Deutero Q

A number of years ago, a fellow Christian took me to task for referring to the ransom theory of the atonement. As I recall, I was simply pointing out to my friend that the idea of ransom was the early church's understanding of the atoning work of Christ.

The "Christ as Victor" (Christus Victor) theory understands Christ as conqueror over the forces of evil. In the great struggle between God and the forces of Satan, the death of Jesus served to ransom sinners from the power of the devil. This ransom view of Christ's atoning work was widely held by the early Christians; there is an interesting parallel between this view of Christ as victor and the struggles the early church faced from temporal forces hostile to Christianity.

Parenthetically, I find both curious and fascinating Gregory of Nyssa's (4th century) analogy of a fishing trip. The flesh of Jesus, Gregory said, was the bait and the deity of Jesus was the fishhook. At the cross, Satan swallowed the hook along with the bait! This theory is called the classical theory or the fishhook theory of the atonement.

While I personally embrace the substitutionary view of atonement, I concur with biblical scholar Leon Morris, who says about the different views of Christ's atoning work: "...we need all the theories. Each draws attention to an important aspect of our salvation and we dare not surrender any. But we are small-minded sinners and the atonement is great and vast. We should not expect that our theories will ever explain it fully. Even when we put them all together, we will no more than begin to comprehend a little of the vastness of God's saving deed."