The Patristic Roots of Satisfaction Atonement Theories: Did the Church Fathers Affirm Only Christus Victor?

Abstract

In his work _Christus Victor_, Gustaf Aulen argued that Anselm of Canterbury’s account of the atonement was foreign to ancient Christian belief. In particular, Aulen argued that Anselm diverged from the original understanding of the doctrine as presented by the church fathers. Aulen argued that the Eastern church rightly endorsed a model of the atonement that he called the ‘classic view’, while Anselm in the West later wrongly developed a theory of satisfaction that Aulen called the ‘Latin’ view. This critique, by extension, applies to other ‘Anselmic’ theories of atonement such as penal substitution that, like Anselm’s, also affirm that Christ’s death in some way satisfied God’s requirements in response to human sin. Patristic literature shows, however, that Aulen’s conclusion is more imposition than exposition. Fathers from both East and West commonly advanced theories that comport well with what Aulen called the Latin view alongside _Christus Victor_.