God’s Victorious Love

The importance of Augustine of Hippo’s thought for western Christianity is difficult to overstate. Medieval theology is deeply influenced by Augustine, and the retrieval of Augustine’s thought is everywhere evident in the theology of the Reformers. Today, the reception of Augustine’s views of election, human nature, sin and grace, and sacramental theology—to name a few—can be seen in Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, and Reformed traditions.

Not so with atonement.

When we begin to explore Augustine’s understanding of the reconciling work of God in Jesus Christ, we enter a different world—the world of patristic theology. Here, we find Augustine embedded in his ancient Christian milieu, and attempts to find in his theology the familiar doctrines of penal substitution and satisfaction of divine justice quickly run aground. While elements of these doctrines are present, Augustine arranges and frames them in a dramatically different fashion than later scholastic theology. What are we to make of this?

Dramatically is the key word here. Augustine’s understanding of God’s reconciling work is consistent with the “dramatic,” “classic,” or “Christus victor” theme of Christ’s conquest of Satan found throughout the church fathers. The fathers took the reality of angelic powers and principalities both literally and seriously, Satan being chief among them, and Augustine is no exception. However, in saying this, we should not think we have taken the measure of Augustine’s thought. For underlying and informing this perspective are biblical insights into the God-given telos of human nature, the love and justice of God, the role of Satan in God’s economy of salvation, and the eucatastrophic events of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of the Son of God.

To plumb the depths of Augustine’s corpus is no small task, and divergent scholarly interpretations abound. However, many agree that a prominent locus of Augustine’s atonement theology can be found in Book 13, paragraphs 11-23 of his massive On the Trinity (De Trinitate), which was published late in his life (circa AD 420-26). An examination of this passage will aid us in our quest to understand Augustine.

Created for union and blessedness

In Book 13 of On the Trinity, Augustine contemplates the incarnation of the Word and the problem of our mortality. Human beings were created for and long for union and blessedness (beatus) in God—we “will to be blessed” and so “will also to be immortal” (11)—but death prevents us from enjoying that blessedness for which we were created. Without the gift of immortality, the God-given telos of human nature cannot be fulfilled, and our mortality leads us to despair.

Here, we see the principal problem to be solved in Augustine’s atonement theology. As with the rest of the church fathers, the fundamental problem of the human condition is death. We are born dying, spiritually dead in our trespasses and sins, and disintegrating into nonbeing under the curse of death because of sin, which has separated the whole of humanity from our original union with God.

He who is by nature the Son of God was made the Son of man through mercy for the sake of the sons of men. -Augustine Share on XHowever, in order to proffer to human beings the hope of immortality and of being restored to our original telos of union with God and blessedness, the Son of God became human. Augustine continues: “If He who is by nature the Son of God was made the Son of man through mercy for the sake of the sons of men . . . how much more credible is it that the sons of men by nature should be made the sons of God by the grace of God, and should dwell in God, in whom alone and from whom alone the blessed can be made partakers of that immortality?” (12)

Here we see the first of the atoning works of God in Augustine’s theology. Note that this first stage of atonement is ontological and teleological. He who is “by nature the Son of God was made the Son of man” so that “the sons of men by nature should be made the sons of God.” Moreover, the outcome of this marvelous work is that we should “dwell in God” and thereby know immortal blessedness. Through the Son’s assumption of human nature to his divine nature, he has restored to human beings the possibility of eternal union with God and the blessedness for which we were created. Thus, the incarnation is the beginning and ground of atonement.

Could not God have effected reconciliation another way?

Augustine now turns to a second concern, which takes the form of an anticipated objection: Why did the Son of God have to take on a human soul and body and to suffer death? Could not God have effected reconciliation another way? Augustine responds that it was indeed possible for God to do this another way; however, the incarnation and free self-offering of the Son for our sake was the most appropriate way for God to demonstrate how much he loves us. “For what was so necessary for the building up of our hope, and for the freeing the minds of mortals cast down by the condition of mortality itself from despair of immortality, than that it should be demonstrated to us at how great a price God rated us, and how greatly He loved us?” (13)

Here we see the second plank, as it were, in Augustine’s atonement platform: the incarnation and voluntary suffering and death of the Son is a revelation of God’s love for sinful humanity. It reveals God’s disposition of love for his creatures. Augustine here engages in a brief exposition of Romans 5:5-10 as he contemplates this fact, citing verse 8: “God commends His love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

But what of the rest of this Romans text, especially Paul’s statement that those who are “justified by his blood” will “be saved from wrath through him?” Augustine sees in this passage the juxtaposition of God’s love and wrath and seeks to make sense of it (14). On the one hand, apart from Christ, we were “enemies of God” and subject to God’s wrath. On the other hand, out of God’s love for us, those who are in Christ have been justified and reconciled to God by Christ’s death. In what sense does Christ’s blood justify us if God loved us while we were still sinners?

Augustine’s first answer to this question is best captured in the following lengthy quote (15):

But what is meant by justified in His blood? . . . And what is meant by being reconciled by the death of His Son? Was it indeed so, that when God the Father was angry with us, He saw the death of His Son for us, and was appeased towards us? Was then His Son already so far appeased towards us, that He even deigned to die for us; while the Father was still so far angry, that except His Son died for us, He would not be appeased? . . .
Pray, unless the Father had been already appeased, would He have delivered up His own Son, not sparing Him for us? . . . But I see that the Father loved us also before, not only before the Son died for us, but before He created the world; the apostle himself being witness, who says, “According as He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world” [Eph 1:4]. Nor was the Son delivered up for us as it were unwillingly, the Father Himself not sparing Him; for it is said also concerning Him, “Who loved me, and delivered up Himself for me” [Gal 2:20]. Therefore together both the Father and the Son, and the Spirit of both, work all things equally and harmoniously.

Here we find a third vital aspect of Augustine’s atonement theology: atonement is irreducibly Trinitarian.

Atonement is irreducibly Trinitarian

For Augustine, it cannot be that the death of Christ reconciles us to the Father, since the Father has already loved and chosen us in Christ from before the foundation of the world. Moreover, there is no separation or conflict within the Godhead in this regard. The Father is not “angry” toward us such that he was “appeased” by the death of the Son, nor was there a time when the Father was angry while the Son was already appeased. Rather, the Father and Son (and Spirit) are of one eternal will and disposition of love toward fallen humanity, and together in history have “equally and harmoniously” undertaken our reconciliation.

What then does it mean that we are justified by the blood of Christ and reconciled to God by his death? Augustine’s answer includes several related points. First, it accorded with God’s justice to permit the human race to be “delivered into the power of the devil” (16) as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin. Through their “original” sin, death came to humanity, and human beings became captive “by nature” to sinful inclination and death under Satan’s dominion.

God eternally determined in love to rescue humanity from bondage to Satan and sin and death. Share on XHowever, second, while permitting Satan to serve as his instrument of punishment, God did not cease to love and be merciful toward humanity. God eternally determined in love to rescue humanity from bondage to Satan and sin and death, and accomplished this through the Son in two ways. The first way is the way of righteousness and the Cross:

What, then, is the righteousness by which the devil was conquered? What, except the righteousness of Jesus Christ? And how was he conquered? Because, when he found in Him nothing worthy of death, yet he slew Him. And certainly it is just, that we whom he held as debtors, should be dismissed free by believing in Him whom he slew without any debt. In this way it is that we are said to be justified in the blood of Christ. For so that innocent blood was shed for the remission of our sins. . . . And hence He proceeds to His passion, that He might pay for us debtors that which He Himself did not owe. . . . And hence it was necessary that He should be both man and God. For unless He had been man, He could not have been slain. (18)

Here we find ourselves in familiar atonement territory. Being God, Jesus lives a life of perfect righteousness; being human, he is unjustly slain on behalf of unrighteous humanity. Consequently, through his unjust passion and death, which were brought about by Satan through Judas, he willingly paid a debt he does not owe in order to remit our debt of sin and free us from our debtor’s prison of death. Through his unjust suffering and death on the Cross, the Righteous One, Jesus Christ, fulfills the justice of God and ransoms fallen humanity from the curse of Adam. The Cross is ground zero in Augustine’s theology of atonement.

However, Augustine is clear that the principal outcome of atonement achieved through the climactic death of Christ on the cross is not so much the remission of sins, but rather what that remission accomplishes: God’s victory over Satan. He who had held humanity in captivity to sin and death has himself been bound through Christ’s righteousness.

It is something . . . more profound of comprehension, to see that the devil was conquered when he thought himself to have conquered, that is, when Christ was slain. For then that blood, since it was His who had no sin at all, was poured out for the remission of our sins; that, because the devil deservedly held those whom, as guilty of sin, he bound by the condition of death, he might deservedly loose them through Him, whom, as guilty of no sin, the punishment of death undeservedly affected (19).

This is not the final act of atonement for Augustine, for the last enemy to be conquered is death. And it is through the power of God, God’s second means of conquering the devil, that death is overcome in the glorious resurrection of the Son. “And therefore He conquered the devil first by righteousness, and afterwards by power: namely, by righteousness, because He had no sin, and was slain by him most unjustly; but by power, because having been dead He lived again, never afterwards to die” (18).

Augustine’s arc

While there is far more that can and should be said—and far more in Augustine that can and should be read!—the preceding is sufficient for us to make two global observations. First, for Augustine, while the Cross is the climax of atonement, the entire arc of the Son’s incarnate ministry is atoning. His assumption of human nature in the incarnation, his life of faithful righteousness, his unjust death on our behalf, his glorious resurrection, and his consequent utter defeat of our ancient Enemy and liberation of humanity from sin and death, are all essential and integral elements of God’s work of atonement “for us and for our salvation.”

However, second, the discerning reader will also note that virtually all “models” of atonement can be plotted along Augustine’s arc of the Son’s descensus et ascensus. His “incarnation” as the Son of Man, his “recapitulation” of Adam’s (and Israel’s) failure, his “satisfaction” and “substitution” for sin, his “victory” over Satan, and through all of it his “revelation” of God’s love— all of these are present and accounted for in Augustine’s atonement theology. The history of Western atonement theology has too often resulted in the fragmentation and isolation of the various aspects of the biblical and patristic depiction of atonement. In Augustine, we see a multifaceted presentation of the atonement, each facet of which coheres within the singular, radiant jewel of the reconciling work of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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