As I mentioned in my editorial “Joyful Exchanges” in the summer 2010 issue of LF, the joyful exchange is one of the “softer melodies” floating along through the history of the church. Here are the examples I’ve turned up so far from theologians other than Luther.

First, from Athanasius, in his “Four Discourses against the Arians” (NPNF 4):

“For [the Logos] was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immorality. For while He Himself was in no way injured, being impassible and incorruptible and very Word and God, [we] men who were suffering and for whose sake He endured all this, He maintained and preserved in His own impassibility.”

Then we have Leo the Great’s Sermon LIV “On the Passion, III.; delivered on the Sunday before Easter” (NPNP 212):

“In our Nature, therefore, the Lord trembled with our fear, that He might fully clothe our weakness and our frailty with the completeness of His own strength.  For He had come into this world a rich and merciful Merchant from the skies, and by a wondrous exchange had entered into a bargain of salvation with us, receiving ours and giving His, honour for insults, salvation for pain, life for death:  and He Whom more than 12,000 of the angel-hosts might have served for the annihilation of His persecutors, preferred to entertain our fears, rather than employ His own power.”

It should come as no surprise the Augustine employs the motif as well, in “Sermon XXX. On the words of the Gospel, Matt. xvii. 19, ‘Why could not we cast it out’? etc., and on prayer” (NPNF 1-06).

“…neither could He have death in that which was His own, nor we life in that which was our own; but we have life from that which is His, He death from what is ours. What an exchange! What hath He given, and what received? Men who trade enter into commercial intercourse for exchange of things. For ancient commerce was only an exchange of things. A man gave what he had, and received what he had not. For example, he had wheat, but had no barley; another had barley, but no wheat; the former gave the wheat which he had, and received the barley which he had not. How simple it was that the larger quantity should make up for the cheaper sort! So then another man gives barley, to receive wheat; lastly, another gives lead, to receive silver, only he gives much lead against a little silver; another gives wool, to receive a ready-made garment. And who can enumerate all these exchanges? But no one gives life to receive death. Not in vain then was the voice of the Physician as He hung upon the tree. For in order that He might die for us because the Word could not die, ‘The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.’”

But this motif would’ve been most familiar to Christians through the ages in the antiphon for the feast of the Circumcision.

"O admirabile commercium! Creator generis humani, animatum corpus sumens, de Virgine nasci dignatus est, et procedens homo, sine semine, largitus est nobis suam Deitatem."

Which translates as: “O admirable exchange! The Creator of the human race, taking upon Himself a body and a soul, has vouchsafed to be born of a Virgin, and appearing here below as man, has made us partakers of His Divinity.”

It is also interesting to note that Calvin used the motif as well in his discussion of the Lord’s Supper, in Section 2, Chapter 17 of Institutes, “Of the Lord’s Supper, and the Benefits Conferred by It.”

“Pious souls can derive great confidence and delight from this sacrament, as being a testimony that they form one body with Christ, so that everything which is his they may call their own. Hence it follows, that we can confidently assure ourselves, that eternal life, of which he himself is the heir, is ours, and that the kingdom of heaven, into which he has entered, can no more be taken from us than from him; on the other hand, that we cannot be condemned for our sins, from the guilt of which he absolves us, seeing he has been pleased that these should be imputed to himself as if they were his own. This is the wondrous exchange made by his boundless goodness. Having become with us the Son of Man, he has made us with himself sons of God. By his own descent to the earth he has prepared our ascent to heaven. Having received our mortality, he has bestowed on us his immortality. Having undertaken our weakness, he has made us strong in his strength. Having submitted to our poverty, he has transferred to us his riches. Having taken upon himself the burden of unrighteousness with which we were oppressed, he has clothed us with his righteousness.”