Barth backing up Tommy...

In following up the quote of NTW about the song, "In Christ Alone", I found this quote on Barth in the course of revision:

"In his exposition Barth is critical of the theory of Anselm and his successors which sees the atonement 'either in the sense that by his (Christ's) suffering our punishment we are spared from suffering it ourselves, or that in so doing he 'satisfied' or offered satisfaction to the wrath of God'. Of these he says: 'The latter thought is quite foreign to the New Testament. And of the possible idea that we are spared punishment by what Jesus Christ has done for us... the main drift of the New Testament... is not at all or only indirectly in this direction.'

However, Barth does take up the conception of satisfaction put forwards by Anselm and uses it his own way. It is not the wrath of God which is 'satisfied'; we must put it rather in this way that God's love, because of its radical nature, must, when it meets sin, work itself out as wrath and so destroy the old Adam. In this way God is satisfied, does what is sufficient (satis fecit). 'Here is the place for the doubtful concept, that in the passion of Jesus Christ, in the giving up of his Son to death, God has done that which is 'satisfactory' or sufficient in the victorious fighting of sin to make this victory radical and total. He has done that which is sufficient to take away sin.' It is divine action in the passion of Jesus Christ with this victorious conclusion."

John Thompson, Christ in Perspective in the Theology of Karl Barth, 71.