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their own day, or blame them because that language has changed during the three
hundred years since. Shall we not rather regret that we cannot to-day use so homely a
word as "at one" (written aton) to represent concord, friendship, reconciliation, and
harmony?
The verb "to atone", meaning "to reconcile" or "to make one", is used by Shakespeare
as follows:
"He desires to make atonement
Between the Duke of Gloster and your brothers" (Richard 3: 1: 3).
"He and Aufidus can no more atone
Than violentest contrariety" (Cor. 4: 6).
"Since we cannot atone you, we shall see
Justice design the victor's chivalry" (Richard 2: 1: 1).
"I was glad I did atone my countrymen and you" (Cym. 1: 5).
And by Philpot: "What atonement is there between light and darkness?"
The word "onement" has now dropped out of use, but is found in Wyclif's writings,
and was employed, according to the Oxford Dictionary, in the year 1598 for "atonement".
The A.V. translators were perfectly right to render the word katallage by the, at that
time, common word "atonement", as they were also right to render the same word in
Rom. 11: 15 "reconciling", and in II Cor. 5: 18, 19 "reconciliation". In the same way
we find Shakespeare using the word "reconcile" on occasion, whereas in other plays he
uses the word "atone".
"Let it be mine honour . . . . . that I have reconciled your friends and you."
The translators of the A.V. would have been perfectly within their rights and have
been fully understood by their own generation if they had written:
"For if the casting away of them be the atoning of the world" (Rom. 11: 15).
"And all things are of God, Who hath atoned us to Himself . . . . . and hath given us
the ministry of the atonement, to wit, that God was in Christ atoning the world to
Himself" (II Cor. 5: 18, 19).
Such a rendering only sounds stranger to our ears because we have lost the word that
was in common use at that time, but if the A.V. translators had proceeded in this way, the
apparent intrusion of the word in Rom. 5: 11 would never have been questioned. It is
we, and not the A.V. translators, who need to be adjusted and rectified.
When the Revisers in 1881 undertook to produce a new version, they substituted for
the archaic one a modern word "in equally good use at the time the A.V. was made, and
expressing all that the archaism was intended to convey, but more familiar to the modern
reader". They therefore adopted "reconciliation" in Rom. 5: 11, but left the sense
unaltered. "Atonement" and "reconciliation" are synonymous, the only difference being
that "atonement" is English in origin, and "reconcile" Latin.