Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served,
but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.
Gospel of Matthew 20:28
The Ransom theory arose at a time in history when Christians were persecuted by the Romans, crucified or fed to wild beasts as a spectacle, hence the awareness of an evil power that, in open hostility to God, would rule the world and from which mankind needs deliverance became intense.
The condition of the Gentile world made such notions as bondage and release, captivity and ransom, more tragically familiar […] Everywhere economic terror and spiritual fear reigned and intertwined to make human life doubly miserable. Many were enduring bondage and slavery physically, but all were caught up in them spiritually.64
Shortly afterwards, the barbarian invasions would begin, sweeping away the western Roman Empire and generating panic, disorientation and uncertainty about the future. In this context, the idea of evil forces at work, particularly in the form of the devil, with the aim of disrupting the economic and social structure and plunging Christians into fear, became even more prevalent. It is worth noting that the Ransom theory established itself and spread widely until it became the dominant Christian thought until after the 11th century, i.e., for almost a thousand years; therefore, it deserves careful examination to understand its origin and the enormous influence it had on the development of Christian theology of salvation.
4.1. Ransom theory
The Ransom theory is commonly attributed to Origen65 who, in the 3rd century, referring to some passages of the New Testament, proposed the idea of a ransom paid by God to the devil to obtain the liberation of men:
If then we have been bought at a price, as Paul also confirms, undoubtedly, we were bought from someone whose slaves we were, who also demanded the price he wanted so that he might release from his authority those whom he was holding. Now it was the devil who was holding us, to whom we had been dragged off by our sins. Therefore, he demanded the blood of Christ as the price for us.66
The theory formulated by Origen was that God, to obtain the liberation of mankind from Satan, offered the blood, i.e., the life of Jesus; the devil, unaware of the consequences he would face, fell into the trap and accepted the exchange. In fact, Jesus, being without sin, could not be kept in the underworld and, by the power of God, was snatched out of the devil's hands after gaining our deliverance:
But to whom did Christ give his soul for ransom? Surely not to God. Could it then be to the Evil One? For he had us in his power until the ransom for us should be given to him, even the life of Christ. The Evil One had been deceived and led to suppose that he was capable of mastering the soul, and did not see that to hold Him involved a trial of strength greater than he could successfully undertake.67
The literal interpretation of the term “ransom”, despite its great popularity, presented a theological dilemma, since it was based on a fundamental assumption: that God was somehow “obliged” to Satan. It was not plausible to believe that the almighty God, creator of the heavens and the earth and of every living thing, could owe such a “debt” to one of his creatures that he would have to pay a “price” to regain possession of what already belonged to him. Eloquent in this sense the words of John Damascene:68 “Be it far from me that the blood of the Lord has been offered to the tyrant!”69
Similarly, Gregory of Nyssa,70 one of the supporters of the Ransom theory, in order to overcome this conceptual problem, opted for a solution in which the devil did not actually receive a ransom, but rather God set a trap to win the seducer with his own weapons:
For we fell into the hands of the prince of this world, who seduced Adam, and made him his servant, and began to possess us as his slaves. But the Redeemer came, and the seducer was overcome. And what did our Redeemer to him who held us captive? For our ransom he held out His Cross as a trap; he placed in It as a bait His Blood. He indeed had power to shed His Blood, he did not attain to drink it. And in that he shed the Blood of Him who was no debtor, he was commanded to render up the debtors; he shed the Blood of the Innocent, he was commanded to withdraw from the guilty.71
The devil, the father of deception, was himself the victim of a plot and was therefore deprived, by a cunning trick on God's part, of what he had obtained through his manipulations; in fact, according to this interpretation, if he had known God's plan he would not have killed the Lord.72 However, the idea of the “trap” did not find a great following within the Church because it attributed to God, albeit animated by good, acting with deception, with “little means” so to speak.
Alternatively, a hypothesis arose that the ransom for the liberation of mankind was offered by Jesus to God rather than to Satan. In this hypothesis, although it is the devil who keeps men in bondage through sin, all rights would belong to God, who allows everything to happen under the terms he has established; therefore, it was Jesus who offered the Father his own blood to obtain the liberation of humanity. This hypothesis can be seen in the thinking of Basil of Caesarea, known as the Great:73
You have need of ransoms that you may be transferred to the freedom of which you were deprived when conquered by the power of the devil, who taking you under his control, does not free you from his tyranny until, persuaded by some worthwhile ransom, he wishes to exchange you […] Do not, then, seek your brother for your ransoming, but Him who surpasses your nature, not a mere man, but the Man God Jesus Christ, who alone is able to give ransom to God for all of us, because “God has set him forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith.”74
This change of setting brought about by Basil the Great, who introduced the proposition of a “payment” to God, may have influenced, many centuries later, the formulation of the Satisfaction theory by Anselm of Aosta, to be discussed in Chapter 6th. Incredibly, it is still a widespread idea today:
Sinners are in bondage to Satan. But they are only in bondage because God has allowed them to be. The bondage mankind finds itself in is part of the punishment for sin. Payment is owed to God, not the Devil […] There is no negotiation between the Devil and the Lord for the release of the captives. Rather, we are redeemed by having Christ crush the head of the serpent after He pays the ransom to God.75
The idea of a ransom paid to God, however, raised further questions: why would Jesus pay a ransom to the Father with his life? If it was a price for the liberation of men, how can it be morally justified for God to hold men captive through Satan? Why, in the end, did God devise a plot whereby he paid a ransom to himself through his Son? In any case, the literal interpretation of the concept of ransom opens theological “chasms”, as echoed in the authoritative words of Gregory Nazianzen in the 4th century:76
Now we are to examine another fact and dogma, neglected by most people, but in my judgment well worth enquiring into. To Whom was that Blood offered that was shed for us, and why was it shed? I mean the precious and famous Blood of our God and High priest and Sacrifice. […] Now, since a ransom belongs only to him who holds in bondage, I ask to whom was this offered, and for what cause? If to the Evil One, fie upon the outrage! […] But if to the Father, I ask first, how? For it was not by Him that we were being oppressed; and next, on what principle did the Blood of His Only begotten Son delight the Father, who would not receive even Isaac, when he was being offered by his Father, but changed the sacrifice, putting a ram in the place of the human victim?77
4.2. Criticism of the Ransom theory
In this chapter, we have looked in detail at how the literal interpretation of the word ransom or redemption (understood as liberation through the payment of a fee), has generated countless criticisms and poses serious theological problems. However, this theory developed in the early centuries of the Church, and often branded by theologians of rationalist thought as mythological and primitive, has in fact had an enormous influence on Christian thought, and is to this day incorporated into some of the most accepted theories of salvation, in the form of a compensation due to God (satisfaction or price for sin). This interpretation, we have seen, nevertheless gives rise to several moral as well as theological problems.
Let me at this point suggest a further option that has apparently never been considered; what if the ransom, again metaphorically speaking, was instead “paid” to us men? Could the blood shed be the “price” paid by Jesus to gain our trust and convince us of forgiveness? What if this “payment” is intended to free us from the guilt that binds us? Not that God needs to shed blood to forgive us, but perhaps we need it to accept his mercy and feel loved and forgiven. This and more will be discussed in detail in the second section of the book.
4.3. Conclusion
In conclusion, the literal interpretation of redemption as a “transaction” has been widely rejected and reinterpreted rather metaphorically as “liberation”. Similarly, “price” should not be understood as “compensation”, but rather as “sacrifice”. In the light of this, the verse we saw at the beginning of the chapter “He gave his life a ransom for many” should be understood as “He sacrificed his life for the liberation of many”.
C. S. Lewis said that all talk about intangible things is metaphorical, and he’s right. We might soak up the charm of a European village, or immerse ourselves in the Bible, even though neither charm nor the Bible are liquids. We might chew on an idea before making a decision, even though few ideas are actually chewy. The atonement is something that is intangible; we cannot see it and we cannot touch it, so the Bible talks about it in metaphorical language, and so must we.78
The evolution of this interpretation in metaphorical form will be the key to the definition of the Christus Victor theory, that we will analyse in the next chapter.