# What were the main differences between Luther and Calvin on the Atonement?



## Dachaser (Sep 21, 2017)

I am in discussion with someone who takes the Luther position of Jesus satisfying the demands of the Law, as His obedience being what allows the father to have sinners credited and forgiven, but I see this more as Calvin did, as in Penal Substitution. What were the differences between Luther and Calvin on this issue?


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## KeithW (Sep 21, 2017)

It depends on who you are talking to about Luther. I spent a year going to a Lutheran church and still go to their midweek Bible study. Lutherans do not necessarily follow all of the same doctrines which Luther believed and taught.

There is a book by Gustaf Aulen called "Christus Victor" which looks at three main atonement types during Christian history. The author describes how Luther did not follow Penal Substitution or the Satisfaction view of atonement originated by Anselm.

Here are some excerpts from the book. (Please pardon the length of the quotations.)

p.118 With regard to Satisfaction, it is well known that Luther spoke very severely about the use of this word: we will not allow it, he says, in our schools or on the lips of our preachers, but would rather send it back to the judges, advocates, and hangman, from whom the Pope stole it.​
pp.104,105 In the "Lesser Catechism" the crucial words describing the work of Christ are as follows: "He has delivered, purchased, and won me, a lost and doomed man, from all sins, from death and the devil's power." It is strange to reflect on the numberless attempts which have been made for centuries past to twist these words round so as to read into them the Latin doctrine of the Atonement [Anselm's Satisfaction theory]. For it is as plain as daylight but that the idea which they embody is identical with that of the Fathers; the three enemies here mentioned are just the familiar trio of the early church: sin, death, and the devil. It can be no accident that Luther expresses himself thus; for we know with what extraordinary care he weighed every word in the "Lesser Catechism". Any doubts that remain are dispelled by the "Greater Catechism". On the Christological section of the Creed, Luther says that the whole Gospel means that we must grasp this part of the Creed as that on which our whole salvation is based. The whole weight rests, he says, on the word "Lord": Christ as our Lord. "What is it now to be a 'Lord'? It is this, that He has redeemed me from sin, from the devil, from death and all woe. For before, I had not yet had any Lord, nor King, but had been held captive under the devil's power, doomed to death, ensnared in sin and blindness. . . . Now, therefore, those tyrants and gaolers are all crushed, and in their place is come Jesus Christ, a Lord of Life, righteousness, all good and holiness, and He has snatched us poor lost men from the jaws of hell, won us, made us free, and brought us back to the Father's goodness and grace."​
pp.105-107 I will quote just one more typical passage; it is perhaps the passage which of all others most exactly sets forth the central points on which Luther's whole teaching depends. It is taken from the "Longer Commentary on Galatians": "Thus the curse, which is the wrath of God against the whole world, was in conflict with the blessing -- that is to say, with God's eternal grace and mercy in Christ. The curse conflicts with the blessing, and would condemn it and altogether annihilate it, but it cannot. For the blessing is divine and eternal, therefore the curse must yield. For if the blessing in Christ could yield, then God himself would have been overcome. But that is impossible. Christ, who is God's power, righteousness, blessing, grace, and life, overcomes and carries away these monsters, sin, death, and the curse." (Here he quotes Col. ii. 15: "Having put off from Himself the principalities and the powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.") "When therefore thou lookest upon this person thou seest sin, death, God's wrath, hell, the devil, and all evil, overcome and dead. In so far therefore as Christ by His grace rules in the hearts of the faithful, there is found no more sin, death, and curse; but where Christ is not known they still remain. Thus they that believe not lack this benefit and this victory. For our victory, as John says, is our faith. This is the primary article of Christian teaching, which in time past sophists hid in darkness, and which fanatics now obscure. And here thou seest how necessary it is to believe and to confess the article about Christ's Deity. When Arius denied this he must also deny "articulum redemptionis" [redemption article]. For, by Himself to overcome the world's sin, death, the curse, and God's wrath, this is not the work of any created being, but of almighty God. Therefore He who of Himself overcame these must actually in His nature be God. For against these so mighty powers, sin, death, and the curse, which of themselves have dominion in the world and in all creation, another and a higher power must appear, which can be none other than God. To destroy sin, to smite death, to take away the curse by Himself, to bestow righteousness, bring life to light, and give the blessing: to annihilate the former, and to create the latter: this is the work of God's omnipotence alone. But when the Scripture ascribes to Christ all this, then is He Himself the Life, and Righteousness, and Blessing -- that is, in His nature and His essence He is God. Therefore those who deny Christ's Deity lose all Christianity and become mere heathens and Turks. Therefore the article of Justification must, as I am continually saying, be exactly understood. For in this all the other articles of our faith are included, and if this remain whole then all the others remain whole. When therefore we teach that men are justified through Christ, and Christ is the conqueror of sin, death, and the everlasting curse, then at the same time we testify that He is in His nature God."​
So Luther used specific wording when describing atonement -- Jesus overcoming, not Jesus satisfying something like the law. But modern Lutherans often use Penal Substitution wording.

The book goes on to make this claim:

pp.119,120 But there is one more point that must not be omitted in this connection. The traditional text of Luther is not always to be trusted. In certain passages where Luther speaks of the merits of Christ and his satisfaction, Bring has proved that the text has been amended in order to bring it into line with the Latin doctrine. Thus, the traditional text of the "Commentary on Galatians", on ch. v. 1, reads thus: "The liberty with which Christ has made us free is not from some sort of bondage to men, or the power of the tyrants, but from the everlasting wrath of God." But the Rorer MS. reads: "It is a liberty from the Law, from sins, death, the power of the devil, the wrath of God, the last judgment." Therefore the true text shows that, so far from contrasting the power of the tyrants with the wrath of God, in this passage as in others he ranges the wrath of God as one of the tyrants from which Christ delivers us. Such disorders in the text are not to be treated as accidental. They shed an interesting light on the extent to which Luther's contemporaries failed to understand him.​


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## Dachaser (Sep 22, 2017)

KeithW said:


> It depends on who you are talking to about Luther. I spent a year going to a Lutheran church and still go to their midweek Bible study. Lutherans do not necessarily follow all of the same doctrines which Luther believed and taught.
> 
> There is a book by Gustaf Aulen called "Christus Victor" which looks at three main atonement types during Christian history. The author describes how Luther did not follow Penal Substitution or the Satisfaction view of atonement originated by Anselm.
> 
> ...


Thanks for this, as I am trying to approach him with all the information on the views of both Calvin and Luther.
His big stumbling block seems to be not wanting to have God pour wrath on Jesus for our sins, as Jesus obedience and satisfaction of the Law is how he sees God able to save sinners by the Cross.


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## Dachaser (Sep 26, 2017)

KeithW said:


> It depends on who you are talking to about Luther. I spent a year going to a Lutheran church and still go to their midweek Bible study. Lutherans do not necessarily follow all of the same doctrines which Luther believed and taught.
> 
> There is a book by Gustaf Aulen called "Christus Victor" which looks at three main atonement types during Christian history. The author describes how Luther did not follow Penal Substitution or the Satisfaction view of atonement originated by Anselm.
> 
> ...


My friends main contention is that would be that the church did not know of the atonement view called the penal Substitution Theory until Calvin invented it.


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## RamistThomist (Sep 26, 2017)

Dachaser said:


> My friends main contention is that would be that the church did not know of the atonement view called the penal Substitution Theory until Calvin invented it.



What they normally say is that the church didn't know the PSA version until Anselm. Well, you can find snippets from fathers teaching PSA, but the church didn't teach it as a whole.


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## C. Matthew McMahon (Sep 26, 2017)

"But now, if God’s wrath is to be taken away from me and I am to obtain grace and forgiveness, some one must merit this; for God cannot be a friend of sin nor gracious to it, *nor can he remit the punishment and wrath, unless payment and satisfaction be made*. Now, no one, not even an angel of heaven, could make restitution for the infinite and irreparable injury and appease the eternal wrath of God which we had merited by our sins; *except that eternal person, the Son of God himself, and he could do it only by taking our place, assuming our sins, and answering for them as though he himself were guilty of them*. This our dear Lord and only Saviour and Mediator before God, Jesus Christ, did for us by his blood and death, in which he became a sacrifice for us; and with his purity, innocence, and righteousness, which was divine and eternal, he outweighed all sin and wrath he was compelled to bear on our account; yea, he entirely engulfed and swallowed it up, *and his merit is so great that God is now satisfied* and says, “If he wills thereby to save, then there will be a salvation. (Sermons of Martin Luther, vol. 2, p. 344)

"He has snatched us, poor lost creatures, from the jaws of hell, won us, made us free, and restored us to the Father’s favor in grace. Christ suffered, died, and was buried that he might *make satisfaction* for me and pay for what I owed, not with silver and gold, but with his own precious blood." (Book of Concord, ed. Theodore G. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1959) 414.)

“This is that mystery which is rich in divine grace to sinners: wherein by a wonderful *exchange *our sins are no longer ours but *Christ’s, *and the righteousness of Christ not Christ’s *but ours*. He has emptied himself of his righteousness that he might *clothe us with it and fill us with it*; and he has taken our evils upon himself that he might deliver us from them.” “Learn Christ and him crucified. Learn to pray to him and, despairing of yourself, say, ‘Thou, Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, but I am thy sin. Thou hast taken upon thyself what is mine and hast given to me what is thine. Thou hast taken upon thyself what thou wast not and hast given to me what I was not.'” Martin Luther, quoted in J. I. Packer and Mark Dever, _In My Place Condemned He Stood_ (Wheaton, 2008), page 85, footnote 31.

"I began to understand that 'righteousness of God' ...to refer to a *passive righteousness* by which the merciful God justifies us by faith...this immediately made me feel feel as if I was born again, a though I had entered through open gates into paradise itself. From that moment the whole face of Scripture appeared to me in a different light...and now where I had once hated that phrase the phrase 'the righteousness of God' so much I began to love and extol it as the sweetest of words" _(Luthers Werke, Wiemar Ed. 54.185.12)
_
"But faith (which we all must have, if we wish to go to the sacrament worthily) is a firm trust, that Christ, the Son of God, stands *in our place* and has *taken all our sins upon* Faith His shoulders, that He is the *eternal satisfaction* for our sin and reconciles us with God the Father." (THE SIXTH SERMON FRIDAY AFTER INVOCAVIT. Volume 2, Works.)

Reactions: Informative 1


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## Dachaser (Sep 26, 2017)

BayouHuguenot said:


> What they normally say is that the church didn't know the PSA version until Anselm. Well, you can find snippets from fathers teaching PSA, but the church didn't teach it as a whole.


The PST atonement view though seems to be the primary and best way to view the Cross of Jesus through in regards to how God viewed it, as He was indeed the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53.


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## RamistThomist (Sep 26, 2017)

Dachaser said:


> The PST atonement view though seems to be the primary and best way to view the Cross of Jesus through in regards to how God viewed it, as He was indeed the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53.



Sure, but that's not the normal way the early church viewed it (and there are reasons for that). I think the early church erred on that point, but that's it.


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## Dachaser (Sep 27, 2017)

BayouHuguenot said:


> Sure, but that's not the normal way the early church viewed it (and there are reasons for that). I think the early church erred on that point, but that's it.


They tended to see it as Jesus being the victor model, correct?


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## RamistThomist (Sep 27, 2017)

Dachaser said:


> They tended to see it as Jesus being the victor model, correct?



Some did. There really wasn't any unified belief.


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## Dachaser (Sep 27, 2017)

BayouHuguenot said:


> Some did. There really wasn't any unified belief.


The PST viewpoint though seems to me to be the only one that really does justice to what happened between the Father, Jesus, and the redeemed.


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