Medieval Debates on Atonement

In a footnote to the aforementioned article, Muller briefly discusses the medieval debates about the atonement. He points out that the medieval doctors stressed the passive obedience almost to the exclusion of the active; the active obedience was merely preparatory, making Christ acceptable or meritorious as a sacrifice. So, the Reformed introduction of the active obedience was actually a move in favor of biblical theology and the gospels. Fair enough. But I stand by my suggestion in the previous post that we can’t do justice to the redemptive role of the work of Christ if we understand it purely in terms of “active obedience,” however that is construed.

Muller also says this in the same footnote: “The sixteenth-century discussion of active and passive obedience ought to be understood as a continuation of the medieval debate over and devleopment of atonement theory ?Enow in the context of a new concept of justification. Indeed, the doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone finds its objective, Christological foundation in the Reformers’ concept of the imputation of the entire obedience of Christ, both active and passive to man; under these new terms, the satisfaction theory of atonement could argue the forensic remission of both poena and culpa and rule out the need for human merit. Although he did not accept a doctrine of penance, Arminius did . . . press atonement theory back toward the medieval model. His distinction of Christ’s active and passive obedience made room for human obedience in the work of salvation and, ultimately, pointed Arminian atonement theory away from the strict penal substitution model of the Protestant orthodox toward the governmental theory of Grotius” (pp. 157-158, fn 58).