Soteriology

Only a Mediator who is both God and man could effect the Redemption; Part I will treat the mediatorship of Christ, the fact of the Redemption, and its concrete realization in Christ's Death, Descent into Hell, and Resurrection.

Christ's mediatorship as the condition of our redemption: the definition of 'mediator,' the distinction between natural and moral mediation, and the dogma—defined at Trent—that Christ is the one Mediator between God and man.

Why the Incarnation was a fitting means of redemption—glorifying God's justice, mercy, love, and wisdom—and in what sense the Redemption was necessary: not absolutely (against Wyclif and the Optimists), but hypothetically, once God chose to exact infinite satisfaction for sin.

Would the Son of God have become incarnate if Adam had not sinned? The classic controversy between the Thomists—who make the Fall the motive of the Incarnation—and the Scotists, who hold Christ absolutely predestined as the center of creation apart from sin.

The concrete fact of Christ's vicarious atonement: the meaning of 'atonement' as satisfaction for the infinite offence of sin, the definition of vicarious atonement as the Godman's voluntary assumption of satisfaction in our stead, and a refutation of the Socinian and Rationalist objections.

The scriptural and traditional proof of the vicarious atonement: the heresies that deny it (Pelagianism, Socinianism, Gnosticism, Theosophy), the witness of Isaias and the New Testament, the Patristic development including the discarded 'rights of the Devil' theory, and the distinction between satisfaction and merit.

The intrinsic perfection of Christ's vicarious atonement in its three ascending stages—adequacy, rigorousness, and superabundance—against the Scotist and Nominalist theory of mere 'extrinsic acceptation,' and the ground of its infinite value in the Hypostatic Union.

For whom did Christ die? Against Predestinarianism and Jansenism, the atonement is shown to be universal—Christ died for all the faithful and for all men without exception—while the fallen angels have no share in it, and the reality of the atonement is not disproved by the fact that many are eternally lost.

How Christ actually redeemed us: His death on the Cross as the efficient means of our salvation, foreshadowed in the Old Testament and attested throughout the New, and the profound congruity of His dying a public, bloody death for the destruction of sin and the model of all virtue.

The descensus ad inferos: its proof from Scripture and Tradition, the fourfold meaning of 'hell' and the determination that Christ descended to the limbus patrum, the relativity of ancient notions about its location, and the soteriological purpose of His descent—to announce deliverance to the just who awaited Him.

Christ's glorious Resurrection as the triumphant consummation of the Redemption: its relation to His death as the complement of justification, and its reality as a cardinal dogma—the true reunion of soul and body, the glorified state of the risen body, and Christ's rising by His own power in virtue of His consubstantiality with the Father.

The sacerdotal character of the Redemption: the definition of a bloody sacrifice, the dogma—defined against the Socinians—that Christ's death on the Cross was a true propitiatory sacrifice proved from the Old and New Testaments, and the theological problems of how Christ was at once victim, priest, and accepting God.

The priesthood of Christ as the corollary of His sacrifice: His ordination as high priest at the moment of the Incarnation, His true earthly priesthood exercised in the sacrifice of the Cross and in sacerdotal prayer, and the everlasting continuance of His priesthood in Heaven, where He intercedes for us by asserting the sacrifice once offered.

The second office of the Redeemer: Christ as the great Teacher foretold by Moses and Isaias, who taught with divine authority by word and example, the theological ground of His prophetic perfection in the Hypostatic Union, and the continuation of His teaching office in the infallible magisterium of the Church.

The third office of the Redeemer: Christ's spiritual kingship foretold in the Old Testament, His deliberate refusal of an earthly throne, His heavenly reign begun at the Ascension, and its continuation in the purely spiritual dominion of the Church—closing with an appendix on the atonement and God's immutability.