Caught in the Act: Reflections on the Work of Christ

by GERHARD O. FORDE, Luther Northwestern Theological Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota

Published by Word & World 3/1 (1983) Copyright © 1983 by Word & World, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. All rights reserved.

 

Already in the 12th century Peter Abelard put the question to which we must at last attend in our thinking about the work of Christ, a question almost totally ignored by subsequent centuries:

If [the] sin of Adam was so great that it could be expiated only by the death of
Christ, what expiation will avail for the act of murder committed against Christ, and for the many great crimes committed against him or his followers? How did the death of his innocent Son so please God the Father that through it he should be reconciled to us—to us who by our sinful acts have done the very things for which our innocent Lord was put to death?1

In a moment of candor rare in the tradition, Abelard sees the death of Christ as a murder in which we are implicated. He wonders how such an act could be considered so pleasing to God as to “satisfy” him.

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