Atonement, Impassibility and the Communicatio Operationum

The biblical account of sin and the saving power of the cross stipulates that only one who is G od himself can atone for the sin of the world. Older Protestant theologians expounded this scriptural teaching by using the christological concept of the communicatio operationum , without foregoing the doctrine of divine impassibility. However, in contemporary discussion of the atonement, the viability of the communicatio operationum and the impassibility of G od have both been called into question. This article recognizes the need for G od the Son himself to act and suffer directly on the cross but, in doing so, also argues that we can uphold the impassibility of God by recovering the communicatio operationum and setting out how it coheres with G od's impassibility. I therefore discuss the exegetical purpose and dogmatic contours of the communicatio operationum and then display its relationship to G od's impassibility in a retrieval of several moves in traditional Reformed theology proper and C hristology, in particular the distinction between essence and person in G od, the meaning of the enhypostasis of C hrist's humanity and the meaning of the communicatio idiomatum .