Redemption (Gr. Ἀπολύτρωσις)

REDEMPTION (Gr. ἀπολύτρωσις). — It is equivalent to ransom, evoking the idea of the liberation of slaves. In Christian doctrine, the R. accomplished by Christ is the liberation of man from bondage to guilt and punishment, through the bloody sacrifice of the God-Man, constituted mediator between God and the human race.

SUMMARY:

I. Sacred Scripture

II. Tradition

III. Scholasticism

IV. Protestantism

V. The Council of Trent

VI. Development of Protestant doctrine

VII. The Catholic synthesis.
I. S. SCRIPTURE. – The Incarnation of the Word in God’s designs was ordered toward the R. of the human race. The very name of Jesus, which in Hebrew means Saviour, contained within itself a promise and a programme of salvation. Therefore the Church sings in her Creed: Qui propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis et incarnatus est. Christ is born as mediator for the reconciliation of man with God, as s. Paul affirms (I Tim. 2:5): “There is one God alone, and one mediator also between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.” Set between heaven and earth, through the mystery of the hypostatic union, although personally distinct from the Father, he is one thing with him through the identity of nature; and at the same time he is man among men through the specifically human essence, which he has wondrously united to his divine person. He therefore possesses the characteristics and resources of the mediator suited to joining together the extreme terms, God and man, separated by guilt. Thus the heart of Jesus Christ becomes the temple and bridal chamber in which the redeemed creature finds and embraces anew the Father whom it had wrongly abandoned.

The R. wrought by Christ is his mediation in act. The whole Gospel is a soteriology, a message of salvation, which the prophet Isaiah anticipated by several centuries in chapter 53 of his book, called the little poem of the R., where he portrays in vivid colours the figure of the Servant of Jahweh, the man of sorrows, who will be wounded and scourged for the iniquities of men and, through his voluntary and bloody sacrifice, will purify souls from sin and reconcile them with God. Jewish and rationalistic criticism has vainly attempted to eliminate the messianic character of this prophecy. The mysterious Servant of Jahweh can be neither the prophet nor the Israelite people: it is fulfilled only in the person of Christ the Redeemer, to whom the prophecy applies down to the smallest details. But Christ’s mediating mission is demonstrated unequivocally in the New Testament. The richest source of this soteriology is undoubtedly found in the letters of s. Paul, but some critics are wrong to attribute exclusively to him the testimony concerning the redemptive value of Jesus’ life and death.

The Synoptics, in recounting the institution of the Most Holy Eucharist, emphasise the words of Jesus Christ: “For this is my Blood of the new covenant, which is shed for the remission of sins” (Mt. 26:28; cf. Mc. 14:24; Lc. 22:20). But in Matthew (20:28; cf. Mc. 10:45) there are recorded the categorical words of the Master, who thus defined his redemptive mission: “The Son of man has not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom (λύτρον) for others.”

This fundamental soteriological theme, stated by the Synoptics in epigraphic style, receives a broad doctrinal development in s. Paul. The Apostle begins with consideration of original sin, which is transmitted from Adam to all humanity (Rom. 5:12), making it an object of God’s wrath and curse (Eph. 2:3). But God, in his infinite wisdom and mercy, freely decrees the R. of the human race through his incarnate Son and carries out his design in the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4). Jesus Christ is thus the second Adam, who will give resurrection and life to men, just as the first Adam had brought them death (I Cor. 15:22; Rom. passim). The whole life of Jesus has redemptive value (Rom. 8:3), but especially his death on the Cross and his Resurrection, which contribute to our salvation not only morally, as an example (Phil. 2:5 ff.; Gal. 2:19 ff.; Rom. 6:4 ff.), but also through true and proper efficient causality (Rom. 4:25). Christ is constituted the bloody victim of our sins, offering the Father his blood and his life as a holocaust of reparation, as the price of ransom and reconciliation. The testimonies follow one another insistently with astonishing realism through sacrificial language, which reaches its culmination in the Letter to the Hebrews, in which the Redeemer is presented as priest and victim of his sacrifice of infinite soteriological value. He is the R. (ἀπολύτρωσις), the ransom (ἀντίλυτρον), the propitiatory offering (Ὀσπήριον), the offering and victim (προσφορά καὶ θυσία) presented to the Father for our reconciliation (Rom. 3:24; I Tim. 2:6; Rom. 3:25; Eph. 5:2). The work of Christ our mediator and redeemer could not have been described more vividly. The force of the Pauline expressions does not permit metaphorical interpretations: in the life, and still more in the bloody sacrifice and Resurrection of Christ, there is a real redemptive efficacy, capable of freeing man from the bonds of sin and restoring his spirit to holiness.

This wondrous and complex work of restoration is framed by the Apostle within the doctrine of the Mystical Body, which establishes a profound solidarity between us and Christ, so that his Passion, Death and Resurrection become the drama of our spirit. We die with him in order to rise with him to a new life (Rom. 6:4): his expiation is ours and his merits are ours, if we adhere to him and insert ourselves into his Mystical Body through faith and active charity (Eph. 4:15). Moreover, the concept of R. recurs in s. John, who reaffirms the Pauline theme of death and blood as an expiatory and propitiatory sacrifice: “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sin of the world” (Io. 1:29); and in the Apoc. 5:8: “You are worthy, O Lord, to take the book and open its seals, because you were slain and have redeemed us to God with your blood”; I Io. 2:2: “And he is the propitiation (ὕπαμός) for our sins.” But s. John broadens the idea of R. by connecting it with the whole life of the Incarnate Word, which is a manifestation and transfusion of supernatural light and life, a preparation for eternal life: “God so loved the world that he gave it his only-begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through him” (Io. 3:16–17).

S. Peter too gathers the soteriological doctrine into these incisive expressions (I Pt. 1:18): “Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible gold or silver... but with the precious blood of Christ, an immaculate and undefiled lamb.”

II. THE TRADITION

The wealth of motifs with which written Revelation presents the R. accomplished by Christ is manifested in tradition, which now emphasizes one element, now another. Among the Fathers there is a great variety of approaches to translating and expounding the data of Revelation, although all are in agreement on the fundamental doctrine concerning the redemptive value of the life, death, and Resurrection of the Savior.

The principal tendencies may be reduced to two: the first, which predominates among the Eastern Fathers, already sees in the Incarnation of the Word the R. of human nature, elevated through apostolic union to divine dignity; the second, preferred by the Latins, readily follows the Pauline concept of the bloody expiatory sacrifice. But alongside these fundamental conceptions, suggested by s. Giovanni and s. Paolo, the Fathers developed secondary forms of exposition, often indulging in a metaphorical style and in images more suited to the mentality of the people. Thus arose the celebrated theory of the devil’s rights: Christ, in order to ransom man from the diabolical slavery of sin, paid Satan the price of his blood. The other, no less singular, was the theory of the abuse of powers: following original sin, Satan had received permission from God to torment human beings; deceived, he also attacked Jesus Christ, believing him to be merely a man, and therefore lost his dominion over all humanity. Imagination helped to give color to the idea: Christ came to be regarded as a hook, which God uses to catch and bring down the great infernal fish.

The rationalists seized upon these marginal motifs in the doctrine of the Fathers in order to conclude that, under the influence of Gnostic dualism, they had constructed a genuine soteriological mythology, presenting God and Satan as contending over sinful humanity as over a prey. But careful critical study has brought to light the superficiality and exaggeration of this thesis. Gathering together the voices of the best tradition, s. Agostino eliminated every ambiguity from the theory of Satan’s rights (De Trinit., 13, cap. 12), highlighting the true reason for the R. (Confess., 10, nn. 43, 68).

In conclusion, among the Fathers there is no organic, systematic doctrine concerning the mystery of the R.; rather, they collectively offer all the elements of this doctrine in a range extending from its essential outlines to its nuances and metaphorical coloring. It was the task of the scholastics to reduce to a system these elements scattered throughout the works of the Fathers.

III. SCHOLASTICISM

The first to attempt an organic synthesis was St. Anselm (v.) in the golden little work Cur Deus Homo. Following St. Augustine, this celebrated doctor employed all his dialectical acumen to illustrate by the light of reason the truths of the faith, which he intensely believed and lived. He sought to give the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the R. a rational form, to the point that at times he seems to compromise their transcendence. Thus, in Cur Deus Homo, he began from an entirely objective analysis of sin as an honor taken from God and, by means of a juridical process, arrived at the assertion of an ineluctable necessity of reparation, which can be achieved in only two ways: either punishment or voluntary satisfaction. Since man could not render God a satisfaction equivalent to the honor taken from him by sin, it was necessary that the Son of God become incarnate; he could then perform human acts of infinite satisfactory value by virtue of the hypostatic union, through which those acts belong to the Person of the Word, to whom Christ’s human nature is intimately united. By freely offering his life to the Father, Christ satisfies divine justice superabundantly and acquires infinite merits, which are poured out upon guilty men, making them worthy of eternal life.

The fundamental motive of Anselm’s reasoning is satisfaction. In Roman law this term signified the legal penalty for an offense; in medieval Germanic law, the offering of compensation for an injustice or an injury (Wergeld). More than from these secular sources, St. Anselm probably drew from Christian language, and especially from the liturgy, in which the term satisfaction was used to indicate the intercessions and merits of the saints on behalf of sinners. But in St. Anselm’s vigorous synthesis the scholastics soon perceived defects and gaps. Above all, they noted the overly juridical character of the treatment, as though God were subject to the norms of human justice and could not exercise mercy and love in his relations with rebellious humanity. Anselm’s doctrine also lacked the concept of solidarity between men and the Redeemer. Yet Sacred Scripture makes divine love and mercy the principal motive of the redemptive work, and St. Paul insists upon our solidarity with Christ through the doctrine of the Mystical Body. Later scholastics, from St. Bernard to St. Thomas, remedied these deficiencies by returning to the eloquent texts of written Revelation and the Fathers. It is enough to recall Io. 3:16: « For God so loved the world that he gave his Only-begotten Son ». Revelation thus contained what was needed to temper St. Anselm’s overly accentuated juridicism.

St. Thomas, embracing the data of Sacred Scripture, the doctrine of the Fathers, and that of the scholastics who preceded him, condensed the essential elements of traditional soteriology into a sober synthesis, regarded as definitive, in Sum. Theol., 3ᵃ, q. 48.

According to the Angelic Doctor, the two fundamental modes of the redemptive work are Christ’s merit and satisfaction, considered not as detached from humanity but as intimately united to sinful humanity through the Mystical Body, whereby Christ the Head constitutes with men the members almost a single person (ibid., a. 2, ad 1). Christ merits and satisfies divine justice by deliberately offering his entire life, but especially his Passion and Death (the material aspect). Yet his merit and satisfaction find their reason for being in Christ’s love for the Father and for men (the formal aspect). This moral element dominates the entire redemptive work and confers immense dignity and value upon physical suffering. « By suffering out of love and obedience, Christ offered God more than was required for reparation of the offense of the entire human race » (ibid., a. 2). And love also gives the Redeemer’s death the character of a perfect sacrifice, although on the part of the crucifiers it was an enormous crime (ibid., a. 3). But the R. is also a liberation, a ransom of man from a double servitude: that of guilt and that of punishment. Guilt is slavery to evil and to the devil; punishment is a debt owed to divine justice. Through his merits and satisfaction Christ breaks the bonds of both forms of servitude, blotting out guilt and remitting punishment (ibid., a. 4). Here St. Thomas touches upon the theory of the devil’s rights, but corrects its defect by categorically affirming that « the R. was necessary to free man with respect to God, not with respect to the devil: it was not to the devil but to God that the price of the blood shed by Jesus Christ had to be paid » (ibid., ad 3). Finally, St. Thomas vindicates, on the basis of Sacred Scripture and tradition, the character of real efficacy belonging to the R. accomplished by the Savior (ibid.).

The Life and Death of Jesus are not merely an example that exerts a moral influence upon men; they are also a causal principle that exerts a physical influence upon consciences, healing them. This efficacy proceeds from Christ’s divinity and operates through his humanity as the instrument of the Word who made it his own. The whole doctrine of St. Thomas may be summarized schematically as follows: Christ, as Head of humanity, his Mystical Body, moved by love and obedience, offered himself to the Father as mediator and voluntary victim for the sins of men, and accomplished their R. by committing his entire self—his divinity and his humanity, soul and body. In this complex work there is an efficient causality promoted by the Person of the Word and passing through the assumed humanity. Efficient causality operates along two parallel lines: merit, which is connected with the free will, and satisfaction, which is connected rather with the sacrifice of the flesh. The result is man’s liberation from the slavery of guilt and punishment and his reconciliation with God (ibid.).

IV. PROTESTANTISM

There is no doubt that Luther reduced Christianity to a problem of salvation and consequently made the R. of man the focal center of his entire religious system. Indeed, both he and his immediate followers did not hesitate to assert that the doctrine of the justification of man through the merits of Christ the Redeemer was something entirely new, as though it were their own invention. Luther began original sin (v.), which was said to have been so disastrous as to corrupt human nature profoundly, depriving it of reason and freedom. Through a sad personal experience he had become convinced that nature was so corrupt and dominated by sinful concupiscence that it could not be healed even by God. Consequently, he held that the R. of Christ could not regenerate and inwardly transform man enslaved to sin, but had to be something extrinsic to man, with a juridical-moral function, in the sense that God condescends not to take our sins into account in view of the holiness and merits of Jesus Christ.

Thus arose the theory of “imputation,” according to which God would not impute to man, incurably sinful, his sins (which remain indelibly fixed in the soul), but would impute to him the holiness of his divine Son, who died for the salvation of sinners. In this way man remains in himself what he is, with his sins and his profound wounds, but in the eyes of God he would appear healthy and holy through the interposition of the holiness of Christ the Redeemer. Nor does man have anything to do for this entirely extrinsic justification: he cannot freely contribute to his salvation, nor perform any act apart from a blind feeling of faith, understood as trust in and surrender to divine mercy. Faith, therefore, without works, without efforts or struggles.

The whole Gospel rebels against this Lutheran interpretation. The regeneration of the spirit, radical renewal, the new creation, the new man, of which s. Paolo and s. Giovanni speak in connection with the R., have no meaning in Lutheran doctrine.

Jansenism, the fruit of genuine Lutheranism, developed Luther’s system by reducing the joyful evangelical message to a somber and inert anguish before the problem of eternal destiny. Luther not only upsets and mortifies human psychology with his extrinsicist and negative soteriology, but also strips man of the heart of Christ, breaking every real bond of solidarity and reducing the Savior to a scapegoat who suffers the blows of justice alone, severed from humanity, unable to exercise any decisive influence upon the heart of man for an intimate restoration. Thus, a system that is inhuman: while it debases man’s nature, it also insults the power, goodness, and wisdom of God, emptying the mystery of the

Cross and destroying the world of Christ’s redeeming Grace.

V. IL CONCILIO DI TRENTO

The Church grasped the full gravity of the error and responded to the Lutheran provocation with the doctrine defined at the Council of Trent (1545–63). In this doctrine, which distilled the genuine Christian tradition developed from divine Revelation, human nature was vindicated above all. The Council, while recalling (sess. V) the doctrine already defined against Pelagianism (v.) in the 5th–6th centuries (the Councils of Carthage and Orange) concerning original sin and its consequences, whereby the whole human person has fallen (in deterius commutatum), defended the integrity of human nature and especially its freedom, which makes human beings responsible for their actions and capable of cooperating with divine Grace for their salvation (sess. VI, chaps. 5 and 6 and canons 4 and 5). It rejected Lutheran justification by imputation and reaffirmed the traditional concept of sanctification through Grace infused into the soul together with charity and the other virtues (ibid., chap. 7 and canons 9, 11, 12), and vindicated for human beings the right and duty constantly to perform good works under the impulse of Grace in order to merit, in the proper sense, an increase of Grace and eternal life (canons 20, 24, 26, 32).

Together with the truth of the internal sanctification of the human person by virtue of infused Grace, the Council of Trent restored against Luther the true redemptive function of Christ (sess. VI, chaps. 7 and 16). The incarnate Word came into this world to save human beings from eternal perdition, the fruit of original and personal sin; for this reason, moved by an immense love, he endured the torment of the Cross, by which he merited justification for humanity and offered full satisfaction to the Father on its behalf. Through his Passion and Death, Jesus Christ infused into human beings sanctifying Grace, which makes them living members of his Mystical Body and adopted children of God, heirs of paradise. Human beings grafted into Christ the Redeemer, as branches onto the vine, satisfy the divine precepts through good works performed by the power of God, and merit eternal life. Thus, according to the concept of s. Paolo, the Life, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ are reproduced and alternate, under the action of redeeming Grace, in the soul of the Christian, who is journeying toward the supreme goal. The entire doctrine of s. Paolo, meditated upon and lived out through fifteen centuries of Christianity, is reaffirmed in the canons of the Council of Trent against Luther’s aberrations.

VI. DEVELOPMENT OF PROTESTANT DOCTRINE

Whereas Catholic doctrine, after the sixteenth century, continued to move peacefully along the merit–satisfaction axis traced by tradition up to s. Tommaso and confirmed by the Council of Trent in the light of the solidarity between humanity and its Redeemer, according to the concept and reality of the Mystical Body, Lutheran doctrine underwent crises and reactions within the very bosom of the Protestant sects, which multiplied after Luther’s death.

The first of these reactions was due to Socino, who transferred the Lutheran principles of free examination and contempt for tradition onto the terrain of pure rationalism, inspired by humanism. Socino harshly criticized the inhuman concept of penal substitution, the basis of the soteriology of Luther and Calvin. For him, the innocent Christ who suffers and makes expiation for others, the true sinners, is something immoral and contrary to law: reparation, like sin, is personal. Ugo Grozio, as a good jurist, attempted to save Lutheran penal substitution from shipwreck by insisting on the juridical relationship between guilt and punishment and on the necessity of expiation for the restoration of the order disturbed by sin. But Socino’s seductive ideas had a powerful influence and underwent broad development in Protestant theology of the last century. Within Protestantism, one must distinguish an orthodox, conservative current, which seeks to defend and preserve the initial positions of the «reformation», even while softening certain harshnesses of the Lutheran conception, and a progressive current, which feels the rationalistic influence, first Socinian and then Kantian. With regard to the problem of R., liberal Protestantism found its adequate expression in the work of Augusto Sabatier (La doctrine de l'expiation et son évolution historique, Paris 1903). He believed that he had discovered in Holy Scripture two redemptive ideas: one ritualistic, of Levitical origin, expressed in the concepts of expiatory sacrifice (s. Giovanni and the Letter to the Hebrews); the other moralistic, of prophetic origin, which presents Christ as the just man who suffers for the salvation of his people (the doctrine of Jesus and Paul). As for tradition, Sabatier traced its outlines with a simplicity unconcerned with documentation; he maintained that soteriology had passed through three phases: the first, mythological, proper to the Fathers, who supposedly underwent Gnostic influence in combining strange theories (of the rights of the devil, abuse of power, etc.); the second, proper to the Scholastics, which may be defined as giorilica and extends from Anselmian satisfaction to the theory of s. Tommaso, which adds the concept of solidarity, and to the exaggerated Lutheran conception of penal expiation, taken up again by Grozio; the third, called moralistic, which arose and developed within liberal Protestantism and which, according to Sabatier, would be the true one.

But moralism is the denial of the mystery of the Cross preached by s. Paolo and s. Giovanni. From an inquiry conducted among Protestants themselves on two occasions (1883–1900) concerning the soteriological question, the following conclusions may be drawn: 1) almost unanimous abandonment of the Lutheran theory of penal expiation. 2) A broad agnostic tendency proper to those theologians, such as Dale, Oliver, and above all Farrar, who accept the fact of R. and do not wish to investigate its manner, which is mysterious and inexplicable. 3) Beyond these first two positions, which are merely negative, two positive currents can be discerned in modern Protestant theology: one is the remnant of orthodox doctrine, linked to the first «reformers»; the other is the epilogue of liberal Protestantism, connected with Socino and still more with Schleiermacher: a) liberal current: it is inspired by Kantian subjectivism and immanentism, seeking to explain R. by psychological and moral means and in an individualistic sense. Every person must resolve the problem of his salvation by looking to Christ as an example and stimulus for repentance and moral restoration. This is the doctrine of Ritschl, Sabatier, and Harnack, which may be defined as a kind of mystical moralism, in which it is difficult to discern the face of a supernatural religion. Rivière is right to assert the fundamental identity of this modern Protestant theory with that of the frankly rationalist Socino; b) orthodox current: it reconnects with Lutheran tradition, maintaining the concept of expiatory satisfaction and therefore the objective character of R. Evidently this current is a reaction to the liberal one and strives to preserve soteriology along the religious line of the supernatural, in accordance with the demands of Holy Scripture. But it has already abandoned the old schemes of Lutheranism, in which the idea of penal substitution dominates as a requirement of God’s vengeful justice. Dr. Fremantle and Dr. Horton (in The atonement..., cited in the bibliography, vol. II, pp. 164 and 131 ff.) speak insistently of Christ’s obedience, which gives value to his sufferings, and of the solidarity linking all sinful human beings to Christ, who redeems them through his loving and painful sacrifice. Lidgett, Fulliquet, and Snowden likewise speak in the same sense. Thus Protestant theology returns, consciously or unconsciously, to Catholic theology.

Lutheran pessimism had an echo in Kierkegaard’s anguished philosophy and even more in the so-called «theology of crisis» of Karl Barth. The latter, educated in German Calvinism, reacted against the digressions of Protestant scientific theology with an energetic appeal to the Lutheran emphasis on the Bible, accepted as the sole source of religious experience under the influence of the Holy Spirit, who enlightens individual believers. Barth made his debut in 1919 with a commentary on s. Paolo, Römerbrief (already in its fifth edition), in which he based his theology on the concept (attributed to the Apostle) of God’s absolute transcendence and his complete dominion over man. In its final expression, Barth’s theology, with particular regard to soteriology, may be summarized in the following terms. Man is tormented by the enigma of his own life and of the world: original sin has caused him to leave the realm of truth, to which he can no longer return by his own strength. He is a lost man who searches anxiously. To his question there is no answer other than the Word of God written in the Bible, in which the yes of eternal divine being and the no of human existence at the mercy of time are revealed. Human reason can do nothing in relation to God; the human will is passive. Man’s freedom is illusory when he is far from God; it is regained through the act of faith, but faith is blind submission to divine arbitrariness and makes him feel responsibility for sin without giving him the strength to free himself from II. The act of faith creates freedom and personality in the sense that it resolves man’s nothingness in God’s yes, but not in this life. On earth, sinful man remains such and therefore a slave to his nothingness, from which he cannot escape even by relying on Christ the Savior. The contrast between God, who is all, and man, who is nothing, is not resolved in this life, not even through faith and Grace: to man tormented by crisis before God and powerless to overcome his temporal problematicity, salvation is announced as the hope of eternal life, only beyond the limits of time.

But against such revivals of Lutheranism, which repeat, on the philosophical and theological terrain, the old theme of God’s despotic dominion and man’s absolute impotence, significant reactions are not lacking (cf. H. W. Ruessel, Gestalt eines christlichen Humanismus, Amsterdam 1939), which at least indirectly point to the need for an orientation toward Catholic doctrine.

One cannot deny the contrast observable between the historical development of Protestant soteriology, bristling with contradictions, and the firm consistency of Catholic soteriology, notwithstanding its progressive doctrinal development, ever adhering to the data of written and oral Revelation.

In our own age, the Vatican Council had prepared a schema on R., which was not defined because the proceedings were interrupted; yet it already bears witness to the mind of the Catholic Church, which preserves and reaffirms the Tridentine concepts of vicarious satisfaction and merit, as well as that of solidarity.

VII. THE CATHOLIC SYNTHESIS

The dogma of R. is a highly complex mystery, in which human and divine elements are at work: the psychology of sin under the twofold aspect of guilt and punishment, repentance and reparation, the value of the actions and sufferings of the Incarnate Word in the light of the hypostatic union, the relationship between Christ and humanity according to the doctrine of the Mystical Body, the divine attributes of justice, love, and mercy in relation to the work of redemption. Rightly does the catechism of the Council of Trent warn (part I, arts. 4, 5): « Nam si quid aliud humanae menti et intelligentiae difficultatem affert, certe crucis mysterium difficillimum existimandum est vixque percipi a nobis potest, salutem nostram ex cruce ipsa et ex co qui pro nobis ligne illi affixus est pendere ». It is the mysterium absconditum a saeculis, of which St. Paul speaks (Eph. 3, 9; Col. 1, 26; Rom. 16, 25).

The position of the Catholic Church before this mystery lies midway between the two extremes found in ancient and modern Protestant theology; and her doctrine translates the Revelation expressed in the Creed: « Propter nos homines et propter nostram salutem descendit de coelis; et incarnatus est... passus et sepultus est; et resurrexit ».

Christ, having constituted himself the mystical head of humanity, belongs to us; for us he offers his life to the Father in loving obedience, thereby satisfying offended divine justice and meriting our restoration. In Christ's work there is an objective aspect, connected with expiation, penal substitution, the propitiatory sacrifice, vicarious satisfaction, and the ransom of man enslaved by sin and the devil; and there is a subjective aspect, which includes the motive of the example given by Christ, the innocent victim of sin, and the participation of men of good will, who adhere to Christ through faith, love, and compassion, and through the Sacraments receive from him the fruitful and healing sap of Grace.

In Lutheran theology the influence of Christ the Redeemer upon men is solely juridical in character (imputation) or moral (example); in Catholic theology Christ's influence is physical-moral, because redeeming Grace is a physical reality, deriving from the Word through the humanity assumed and sacrificed on the Cross. According to Catholic doctrine, the profound and definitive analysis of R. is connected with the analysis of sin; thus the aspects of R. are as numerous as those of sin, as is evident in the doctrine of St. Paul.

Sin, now, is principally reducible to the denial of love and the violation of justice: whoever sins separates himself from God in order to cleave to creatures, thereby perverting love; moreover, he offends God and his law by disturbing the order established by God and consequently violating justice. Sin, therefore, is essentially hatred and iniquity: two elements, of which the first is subjective because it is immanent in the human spirit, while the second is rather objective, because it violates the order immanent in nature as an expression of God's will in the form of law. To the first element corresponds the offense of guilt, to the second that of punishment. R. must therefore be a restoration of love and justice for the reconciliation of man with his offended Creator. Once sin has been committed, the demand of justice immediately arises for the restoration of order and the reparation of the offense done to God. But this offense is, in a certain sense, infinite by reason of its object (God), and therefore cannot be adequately repaired by man. Love therefore intervenes, moving God to send his Son to earth so that, by becoming incarnate, he might be in a condition to suffer and offer the Father worthy satisfaction for the sins of men. Certainly God, moved by love, could have forgiven man without the tragedy of the Cross; but since his works are perfect, he wished also to satisfy the demands of justice through the superabundance of his love, causing the Incarnate Word to undergo the utmost suffering.

As a work of justice, R. corresponds to the objective aspect of sin (iniquity) and is expressed in the concept of satisfaction; as a work of love, it corresponds to the subjective aspect of guilt (hatred) and is realized in the concept of merit.

Both justice and love make use of suffering, as a material element suited to the justice that demands and to the love that gives itself.

According to Catholic doctrine, R. is resolved into an act of love, which lies at the root of all God's works (cf. St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., I, qq. 20-21).

2-23. 2. Fathers: G. van Crombrugghe, De soteriologiae christianae primis fontibus, Lovanio 1905; J. Rivière, Le dogme de la R. Essai d'étude historique, Parigi 1905; id., Le dogme de la R. chez st Augustin, ibid. 1928; id., Le dogme de la R. après st Augustin, ibid. 1930; id., Le dogme de la R. Etudes critiques et documents, Lovanio 1931. 3. Scholastics: S. Anselmo, Car Deus Homo (cf. L. Heinrichs, Die Gesangstungstheorie des hl. Anselmus von Canterbury, Paderborn 1909; P. Ricard, De santificatione Christi in tract. s. Anselmi • Car Deus Homo, Lovanio 1914; J. Rivière, Le dogme de la R. Etude théologique, 3rd ed., Parigi 1931, pp. 97 and 216). S. Bonaventura: R. Guardini, Die Lehre des hl. Bonaventura von der Erlösung, Düsseldorf 1921. A large part of Catholic theology on the question of Redemption follows the thought of s. Tommaso; consequently, scholastic manuals generally treat the subject on the basis of the Summa Theologica; Harnack, Sabatier, and Turmel do not see an organic soteriology in s. Tommaso, but discover gaps and defects in II. This severe judgment, arising from little understanding and much prejudice, has also influenced some Catholic writers. Scoto (Op. Oxon., In III Sent., dd. 19-20) approaches the problem from another point of view, not without criticizing s. Tommaso. He sees Redemption as incidental and not as the end of the Incarnation, proceeding from the concept of the absolute primacy of Christ in the divine plan of creation: cf. Tg. Fetten, Johannes Dans Scotus über das Werk des Erlösers, Bonn 1913; J. Rivière, La doctrine de Scot sur la R. devant l'hist. et la théol., in Estudio Franciscans, 45 (1933), pp. 271-83. 4. Ancient Protestants: V. CALVINO LUTERO SOCINO. 5. Modern Protestants: classical orthodox school: Fr. Bonifas, Etudes sur l'expiation, Montauban 1861; B. Pozzy, Histoire du dogme de la R., Parigi 1868; J. Bastide, Exposé du dogme de la R., Montauban 1869. Liberal rationalist school: A. Reville, De la R., Parigi 1859 (inspired by the work of Ch. Baur); A. Ritschl, Die Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, 3rd ed., Bonn 1889; A. Sabatier, La doctrine de l'expiation et son évolution historique, Parigi 1903 (a lively synthesis of all liberal doctrine developed from Schleiermacher onward); G. B. Stevens, The christian doctrine of salvation, Edimburgo 1905; R. Mackintosh, Historical theories of atonement, Londra 1920. Modern orthodox school (which comes close to Catholic positions): Dr. Wetzel, Grundlinien der Versöhnungstheorie, Lapsia 1910; P. L. Snowden, The atonement and ourselves, Londra 1919; H. Monnier, Essai sur la R., Neuilly 1929. For recent trends in Protestantism: The atonement in modern religious thought. A theological symposium, Londra 1907; E. Pfenningsdorf, Der Erlösungsgedanke, Gottingen 1929 (report on the Frankfurt Congress of 1928); The second World conference on faith and order (Edimburgo 1937), ed. Hodgson, Londra 1938. A survey of Protestant theology concerning Redemption has recently been made by Thomas Hywel Hughes, The Atonement. Modern Theories of the Doctrine, Londra 1949. The author advances his strange opinion, according to which God chooses the death on the Cross of his Son in order to acquire within himself the sense of a certain responsibility for the sins of men! For the “theology of crisis,” which is a return to the thought of Lutero and Calvino, cf. Karl Barth, Römerbrief, Monaco 1919; id., Kirchliche Dogmatik: I. Die Lehre vom Wort Gottes (2 vols.), II. Die Lehre von Gott (2 vols.), ibid. 1932; III and IV (in preparation). An effective critique is found in J. Hamer, L'occasionalisme théologique de K. Barth, Etude sur sa méthode théologique, Parigi 1949. 6. Catholics: H. N. Oxenham, The catholic doctrine of atonement, Londra 1865; E. Hugon, Le mystère de la R., Parigi 1910; I. Lammme, La R. Etude dogmatique, Lovanio 1911; A. Donders, Erlösungsschmacht in alter und neuer Zeit, Münster 1926; L. Richard, Le dogme de la R., Parigi 1932; H. N. Oxenham, Le dogme de la R. au début du moyen âge, ibid. 1934; R. Storr, Erlösung, Rottenburg 1935; M. Bendiscioli, Il problema della giustificazione. La coscienza cristiana del peccato e della R. nel suo sviluppo storico, Brescia 1940. Pietro Parente