John R. Rosenberg (then-professor of Spanish literature and dean of the College of Humanities at BYU), in a discussion of the atonement during the 2005 BYU Women’s Conference, used the term “propitiation”:
While we may not be
able to fully grasp how the Atonement operated as propitiation,
that is, as payment of debt required by divine justice, we can understand the
Lord’s offering of mercy. That mercy becomes operative when we are blessed with
the central epiphany of our spiritual life: although the Lord’s understanding of
my humanity, my failures, my pride, and my fear is through and perfect, so is
His life and His optimism for my potential.
Kind David shares his
recognition of this principle when in the eighth psalm he prayerfully asks, “When
I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which
thou hast ordained; that is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:3-4).
David states at the stars and knows that he is nothing. Another king—Benjamin—calls
us “beggars” to illustrate the same idea. Yet David in his smallness and
sinfulness still declares, “Thou hast made [man] a little lower than the
angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour” (Psalm 8:5), and Benjamin
tells us that because of Christ’s sacrifice, “he hath spiritually begotten you;
for ye say that your hearts are changed through faith on his name; therefore,
ye . . . have become his sons and his daughters” (Mosiah 5:7). In other words,
out of the Lord’s perfect understanding of our imperfection we are lifted,
talking with Him and our first steps toward the ultimate lifting we call
exaltation. (John R. Rosenberg, “’Old Variaunce’ or ‘Newe Atonement’: Marriage
and the Imitation of Christ,” in A Light Shall Break Forth: Talks from the
2005 BYU Women’s Conference [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2006], 190-91,
emphasis added)
