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It is available online, in case you did not know. It is a foundational text for the eastern orthodox church and one which we use in Sunday school. Of course we don't see Augustine in it at all. Perhaps you could elaborate on why you think it follows Augustine.

I think the most convincing statement was this one -
"For if He came Himself to bear the curse laid upon us, how else could He have "become a curse," unless He received the death set for a curse? and that is the Cross. For this is exactly what is written: "Cursed is he that hangeth on a tree."
On Good Friday this is what we sing of in the Orthodox church..

I found your post to be most intriguing.
"Athanasius clears all this up by presenting the Atonement in terms long lost to the west -- in terms of human nature."
This is, of course, exactly how we see it as well.

The online version that you refer me to is only a very brief summary, almost like a table of contents. I do not think the full version is available online, and the St. Vladimir's edition has a wonderful introduction by C.S. Lewis. I call it "Augustinian" only because in certain parts of it there is to be found the idea of satisfaction in the sense of paying what is "due". I am thinking of chapter 4, section 20, speaks of "settleing the account" and "death there had to be, and death for all, so that the due of all might be paid"

Here, clearly, is the language of "due" (Latin "ius", unsure of the Greek) and the paying of what is due. Thus, there is a component of satisfaction. However, anyone who has read the previous chapters knows that what is "due" is due not merely because God demands it with His will, nor even because divine Justice requires punishment for vengeance's sake, or even for Justice's sake. Rather, the reader knows that what is due is due because of the law written in our nature, namely, the gratuity of the divine image spoken of in the first chapter, the injunction to guard the gift of the image, and the subsequent refusal to do so. God owes it to his GOODNESS to heal us of the self-inflicted penalty of death that we are already paying, not to his JUSTICE to punish man further for sin. The whole purpose of the incarnation is to glorify the body and liberate it from the inevitable penalties that we already voluntarily impose given teh wounds of nature. That is what is DUE to God -- to glorify the human body and liberate from all penalties-- not FURTHER penalties over and above what is already coming to us.

Unfortunately, the concept of ius was transformed AFTER Aquinas so that the "due" is something owed to an impersonal JUSTICE, not something God owes to his own love and goodness and wisdom. Again, I submit that when Augustine and Aquinas are read correctly, their concept of satisfaction (and hence their satisfaction theology of the atonement) has much more in common with the Christus Victor approach than it has when read backwards through a Clavinist, Lutheran, Ockhamist lens.

In short, prior to Ockham and the Reformers, to pay what is due is nothing other than to give medicine, to heal, to rehabilitate human nature. That is what God owes to his goodness, love, and wisdom.

After Ockham and the Reformers, to pay what due is to give to God something that is his RIGHT, to satisfy His right to our pain and punishment. On this view, Christ's suffering pays what is due because God has a right to pain and punishment so great that humans cannot pay it off. The offense is infinite or something. Hence, God must become man to fulfill God's right to infinite pain and punishment for man. This is absurd in the extreme if pressed even a little, but it is the predominant way people think of it. Frankly, I think this absurd theory of the atonement is one large factor in the de-Christianizing of the West. The popular understanding of the atonement really is absurd.

On the traditional view, both East and West, to pay what is due is to PERFECT A THING ACCORDING TO ITS NATURE. God in Christ pays what is owed to HIS GOODNESS, LOVE, AND WISDOM, and what God owes to God is that man be healed in his nature, and to conquer death, to liberate us from incessant self-infliction of the wounds, to elevate us beyond human nature, to divinize and deify man, and to glorify the BODY. Christ fulfills what is due on the cross AND in the resurrection.

The God of Ockham and the Reformers is a sadistic monster, exacting vengeance for vengeance's sake, in the name of Justice. If that is what God is, I am an atheist. The God of the Patristics and early Scholastics is merciful in the technical sense -- mercy is the action proceeding from love to relieve the afflictions of others.