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Expiation and Propitiation carries three contested facts, and they are one real translation dispute rather than three. "To expiate is to deal with a thing... To propitiate is to deal with a person," and a single Greek word group in the New Testament has been translated both ways, "which way it is translated decides a good deal."

Three Named Positions on the Same Word

disputed-point names all three: "C. H. Dodd argued in the 1930s from Septuagint usage... that the New Testament sense is expiation, and that reading God as the object imports a pagan idea of appeasement. Leon Morris replied that divine wrath is a real and frequent subject in both testaments... and that removing propitiation removes something the text supplies. A third reading takes hilasterion in Romans as the kapporeth, the cover of the ark, so that Christ is the place where atonement is made rather than its agent or its object; Tyndale and Luther both followed this." Its own description adds that "nothing in the Greek settles the question, and the English word a translator chooses tends to follow the doctrine already held."

What Rides on the Answer

doctrinal-status and its detail do not add a fourth position; they state what the other atonement theories stand to lose or keep depending on which reading wins. If the word means expiation, "the models requiring a change in God lose their strongest single text, and Christus Victor, recapitulation and moral influence are unaffected." If it means propitiation, "the penal and satisfaction accounts have their central vocabulary underwritten." One dispute, three named positions, and a clear statement of the stakes rather than a fourth claim.

Where To Read More

• Expiation and PropitiationSalvation and LiberationOne New Testament translation dispute, three named scholarly positions, and the doctrinal stakes riding on the answer