n. The act of propitiating; the act of making propitious.n. That which propitiates or appeases; that which furnishes a reason for not executing a punishment justly due for wrong-doing; specifically, in the New Testament, Christ himself, because his life and death furnish a ground for the forgiveness of sins.n. Synonyms Atonement, Reconciliation, Propitiation, Expiation, Satisfaction. By derivation and by Biblical usage atonement and reconciliation are essentially the same: two that were alienated are made at one, or put back into friendship. Atonement, however, is not now applied to the relation of man to man, except in its extra-Biblical extension, by which it means also the making of full and satisfactory amends (satisfaction) or the enduring of proper penalties (expiation) for a great wrong: as, there could be no atonement for such an outrage. As applied to the relations of God and man, atonement has been lifted into much greater dignity than any other word in the list; it is now the august, chosen, and only endeared word for the effect of the life and especially of the death of Christ in establishing right relations between God and man; reconcile and reconciliation are the principal words for this in the New Testament, atonement being used only once, and atone not at all. Propitiation is the only one of these words having exclusive reference to the feelings or purposes of the person or being offended; it is a severe word, implying slowness to relent, and is, in regard to the attitude of God toward man, chiefly a theological term. Expiation regards the guilt of the offense; it is the suffering of the penalty proper for an act (as, to make expiation for one's crime upon the scaffold), or of an adequate substituted pain. The word is general, and only barely Biblical (Num. xxxv. 33, margin, and revised version), although the fact is by the mass of Christians believed to lie in some form in the sufferings of Christ. Satisfaction in this connection means adequate amends: as, satisfaction for an insult or for damage; the word has been taken by a school in theology to express the sufficiency of the sufferings of Christ to meet the demands of the retributive justice of God.
