priestly act to which the worshipper must (in McLeod Campbell's favorite phrase) "respond in Amen." And if we understand the Biblical sacrifices as at least in part expiatory, then we can go further and add "the conception of sharing in the cleansing power of life which has been released in death, dedicated, and presented to God."²⁰

If, then, we interpret the category of sacrifice as neither substitutionary nor placatory, but representative and expiatory, I think we have a category of atonement such as would be required by the Reformers' conception of justifying faith. For it is precisely the nature of justifying faith to lay hold upon, and to make its own,

¹⁸ The Bible and the Greeks (London, 1935), ch.v.
¹⁹ Ritschl's view was, of course, that atonement "covered" the worshipper, not from Yahweh's wrath, but from his glory: it had to do with man's creatureliness rather than his sin. There is an excellent (if now rather old) review of sacrificial theories, their merits and demerits, in G. B. Stevens, Christian Doctrine of Salvation (New York, 1905), ch.i. Stevens rightly points out that no one "explanation" is likely to express adequately the differing motives with which the worshipper must have approached the altar.
²⁰ Vincent Taylor, Atonement, p. 187.

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something done on its behalf by Christ. Only, instead of faith's apprehending a past victory (which is rather incongruous), we now have a faith which identifies itself with a perfect offering (which, though certainly a little foreign to our modern ways of thinking, is very much less incongruous, being implied directly in the concept of sacrifice itself). On the sacrificial theory the "at-one-ment" is not the offering by Christ of himself, but the offering plus the sinner's identifying himself with it. The danger of the "classic" theory is that in making Christ's victory itself the atoning act, it over-objectifies the atonement and thus makes it difficult to relate atonement and justification.

IV

It remains to add, very briefly, what was Jesus' self-offering? And how does it expiate?

(1) Jesus' offering to God was his life of perfect obedience, an obedience which remained firm in the face of death. Even the death of Christ derives its significance from being an act of obedience. In St. Bernard's familiar adage, "Not his death, but his willing acceptance of death was pleasing to God." It is remarkable how prominent is the idea of Jesus' obedience alike in the New Testament and in the Reformers. He was "obedient unto death," says Paul (Phil. 2: 8). And again: "By the obedience of one shall many be made righteous" (Rom. 5: 19). Hebrews associates Christ's obedience with his sacrifice, making use of the 40th Psalm (Heb. 10: 4-10). Again, in both the Reformers Christ's gift to us, his part in the "happy exchange," is always his obedience or righteousness. According to Luther, it was with his eternal righteousness that Christ endowed his bride (that is, the sinful soul).²¹ According to Calvin, Christ reconciles us to God "by the whole course of his obedience." The purpose of the Incarnation was precisely that he might pay the debt of obedience; and even his death is significant only because it was a sacrifice offered willingly.²² The "victory" of Christ, we might add, was that he allowed nothing to turn him from his purpose to make this perfect offering to God. The crucial engagements in the conflict are represented in the Gospels by the temptation-story, the decision of Jesus to set his face stedfastly towards Jerusalem, the agony in the garden, and, finally, the cross.

²¹ W.A. 7.55.7ff.
²² Inst., II.xvi.5; Comm. on Isaiah 42: 1, John 10: 18.

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The victory of obedience was complete when he cried out "Father, forgive them" (the obedience of love) and "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit" (the obedience of faith). And upon this victory the resurrection set the seal.

I would wish, then, to limit Christ's sacrifice to his offering a life of perfect obedience to his Father's will, and I do not consider Vincent Taylor's threefold division at all helpful.²³ The first division corresponds closely with what we ourselves have argued above. The second division, however, is more questionable. Apparently it is an attempt to rehabilitate the penal element in older theories of atonement: "The self-offering of Jesus is his perfect submission to the judgment of God upon sin." And Taylor in his various writings has shown himself willing to describe the sufferings of Jesus as "penal." Now, we certainly cannot say that Jesus' sufferings were penal in the sense that he underwent punishment for his own sins, nor (if our argument so far is correct) can we say that he was punished as the substitute for others: he was not indeed "punished" at all. All we can say is that Jesus suffered the consequences of other people's sins, and at least some of these consequences could be described as "penalities." This is perhaps all Taylor himself intends.²⁴ But clearly these consequencies were not penal for Jesus. Therefore one wonders whether the word "penal" can be anything but misleading in this context. The only way in which Christ could offer to God the sacrifice of perfect obedience was by entering into the human situation with all its sinfulness and so sharing in the suffering which human sinfulness (no doubt, under God's judgment) entails. But this does not strictly make his sufferings either "penal" or "vicarious." This would surely be to mis-state the entailment of mankind's solidarity in sin, one consequence of which is that an Innocent man can be ensnared in the meshes of other people's sins.²⁵ Nor, I think, does Taylor further his case (in the third division) by introducing McLeod Campbell's and R. C. Moberly's notion of "vicarious repentance." Moberly's illustration (which Taylor cites) of a mother's shame for her child's misdemeanor surely does not help, for such a sense of shame arises from a feeling of implicit guilt. Indeed, we sometimes say that the mother is ashamed of her child

²³ Jesus and His Sacrifice, pp. 307 ff.
²⁴ Cf. Forgiveness and Reconciliation, pp. 210-12.
²⁵ J. B. Priestley has attempted to present this consequence dramatically in his interesting play, An Inspector Calls.

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rather than feels shame for her child. The notion of "shared guilt" may be a feeling of partial responsibility, or it may be a discomforting consciousness of one's own proneness to the same wrong. In neither case is the notion applicable to Jesus.

(2) Jesus' obedience expiates our sins by removing the crippling disability which past wrongdoing leaves as its mark upon our souls. Sin leaves an indelible stain-a miasma²⁶ -upon the moral self. "Souffrir passe, avoir souffert ne passe jamais":²⁷ that is profoundly true of every department of a man's life, not least of his sinning. But if the mark can never quite be removed, it may be "covered," and its effects "neutralised." This, however, could only be achieved by the introduction of a greater power for good, capable of giving an entirely new direction to a man's existence. "If we think realistically, there is no way of disinfecting moral corruption except by creating a new center of healthy life capable of absorbing the diseased tissue."²⁸ And this is precisely what Christ's obedience is able to do for us, if we make his self-offering our own-if we lay our hand upon the victim's head, if we breathe our humble "Amen" to what he has done for us by the grace of God, and if we take our stand within the communion of his saints, the sphere in which atonement is taking place.

And is not the hand we lay upon his head the hand of faith? Then sacrifice and justification are but two symbols for one and the same thing. If it be objected that we have only added one vague metaphor to another, the answer is obvious. The very fact that two independent lines of thought lead us on to the same point testifies to the genuineness of the experience which lies behind and beyond them. And yet we will gladly agree with Calvin when he says, "No language can fully represent the consequences and efficacy of Christ's death."²⁹ Language, after all, is but a witness pointing to a reality beyond itself; yet it may become a sacrament through which the reality reaches us.

²⁶ The ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus is perhaps the best commentator on this theme.
²⁷ Léon Bloy (quoted by Berdyaev in Freedom and the Spirit, p. vii).
²⁸ C. H. Dodd, Three Sermons (London, 1954), p. 22.
²⁹ Comm. on Eph. 5: 2.