Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
162However, as with other traditional doctrines, it is important to try to go back in
hist oric al imaginat ion to the original experienc e out of whic h it grew. It is evident
that the profound and all-absorbing experience of the early post-Easter Christian
c ommunit y was of a living spirit , whic h t hey ident ified as t he spirit of t he risen
Jesus, welling up wit hin t hem, individually and c orporat ely, and drawing t hem int o
a new, joyous and exhilarat ing form of life, full of posit ive meaning and free from
the besetting fears of the ancient world – of demons, of fate, of sin, and of death.
T his new liberat ed life, overflowing wit h meaning and hope, was t he religious realit y
that was to be expressed, first in what seem to us today a cluster of bizarre
images, and lat er, wit hin medieval Lat in Christ ianit y, in various sophist ic at ed
theories of a transac tional atonement. However, we in the Western churches today,
both Catholic and Reformed, may well feel that none of these inherited theories
ret ains any real plausibilit y and t hat we should look again at t he alt ernat ive
development within Eastern Christianity of the idea of a gradual transformation of
t he human by t he divine Spirit , c alled by t he Ort hodox t heologians deific at ion
(t heosis).
These two c onc eptions do not of c ourse exc lude eac h other. Latin theology has
also held that the justific ation won by Jesus’ death leads to sanc t ific at ion, whic h is
the gradual transformation of the sinner into a saint. And Orthodox theology also
holds that Jesus’ death was somehow c ruc ial in bringing about human ‘deific ation’.
And sinc e bot h t radit ions use t he same st oc k of biblic al images, one c an find muc h
the same language somewhere within eac h. Nevertheless, their basic tendencies
move in different direc tions, one guided by a transac tional-atonement c onc eption
and the other by a transformational c onc eption of salvation.
We shall c ome bac k later to the Eastern tradition and its transformational
c onc eption, but in the meantime let us look more c losely at the transac tional
mo d e l.
Before the division between the Eastern and Western churches the earliest
attempt to conceptualize the Christian experienc e of liberat ion and new life
fastened upon the Markan saying of Jesus, that ‘the Son of man also c ame not to
be served but t o serve, and t o give his life as a ransom (lut ron) for many’ (Mark
10.45). Ransom had a poignant meaning in the anc ient world, when a c onsiderable
proport ion of t he populat ion lived in a st at e of slavery, and free c it izens were liable
to become slaves if their tribe, city or nation was defeated in a war. Being
ransomed, and thus made free, was accordingly a vivid and powerful met aphor
whose force most of us can only partially recapture today.
But , making t he perennial t heologic al mist ake of t aking met aphoric al language
lit erally, t he early Christ ian t heologians asked t hemselves t o whom Jesus was, by
his death, paying a ransom; and the inevitable answer was the devil – who else? In
the words of Origen, ‘To whom gave he his life “a ransom for many”? It c annot
have been to God. Was it not then to the evil one? For he held us until the ransom
for us, even the soul of Christ, was paid to him’ (Grensted 1962, 38). And so for
many c enturies – indeed virt ually unt il Anselm int roduc ed his sat isfac t ion t heory in
the eleventh c entury – it was generally accepted by Christian writers and preachers
that the human rac e had fallen through sin under t he jurisdic t ion of t he devil and
that the c ross of Christ was part of a bargain with the devil to ransom us. Wit hin