Suffering, Not Power: Atonement in the Middle Ages

by Benjamin Wheaton

Correcting a popular view of the atonement. Was Christ’s death a victory over death or a substitution for sin? Many today follow Gustav Aulén’s Christus Victor view, which portrays Christ’s death as primarily a victory over the powers of evil and death. According to Aulén, this was the dominant view of the church until Anselm reframed atonement as satisfaction and the Reformers reframed it as penal substitution. In Suffering, Not Power , Benjamin Wheaton challenges this common narrative. Sacrificial and substitutionary language was common well before Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo . Wheaton displays this through a careful analysis of three medieval figures whose writings on the atonement are commonly Caesarius of Arles, Haimo of Auxerre, and Dante Alighieri. These individuals come from different times and contexts and wrote in different genres, but each spoke of Christ’s death as a sacrifice of expiation and propitiation made by God to God. Let history speak for itself, read the evidence, and reconsider the church’s belief in Christ’s substitutionary death for sinners.

Genres: Theology

280 pages, Paperback

Published June 8, 2022

Reviews

[Josiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! Read for a seminary course at Ryle Seminary. Adding a book review I wrote for that class, in case anyone is curious about the book and why they should read it (they should!)

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In “Suffering Not Power: Atonement in the Middle Ages,” Benjamin Wheaton successfully challenges a popular view that the early church held a “Christus Victor” model of Christ’s death on the cross until Anselm of Canterbury’s “Satisfaction Theory,” which finally evolved into the “Penal Substitutionary Atonement” of the Reformers. Through extensive engagement with the scholarly debate between Joseph Turmel and Jean Riviere, and through in-depth examination of the life, context, and theology of Dante Alighieri, Caesarius of Arles, and Haimo of Auxerre, Wheaton finds ample support that Christ’s death was consistently understood as a sacrifice by God to God in the Middle Ages.
In chapters two and three, after an introduction outlining the book and explaining its purpose, Wheaton studies the theme of atonement in Dante’s De Monarchia and Paradiso. The purpose of the former work was to establish the legitimacy of secular (Roman) government over Papal rule. And yet, the political conclusions of his study are subordinate to the theology he uses to get there. Ultimately, the governor of Judah under Caesar sentenced Christ to death. “For Dante, it is manifestly the case that Christ had to have been punished for the sins of mankind for them to be forgiven,” writes Wheaton. “Therefore, the suffering he underwent had to have been a just punishment ordered by a lawful authority.” For His death to propitiate God, it had to be just; and only one who has legitimate authority and sovereignty to judge judges justly. Therefore, to Dante, Rome’s rule over mankind was just. After considering Paradiso, Wheaton summarizes Dante’s atonement theology as propitiation explained in two ways. First, the punishment of Adam’s sin upon humanity’s representative (Christ); second, the redress of original sin through a good deed of equal moral value provided by Christ’s humiliation on the cross in obedience to God. Thus, in Dante, one sees in a single theory the unity of the principle of both penal substitutionary atonement and vicarious satisfaction. It is a thoroughly theocentric vision.
In chapters four and five, Wheaton demonstrates how Caesar of Arles presented the atonement as a sacrifice of propitiation and expiation made by God to God. While there are hints of what might first appear to sound like a Christus Victor model, Wheaton shows that for Caesar, man’s greatest problem is not the devil’s tyranny per se, but his own sin that bound him to the devil. They are co-sufferers, co-condemned. Yes, Christ defeats Satan and frees his elect, but He does so first by dealing with sin by a sacrifice of propitiation and expiation by which the sins of humanity are forgiven. Caesar of Arles’s views are worth consideration not only because of his immediate importance as a powerful preacher and bishop, but because he crafted his own popular homiliaries, emphasizing his own theology and agenda, from which many clergy preached.
In chapters six and seven, Wheaton presents the atonement theology of Haimo of Auxerre. Despite being relatively unknown today, Haimo’s commentaries on Scripture, in which his atonement theology shone, were among the most popular Medieval Biblical commentaries. “The atonement for Haimo of Auxerre is theocentric, not demonocentric,” writes Wheaton. The cross solves a problem regarding God and man, not the devil. Similar to Caesar of Arles, humanity’s chief problem is not bondage to Satan but sin itself. As Wheaton demonstrates from Haimo’s commentary on Hebrews, the atonement was a sacrifice made to the Father by the Son, and, to the extent of His will, by the Father Himself. The cross is both a sacrifice of expiation and propitiation because “it destroys sin” and “averts God’s wrath.”
In chapter seven, after completing his consideration of Haimo of Auxerre’s contribution to atonement theology, the author examines the relationship of theologians before Anselm to Anselm himself on the atonement. Building upon the research of Jean Riviere, Wheaton argues that Anselm’s work was not a radical break from the Christus Victor tradition, as some narrate, but was “in essential continuity with the teaching of the fathers and the best of the Carolingians and their immediate successors.” For all of them, the atonement was primarily a propitiating and expiating sacrifice for humanity’s sin made through Christ’s death, and a sacrifice made to God, not the devil. The image of the devil’s “rights” over a captive, sinful humanity, and the necessity of God justly forgiving sinners rather than through a decree of power are, according to Wheaton (and Riviere), simply that: images. “The Devil’s rights, properly understood, merely refer to the consequences of our sin,” writes Wheaton. And, as Riviere notes, the claim of justice toward Satan regarding his “right” to humanity was never understood as a strict or necessary law to which God was bound; rather, it was a way of expressing the firm belief that God chose to save humanity not by decree but by a manifestation of his attributes of justice, love, and mercy through Christ’s atonement on the cross. Anselm is simply correcting the irresponsible outgrowth of language that threatened to overcrowd the substance with the image.
Suffering, Not Power is arranged with excellence for scholarly and popular reading. Popular readers may, at first, wonder why Wheaton engages with Riviere’s work. However, by the conclusion, readers will discover the wisdom of Wheaton’s approach. Riviere’s debate with Turmel “has uncanny similarities with the discussions ranging today,” his contributions cracked the “nut” of Turmel’s theories with the “sledgehammer” of historical scholarship, and yet it has been largely forgotten. Riviere’s work, unfortunately, was never particularly accessible, especially for the English-speaking world. Moreover, historical discoveries since Riviere’s death allow for updates to his project. Therefore, by introducing Riviere to the English-speaking world and Protestants in particular, alongside three detailed vignettes of his own scholarship, Wheaton offers readers the best of both worlds: access to an arsenal of previously unavailable, theologically relevant historical findings in a readable format alongside a trustworthy guide.
Wheaton’s choice to study Dante Alighieri, Caesarius of Arles, and Haimo of Auxerre benefits readers in a similar way. Wheaton has deliberately avoided the no-doubt tempting approach of providing sheets of supporting quotes from the Middle Ages without context. If that is what readers are looking for, they will be sorely disappointed. Rather, Wheaton often devotes significant time to the life, times, and works of these three men and their engagement with contemporaries before considering their views on the atonement. Yet, persisting readers will find this diet considerably more solid than the alternative. Wheaton does not merely present his opinions, scattering misleading quotes along the way, but takes his readers on a tour through the theology and history of the Middle Ages, clearly demonstrating the historical validity of his argument over and over again. Readers will walk away not only with a stronger position from which to argue but with a greater understanding of atonement theology in the Middle Ages and with the glories of the gospel itself.
Indeed, this was the greatest surprise for this reader: that the evangelical truth was not lost during the Middle Ages. No doubt, doctrinal error and corruptions abounded in many places, and Wheaten may be slightly too generous to overlook the questionable role of baptism for Protestants in Haimo of Auxerre, for example, or Dante’s confusion about who punished Christ on the cross (God the Father or the Roman authorities). But he has nonetheless demonstrated that the complete, once and for all atonement of God to God, in all its propitiating and expiating majesty, was preached by figures like Caesarius of Arles, taught by Haimo in the commentaries that would become extremely popular, and propagated by Dante to eager readers throughout Europe. In fact, Protestant readers may be surprised to discover their own atonement theology is perhaps closer to Wheaton’s three vignettes than even C.S. Lewis, whose portrayal in the well-loved The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe rings heavy with Christus Victor language.
It would seem that, when it comes to the core of the atonement, an overly pessimistic interpretation of this era is unfounded. Readers may not only discover that the gospel endured throughout this time but also learn much about the atonement from Caesarius, Haimo, and Dante for their own enjoyment and enrichment.

[Danny Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent review of the history, although tends to be repetitious. Sometimes glosses over details/nuances, but understandable for a book of its length. Loved it and was of great benefit. Would give it a 3.75/5.00.