Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1954, Page 46

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46 Proceedings of the Forty-Third Convention,

ibid., p. 390, note). Again, he says: “Justification has taken place
conjointly with the atonement” (ibid., p.456, note); and: “Now
{because of Christ’s resurrection] we can confidently preach: ‘The
world is justified, the world is reconciled with God’; which latter
expression [the world is reconciled with God] one could not dare
to use if the first [the world is justified] were not true” (ibid.,
p. 465). Our fathers therefore, in accordance with Scripture and
the Confessions, used the terms “atonement” and “reconciliation”
as always embracing within themselves the entire justification or
the actus forensis, and consequently regarded them as correct and
adequate expressions also for justification.

Dr. F. Pieper goes even further. He says: “Those who deny
the juridical character of reconciliation and of its appropriation
are thus engaged, consciously or unconsciously, in the evil work
of destroying the entire Christian doctrine as it is revealed in Holy
Scripture.” He quotes with approval also Theodosius Harnack,
who in opposition to Von Hofmann said: “Reproaching the Lutheran
Confessions for maintaining the juridical character of the rec-
onciliation of the world is an attack upon: the Scripture.” And
Dr. Pieper concludes this chapter by saying: “All polemics against
the ‘juridical concept’ of the reconciliation of the world will cease
if Scripture is permitted to speak” (Dogmatics, II, 355).

What is true of the terms “reconciliation” and “atonement” is
true with equal force of the term “propitiation.” One cannot even
conceive of God as being propitiated through the sacrificial work
of Christ except with His consent and decision thereto. Dr. Theo-
dore Diercks confesses as much when in his Reconciliation and
Justification, p.34, he says: “Here the word hilaskesthai does not
only mean placare or only expiare, but both thoughts are included
in the word” (emphasis ours). “Propitiation” is therefore a syn-
onym for “reconciliation” and is a juridical concept. Nay, it is
more, it is also a synonym for the strongly forensic word “for-
giveness.” This is clearly demonstrated by Dr. R. T. Du Brau.
In an article that appeared in the April issue of the Concordia
Theological Monthly (XVI, 249 ff.), under the heading “Forgiveness
in the LXX,” he points out that “the Hebrew salach [forgiveness,
to forgive] is generally rendered in the Septuagint by hilasmos,
hilaskomai. Its primary significance,” he says, “is to shelter, to
cover. The classics transposed its meaning to the religious pro-
cedure of the conciliation of the gods; with them hilaskomai denotes
obtaining the favor of the gods. Homer always uses it so.”

Dr. Du Brau continues: “Our Latin-English verb ‘cover’ is
a direct lineal descendant of the Hebrew kaphar, the noun in the
LXX being hilasmos and translated ‘propitiation,’ ‘atone,’ ‘atone-
ment.

Now, it is significant to note that in translating verse 4 of the
130th Psalm, “But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest
be feared,” the translators of the LXX, in order to render into
Greek the Hebrew word salach, “forgiveness,” used the Greek
word hilasmos as the proper word by which to express it. And
this is also the very word which the Apostle John employs when
in 1 John 2:2 he says: “And He [Jesus Christ] is the Propitiation
[Greek: the hilasmos, or forgiveness] for our sins, and not for
ours only, but also for [those of] the whole world.”