Thank you for your response, watcher, and for the citations you provided; they are quite apt.
Aquinas clearly represents the latin tradition regarding the understanding of the death of Christ: it is an appeasement which saves us from death, rather than a sacrifice in which we die. But the latter supports a more simple reading of Scripture: "Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united to him in a resurreciton like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him." This is not metaphorical; it is how Paul truly understands the significance of Christ's death. We are "in Christ" in the sense that we are united with him, in his death and in his resurrection. We have this unity by our faith; by our faith we are in Him so that we can die, and if we die with Him we shall live with him. This is a theology much different from the sort which says that believing in Jesus will make his death an efficable payment for our sins so that we will not need to pay the price ourselves. We have to pay the price, in some way, so that we can be rid of sin; it does no good to merely escape the punishment for sin; the punishment is sin's destruction, the punishment is our medicine. Grace is not escaping death, it is dying and then living again.
