The writing and correspondence of Hastings Rashdall: 1915 to 1924			HastingsRashdall.org.uk
The Bampton Lectures "The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology"
When published in 1919, the 502 page book contained not only the eight lectures but also detailed footnotes, additional appendices and  a 'continuation' of Lecture IV. The extracts shown here, and the longer one which may be downloaded, are from Rashdall's section on Abelard in Lecture V and the whole of his concluding Lecture VIII - The Truth of the Atonement.
Very different and very much simpler is the teaching which the far bolder, if less saintly, thinker Abelard substitutes for the ransom theory. Abelard was specially interested in the theoretical study of morality: his Scito te ipsum represents a really original treatise on moral philosophy, written before the recovery of the Aristotelian writings made originality in ethics almost impossible to the medieval mind. His study of morality, combined with the task of commenting upon the Epistle to the Romans, forced upon him the problem of the atonement and its justice. In Abelard not only the ransom theory but any kind of substitutionary or expiatory atonement is explicitly denied. We get rid altogether of the notion of a mysterious guilt which, by an abstract necessity of things, required to be extinguished by death or suffering, no matter whose, and of all pseudo-Platonic hypostasizing of the universal “Humanity.” The efficacy of Christ's death is now quite definitely and explicitly explained by its subjective influence upon the mind of the sinner. The voluntary death of the innocent Son of God on man's behalf moves the sinner to gratitude and answering love – and so to consciousness of sin, repentance, amendment. His position is succinctly expressed in one of the propositions condemned by the Council of Sens in 1141 and by Pope Innocent II. After stating with remorseless clearness the objections to the common ideas upon the subject, he proceeds: “I think, therefore, that the purpose and cause of the incarnation was that He might illuminate the world by His wisdom and excite it to the love of Himself.”
Download extracts from the lectures, including the whole of Lecture VIII. Back to the writing and correspondence of Rashdall, 1915 - 1924.		Let me begin by setting down clearly what the theory is. That cannot be done better than by repeating once more the formulation of it which is due to Peter the Lombard: “So great a pledge of love having been given us, we are both moved and kindled to love God who did such great things for us; and by this we are justified, that is, being loosed from our sins we are made just. The death of Christ therefore justifies us, inasmuch as through it charity is stirred up in our hearts.”. . . His death has been more to Christendom than other martyr-deaths, just because He was so much more than other martyrs, because His life was more than other lives; because His Messianic calling was a unique calling; because, in fact, of all that has led Christendom to see in that life the fullest revelation or incarnation of God. There is nothing in the fact that the necessity for the death did not arise from any objective demand for expiation which can diminish the gratitude and the love which such a death, taken in connexion with such a life, was calculated to awaken towards the Sufferer. And if the character which is revealed by that Sufferer be the character of God Himself, then the love that is awakened towards Christ will also be love of the Father whom in a supreme and unique way Christ reveals. And that love will express itself in repentance and regeneration of life.