was this ransom paid?  The answer was, the devil.  According to Origen and to Gregory, God paid the devil the life of Jesus in order that the devil might let humanity go free.  The devil, by deceit, had tricked man, and man had become his slave—­God now plays a trick upon the devil, and by offering him the life of Jesus, secures the release of man.  That was the interpretation held by many theologians for almost a thousand years, but in the eleventh century there arose a man who was not satisfied with the old interpretation.  The world had outgrown it.  To many it seemed ridiculous, to some it seemed blasphemous.  There was an Italian by the name of Anselm who was an earnest student of the Scriptures, and he seized upon the word “debt” as the key-word of the problem.  He wrote a book, one of the epoch-making books of Christendom, which he called “Cur Deus Homo.”  In this book Anselm elaborated his interpretation of the reconciliation.  “Sin,” he said, “is debt, and sin against an infinite being is an infinite debt.  A finite being can not pay an infinite debt, hence an infinite being must become man in order that the debt may be paid.  The Son of God, therefore, assumes the form of man, and by his sufferings on the cross pays the debt which allows humanity to go free.”  The interpretation was an advance upon that of Origen and Gregory, but it was not final.  It was repudiated by men of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and finally, in the day of the Reformation, it was either modified or cast away altogether.

Martin Luther, Calvin, and the other reformers seized upon the word “propitiation,” and made that the starting-point of their interpretation.  According to these men, God is a great governor and man has broken the divine law—­transgressors must be punished—­if the man who breaks the law is not punished, somebody else must be punished in his stead.  The Son of God, therefore, comes to earth to suffer in His person the punishment that rightly belongs to sinners.  He is not guilty, but the sins of humanity are imputed to Him, and God wreaks upon Him the penalty which rightfully should have fallen on the heads of sinners.  That is known as “the penal substitution theory.”

It was not altogether satisfactory, many men revolted from it, and in the seventeenth century a Dutchman, Hugo Grotius, a lawyer, brought forth another interpretation, which is known in theology as “the governmental theory.”  He would not admit that Christ was punished.  His sufferings were not penal, but illustrative.  “God is the moral governor,” said Grotius, “his government must be maintained, law can not be broken with impunity.  Unless sin is punished the dignity of God’s government would be destroyed.  Therefore, that man may see how hot is God’s displeasure against sin, Christ comes into the world and suffers the consequences of the transgressions of the race.  The cross is an exhibition of what God thinks of sin.”  That governmental theory was carried into England