Word: jesus
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Anselm's formulation, often called substitutionary atonement, has been restated in countless ways over the centuries. The church eventually extended its concept of the sin for which Jesus died beyond Adam's disobedience to everybody's transgressions. The 16th century reformer John Calvin replaced Anselm's feudal king with a severe judge furious at a deservedly cursed creation. Hala Saad, a contemporary churchgoer in Texas, recites a milder modern version: "All I had to do was sign up for God's debt-cancellation plan--for Jesus to take my place...
...legitimate doctrine in the 16th century. The Reformation also bathed in the blood of the Lamb, and rare is the American Protestant congregation that doesn't sing, "O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood/to every believer the promise of God/The vilest offender who truly believes/That moment from Jesus a pardon receives...
...supernatural structure perturbed some Enlightenment rationalists. Its scant room for human volition contradicted a growing 18th and 19th century optimism that the species could perfect itself through its own efforts. And in a religious culture increasingly defined by emotional evangelizing and the idea of a personal relationship with Jesus, Anselm's legalistic equation struck some as a liability for those preaching to win souls...
...relief, they turned to a source as old as Anselm. The French theologian Peter Abelard had also worked in the Middle Ages to address Jesus' role in reducing sinful humanity's distance from God, but he did so without recourse to tit-for-tat transaction. His atonement took place less as a compact between God the Father and God the Son and more in the hearts of believers cleaving to the message of Jesus' life--and the love most dramatically expressed in his willingness to die rather than renounce his calling. "Love answers love's appeal," Abelard wrote. With Jesus...
...nicely with the Enlightenment spirit, and it took wing. The Hartford, Conn., minister Horace Bushnell, its great 19th century proponent, declared that atonement's new location was not in "remote fields of being" but in humanity, as "a moral effect, wrought in the mind of the race." Jesus' death became less central, because it was no longer the price for lifting the burden of sin; instead, Bushnell's successors took to preaching the Saviour's life, exhorting their congregations to strive toward reconciliation with the Father by emulating the Son's healings, his scourging of the money changers...