Christians undertaking to understand the Atonement have made use of many different illustrations. I heard a parable some years ago (before the days of blenders and food processors, which for all I know may have made the illustration obsolete) based on the making of mayonnaise. Now mayonnaise contains oil and vinegar, which do not readily mix, but here they are broken into tiny droplets and dispersed throughout each other in what is called an emulsion, and the emulsifying agent is lecithin, supplied by the egg yolk. To make mayonnaise, you start with an egg yolk and beat it thoroughly. Then you add just a dab of oil and beat it in, then just a dab of vinegar and beat it in, then oil, and so forth. Now if you add too much at once, the mayonnaise will curdle and separate, and once this happens, you cannot get it smooth again no matter how long and hard you beat it. To salvage a curdled mayonnaise, you take a new bowl and a new egg yolk, and beat that. Then you begin adding the curdled mixture a little at a time, beating it in as you go. Result: smooth, creamy mayonnaise. Now the human race is like a curdled mayonnaise. It has gotten off on the wrong track, and hopelessly out of kilter. In order to set things right, God has started over from scratch. He has founded a new race, with Himself in the person of Jesus Christ as the new Adam, and has offered to each of us the opportunity of being adopted into that race, of receiving a new nature and a new inheritance. The old mayonnaise, considered simply by itself, is beyond salvaging. But God has begun a new mayonnaise, with Jesus as the new egg yolk, and not one single messy particle of the old mayonnaise need be left out of the new.
Or, if you like, you may say that we are like branches on a grapevine that has suffered root rot, and have been grafted onto a new and healthy vine. Or, if you wish, you may think of the Atonement in terms of a blood transfusion. If a man is dying of hepatitis, the best cure is a transfusion of blood or blood serum from someone who has had hepatitis and has recovered from it. His blood has the antibodies that can defeat the disease. And having defeated it in his body, they can now defeat it in yours. Along similar lines, I am told of a man in Florida who raises venomous snakes of many kinds, and has been bitten frequently. His blood serum is of great value in the treatment of snakebite victims, for it contains antitoxins against just about every kind of snake venom. The moral is, get yourself a blood transfusion from the One Man who has endured death and hell and recovered from it -- the Man who has been bitten by the great serpent, the ancient enemy of mankind, and has crushed its head.
Now I should like to talk about another theory of the Atonement that seems to me to have elements of both the beau-geste and the pattern theories, but also some special characteristics of its own.
There is a play by Jean-Paul Sartre called Morts sans Sepultre (The Living Dead -- literally, The Unburied Dead: one English translation calls it The Victors.) I have not seen or read it recently, but part of it goes something like this: The scene is the attic of a house in France during the Second World War. In the attic are a half-dozen prisoners, captured members of the resistance. It is night, and the next morning they will be taken out one at a time and tortured for information. None of them has any information of value, so they need summon no will power. There is nothing to do but wait, and then suffer, and then die. But now the attic door opens and the soldiers throw another man in. He is the leader of the resistance for that region, but the soldiers do not realize this. To them he is simply someone caught out-of-doors after curfew, and so they are detaining him for the night and will release him in the morning. Now the other prisoners are in a different position. Now they have an active and mot merely a passive role to play in what awaits them. They tell the leader, "Don't worry. We will hold our tongues." He begins to says, "I thank you, for myself, for the Resistance, for France. Your courage and your sacrifice will not be forgotten." Suddenly, one of the others, his fiancee, says, "Oh, shut up. Nothing you have to say could possibly mean anything to us. I am not blaming you. It is not your fault. But the fact is that you are a living man and I am a dead woman, and the living and the dead have nothing to say to each other. Tomorrow you go out that door to freedom and life, and I go out it to torment and death, and that fact puts an impenetrable barrier between us. I do not hate or envy you. I simply do not see you as a meaningful part of my universe. Now go sit down over there, and leave me to talk and hold hands with my brothers and sisters, the people with whom I shall be dying in a few hours."
It occurred to me, when I read this, that an important reason for the Crucifixion is the breaking down of precisely that barrier between God and us. Without it, many of God's demands on us would be simply infuriating. Consider a driver seated at the wheel of a car as his associates try to push it out of a mudhole. He keeps saying to them: "Push harder! Put your backs into it! Don't give up. You can do it if you try. Oh, come now, you can do better than that. Keep at it. Two or three more good pushes and you'll have it out." And so on. They may remind themselves that it is essential to have someone steering, and that it is therefore unreasonable of them to resent his being where he is, but they would be other than human if they did not feel an overpowering urge to pull him out of his seat and send him sprawling face down in the mud. Note how different it would be if he were himself standing thigh-deep in the mud, shoving the car with all his might and gasping out encouragement to his fellow pushers. He might be saying exactly the same things as he was saying behind the steering wheel in the first scenario. The difference is that by getting into the mud and pushing with the others he has earned the right to say them. In just this way, God, by taking human nature upon him and living in poverty and dying in shame and torment, has earned the right to ask us to bear our burdens willingly. By forgiving those who have wronged him, he has earned the right to ask us to forgive those who have wronged us.
Perhaps some of you know the work of Dorothy L Sayers, author of some highly regarded detective fiction, among other things. The other things indlude a play called, "The Zeal of Thy House," which she wrote to be performed in Canterbury Cathedral as one in a series of annual fund-raising productions, another of which was T. S. Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral". Her play deals with a cathedral architect, William of Sens, whose besetting sin is his pride in his work. He is injured on the job, and unable to supervise the workers and continue the job as he ought, and so is faced with the choice to resign or stay on, depending on which is more important to him, that the finished building be his work, or that it be work done as well as possible. In a vision, the Archangel Michael appears to him and they have the matter out.
W Let Him destroy me, since He has the power To slay the thing He envies -- but while I have breath My work is mine; He shall not take it from me.
M No; thou shalt lay it down of thine own will.
W Never. Let Him heap on more torments yet--
M He can heap none on thee, He hath not borne--
W Let Him strike helpless hands as well as feet--
M Whose Feet and Hands were helpless stricken through--
W Scourge me and smite me and make blind mine eyes--
M As He was blindfolded and scourged and smitten--
W Dry up my voice in my throat and make me dumb--
M As He was dumb and opened not His mouth--
W Cramp me with pains--
M As He was cramped with pains, Racked limb from limb upon the stubborn Cross--
W Parch me with fever--
M He that cried, "I thirst"--
W Ring out my blood and sweat--
M Whose sweat, like blood Watered the garden in Gethsemane--
W For all that He can do, I will not yield, Nor leave to other men that which is mine, To botch -- to alter -- turn to something else, Not mine.
M Thou wilt not? Yet God bore this too, The last, the bitterest, worst humiliation, Bowing His neck under the galling yoke Frustrate, defeated, half His life unlived, Nothing achieved.
W Could God, being God, do this?
M Christ, being man, did this; but still through faith Knew what He did. As gold and diamond, Weighed in the chemist's balance, are but earth Like tin or iron, albeit within them still The purchase of the world lie implicit: So, when God came to test of mortal time In nature of a man whom time supplants, He made no reservation of Himself Nor of the godlike stamp that franked His gold, But in good time let time supplant Him too. The earth was rent, the sun's face turned to blood, But He, unshaken, with exultant voice Cried, "It is funished!" and gave up the ghost. "Finished" -- when men had thought it scarce begun. Then His disciples with blind faces mourned, Weeping: "We trusted that He should redeem Israel, but now we know not." What said He Behind the shut doors in Jerusalem, At Emmaus, and in the bitter dawn By Galilee? "I go, but feed my sheep; For Me the Sabbath at the long week's close -- For you the task, for you the tongues of fire." Thus shalt thou know the Master Architect Who plans so well, He may depart and leave The work to others. Art thou more than God? Not God Himself was indispensable, For lo! God died -- and still His work goes on.
I have a friend with terminal cancer. What can I, with no comparable problems, find to say to her? I could say, "Keep smiling. There is nothing so self-destructive as self-pity, you know. So hold your head high, and face your fate unflinching, remembering that death is the shared destiny of the race." Perfectly true, but the normal response would be to hit me with the handiest blunt instrument. If, on the other hand, I pat her on the shoulder and say, "There, there, poor dear, I know just how you feel," that would be equally infuriating, because she is dying and I am not, and the plain fact of the matter is that I don't know how she feels, and we both know it. But Christ is in a different position. He can make non-negotiable demands, just as an officer can order his men to charge a machine-gun emplacement, provided that he himself leads the charge. On the other hand, he can offer comfort without sounding smug. He can say: "My daughter, you are going into the dark, and you are terrified. I know the feeling, for I once walked alone into that same darkness, and I was terrified. But you need not walk it alone. I have been there before, and I know the way, and what lies beyond. Come place your hand in Mine, and we will walk it together."
An English chaplain in the First World War, Studdert-Kennedy, gave an address to his fellow-chaplains in which he said (approximately):
The one thing that you absolutely must do as chaplains is to go into the line with the men. The Army does not require it. As far as regulations are concerned, you are free to stay out of the trenches, well behind the front, and minister to the men before they go into combat and when they come back out for brief intervals. But if you do that, you will do no good at all. There is no way that you can talk about the meaning of life and death to a man who is facing death and knows that you are not. But if you go into the line with the men, if you get shot at and shelled and gassed along with them, then they will listen to you. And it doesn't matter whether you are eloquent. The fact that you are there with them when you don't have to be, doing your Master's business, will tell them something about your Master. Of course, taking this advice means that you may be killed. So be it. The more chaplains that die in the trenches doing Christ-like deeds, the better. Most of us will preach far better dead than alive.
In those terms, we may say that God has paid his dues, has earned the right to talk to us about suffering because he has endured it with us. He endured not only physical pain, but the torments of doubt and uncertainty and fear. In the Garden of Gethesemane, waiting for the soldiers to come and arrest him, he was clearly in great distress of mind. Some people think that this shows a character flaw -- that a truly great man, or a truly wise man, would say, "I never worry about things I can change, and I never worry about things I cannot change," and so would not have been bothered by the prospect of torture and death. I reply that a man who did not let such things bother him would have very little to say to the rest of us.
The beginning of the Passion -- the first move, so to speak -- is in Gethsemane. In Gethsemane a very strange and significant thing seems to have happened. It is clear from many of his sayings that Our Lord had long foreseen His own death. He knew what conduct such as His, in a world such as we have made of this, must inevitably lead to. But it is clear that this knowledge must somehow have been withdrawn from Him before He prayed in Gethsemane. He could not, with whatever reservation about the Father's will, have prayed that the cup might pass and simultaneously known that it would not. That is both a logical and a psychological impossibility. You see what this involves? Lest any trial incident to humanity should be lacking, the torments of hope -- of suspense, anxiety -- were at the last moment loosed on Him -- the supposed possibility that, after all, He might, He just conceivably might, be spared the ultimate horror. There was precedent. Isaac had been spared: he too at the last moment, he also against all apparent probability. It was not quite impossible...and doubtless He had seen other men crucified...a sight very unlike most of our religious pictures and images. But for this last (and erroneous) hope against hope, and the consequent tumult of the soul, the sweat of blood, perhaps he would not have been very Man. To live in a fully predictable world is not to be a man. At the end, I know, we are told that an angel appeared "comforting" Him. But neither "comforting" in sixteenth-century English nor "ennischuon" in Greek means "consoling". "Strengthening" is more the word. May not the strengthening have consisted in the renewed certainty -- cold comfort this -- that the thing must be endured and therefore could be? [CS Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, chiefly on prayer, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964, p 42]
By enduring suffering, Christ does two things. First, he enables us to hear him when he speaks to us with authority about doing our duty even when it involves suffering. Second, he enables us to hear him when he speaks words of encouragement and comfort. In one section of Thomas More's "Treatise on the Passion," Christ is represented as saying to a prospective martyr:
Art thou terrified? Do thy knees fold under thee? Then put thine hand in mine and walk with me, for I have trod this road before thee. In Gethsemane, I too was alone and afraid. I also sweated and shook. I also choked back the scream of terror. I also felt helplessness and dread. The man of stout heart, who will walk whistling to the stake with a firm tread and a merry countenance, hath a hundred glorious martyrs in whose steps he may tread, but thou, poor, weak, trembling silly sheep, think thou it sufficient to follow only after me.
All this is what I have called the existential theory of the Atonement. You will notice that it resembles the Abelardian theory, in that it holds that Christ died in order to win men's hearts, to make a gesture that they could respond to in love. It also resembles the pattern theory, in that it holds that God walked a certain path in the person of Jesus, in order to enable us to walk it with Him.
Once a friend of mine said, "I don't see the point of the Crucifixion," and I talked about the Abelardian theory, telling her the Oscar story. She was clearly only partly satisfied, so then I told her Sartre's attic story. She said, "Oh, I like that. It's so much better than the other one, because it doesn't have any of this business about sin in it. I get so sick of the way every discussion of religion ends up harping on sin. But that attic story doesn't do that at all. It just starts out with the fact that we've all got troubles and need a friend to hold our hand and listen and care, and understand, because he's had troubles of his own and knows firsthand what trouble means. And the idea that God is a friend like that, and that he cares enough about us to endure trouble himself for the sake of sharing it with us -- now that's what I call really good news."
This got me to thinking about the whole question of evangelism, of presenting the Christian message to those who have not heard it, or have heard it but not accepted it, and just possibly not accepted it because it was not presented in the right way for them. Throughout Christian history, most evangelists have taken it for granted that the place to begin is with the fact that the man is a sinner and needs forgiveness and deliverance. Let me qualify that a little. If the man does not think that Christianity is true, you may start somewhere else. You might begin an argument with an atheist by inviting him to consider the First Cause Argument. Or if he believes in God but doubts that we have any trustworthy historical information about the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, you might discuss textual criticism and archaeology. But when the question is, "Why should I become a Christian? Why does it really matter, except for people with philosophical or historical interests, whether this is true or not?" then the standard answer is, "Because you have left undone the things that you ought to have done, and you have done the things that you ought not to have done, and you are on a collision course with the Creator and Judge of the Universe, and if you collide, guess who loses."
John Wesley stated that for any prospective Methodist, the first qualification was "desire to flee from the wrath to come." And CS Lewis, asked to give a series of lectures on the BBC that would present Christianity from scratch, began by telling his listeners that they were all sinners. He said:
Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the sort of facts I have been describing. Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness. It is after you have realised that there is a real Moral Law, and Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power -- it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk. When you know you are sick, you will listen to the doctor. CS Lewis _Mere Christianity_ (MacMillan Paperbacks, 1960) pp38-9
One might say that Christian preachers preach first the Law and then the Gospel. In the Old Testament, God gives the Ten Commandments and makes clear that He is a righteous God, a holy God, and that he demands righteousness from men, and that his demands for moral perfection on our part are non-negotiable. In the New Testament, he brings us the good news that although we cannot fulfil his demands on our own, Christ has fulfilled them on our behalf. First the diagnosis (terminal), then the remedy. Paul can be quoted extensively on this contrast. But when we look at the Old Testament, we find that God does not begin with the Law. The Israelites are in bondage in Egypt. God sends Moses, not with a list of demands, but with a promise of deliverance. He begins, not by talking about the morals of the Isralites, but by saying:
I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.
After he has brought them out of Egypt, he leads them to Mount Sinai, and then he tells them, "You are my own chosen people, and here is how I want you to live." In the Old Testament, no less than the New, morality is not a prerequisite for salvation but a loving response to God's saving action.
A man with several sons once told me: When one of my sons has done something wrong, he usually gets sent to his room. After he has been there a while, I go up and say, "Son, come down and join the family." At that point, he often says (but is under no obligation to say, as a condition of release), "Dad, I'm sorry I did such-and-such." Note that he does not apologize and then get accepted. It is after he has been accepted that he apologizes.
There are those who would say that, for them at least, the Christian experience has been similar, that only after they were aware of being accepted by God did they experience the ability to forsake their sins, or the desire to be rid of their sins, or even the awareness that they were sinners. Some of them say that, if the demand for repentance had come first, they do not think that they would ever have become Christians at all.
I know a man who told me: "I was never able to live chastely until a minister told me to stop worrying about it -- that God did not require it of me. That simple statement turned my life around, and now (Praise the Lord!), I am living chastely."
I once saw Tim Gallwey, author of THE INNER GAME OF TENNIS, working with a pack of hopeless klutzes. He said to one of them, "I am going to toss you a tennis ball, and I want you to catch it." He threw the ball, and the guy fumbled it. Next he said, "Now this time, when I toss it, I want you to notice that I put a little spin on the ball. If you look at the seams, you will can see how it is spinning. Watch the seams, and note how the ball turns over and over in the air." He tossed it, and the guy caught it with no problem. The difference was that this time he was not worrying about catching it. In a sense, he caught it because he wasn't trying to.
The following entry is from p 125 of HOW TO LIVE WITH YOUR SPECIAL CHILD, by George von Hilsheimer, Acropolis Books, Washington, DC, 1970. The book gives no further references (that I can find) to Charles Slack.
Charles Slack has been having Puerto Rican janitors (preferably with little or no English) bring teaching machines into cells with young criminals. The janitor gets it across that the machine is supposed to teach the kids. He also gets it across that since it is the machine's job to TEACH, if the kid makes a mistake the machine will give him a dime for having wasted his time. Nearly everyone rubs their eyes at this point. THE MACHINE GIVES THE STUDENT A DIME IF THE STUDENT MAKES A MISTAKE because the machine has not done its job and taught him. These young criminals do not work to make mistakes or to make dimes. No one has to con these kids into the advantages of knowing. They do quite well for themselves if the social consequences and structures of the TEACHING process are changed. Many of these hoods work for hours at a time on the machines and graduate from jail to college.
Stephen Neill, headmaster of an unconventional school in England, tells in his book SUMMERHILL of a boy at his school who was imperfectly toilet-trained. His mother had tried to encourage progress by promising him a penny for every day that he did not soil his shorts. When the boy arrived at school, and Neill learned of the mother's policy, he responded by promising the boy threepence for every day when he did soil his shorts. The boy was soon "cured". Neill says that the mother had symbolically told the boy that she loved him only when he was "good". Neill (again bending the stick the other way to straighten it), told the boy that he was loved without conditions, and the boy, thus delivered from the need to be clean as a means of obtaining love and approval, was free to choose cleanness for its own sake, which he did.
So, why am I not altogether enthusiastic about the notion of beginning by telling people about the love of God and leaving the righteousness of God to be talked about later after the hearer has accepted God's unconditional offer of free grace? I suppose because it seems sneaky to sign someone up and then spring on him the news that there are some things that God wants him to do. But it is also true that I find a good many people, both in and out of the church, who have apparently heard that God is Love, and not heard anything else, and who think this means that they will demand and God will deliver. We have a man who proposes to desert his wife and children and live in Las Vegas with a chorus girl. We tell him that God has forbidden this sort of behavior, and he replies: "But if I don't run off to Las Vegas and live with Fifi, I won't be happy. I know that God loves me, so surely he wants me to be happy. He could hardly be called a good God if he didn't. Therefore, he must want me to live with Fifi." We say: "But if you leave your wife and children, they will be unhappy. Don't you supose that God cares about them, too?" He says: "That's God's problem. If He wants them to be happy, let him take care of making them happy and not ask me to do it for him. If God is omnipotent, it should surely not be beyond his powers to find some nice guy who would be delighted to marry my ex-wife and adopt the children and who will be just right for them all. But don't expect me to believe that God wants me to sacrifice my happiness for them. Don't try to lay a guilt trip on me, buddy, because I'm not buying it. I know that guilt is just a device for making people do what they don't want to do. Don't talk to me about ethics. That's Puritanical. That's Jerry Falwell. That's pre-Vatican II. What do you mean, am I a Christian -- of course I'm a Christian. I believe in God, a good, kind, loving God who doesn't try to make people feel guilty. And now I must leave for Vegas."
This is not an unusual attitude, and I think we must say of such people, even if they are life-long church members, or especially if they are, that they do not know a thing about Christianity, and that they will not know anything about it until they understand that God does make demands, and that those demands are not to be ignored with impunity.
Perhaps I am making a great deal of fuss over something very simple, namely the fact that you have to approach people where they are, speaking to each person in language that makes sense to him in terms of his present condition, and that although you have the same ultimate goal in mind for them all, you will no more have the same approach for them all than a doctor, wishing all his patients to be healthy, will give them all the same medicine. Some people have overwhelming feelings of guilt, and need to know about God's forgiveness. Others have no feelings of guilt, but are in fact guilty and need to know it. And knowing what to say to a given person is ten per cent theology and ninety per cent psychology. And one thing I am no good at is psychology, and especially salesmanship. So I will stop here. I hope these notes have provided material for discussion.
THE DRAMATIC THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT
"Oh, give thanks unto the LORD, for He is good; for His mercy endureth forever. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom HE hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy." (Psalm 107:1-2, KJV)
I now ask you to consider the dramatic (ransom, classical, Gregorian) view of the Atonement.
The earliest Christian writers on the Atonement outside the New Testament itself, say up to 600 AD, regularly speak of Christ as having ransomed us. Much of the ancient Mediterranean world was at risk from pirates and robbers, who seized travellers and others and held them for ransom. When Christian writers spoke of sinners as captives needing to be ransomed, their listeners found the picture a familiar and comprehensible one. A significant fraction of them had at some time been asked to give money to help ransom a captive. Thus, it seemed quite natural to speak of Christ as offering Himself as a ransom for captive sinners. "The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:28) "There is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all." (I Timothy 2:5-6) "You were redeemed, not with corruptible things, not with silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot." (I Peter 1:18) But who was the pirate, the captor? Who held men prisoners, and to whom was the ransom paid? Many writers simply ignored this question, but some who answered it (among them Origen and Gregory of Nyssa) pointed to Death or Sin personified, or to the Devil. A writer might say, for example, that Death (or Sin, or Satan) held all mankind prisoners in his great dungeon, Hell, and that when God took human nature upon Him in the person of Jesus Christ, and allowed Himself to be crucified, Death eagerly welcomed one more captive into his prison, not recognizing Him as God. But once He was in the prison-house of Death, Jesus broke the doors down from the inside and led all the prisoners to freedom.
Consider a Mission Impossible episode in which the IM team has the job of getting some distinguished scientist out of a maximum-security East German prison. ("Your mission, Jesus, should you choose to accept it....") Some member of the team pretends to be thoroughly drunk, walks past the prison, and spits on the polished boots of a Prussian officer. He is promptly thrown into a dungeon, where he turns to the figure next to him and says, "Good evening, Professor Einstein. I am Martin Landau, of Mission Impossible, and I am here to get you out and take you to Paris." This, in a suitably ingenious way, he proceeds to do. In line with the ransom theme, the detail is sometimes added that Jesus offered Himself to Death in exchange for all Death's other prisoners, and that Death, recognizing Jesus as a great warrior on the other side, but not as God Himself, eagerly agreed to the exchange, and then discovered too late that he had over-reached himself. Picture a Clint Eastwood film, in which the bank robbers are holed up in the bank, holding the bank officers and tellers and some bank customers as hostages. Clint (Dirty Harry) manages to talk them into an exchange whereby he becomes their hostage in exchange for the release of all the others.
Write the rest of the script yourselves. (And then Jesus said to Death: "Go ahead. Make my day.") Pope Gregory the Great preached on the text, "Canst thou draw Leviathan out with a hook?" (Job 41:1) By Leviathan we are to understand the great sea monster, who here symbolizes Sin, Death, Hell, and Satan. Now Jonah was swallowed by a literal sea monster, and disgorged after three days, and this is a sign (Matthew 12:40) of the three-days sojourn of the Son of Man in the prison of Death. But Jesus, being swallowed up by the leviathan Death, is able not only to escape from the belly of the beast, but to destroy it. He is the one who draws leviathan out with a hook. And how does he get the leviathan to swallow the hook in the first place? By taking human nature upon Him, by being man as well as God, so that it is possible for Him to die, so that Death will recognize Him as its prey. In other words, by baiting the hook of His Divinity with the worm of His Humanity. See Psalm 22, the Crucifixion Psalm -- "Behold, I am a worm!" The assertion that the death of Christ was a ransom paid to the Devil was denied by Gregory of Nazianzus and John of Damascus, but neither offers a clear alternate suggestion, and it was only with the publication of Anselm's CUR DEUS HOMO in 1098 that the theory was effectively challenged.
A Swedish Lutheran theologian, Gustav Aulen, has written a book, CHRISTUS VICTOR, in which he presents the dramatic (or classical) theory of the Atonement, comparing it with the Anselmic (or Latin) and the Abelardian theories. Aulen maintains that Martin Luther held this theory of the Atonement, although the majority of Lutheran writers since have been Anselmists. He quotes from Luther's Catechism and Sermons, and above all, his hymns, to make the point. I here reproduce three of the hymns.
EIN FESTE BURG, by Martin Luther, trans. R. Hodges,
A mighty fortress is our God, A bulwark never failing, A helper he amid the flood Of mortal ills prevailing. For still our ancient foe Doth seek to work us woe. His craft and power are great And armed with cruel hate; On earth is not his equal.
Did we in our own strength confide, Our striving would be losing, Were not the right man on our side, The man of God's own choosing. Dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is he, The Lord of Hosts his name, From age to age the same, And he must win the battle.
Should threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim, We tremble not for him. His rage we can endure, For, lo, his doom is sure. One little word shall fell him.
That word, above all earthly powers-- No thanks to them--abideth. The Spirit and the gifts are ours Through him who with us sideth. Let goods and kindred go, This mortal life also. The body they may kill. God's truth abideth still. His kingdom is forever.
CHRIST LAG IN TOTESBANDEN, by M. Luther, trans. ? (Shirmer Co.)
Christ lay in death's dark prison. It was our sin that bound Him. This day hath He arisen, And sheds new life around Him. Therefore let us joyful be And praise our God right thankfully. So sing we, Alleluia!
O'er Death no man could prevail. If mortal e'er came near him, Through guilt all our strength did fail. Our sinful hearts did fear him. Therefore Death did gain the day And lead in triumph us away, Henceforth to dwell with him imprison'd.
Now Jesus Christ, the Son of God, For our defence hath risen. Our grievous guilt He hath removed And Death hath bound in prison. All his might Death must forego, For now he's naught but idle show. His sting is lost forever.
How fierce and dreadful was the strife When Life with Death contended, For Death was swallowed up by Life And all his power was ended. God of old, the Scriptures show, Did promise that it should be so. O Death, where is thy victory?
The Paschal Victim here we see, Whereof God's word hath spoken. He hangs upon the cruel tree, Of saving love the token. His blood ransoms us from sin, And Death no more can enter in. Now Satan cannot harm us.
So keep we all this holy feast, Where every joy invites us. The Sun is rising in the east -- It is the Lord Who lights us. Through the glory of His grace, Our darkness will to day give place. The night of sin is over.
With grateful hearts we all are met, To eat the bread of gladness. The ancient leaven now forget, And every thought of sadness. Christ Himself the feat hath spread, By Him the hungry soul is fed, And He alone can feed us.
NUN FREUT EUCH, by Martin Luther, trans. Richard Massie, alt.
Dear Christians, one and all, rejoice, With exultation springing, And with united heart and voice And holy rapture singing, Proclaim the wonders God has done, How his right arm the vict'try won, What price our ransom cost him!
Fast bound in Satan's chains I lay, Death brooded darkly o'er me, Sin was my torment night and day; In sin my mother bore me. But daily deeper still I fell; My life became a living hell, So firmly sin possessed me.
My own good works all came to naught, No grace or merit gaining; Free will against God's judgement fought, Dead to all good remaining, My fears increased till sheer despair Left only death to be my share; The pangs of hell I suffered.
But God had seen my wretched state Before the world's foundation; And, mindful of his mercies great, He planned for my salvation. He turned to me a father's heart; He did not choose the easy part, But gave his dearest treasure.
God said to his beloved Son; "'Tis time to have compassion. Then go, bright jewel of my crown, And bring to all salvation; From sin and sorrow set them free: Slay bitter death for them that they May live with you forever."
The Son obeyed his Father's will, Was born of virgin mother; And, God's good pleasure to fulfil, He came to be my brother. His royal power disguised he bore, A servant's form, like mine, he wore, To lead the devil captive.
To me he said: "stay close to me, I am your rock and castle. Your ransom I myself will be; For you I strive and wrestle; For I am yours and you are mine, And where I am you may remain; The foe shall not divide us.
"Though he will shed my precious blood, Of life me thus bereaving, All this I suffer for your good; Be steadfast and believing. Life will from death the vict'ry win; MY innocence shall bear your sin; And you are blest forever.
"Now to my Father I depart, From earth to heav'n ascending, And, heav'nly wisdom to impart, The Holy Spirit sending; In trouble he will comfort you And teach you always to be true And into truth shall guide you.
"What I on earth have done and taught Guide all your life and teaching; So shall the kingdom's work be wrought And honored in your preaching. But watch lest foes with base alloy The heav'nly treasure should destroy; This final word I leave you."
Easter hymns in general often use imagery borrowed from the Dramatic Theory of the Atonement.
As Aulen points out, "theory" is perhaps too strong a word here. Aulen usually prefers the phrase "dramatic view of the Atonement," since what is here offered us is not an analysis, an explanation of how the Atonement works, such as Anselm (for example) presents, but rather a series of images that appeal to one's imagination and one's sense of the fitting. And this brings us to another consideration.
At a time when C.S. Lewis (author of MERE CHRISTIANITY, quoted above, and other books) was not yet a Christian, he was talking with his friend J.R.R. Tolkien (author of THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS and other books), and said, "What I cannot understand is why the death of Christ should help us, or make a difference in our relation to God." To this Tolkien replied: "Consider the myths and other tales of almost every culture. They are full of instances in which someone voluntarily suffers a great deal in order to set someone else free. Usually, in the story, it is difficult or impossible to see WHY there should be any connection between the suffering and the deliverance, or HOW the one acts to bring about the other. But when you are reading the story, enjoying it purely as a story, you do not trouble yourself with asking why. You accept the connection as a given. Nor is this because it is only a story, with no claim to be true, and therefore it doesn't have to make sense. A story has to make sense in its own terms, or it is not a good story. You accept these stories, or some of them, as good stories. You see that the theme rings true, that it is somehow right and fitting that the freely accepted suffering of the one should bring about the deliverance of the other. And the rest of mankind sees the same thing, or these stories would not have become part of the imaginative heritage of just about every people on the face of the globe. The story of the Crucifixion and Resurrection is one more story of this type, with the difference that it is really true. The thing really did happen. Now if, when you meet the story as fiction, you see that it makes sense, even though you cannot put into words an explanation of WHY the suffering of A should cause the deliverance of B, then it is reasonable, when you meet the phenomenon in real life, to accept it, seeing that it makes sense, even though you cannot explain why it makes sense, or how it works." Lewis thought that this was a good answer, and it was a factor in his decision, made shortly thereafter, to become a Christian.
Tolkien referred Lewis to numerous stories of a certain kind. Given the literary background he shared with Lewis, it was not necessary for him to give examples. I do not know what stories he would have mentioned, so I will simply mention one that I remember from my childhood that I think illustrates the sort of thing that Tolkien was talking about.
The Seven Brothers
Once there was a fair maiden who had seven brothers, whom she loved very much. Through some misfortune (probably angering a witch) the brothers were enchanted and turned into seven wild geese. The maiden searched far and wide for a means to break the spell. Finally, she was told: "Find a bed of fiery nettles. You must pluck the nettles with your bare hands, and tread them with your bare feet until only the fiber remains. Then you must spin the fiber into yarn, and knit seven shirts from the yarn. Throw the shirts over the heads of your seven brothers, and they will be restored to human shape. But until this is done, you must not speak. If even one word passes your lips, the spell that binds your brothers will never be broken." So the maiden found a hut deep in the forest, and there began her task. Five years had passed, and she had woven five shirts, when a handsome prince came by, saw her, and fell in love with her. He wished to marry her, but she said neither yes nor no. He brought her back to his palace, with her spinning wheel, knitting needles, completed shirts, and so on. There he installed her in a room of the palace, and announced his intention of marrying her as soon as her laryngitis cleared up so that she could say "I will." However, the prince's wicked younger brother, who was counting on inheriting the throne if the prince died childless, accused the maiden of being a witch, citing as evidence her peculiar behavior with the nettles, and the fact that she had a flock of seven wild geese flying in and out of her chamber window. The prince was forced to bring her to trial, and since she offered no word of explanation, she was condemned to the stake. In the cart on her way to death, she still continued her knitting. As she was about to be tied to the stake, the seven wild geese flew down and landed. She threw a shirt over each, and they turned back into human form. Then at last the maiden was free to speak, and she told the whole story. She and the prince were married, and lived happily ever after. (However, she had not finished the left sleeve on the last shirt, and so her youngest brother had, for the rest of his life, a goose wing instead of his left arm.)