2nd–6th centuries

The Latin Fathers: from Tertullian's legal terms to the synthesis of Gregory the Great

Tertullian, according to Berkhof, stressed the central significance of Christ's death on the cross and introduced legal terms – guilt, satisfaction, merit – though he applied them not to Christ's sacrifice but to penance and good works after baptism. Hilary of Poitiers regarded Christ's death as satisfaction to God, grounded, as in Athanasius, in God's veracity; Ambrose repeated Origen on the ransom to Satan but stressed the sacrifice to God as satisfaction of the death sentence. Augustine, summing up what went before, departed from Greek theology in the main: his principal ideas are original sin, justification by grace, and reconciliation through Christ's sacrifice appeasing God's wrath; but he did not work out a complete theory. Gregory the Great gave "the fullest synthesis of Latin theology on the atonement": only a sacrifice can blot out sin, but an animal cannot, and there is no sinless man, so the Son of God became incarnate and, being sinless, became a sacrifice for us.