Redemption
Part II
A. Satisfaction of Christ
Satisfaction, or the payment of a debt in full, means, in the moral order, an acceptable reparation of honour offered to the person offended and, of course, implies a penal and painful work. It is the unmistakable teaching of Revelation that Christ offered to His heavenly Father His labours, sufferings, and death as an atonement for our sins. The classical passage of Isaias (lii-liii), the Messianic character of which is recognized by both Rabbinical interpreters and New Testament writers (see Condamin, "Le livre d'Isaie" Paris, 1905), graphically describes the servant of Jahveh, that is the Messias, Himself innocent yet chastized by God, because He took our iniquities upon Himself, His self-oblation becoming our peace and the sacrifice of His life a payment for our transgressions. The Son of Man proposes Himself as a model of self-sacrificing love because He "is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a redemption for many" (lytron anti pollon) (Matt., xx, 28; Mark, x, 45). A similar declaration is repeated on the eve of the Passion at the Last Supper: "Drink ye all of this. For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins" (Matt., xxvi, 27, 28). In view of this and of the very explicit assertion of St. Peter (I Pet., i, 11) and St. John (I John, ii, 2) the Modernists are not justified in contending that "the dogma of Christ's expiatory death is not evangelic but Pauline" (prop. xxxviii condemned by the Holy Office in the Decree "Lamentabili" 3 July, 1907). Twice (I Cor., xi, 23, xv, 3) St. Paul disclaims the authorship of the dogma. He is, however, of all the New Testament writers, the best expounder of it. The redeeming sacrifice of Jesus is the theme and burden of the whole Epistle to the Hebrews' and in the other Epistles which the most exacting critics regard as surely Pauline, there is all but a set theory. The main passage is Rom., iii, 23 sq.: "For all have sinned, and do need the glory of God. Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption, that is in Christ Jesus, Whom God hath proposed to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to the shewing of his justice, for the remission of former sins." Other texts, like Eph., ii, 16; Col., i, 20; and Gal., iii, 13, repeat and emphasize the same teaching. The early Fathers, engrossed as they were by the problems of Christology have added but little to the soteriology of the Gospel and St. Paul. It is not true, however, to say with Ritschl (" Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versohnung", Bonn, 1889), Harnack ("Precis de l'histoire des dogmes", tr. Paris, 1893), Sabatier ("La doctrine de l'expiation et son evolution historique", Paris, 1903) that they viewed Redemption only as the deification of humanity through incarnation and knew nothing of Christ's vicarious satisfaction. "An impartial inquiry", says Riviere, "clearly shows two tendencies: one idealistic, which views salvation more as the supernatural restoration of mankind to an immortal and Divine life, the other realistic, which considers it rather as the expiation of our sins through the death of Christ. The two tendencies run side by side with an occasional contact, but at no time did the former completely absorb the latter, and in course of time, the realistic view became preponderant" (Le dogme de la redemption, p. 209). St. Anselm's famous treatise "Cur Deus homo" may be taken as the first systematic presentation of the doctrine of Redemption, and, apart from the exaggeration noted above, contains the synthesis which became dominant in Catholic theology. Far from being adverse to the satisfactio vicaria popularized by St. Anselm, the early Reformers accepted it without question and even went so far as to suppose that Christ endured the pains of hell in our place. If we except the erratic views of Abelard, Socinus (d. 1562) in his "de Deo servatore" was the first who attempted to replace the traditional dogma of Christ's vicarious satisfaction by a sort of purely ethical exemplarism. He was and is still followed by the Rationalist School which sees in the traditional theory all but defined by the Church, a spirit of vindictiveness unworthy of God and a subversion of justice in substituting the innocent for the guilty. The charge of vindictiveness, a piece of gross anthropomorphism, comes from confounding the sin of revenge and the virtue of justice. The charge of injustice ignores the fact that Jesus, the juridical head of mankind (Eph., i 22), voluntarily offered Himself (John, x, 15), that we might be saved by the grace of one Saviour even as we had been lost by the fault of the one Adam (Rom., v, 15). It would be a crude conception indeed to suppose that the guilt or culpability of men passed from the consciences of men to the conscience of Christ: the penalty alone was voluntarily assumed by the Redeemer and, in paying it, He washed away our sins and restored us to our former supernatural state and destination.
B. Merits of Christ
Satisfaction is not the only object and value of Christ's theandric operations and sufferings; for these, beside placating God, also benefit man in several ways. They possess, in the first place, the power of impetration or intercession which is proper to prayer, according to John, xi, 42: "And I knew that thou hearest me always." However, as satisfaction is the main factor of Redemption with regard to God's honour, so man's restoration is due principally to the merits of Christ. That merit, or the quality which makes human acts worthy of a reward at the hands of another, attaches to the works of the Redeemer, is apparent from the easily ascertained presence in them of the usual conditions of merit, namely
* the wayfarer state (John, i, 14);
* moral liberty (John, x, 18);
* conformity to the ethical standard (John, viii, 29); and
* Divine promise (Is., liii, 10).
Christ merited for Himself, not indeed grace nor essential glory which were both attached and due to the Hypostatic Union, but accidental honour (Heb., ii, 9) and the exaltation of His name (Phil., ii, 9-10). He also merited for us. Such Biblical phrases as to receive "of his fulness" (John, i, 16), to be blessed with His blessings (Eph., i 3), to be made alive in Him (I Cor., xv, 22), to owe Him our eternal salvation (Heb., v, 9) clearly imply a communication from Him to us and that at least by way of merit. The Council of Florence [Decretum pro Jacobitis, Denzinger-Bannwart, n. 711 (602)] credits man's deliverance from the domination of Satan to the merit of the Mediator, and the Council of Trent (Sess. V, cc. iii, vii, xvi and canons iii, x) repeatedly connects the merits of Christ and the development of our supernatural life in its various phases. Canon iii of Session V says anathema to whoever claims that original sin is cancelled otherwise than by the merits of one Mediator, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and canon x of Session VI defines that man cannot merit without the justice through which Christ merited our justification.
The objects of Christ's merits for us are the supernatural gifts lost by sin, that is, grace (John, i, 14, l6) and salvation (I Cor., xv, 22); the preternatural gifts enjoyed by our first parents in the state of innocence are not, at least in this world, restored by the merits of Redemption, as Christ wishes us to suffer with Him in order that we may be glorified with Him (Rom., viii, 17). St. Thomas explaining how Christ's merits pass on to us, says: Christ merits for others as other men in the state of grace merit for themselves (III:48:1). With us merits are essentially personal. Not so with Christ who, being the head of our race (Eph., iv, 15 v, 23), has, on that score, the unique prerogative of communicating to the subordinate personal members the Divine life whose source He is. "The same motion of the Holy Ghost", says Schwalm, "which impels us individually through the various stages of grace toward life eternal, impels Christ but as the leader of all; and so the same law of efficacious Divine motion governs the individuality of our merits and the universality of Christ's merits" (Le Christ, 422). It is true that the Redeemer associates others to Himself "For the perfecting of the saints, . . . for the edifying of the body of Christ" (Eph., iv, 12), but their subordinate merit is only a matter of fitness and creates no right, whereas Christ, on the sole ground of His dignity and mission can claim for us a participation in His Divine privileges.
All admit, in Christ's meritorious actions, a moral influence moving God to confer on us the grace through which we merit. Is that influence merely moral or does it effectively concur in the production of grace? From such passages as Luke, vi 19, "virtue went out from him", the Greek Fathers insist much on the dynamis zoopoios or vis vivifica, of the Sacred Humanity, and St. Thomas (III:48:6) speaks of a sort of efficientia whereby the actions and passions of Christ, as vehicle of the Divine power, cause grace by way of instrumental force. Those two modes of action do not exclude each other: the same act or set of acts of Christ may be and probably is endowed with twofold efficiency, meritorious on account of Christ's personal dignity, dynamic on account of His investment with Divine power.