Theories of Atonement:
A possible explanation for how Jesus’ life and death play a role in the salvation of the human race.
However, in Post-modernism, things have changed; human kind has struggled with the idea that not everything that is true can be proven true by scientific evaluation or equations. For example, love is real, but it cannot be proven in a scientific experiments. Hence, in post-modernism a new openness exists. Instead, of absolutes, truth can be found in the midst of all things. “God is above all, in all and through all” – Eph 4:4-6.
This Table was developed in part from Brian McLaren’s Book The Story We Find Ourselves In.
| Atonement Theory | Description | The Enemy |
| Substitution | God sent Jesus into the world to absorb all the punishment for our sins. That’s what the cross was all about. It was Jesus absorbing the punishment that all of us deserve. He became the substitute for all of us. As he suffered and died, all our wrongs were paid for, so all of us can be forgiven. Question: 1. If God wants to forgive us, why doesn’t he just do it? 2. How does punishing an innocent person make things better? (divine child abuse?) | God’s just wrath towards our sinfulness. |
| Ransom | We humans, through our sin, placed ourselves under the authority of Satan. Jesus comes and offers himself as a ransom for us. He says to Satan, ‘If I give you myself, will you set them free?’ Satan agrees to the bargain, and so he takes, tortures, and kills Jesus, whose self sacrifice sets us free. Of course, in the end, God double-crosses Satan—pardon the pun—by raising Jesus from the dead. So Satan is doubly the loser, and we’re set free to live for and with God again. Question: 1. Why would God be making deals with the devil? | Satan, who has us as prisoners, or kidnapped. |
| Christus Victor | Jesus enters into and overcomes death. This opens the door for us to enter eternal life. | Death |
| Perfect Penitent (C. S. Lewis) | Forgiveness, for it to be legitimate and real, requires an expression of sincere repentance. And none of us are very good at repenting. None of us can repent sincerely or fully, because deep down, a part of us, at least, still loves to sin. Our best repentance is always ambivalent, partial, holding, holding back. So this theory sees Jesus’ acceptance of death—after all, he could have escaped any number of ways—as his enacting, on behalf of the whole human race, perfect repentance for us. He becomes a representative of all humanity, and willingly submits himself to being condemned and punished on our account, in spite of his true innocence, as a way of acting out real repentance for the human race. | Our inability to enact sincere repentance. There is always just a little piece of us deep down that loves to sin. |
| Moral Influence | The cross demonstrates Jesus’ self-giving, his complete abandonment to God’s will, his complete self-devotion for the sake of the world. Jesus’ death completes the whole message of his life: he makes visible the self-giving love of God. When that sacrificial love touches us, we are changed internally—‘constrained’[1] is the word Paul uses for it—so that we want to stop being selfish, and we want to join God in self-giving, beginning by giving ourselves back to God, and leading us to give ourselves to our neighbors and the world too. It’s as if Jesus invites us into his self-giving. He gives himself to God, for the sake of the whole world, and he invites us into his devotion, both to God and for the world. | Selfishness and Lack of Love |
| Powerful Weakness (Foolish Wisdom) | Hinges on the word, ‘vulnerable’. By becoming vulnerable on the cross, by accepting suffering from everyone, Jews and Romans alike, rather than visiting suffering on everyone, Jesus is showing God’s loving heart, which wants forgiveness, not revenge, for everyone. Jesus shows us that the wisdom of God’s kingdom is sacrifice, not violence. It’s about accepting suffering and transforming it into reconciliation, not avenging suffering through retaliation. So through this window, the cross shows God’s rejection of the human violence and dominance and oppression that have spun the world in a cycle of crisis from the story of Cain and Abel through the headlines in this morning’s Washington Post; I don’t know . . . this theory might be nonsense, but maybe there’s a grain of truth in it. The cross calls humanity to stop trying to make God’s kingdom happen through coercion and force, which are always self-defeating in the end, and instead, to welcome it through self-sacrifice and vulnerability.” | Human power, or arrogance, or pride, especially religious pride. We think we can do it all in our own way, our timetable, our methodology, our cleverness. We just mess things up. Human Violence, Dominance and Oppression. |
| God’s Agony Made Visible | God’s agony made visible on the cross. The pain of forgiving, the pain of absorbing the betrayal and forgoing any revenge, or risking that your heart will be hurt again, for the sake of love, at the very worst moment, when the beloved has been least worthy of forgiveness, but stands most in need of it. It’s not just something legal or mental. It’s not just words; it has to be embodied, and nails and thorns and sweat and tears and blood strike me as the only true language of betrayal and forgiveness. Jesus is able to forgive and ask God to forgive us on the cross. Jesus is showing that if he could forgive us at that moment, at our ugliest, lowest point, then we should forgive one another. | The Pain of Forgiving people at their least worthy moment. |
* The Descriptions have been borrowed from Brian McLaren’s book, The Story We Find Ourselves In (pages 101-106).
[1] I believe this in reference to 1 Corinthians 9:15-17 when Paul basically says he doesn’t do what does for himself, he does it because he is ‘compelled’/’constrained’ to preach Christ.
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