PROPITIATION (ἱλασμός, G2662, propitiation; καταλλαγή, G2903, reconciliation). The word “propitiation” is closely related to the word “expiation.” The difference in meaning may be summarized as follows: a person who is angry or offended is propitiated, i.e., appeased; whereas sin and guilt, which weigh upon the conscience of the offender are expiated, i.e., removed or wiped away. A significant debate in current Biblical and theological studies concerns the question of whether or not the Bible ever speaks of God being propitiated. Because of this difference of opinion, the same passages of Scripture are sometimes tr. with the word “propitiation” that are rendered in other VSS by “expiation” (see Rom 3:25; 1 John 2:2; 4:10, where the KJV has “propitiation” and the RSV has “expiation”). In like manner, the same passages cited in an article on propitiation are in another article cited to illumine the idea of expiation. Behind this striking lack of concensus is a fundamental theological issue; namely how shall one conceive of the wrath of God?
In classic pagan usage the word propitiation, which trs. ἱλασμός, G2662, was used of averting the wrath of the gods. Renewed favor with heaven was won for the offender by his offering a gift or sacrifice to atone for his trespass. It is therefore argued that if one insists on speaking of God being propitiated, he turns the loving God of the Bible into a capricious and vindictive deity who inflicts punishment on those who do not bribe Him with their gifts and offerings. Obviously this is not the kind of God the Bible reveals, and so it must be concluded that God cannot be propitiated. In its most consistent formulation, this view involves the denial of divine wrath altogether as incompatible with the truth that God is love.
Whereas it is correct to say that the Bible never expressly makes God the object of the verb “propitiate,” it is quite another matter to say that the Bible knows nothing of divine wrath and propitiation. It is a fundamental datum of Scripture that because God is a holy God, He is angry with all who are guilty of wrongdoing. It is said that there are more than twenty different words used to express the wrath of God in the OT, with over 580 occurrences of these words. “Now I will soon pour out my wrath upon you,” says the Lord (Ezek 7:8f.); “the anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind,” says Jeremiah (23:20). The psalmist laments, “O God, thou hast rejected us, broken our defenses; thou hast been angry” (Ps 60:1). To be sure, wrath is God’s “strange” work (Isa 28:21); mercy His “proper” work, but wrath is nonetheless His work, even though God is “slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Ps 103:8).
The same is true of the teaching of the NT. Although the dark theme of the divine wrath is not so heavily underscored as in the OT, it was a real part of the earliest Christian concept of God. Some scholars have insisted that in the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, God’s mercy becomes universal and the wrath of God is simply a fig. way of describing the impersonal law that is operative in a moral universe, a law which makes it impossible to sin with impurity.
Even a casual perusal of the NT shows that its authors do not think in terms of impersonal law, but of divine activity. Where the “law” enunciated that sin leads to more sin and finally to destruction, it is not an impersonal matter (Rom 1:18f.). It is God who gives up the sinner to “impurity” (v. 24); to “dishonorable passions” (v. 26); and to a “base mind” (v. 28). This is the manner in which God reveals His wrath from heaven (v. 28).
In this context of God’s personal activity, hilaskomai and its derivatives, when used in the NT to interpret the work of Christ, should be understood in the sense of propitiation of the divine wrath. Perhaps the most important passage in this regard is Romans 3:25 (KJV). Paul is saying that God has set forth Christ as a “mercy seat” for sinners. He employs the same Gr. word, hilasterion, that is used in the LXX to designate the cover on the Ark that was the “place of propitiation” in the Day of Atonement ritual. Since, however, in this passage, Paul is not discussing the details of the sacrificial system, and since it is somewhat complicated to think of Christ as both the sacrifice and the place where the sacrifice was offered, many scholars prefer to understand the passage to say, Whom God set forth to be a “propitiatory sacrifice,” or a “propitiation,” through faith in His blood. In any case, the general meaning is that those who are out of favor are restored to favor, because of a change of mind, not in those who by faith plead the blood, but in the One to whom it is offered.
With this interpretation agrees the affirmation in Hebrews 2:17, where it is said that Christ had to share in our human nature, “in order that he might make propitiation with reference to the sins of the people” (orig. tr.). There being no direct reference in this passage to the divine wrath, it would be possible to argue that the verb means “to expiate,” taking its meaning from its object, “the sins of the people.” In the larger context of the epistle as a whole, Christ is the High Priest “in things pertaining to God,” which gives the passage a Godward rather than a manward reference.
John wrote, “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:1, 2 KJV). 1 John 4:10 declares that God “loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (KJV). Here the case for “expiation” is less plausible than in Hebrews 2:17, for Christ is called an “advocate with the Father” (1 John 2:1). Now if God is so related to the sinner that the latter needs an “advocate,” this implies that Christ does more than purge guilt; He stands between the sinner and God, which suggests propitiation. Furthermore, John alluded both to Christ’s blood and to the fact that He is the “righteous one,” which is reminiscent of the confluence of ideas (1:7; cf. Rom 3:25).
Note should be taken of the important truth that this propitiation in Christ does not originate, as in heathen worship, with the one who brings the sacrifice. Rather it is God Himself, motivated by love, who provides the propitiation as a free gift. In this teaching are preserved both the severity of the divine reaction against sin, and the depths of the divine love for the sinner.
If one reduces the language of Scripture from “propitiation” to “expiation” in all instances, he still must answer the question, Why should sins be expiated? What would happen if no expiation were provided? Can one deny that, according to the teaching of Scripture, men will die in their sins? The logical implication of the denial of propitiation as unworthy of God is the teaching that God will ultimately manifest His forgiving love to everyone, regardless of how one is related to Christ—a point of view that is increasingly the vogue, but one that is contrary to Scripture.
Furthermore, the very idea of “canceling guilt” or “removing sin” implies the dimension of the personal. Unless one wants to reduce guilt to “guilty feelings,” he can not speak of removing guilt by expiation, without implying a change in relationship between two persons, namely God on the one hand and the sinner on the other. In discussions that dismiss propitiation of “an angry and fickle deity” as characteristic of a primitive stage of Israelite religion, one sometimes finds the concession that perhaps expiation should be understood as necessary for turning away the anger of God.
In conclusion, the idea of the divine wrath is not due to Gr. influence upon Christian theology. The Gr. philosophers considered it unthinkable to predicate of the divine being the emotion of anger, or for that matter, any emotion. The only reason, therefore, that Christian faith continues to speak of propitiating the divine displeasure against sin is that this is an endemic strand of Biblical revelation.
Bibliography C. H. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks (1935); L. Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (1955).