On atonement …

Christian Century, June 28, 2005 by Jerry Handspicker

THANKS FOR the wonderfully crisp review of literature on the atonement in Mark Helm's article "Cross purposes" (March 22). For those who wish a holistic approach to this doctrine there is an older source which ought not to be overlooked. P. T. Forsyth, in the fourth chapter of his book The Work of Christ, writes of the "threefold chord" which unites the triumphant (Gustaf Aulen), satisfactionary (Anselm) and regenerative (Abelard) aspects of atonement.

Forsyth maintains that Christ's saving work consists "not in his obedient suffering, but in his suffering obedience." He sums up as follows: "This obedience was the Holy Father's joy and satisfaction. He found Himself in it. And it was also the foiling and destruction of the evil power. And it was farther the creative source of holiness in a race not only impressed by the spectacle of its tragic hero victorious, but regenerate by the solidarity of a new life from its creative Head."

Aulen wrote Christus Victor in 1930; Forsyth published Work in 1910.

Jerry Handspicker

Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, Mass.