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Doctrine of atonement in Coleridge and Maurice
THE PURPOSE of this Thesis is to advocate a return-to a preAnsclinic
conception of Atonement theory, and to make an appeal for
renewed attention to the Patristic idea of a "Ransom". The Death
of Christ is a Ransom - a Price - which God has to pay for the
redemption of men.I do not profess to put forward any new discovery in this fully
excavated - even over excavated - field of Atonement controversy,
every inch of which has been examined and re-examined with a
minuteness which itself speaks for the importance of the subject
and its vital concern to the human heart; but it is the fact that
with Anselm there cane a radical change of emphasis which has more
or less coloured tho treatment of the doctrine ever since, and has
-
as I have been forced to think - introduced a certain obsession
or prejudice, a certain biassed point of view that has been too
readily accepted in dealing with the Atonement. Anseln gave the
death blow to the theory of a "Ransom to the Devil" which prevailed
before his tine. That theory has never really raised its head again.
It has in most books on the Atonement boon exhumed for a nomont
only to be battered with fresh blows and flung into the grave
again with renewed contumely. "That hideous theory", Rashdall
calls it,- "the coarse mythology of the Ransom theory". And ho
says, "Never in the whole history of Christian thought has a doct¬
rine been so decidedly destroyed by criticism and more univorsally
abandoned".(Ideas and Ideals.158)I venture to think it is just this universal abandonment of it,
this utter refusal to look at what it means and to nako use of
(ii)
the principle underlying it that has introduced into the doctrine
and retained in the doctrine a sense of obscurity and mystery
which need not bo there. As an act of God, and an outcone of
God'* nature and character, the Atonement is naturally mysterious,
hike all the greatest things it ultimately - exit in mysterium. •
hut apart from the welcome grandeur of this inevitable and aweinspiring
mystery, one fools - in reading the history of the
doctrine up to the prosent timo, in tracing the efforts of tho
greatest writers to find an explanation of the fact - one cannot
resist the impression that there is a difficulty which ought, to
yield, there is a sense of baffled effort, to some extent there i3
the fooling of a koy lost, a missing dlaitent that, were it found,
would illumine a dark region.I may indicate the Scope of the Thesis as follows
I shall first of all deal with the two writers, Coleridge
and Maurice, in turn, indicating in each case the various
points of their actual teaching 011 the Atonement. I shall
then endeavour to show the affinity of their leading principles with that theory to which I wish to call fresh attention, viz,- the Patristic theory of Ransom. This theory itself
will then require some description,-and I shall set it forth,
briefly, as it appears in the pages of Gregory of hyssa -
where we have it in its purest form. Kext will follow -
an account of Anselm's refutation of the theory - my own
counter criticism of Anselm and of the whole "Satisfaction"
idea in Atonement doctrine - criticism of the purely subjective theory of "Moral Influence", showing the defects
of that theory as an explanation of the Atonement, and
pointing out how essentially the teaching of Coleridge and
Maurice is to be distinguished from it. This will be followed, finally, by a constructive summary of the doctrine