Christus Victor

According to the Christus Victor theory of the Atonement, Christ's death defeated the powers of evil, which had held humankind in their dominion. It is a model of the atonement that is dated to the Church Fathers, and it, or the related ransom theory, was the dominant theory of the Atonement for a thousand years, until Anselm of Canterbury supplanted it in the West with his Satisfaction theory of atonement.

A recent use of the term was the title of Gustaf Aulén's book, first published in 1931 and translated into English by Gabriel Hebert, in which he drew attention back to this classic early Church understanding of the atonement. Gustav Aulén writes in description of Christus Victor, "the work of Christ is first and foremost a victory over the powers which hold mankind in bondage: sin, death, and the devil."

In his book, Aulén identifies three main types of Atonement Theories:

Aulén's book consists of a historical study, beginning with the early church, tracing Atonement theories up to the Protestant Reformation. Aulén argues that Christus Victor (or as Aulén called it the "classic view") was the predominant view of the early church and for the first thousand years of church history and was supported by nearly every Church Father including Irenaeus, Origen of Alexandria, and Augustine of Hippo, to name a few. A major shift occurred, Aulén says, when Anselm of Canterbury published his “Cur Deus Homo” around 1097 AD which marked the point where the predominant understanding of the Atonement shifted from the classic view (Christus Victor) to the Satisfaction view in the Roman Catholic Church, and later within Protestantism. The Orthodox Church still holds to the Christus Victor view, based upon their understanding of the Atonement put forward by Irenaeus, called "recapitulation" Jesus became what we are so that we could become what he is. (see also Theosis).

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