50 Key Concepts in Theology

Atonement
Atonement is the ‘at-one-ment’ or ‘reconciliation’ of God with humanity
achieved by Christ’s death upon the cross.
The classical doctrine of the atonement depends upon the doctrine of the
fall, which says that humanity has become alienated from God through human
sinfulness. The doctrine of the atonement says that Christ’s death somehow –
the ‘somehow’ being a matter of much dispute – reconciled humanity with
God.
The history of the doctrine of the atonement is instructive. All doctrines
have an evolutionary history as ideas develop and culture changes. The
earliest doctrines of the atonement – which were the orthodoxy of their time –
have long since been superseded. Indeed, the doctrine of the atonement is still
a matter of fierce debate.
The earliest doctrines of the atonement, prevalent among the Church
Fathers and in the centuries up to the first millennium, were so-called
‘victory’ or ‘ransom’ theories. The world was believed to be under the control
of the devil, who demanded Jesus’ death as the price for releasing humanity
from its satanic captivity. These ideas of ‘ransom’, ‘hostage’ and ‘captivity’
persist in our Easter hymns. But there is something unsatisfactory about the
idea that God does deals with the devil. This was pointed out both by Peter
Abelard and by St Anselm, who said that the ransom theory implied that the
devil had rights or powers that God had to respect. And this was clearly not
acceptable.
It was St Anselm, writing a thousand years after the birth of Christianity,
who proposed a revised understanding of the atonement, offering a new
theory based upon God’s need to punish someone for the sins of humanity.
Anselm’s argument is that human sinfulness requires some kind of divine
punishment. But God’s mercy prevents him from punishing us, so Jesus offers
himself as our ‘substitute’, taking the blame on our behalf. Thus God squares
the circle by remaining both fully just and fully merciful.
There is, as Peter Abelard first pointed out in the twelfth century,
something repellent about the punishment theory of the atonement:
How cruel and wicked it seems that anyone should demand the blood of
an innocent person as the price for anything, or that it should in any way
please him that an innocent man should be slain – still less that God should
consider the death of his Son so agreeable that by it he should be reconciled to
the whole world!

---

Abelard proposed an alternative ‘exemplar theory’ of the atonement,
arguing that Jesus’ death on the cross provided us with a life-changing
example of stoical love in the face of injustice, cruelty, violence and death.
Christ’s death showed us the way out of sin and the path back to
reconciliation with God. Abelard’s version of the atonement has recently been
championed by René Girard, who rejects penal substitution, seeing it as a
form of scapegoating. Girard argues that Jesus made a self-sacrifice of his life
to show precisely that there is a non-violent alternative to scapegoating. Since
we are, Girard says, creatures who learn by imitating others, Jesus’ death is a
virtuous example that can bring about social transformation.
The problem with exemplar theories – most ‘solutions’ also create new
problems – is that they do not clearly explain how Christ’s heroic and
exemplary death achieves the objective of cancelling the historic sins of
humanity. A more radical solution is to re-think the atonement altogether and
detach it from the event of the crucifixion. It is possible to argue (see Michael
Winter, The Atonement, 1995) that the atonement comes about through the
Last Supper and the Eucharist, as Jesus gives himself to us as a spiritual
resource. Winter argues that Jesus did not ‘die for our sins’ but endured a
martyr’s death, refusing to capitulate in the face of earthly power and
violence.
Anselm’s doctrine is increasingly an embarrassment to Christian
theology. As Girard comments, penal substitution ‘has done more than
anything else to discredit Christianity in the eyes of the modern world’
(Things hidden since the foundation of the world, 1987). A theological logic
of crime and punishment, that worked for a previous epoch, now looks
barbaric and paints God as a monster. One of the features of Christian
theology in the twenty-first century will be the gradual abandonment of the
penal view of the atonement in favour of non-violent alternatives. Perhaps
some of these alternatives have still to be thought up.
Some traditionalists are concerned already about what they call the
‘downgrading’ of Anselm’s doctrine of atonement. But the fact that Anselm’s
‘penal substitution’ theory of the atonement, or versions of it, only became
orthodoxy after a thousand years of Christianity, shows that the Christian idea
of truth is subject to radical change. Today’s orthodoxy may well be
tomorrow’s heresy, and vice versa.
THINKERS
Peter Abelard (1079–1142) argued that Christ’s death merely showed us
the way to the atonement.

---

St Anselm (c. 1033–1109) developed the classic view that God has to
demand satisfaction for the dishonour brought upon him by human sin.
Christ’s death satisfies God’s honour because it is the sacrifice of a perfect
human being.
Gustav Aulén (1879–1977) tried to rehabilitate the view of the Early
Fathers that the atonement must be understood as part of a theological drama
in which Jesus ‘defeats’ the powers of evil (Christus Victor, 1931).
René Girard (1923– ) rejects any idea of a violent father punishing his
son on the cross. Girard sees the death of Jesus as an exemplary, non-violent
act of turning the other cheek.
St Paul (3–65) argued that Jesus’ death reconciled us to God ‘once and
for all’ by destroying the power of sin.
Karl Rahner (1904–84) argued that Jesus’ death is ‘an efficacious sign of
the redeeming love that communicates God himself, because the cross
establishes God’s love in the world in a definitive and historically irreversible
way’ (Theological Investigations, chapter 21).
Albrecht Ritschl (1822–89), a liberal theologian, argued that the
atonement is moral and spiritual and concerns an inner change in the believer.
Thomas Szasz (1920– ), a psychologist, argued that ‘in the rejection, or
transcending, of the scapegoat principle lies the greatest moral challenge for
modern man. On its resolution may hinge the fate of our species’ (The
Manufacture of Madness).
IDEAS
Limited atonement: the belief that God is only reconciled to those who
have been predestined for salvation.
Penal substitution: the idea that Jesus accepts a death penalty that is
rightly ours because of our sin.
Propitiation: the idea that God must be appeased because of the wrong
done to him by human beings.
Ransom theory: this theory of the atonement states that Christ’s life was a
ransom paid to the devil in order to save humanity.
The Suffering Servant: a figure in the book of Isaiah (chapter 53), often
taken to be a reference to Christ, who is ‘wounded for our transgressions’.
Sacrifice: the idea that Jesus sacrifices his life for the ‘higher’ cause of
saving humanity.

---

Socinianism: the Socinians (followers of Faustus Socinius in the
sixteenth century) argued that Christ did not die for our sins. God is perfectly
benevolent and could never sanction the crucifixion. So Christ’s death was
merely an example to us of perfect forgiveness.
BOOKS
Colin Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor,
Rationality and the Christian Tradition (Eerdmans, 1989)
Paul Fiddes, Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of
Atonement (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989)

---