But in the middle ages another view of the atonement became Orthodox, founded not upon the idea of a ransom, but on that of a debt. According to this view the divine law requires that the debt which man owes to God, which is perfect obedience, shall be paid, either by himself or by some one else. Anselm, the founder of this theory, defined sin “as not giving to God his due.” Man cannot pay this debt himself, and therefore Christ pays it for him. This is the legal view of the atonement, or perhaps we might rather call it the commercial view.

But this theory, after having endured as Orthodox for some five hundred years, gave place to a third, based not on the idea of a ransom or of a debt, but of a state necessity. It would not do for God, as a moral Governor, to forgive sin, unless by some great example an impression could be made of the evil of sin. This impression is produced by the death of Christ, who therefore died not to atone for past sin, but to prevent future sin, or, in other words, to make a moral impression on the human mind. This is the popular theory of the atonement held by the Orthodox at the present time. But it is very much mixed up with the others. The different views held by modern Orthodoxy range all the way from the old Calvinism of Princeton, through the various shades of New England theology, to the latest form expressed by Dr. Horace Bushnell in his recent work on “Vicarious Sacrifice.”