The (Theological) Elephant in the Room
I am just beginning to work on a study on atonement. Looking through the many theological threads we have had in Purgatory, some in Kerygmainia and one or two elsewhere, it is one word that keeps cropping up.
Yes, we had a rather long discussion on penal substitutionary atonement. Not sure we came up with any real conclusion on that.
Anyway, I have worked through nine ideas of atonement. Some of them are quite familiar. Others not so familiar. What I would like to know is which one of these fit how you understand atonement. But feel free of your own.
As a fun part of the survey. See if you can name a theologian who came up with the idea.
Summary of Atonement Theories
1. Recapitulation Idea; Christ becomes the “new Adam,” reliving human life in perfect obedience and restoring humanity.
2. Ransom Idea: Humanity is enslaved by sin, death, and the devil; Christ’s death liberates us and defeats the powers. (Also known by what title?}
3. Satisfaction Idea: Sin dishonors God; Christ’s death offers the infinite honor owed to God.
4. Moral Influence Idea: Christ’s death reveals God’s love so deeply that it moves sinners to repentance.
5. Example Theory Idea: Christ’s death is an example of obedience meant to inspire moral living.
6. Governmental Theory Idea: Christ’s death demonstrates the seriousness of God’s moral law, allowing God to forgive while upholding justice.
7. Penal Substitution Idea: Christ bears the penalty of sin in our place, satisfying divine wrath and justice.
8. Relational / Participatory Atonement Idea: Sin is alienation; Christ restores communion between God and humanity through self‑giving love.
9. Joyful Exchange Idea: Christ takes our sin and gives us His righteousness — the “joyful exchange.”
This is what happens when one has nothing else to do on a Wednesday afternoon. I mean we did not get to see anything concerning the eclipse.
Yes, we had a rather long discussion on penal substitutionary atonement. Not sure we came up with any real conclusion on that.
Anyway, I have worked through nine ideas of atonement. Some of them are quite familiar. Others not so familiar. What I would like to know is which one of these fit how you understand atonement. But feel free of your own.
As a fun part of the survey. See if you can name a theologian who came up with the idea.
Summary of Atonement Theories
1. Recapitulation Idea; Christ becomes the “new Adam,” reliving human life in perfect obedience and restoring humanity.
2. Ransom Idea: Humanity is enslaved by sin, death, and the devil; Christ’s death liberates us and defeats the powers. (Also known by what title?}
3. Satisfaction Idea: Sin dishonors God; Christ’s death offers the infinite honor owed to God.
4. Moral Influence Idea: Christ’s death reveals God’s love so deeply that it moves sinners to repentance.
5. Example Theory Idea: Christ’s death is an example of obedience meant to inspire moral living.
6. Governmental Theory Idea: Christ’s death demonstrates the seriousness of God’s moral law, allowing God to forgive while upholding justice.
7. Penal Substitution Idea: Christ bears the penalty of sin in our place, satisfying divine wrath and justice.
8. Relational / Participatory Atonement Idea: Sin is alienation; Christ restores communion between God and humanity through self‑giving love.
9. Joyful Exchange Idea: Christ takes our sin and gives us His righteousness — the “joyful exchange.”
This is what happens when one has nothing else to do on a Wednesday afternoon. I mean we did not get to see anything concerning the eclipse.
Comments
Of course, no one model can ever be sufficient and we're best off holding onto all the models at the same time.
We have to see the atonement as part and parcel of the entire 'Christ Event' as @Alan Cresswell suggests.
I'm not really in favour of filleting it up into 'chunks'.
Number 2 appears to be a more modern take on ransom theory. How about removing the reference to "defeats the powers" and add Alan's suggestion as a tenth (which also addresses Arethosemyfeet's point)?
And, in a related, but temporal, vein, how about:
Jesus as the Christ took on the conditions of finite existence, namely estrangement, guilt, and death, and conquered them. Fallenness (aka the Old Being) is characterised by existence, actuality, and alienation - the contrasting New Being is found in essence, potentiality, and reconciliation. (Salvation is the transformation from Old Being to New Being.)
Yes, for me Christs whole life is involved with atonement, from the Conception when the Word took on and opened up humanity to glorification, to the Resurrection when the sting was taken out of death, and via his actions and teachings which showed us the "way back."
I really, really don't like theologies that rely on an angry God being pacified by the death of his Son. What sort of model for behaviour is that!
This.
And this.
I can't see it appealing to anyone who leans towards universalism.
A "legally binding" which also binds God. And that's where it falls over for me.
It may satisfy love if you look at it from certain angles, but from whichever angle you look at it it is unjust. It is always unjust to punish an innocent person for a crime someone else committed. That's just about the paradigm case of injustice.
Punishment isn't like lightning, that can be discharged as long as it strikes something: it can only justly be discharged on the one who deserves it.
We could get into debates about 'propitiation' or 'expiation.'
I think one of the issues with PSA is that it tends to be framed in rather crude and often grotesque terms. Not all its proponents are quote so reductionist though.
I can understand it's usefulness as a model but the whole 'Christ event' is much wider in scope.
Yeah, I’m pretty much all of the above…
When the (claimed by almost all PSA believers) alternative is infinite punishment for a finite crime justice is already off the table. Faith, hope and love outlast all else.
Exactly that.
I mostly lean that way, but I do think it matters when some theories give borderline-blasphemous impressions of God's nature.
This is the most graceless thing I have ever read. Justice does not triumph grace. And cheap grace????? Don't even start. Worshipping a tyrant may satisfy some kind of spiritual blood lust for some but it is not for me.
I'm not at all a PSA adherent. But I do agree that God can't simply hand-wave away evil as if it didn't matter, as if justice didn't matter. It does. Which is what I think Hugal was saying.
For my own part, I think God handles that issue internally, on the cross. And while there are a lot of different models of the atonement that try to explain exactly how and that are helpful to various people, I don't think any Christian is bound to a particular model. Which is good, as every model has its drawbacks, and that causes a lot of unnecessary fights.
I used to think the Orthodox were 'soft' on sin because they didn't stress the 'penal' and juridical element in the way some other Christian traditions do.
Until I had to confess what I felt were more 'serious' sins than usual ...
But all sin is serious. To say it's a 'falling short of the mark' doesn't diminish that.
I agree with @Lamb Chopped and others here that it's better to take an holistic view based on the life, teachings, moral example, atoning death, glorious resurrection and ascension of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ rather than filleting it all into chunks.
And yes, our ongoing union with Christ.
'Christ in you, the hope of glory.'
Seriously??
The description from Alan Hirsch goes some way to describing how I understand the term (in a theological context):
Definitely my thought for the day!
Lots of people today aren’t ready for that either. But some are.
In particular, it strikes me that the nature of God's justice is of ongoing concern to those of us who are beneficiaries of historical injustice. The matter of reparations (for example) points to this being a live issue. How do we deal with consequential questions about how we will be judged?
I agree that is probably what that quote alludes to. And people who have agape love don't need justice.
Where is the need for atonement in this? In the hearts of the accountants. God is not an accountant.
The wrath, the accountancy, the wrath arising from the lack of accountancy, is in human hearts. We also have to learn to live with that total love, and we have barely even started as a species, or indeed a faith community, with this huge task, having got totally caught up in accountancy.
OK. My personal injustices as a child really don't compare with the systemetic injustices we're talking about here, but I'm going to compare them anyway because they're the only solid (to me) peg I have to hang things on.
What did I want to happen the peers who made my school days a misery? What would justice have looked like?
Did I want them hauled up in front of the head and thrashed?
Did I want them to disappear? To cease to exist?
The first would have changed nothing about them or me; they'd have been back. At best they'd be too fearful to continue. But that is no better than the second, where there is no satisfaction or recognition. It just stops.
No, what I really wanted (and would still want) would be for them to recognise the wrong they were doing, apologise - genuinely - and a future open up where they treated me as the valuable human being that I was and am rather than an object of derision to abuse for amusement, giving me the social life and friendships that should be normal for a child.
So that's the lens through which I have to see the question of justice. It's setting things how they should be, not just paying back.
It's why I don't really have much use for Hell, and why I'm what you might call an eventual Universalist.
I think Paul has told how atonement is to be understood: 2 Corinthians 5:18–20.
And I think @KarlLB has beautifully described what that reconciliation can look like. For me, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” is the lens through which any model or paradigm of atonement has to be viewed.
I find discussion on atonement interesting. The root is the Day of Atonement. A lamb is sacrificed and the blood used to cover the representation of human sin. The standard way of understanding this is that Jesus was the lamb and his blood covers us in a similar way that the blood of the lamb did. In the early Christian understanding sacrifice was needed for atonement and God sacrificed himself once for all.
If this is not atonement what is? How does it work otherwise?
The problem with that is it doesn't say any more than it says, if you catch my drift. How does blood cover sins? What does cover mean in this context? Never mind how does it work otherwise - how does it work thiswise?
There's nothing inherently substitutionary or penal in what you posted, you might notice.
Really important.
I suppose I’d say essentially fallible. Often despite our best intentions. And sometimes we don’t have our best intentions.
Terms like “Total depravity” can be extraordinary unhelpful given the current colloquial understanding of the word “depraved”. It’s hard to get over that colloquial meaning.
That’s true particularly if we’ve experienced manipulative parenting. If one’s experience is of a parent withholding approval, then by association the word “ Father” can have all sorts of negative effects.
People strive for approval. Then the notion of being saved by grace can get translated in the mind to “no matter what I do I’ll be wrong”.
Love then becomes conditional on us saying the right prayer of repentance. Without that we’re destined for Hell.
The consequences of an environment which fosters
a) guilt
b)striving for approval and
c) I’ll never be good enough
can be very damaging.
Where is unconditional love to be found and experienced? People can despair of ever finding that place.
First, the sacrificial animals specific to Yom Kippur were a bull (for the priests) and two goats (for the people). It was a goat’s blood, not a lamb’s blood, that was sprinkled in the Holy of Holies. So references in the NT to Jesus as “lamb” don’t really connect with the Day of Atonement.
And second, in Hebrews Christ is equated to the high priest at Yom Kippur rather than to the sacrificial animal. Unlike the Levite high priest, Christ remains in the Holy of Holies, making intercession.
Beyond that, we shouldn’t ignore that Jesus was crucified and resurrected at Passover—the feast celebrating deliverance from bondage. Paul wrote “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificied.” (1 Cor. 5:7.)
I would argue that the connection of God’s reconciling acts in Christ with Passover is much stronger in the NT than the connection with the Day of Atonement.
Meanwhile, @Barnabas62, I have longed wished that “total depravity” could be replaced with a term that accurately reflects what the idea actually means. This is what happens when people start with an acronym and then force ideas into that acronym.
Agree entirely with that final paragraph.
I guess also we need to recognise that some bad church leaders actually like the bad colloquial effects. Managing by fear remains quite popular both at secular work and some local church environments.
“Everything is forbidden unless it’s compulsory”.
That can even be amusing if we don’t live in that sort of environment. Unfortunately some people still do. It can take a lot of real love before those tapes stop playing in the mind.
While mainstream Christianity would say humans (and everything else in creation) are essentially good, the word 'essentially' can only do so much work.
The blood of the first Passover lambs wasn't a sacrifice as such, it was used to mark the homes of the Israelites who gathered as families to celebrate their coming freedom. It was a mark that these were the people of God, and that based on that identity they avoided death. The Passover lamb didn't die in their place (or, rather the place of their firstborn), it wasn't a sin offering or any of the other rituals for forgiveness of sin in the Jewish religion, it was unconnected to sin or forgiveness.
Yet, as you note, it is a connection to Christ and sacrifice is something that the Gospel accounts putting the Crucifixion at the time of Passover, and the writings of Paul, emphasise. The blood of the Passover Lamb marks us as the people of God, and we're delivered from death simply because of that identity. With a dash of reminding us that we're all family who gather together with a single Paschal lamb, and that is also integral to our identity as the people of God (and hence we're not even talking about our individual sins or acts of faith).
There’s another aspect I thought of after I posted that I think is relevant here and that fits with what you wrote, and that is that while Yom Kippur may be the holiest day of the year, it is Passover that is central to Israel’s identity and self-understanding. Together with the covenant made with Abraham and Sarah, the Exodus is the foundational story of Hebrew identity. It underlies everything. It’s reflected in the Ten Commandments, which begin “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.” It’s reflected throughout the psalms. It’s at the center of the Hebrew Scriptures.
So it’s not surprising to me that the Passover, and the Exodus it recalls, would be central to how the NT writers and the early Church, at least those in the early Church from an Israelite background, understood who Jesus was and what he did.
To me "unfair" never shakes the redolence of a child stamping its foot because its cousin got a Play Station and they only got a video game.
Given that, is it necessary to believe a certain religion's tenets to be atoned-for? Why?
For me, many of the original statements sort of overlap.
Myself, I like the Joyful Exchange idea. Very simple, and direct. It is simple because it is relational and personal. It is direct because it describes atonement as an immediate exchange between Christ and the believer rather than a complex mechanism. Christ becomes what we are so that we may become what he is. Builds on three verses:
“He became sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor 5:21)
“Christ redeemed us by becoming a curse for us.” (Gal 3:13)
“I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal 2:20)
But, again, I was only asking for personal preferences. This is mine.