Regarding Christology and atonement, the later Erlangen school represented by Paul Althaus (1888-1966) and Werner Elert (1885-1954) was in many ways more conservative than its nineteenth predecessors. The nineteenth-century Erlangen school had taken over from Lutheran Pietism and Friedrich Schleiermacher the concept that that along with the Bible and the Lutheran Confessions, Christian experience was a valid source of theological authority. By contrast, under the influence of their teacher Ludwig Ihmels, Elert and Althaus affirmed that Scripture was the supreme theological authority to the exclusion of religious experience. Similarly, both Althaus and Elert abandoned Johannes von Hofmann and Gottfried Thomasius’s metaphysically problematic belief in kenotic Christology in favor of a fairly traditional understanding of the two natures in Christ.
Both Elert and Althaus took an interest in responding to the historical skepticism concerning the identity of Christ and the historicity of the Gospels that marked the work of figures like Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976). Both Erlangen theologians held that Christianity would be meaningless and invalid if the Gospels were false and if Jesus was not true God and man. In order to push back against theological Liberalism and historical skepticism, Elert and Althaus offered a series of common arguments in their respective works.
First, in his early and shorter dogmatics, Elert partially adopted Hofmann’s line of reasoning by insisting that the development of the Church and the reality of the contemporary Christian community would make little sense if the events of the Bible (including the life of Christ) had not occurred generally as reported. Analogously, contemporary Americans are not vexed about whether there was an American Revolution since the US government and other American institution would not exist if it had not happened. So too the Church as an embodied community would make little sense as it exists now if the history salvation as described by the Bible had not occurred.
Secondly, both Elert and Althaus argued that Jesus was an absolutely unique personality that could never be a mere invention of early Christians. Even if a detail here or there in the Gospel records might be inaccurate (it should be noted that neither believed in the full inerrancy of Scripture), the utterly uniqueness of Jesus’s personal character impressed itself upon the apostles and is reflected in the New Testament witness. The biblical and ecumenical doctrine of the two natures in Christ could be justified by pointing to the fact that the utterly unique personality of Christ presented in the Gospels contained both divine and human elements.
Both Althaus and Elert also very zealously defended the biblical and confessional doctrine of penal substitution. In his seminal work, The Theology of Martin Luther, Althaus vigorously argued against Gustaf Aulén and his attempt to claim Luther for the Christus Victor atonement motif. Likewise, in his work Law and Gospel (which primarily a response to Barth’s theology of grace and ethics), Elert outlined and defended his affirmation of the doctrine of penal substitution.
According to Elert, in the post-lapsarian world, humanity lives a “nomological” existence wherein humans are constantly enveloped by the experience of the condemnation of the law. Jesus came into the world as the embodiment and fulfillment of divine grace and judgment. He exposed the hypocrisy of those who claimed not to be sinners, while forgiving and having fellowship with the moral outcasts. He not only gave forgiveness, but taught an ethic of forgiveness that transcends the law. Jesus’ ethic of non-retaliation and forgiveness transcends the law because the logical final fulfillment of the law is retribution and retaliation (lex talionis). In order to make divine forgiveness and the Christian ethic of non-retaliation an actuality, Christ had to end the retribution of the law by bringing it to a completion by his death. The cross is thus a final retributive punishment for sin that ends all retribution. This was the fulfillment of divine wrath against sin and is an act of pure law. By contrast, the resurrection is act of pure grace, since it reveals God’s forgiveness won by the cross.
Image from Jeff Davis, “Contemporary Issues in the Christological Methods,” Life Giving Words of Hope & Encouragement by Jeff Davis, May 17, 2017, https://jeffdavis.blog/2017/05/17/contemporary-issues-in-the-christological-methods/.