ATONEMENT in the MIDDLE AGES
BENJAMIN WHEATON
Suffering, Not Power: Atonement in the Middle Ages
Copyright 2022 Benjamin Wheaton
Lexham Academic, an imprint of Lexham Press
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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations that are not drawn from the Latin are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
Print ISBN 9781683595991
Digital ISBN 9781683596004
Library of Congress Control Number 2021948312
Lexham Editorial: Todd Hains, Andrew Sheffield, Jessi Strong, Danielle Thevenaz, Mandi Newell
Cover Design: Joshua Hunt, Brittany Schrock
Dr. Laura Wheaton
Penal Substitution in the De monarchia
Penal Substitution and Satisfaction in the Paradiso
Sin Offering in Christus Victor
5. Caesarius of Arles, Part II
Expiation and the Devil’s Rights in Christus Victor
Expiation and Propitiation in a Sacrificial Offering
Sacrifice and Satisfaction in Christ’s Crucifixion
BLE Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique
CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina
PL Patrologia Latina
RevScRel Revue des sciences religieuses
RHR Revue de l’histoire des religions
Amour fist Diex du ciel descendre,
Amour li fist char et sanc prendre,
Amour le fist par deniers vendre,
Amour le fist en la crois pendre,
Amour le fist son sanc espandre,
Amour li fist le costé fendre,
Amour li fist l’esperit rendre,
Amour le fist gésir en cendre.
A ceste amour devons entendre.
Love made God come down from heaven,
Love made him take flesh and blood,
Love made him be sold for silver,
Love made him hang on the cross,
Love made him pour out his own blood,
Love made him slit his own side,
Love made him give up his spirit,
Love made him lie down in ash.
We must incline unto this love.
—Anonymous thirteenth-century French poem
INTRODUCTION
This book is an experiment, an attempt to grapple with history in all its immensity. Because of history’s vast size and scope, it can be very mercurial. Just when we think we have established an accurate narrative about some event or idea, something comes along to upend it and make us doubt ourselves. Then—sometimes—when we have entertained these doubts and allowed them to persuade us to create a new narrative, the facts in all their vast multitude come back to slap us in the face and drive us to realize the old narrative was more right than wrong. At other times, of course, the old narrative has no such renaissance ...
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About Suffering, Not Power: Atonement in the Middle AgesWas Christ’s death a victory over death or a substitution for sin? Many today follow Gustav Aulén’s Christus Victor view, which portrays Christ’s death as primarily a victory over the powers of evil and death. According to Aulén, this was the dominant view of the church until Anselm reframed atonement as satisfaction and the Reformers reframed it as penal substitution. In Suffering, Not Power, Benjamin Wheaton challenges this common narrative. Sacrificial and substitutionary language was common well before Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo. Wheaton displays this through a careful analysis of three medieval figures whose writings on the atonement are commonly overlooked: Caesarius of Arles, Haimo of Auxerre, and Dante Alighieri. These individuals come from different times and contexts and wrote in different genres, but each spoke of Christ’s death as a sacrifice of expiation and propitiation made by God to God. Let history speak for itself, read the evidence, and reconsider the church’s belief in Christ’s substitutionary death for sinners. |
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