ROMAN LAW HISTORICAL SCIENCES 307 



the Roman verbal contract was made, and quaintly adds: "Is it 

 toyish that the Church exacteth an irrevocable promise of obedience 

 by way of a solemn stipulation?" 1 



In the development of Christian doctrine there appears a tendency 

 similar to that which Matthew Arnold described in Literature and 

 Dogma. Legal phrases and conceptions- derived from Roman law, 

 which were at first used metaphorically or by way of illustration, 

 came by degrees to be used literally as dogmatic definitions. Thus 

 the relation of God to man, from being viewed as a moral one based 

 upon love and duty, came to be regarded in a strictly legal light. 



It has often been pointed out that St. Paul, as befitted a Roman 

 citizen, was fond of using metaphors drawn from the law of the 

 Empire. As has been well said by a distinguished clergyman, "he 

 construed Christ in mixed terms of Hebrew sacrifice and Roman 

 law." 2 St. Paul uses the ceremony of adoption, the Roman concep- 

 tion of heirship, the Roman form of guardianship, the sealing of the 

 praetorian will, in order to illustrate various aspects of God's dealings 

 with man. 3 But he uses them as illustrations, not as clear-cut 

 definitions. So also, when he speaks of the death of Christ as a ran- 

 soming or redemption of man from sin, he does so by way of showing 

 in an eloquent figure of speech how man has been affected by Christ's 

 influence and example, rather than as defining a legal function 

 performed by Christ. 



When we pass to the works of Augustine, Ambrose, Origen, Atha- 

 nasius, and other Fathers of the Church, we find the idea of Christ's 

 work for man beginning to harden into that of the performance by 

 Him of a legal service. 4 This was regarded as one of two legal trans- 

 actions; either (1) as satisfactio, paying off the debt which man, an 

 insolvent debtor, was himself unable to pay, and canceling the 

 chirograph made by man; or (2) as redemptio, buying man back from 

 the slavery in which Satan held him. But for theological purposes 

 these two different aspects of the Atonement were treated as one and 

 the same. 



Pelagius and St. Augustine in the fifth century had a famous 

 controversy over the effects of Christ's sacrifice, and so had Abelard 

 and St. Bernard seven centuries later. In both cases the orthodox 

 doctrine prevailed, that men could not become partakers of the 

 Kingdom of Heaven unless their debts were wiped out through the 

 satisfaction offered by Christ. 5 



St. Anselm of Canterbury, who had studied the civil law, and 



1 Ecclesiastical Polity, 5th book, sect. 64. 



2 McConnell, Christ, 'p. 54. 



3 Ball, St. Paul and the Roman Law. 



4 See extracts from the Fathers in Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. 36, p. 441. 



5 Voss, Hist. Pelagian, lib. 7, 1, thesis 3, and his Responsio ad Judicium Ra- 

 venspergii, cap. 3. 



