Middle Ages

The Scholastics on the atonement: Lombard, Bonaventure, Aquinas and Duns Scotus's "acceptation"

Peter Lombard, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, according to Berkhof, adopted elements of Anselm and Abelard without joining them into an inner unity: Lombard begins with Christ's merits, but answers the question of how his death frees us in Abelard's way – it reveals to us God's love. Thomas absorbed his predecessors' thought more fully than the others: the atonement is not absolutely necessary – God could have forgiven without satisfaction, but chose to require it; Christ's passion effects salvation as merit, as superabundant satisfaction through the mystical union of head and members, as a voluntary sacrifice and as redemption from bondage; the devil has no rights, and no ransom was paid to him. Duns Scotus made the atonement dependent on God's arbitrary decision: satisfaction was necessary only because God willed it, and the finite merit of Christ's human nature was accepted by God as sufficient (acceptilation, or acceptation).