ty on the effect of the atonement. Jesus alone of the great
founders of religion suffered an early and violent death, even the death
of a criminal. It became therefore the immediate task of his followers
to explain this fact. This explanation was the more urgent because under
the influence of Jewish monotheism the rule of God was accepted as an
undoubted presupposition, so that the death of Jesus must be in
accordance with his will. The early Church naturally used the terms and
phrases of the prophets. He died the death of a criminal, not for his
sins, but for ours. Isaiah liii. was suggested at once and became the
central explanation: Christ is the suffering servant who is numbered
with the transgressors and who bears the sins of many.

Jesus faced this problem perhaps before the opening of his ministry,
certainly from his break with the ecclesiastical authorities. As his
violent death drew near, his words indicated how he preserved his deep
faith unshaken while yet recognizing the seeming failure of his mission.
He devotes himself more exclusively to the little body of his faithful
friends and commits his mission to them. As his work is sealed by his
death his body is broken and his blood is shed for them. Through this is
to come the victory which is denied to his life, as the seed cast into
the ground and dead brings forth fruit. Our hints are few of Jesus'
teaching, but this much, at least, we cannot doubt unless we suppose
that death took him unawares, or that his explanation of the impending
fact took on some un-Jewish form; and further, that the earliest
tradition misrepresents him. But these hypotheses do not commend
themselves, and we accept the tradition that Jesus taught that his death
was an atonement for others.

Beyond this the gospel does not go. Why vicarious suffering is needed,
or why the God who is the loving Father does not simply forgive, as in
the parable of the prodigal son, is not asked. For after all it is not
theory which is central, but the fact of the death, and the reason
assigned is simply "for others."

In St Paul we find the beginnings of explanation, indeed of two
explanations, and in the Epistle to the Hebrews the whole sacrificial
system is found to culminate in Christ, of whom all priests and
sacrifices are symbols, so that they are abolished with the coming of
the great reality.

In the Greek world further questions are raised and the thought of the
death as a ransom is prominent