Footnote 1: see Christus Victor by Gustaf Aulen (Macmillan, 1969) which demonstrates that this view of the Atonement was the dominant one of the pre-Nicene Fathers. It was also the Desposynic view taught at the Jerusalem Church and rooted and grounded in the Torah.

There are distinct Hebrew words to describe different aspects of redemption. Ga'al - 1350 - refers directly to the kinsman-redeemer. Kapar, 3722, refers to the thing used as the ransom by the kinsman-redeemer. Padah, 6299, indicates that it is used in a substitutionary way. The Desposyni did not teach the ransom theory of the Atonment as it is conceived by classical theologians, as if Satan was some kind of self-dependent god who had to be appeased. It was a satisfaction of public justice which was required and is best answered by a Trinitarian Governmental View of the Atonement. The standards of public justice are set by the immutable Divine Nature of the ontological Trinity. Satan was created to serve God as "the Adversary" of evil. Satan existed as a voice for public justice, but in his corruption as "the Accuser of the Brethren" (Job 1; Revelations 12), he provided a pedagogical opportunity for God to display the glory of His moral perfection to all of His creation (moral influence) in the substitutionary death of His Son. Jesus, as the kinsman-redeemer (ga'al) offers His blood as the ransom (kapar) that Satan is required to accept as the substitution (padah) for the blood of all mankind.

The views of Anselm and Abelard are humanistic theories of the Atonement and find little support in the patristic writings of the Church.

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