Atonement Theories Quotes

When 'biblical' theologies ignore the gospels, something is clearly very wrong." (on atonement theories)

I remember sitting in the Beth Shalom synagogue in Cambridge on the night of Kol Nidre. Peter Lipton, a friend and an atheist philosopher, was giving a sermon on the theme of “atonement:” “If we treat another person as essentially bad, we dehumanize him or her. If we take the view that every human being has some good in them, even if it is only 0.1 percent of their makeup, then by focusing on their good part, we humanize them. By acknowledging and attending to and rewarding their good part, we allow it to grow, like a small flower in a desert.

This century will be called Darwin's century. He was one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin on the one hand and the name of every theologian who ever lived on the other, and from that name has come more light to the world than from all of those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity. He has not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that the Bible is a book written by ignorance--at the instigation of fear. Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin, and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her grandest. Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and his doctrines are now accepted facts. His light has broken in on some of the clergy, and the greatest man who to-day occupies the pulpit of one of the orthodox churches, Henry Ward Beecher, is a believer in the theories of Charles Darwin--a man of more genius than all the clergy of that entire church put together. ...The church teaches that man was created perfect, and that for six thousand years he has degenerated. Darwin demonstrated the falsity of this dogma. He shows that man has for thousands of ages steadily advanced; that the Garden of Eden is an ignorant myth; that the doctrine of original sin has no foundation in fact; that the atonement is an absurdity; that the serpent did not tempt, and that man did not 'fall.' Charles Darwin destroyed the foundation of orthodox Christianity. There is nothing left but faith in what we know could not and did not happen. Religion and science are enemies. One is a superstition; the other is a fact. One rests upon the false, the other upon the true. One is the result of fear and faith, the other of investigation and reason.

At best, the theory of substitutionary atonement has inoculated us against the true effects of the Gospel, causing us to largely “thank” Jesus instead of honestly imitating him. At worst, it led us to see God as a cold, brutal figure, who demands acts of violence before God can love his own creation

Jesus never said, “Worship me,” but he often said, “Follow me.” We have wasted a lot of good energy on “vicarious substitutionary atonement theories” and created a punitive and petty God in the process—a “Father God” who was incapable of forgiving “without blood.”6 Is God that unfree? Remember, the ego likes contests of win and lose and cannot even comprehend anything like win-win. Jesus became our substitute in losing, hoping it would let us off the hook, I guess.

The Tomorrow Man theory. It’s pretty basic. Today, right here, you are who you are. Tomorrow, you will be who you will be. Each and every night, we lie down to die, and each morning we arise, reborn. Now, those who are in good spirits, with strong mental health, they look out for their Tomorrow Man. They eat right today, they drink right today, they go to sleep early today–all so that Tomorrow Man, when he awakes in his bed reborn as Today Man, thanks Yesterday Man. He looks upon him fondly as a child might a good parent. He knows that someone–himself–was looking out for him. He feels cared for, and respected. Loved, in a word. And now he has a legacy to pass on to his subsequent selves…. But those who are in a bad way, with poor mental health, they constantly leave these messes for Tomorrow Man to clean up. They eat whatever the hell they want, drink like the night will never end, and then fall asleep to forget. They don’t respect Tomorrow Man because they don’t think through the fact that Tomorrow Man will be them. So then they wake up, new Today Man, groaning at the disrespect Yesterday Man showed them. Wondering why does that guy–myself–keep punishing me? But they never learn and instead come to settle for that behavior, eventually learning to ask and expect nothing of themselves. They pass along these same bad habits tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and it becomes psychologically genetic, like a curse. Looking at you now, Maven, I can see exactly where you fall on this spectrum. You are a man constantly trying to fix today what Yesterday Man did to you. You make up your bed, you clean those dirty dishes from the night before, and pledge not to start drinking until six, thinking that’s the way to keep an even keel. But in reality you’re always playing catch-up. I know this because I’ve been there. The thing is–you can’t fix the mistakes of Yesterday. Yesterday Man is dead, he’s gone forever, and blame and atonement aren’t worth a damn. What you can do is help yourself today. Eat a vegetable. Read a book. Cut that hair of yours. Leave Tomorrow Man something more than a headache and a jam-packed colon. Do for Tomorrow Man what you would have wanted Yesterday Man to do for you.

The rationalistic faith of the Enlightenment has a view of God (Deism), revelation (general, not special), truth (known by reason alone), sin (Pelagianism), Christ (teacher of morality and example of love), atonement (via subjective theories only), salvation (through education and technology), the church (the scientific community), and eschatology (utopia on earth through progress). But most modern people who live their lives as though this set of beliefs were true dislike admitting that they follow a religion. They would rather it was a choice between religion and reason, which is why the myth of the warfare between science and religion was invented in the nineteenth century.

The cross is an offense, a scandal (1 Cor. 1:18; Gal. 5:11). We should beware any view of the cross that seeks to make it more palatable to “more enlightened” sensibilities. We should be on guard against any theory of the atonement that promises fulfillment, beauty, and enlightenment apart from the blood of Jesus.

There must be, and, if we are honest, there always will be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand. For Jesus and for his followers, the crucifixion became the dramatic symbol of that necessary and absurd stumbling stone. Yet we have no positive theology of such necessary suffering, for the most part. Many Christians even made the cross into a mechanical “substitutionary atonement theory” to fit into their quid pro quo worldview, instead of suffering its inherent tragedy, as Jesus did himself. They still want some kind of order and reason, instead of cosmic significance and soulful seeing.1

People sometimes say, indeed, that it makes little difference what theory of the atonement we may hold. Ah, my friends, it makes all the difference in the world. When you contemplate the cross of Christ, do you say merely, with modern theorists, ‘What a noble example of self-sacrifice; I am going to attain favour with God by sacrificing myself as well as He.’ Or do you say with the Bible, ‘He loved me and gave Himself for me; He took my place; He bore my curse; He bought me with His own most precious blood.’ That is the most momentous question that can come to any human soul.

I believe creeds aren't worth the paper they are written on...But I still believe in God. I believe that if you look at my life, you'll only sometimes see what I believe. I believe that if we have two coats, we should give one away (though I don't do it). Today I don't believe in anything; tomorrow who knows. I sometimes believe in God- one who existed before time, beyond gender or fathom. Make of heaven and earth and ginger (all good things), whales, two-hundred-foot cliffs, cloud banks, shipwrecks, And in Jesus Christ, God's only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost- how? Born of a fourteen-year-old, Mary, scared out of her wits. Was crucified, dead, and buried, and I used to believe in the penal substitution theory of atonement, but now I just see a violent death and struggle to see how violence can ever be redemptive... He descended into hell, or was hell all around him all the time? The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into safety of abstraction, away from having to feel this, from dealing with this, And sits, maybe sprawls, on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. I believe in me; I believe in the Spirit, Sophia, wisdom... The holy catholic (i.e., everybody) Church; The Communion of saints; does this mean me? LOVE The Forgiveness of sins (but I still feel shame); (don't you?) The Resurrection of the body. I believe in singing the body electric And the life everlasting, A life we find right here in our midst

The sensed irrelevance of what God is doing to what makes up our lives is the foundational flaw in the existence of multitudes of professing Christians today. They have been led to believe that God, for some unfathomable reason, just thinks it appropriate to transfer credit from Christ’s merit account to ours, and to wipe out our sin debt, upon inspecting our mind and finding that we believe a particular theory of the atonement to be true—even if we trust everything but God in all other matters that concern us. It is left unexplained how it is possible that one can rely on Christ for the next life without doing so for this one, trust him for one’s eternal destiny without trusting him for “the things that relate to Christian life.” Is this really possible? Surely it is not! Not within one life.

The Levellers . . . only change and pervert the natural order of things: they load the edifice of society by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground. . . . Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from withholding in practice (if I were of power to give or to withhold), the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. . . . In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things. . . . Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves, and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. . . . Society is, indeed, a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure; but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. . . . You would not cure the evil by resolving that there should be no more monarchs, nor ministers of state, nor of the Gospel— no interpreters of law, no general officers, no public councils. You might change the names: the things in some shape must remain. A certain quantum of power must always exist in the community, in some hands, and under some appellation. Wise men will apply their remedies to vices, not to names— to the causes of evil, which are permanent, not to the occasional organs by which they act, and the transitory modes in which they appear. Otherwise you will be wise historically, a fool in practice. . . . The effects of the incapacity shown by the popular leaders in all the great members of the commonwealth are to be covered with the 'all-atoning name' of Liberty. . . . But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is cannot bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths. . . . To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power, teach obedience, and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government, that is to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind.

The Bible account of man's creation is that God created him perfect and upright, an earthly image of himself; that man sought out various inventions and defiled himself (Gen. 1:27; Rom. 5:12; Eccl. 7:29); that, all being sinners, the race was unable to help itself, and none could by any means redeem his brother or give to God a ransom for him (Psa. 49: 7, 15); that God in compassion and love had made provision for this; that, accordingly, the Son of God became a man, and gave man's ransom-price; that, as a reward for this sacrifice, and in order to the completion of the great work of atonement, he was highly exalted, even to the divine nature; and that in due time he will bring to pass a restitution of the race to the original perfection and to every blessing then possessed. These things are clearly taught in the Scriptures, from beginning to end, and are in direct opposition to the Evolution theory; or, rather, such 'babblings of science, falsely so called,' are in violent and irreconcilable conflict with the Word of God.

Except for Christianity, the Nazis reject as Jewish everything which stems from Jewish authors. This condemnation includes the writings of those Jews who, like Stahl, Lassalle, Gumplowicz, and Rathenau, have contributed many essential ideas to the system of Nazism. But the Jewish mind is, as the Nazis say, not limited to the Jews and their offspring only. Many “Aryans” have been imbued with Jewish mentality—for instance the poet, writer, and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, the socialist Frederick Engels, the composer Johannes Brahms, the writer Thomas Mann, and the theologian Karl Barth. They too are damned. Then there are whole schools of thought, art, and literature rejected as Jewish. Internationalism and pacifism are Jewish, but so is warmongering. So are liberalism and capitalism, as well as the “spurious” socialism of the Marxians and of the Bolsheviks. The epithets Jewish and Western are applied to the philosophies of Descartes and Hume, to positivism, materialism and empiro-criticism, to the economic theories both of the classics and of modern subjectivism. Atonal music, the Italian opera style, the operetta and the paintings of impressionism are also Jewish. In short, Jewish is what any Nazi dislikes. If one put together everything that various Nazis have stigmatized as Jewish, one would get the impression that our whole civilization has been the achievement only of Jews.

I believe creeds aren't worth the paper they are written on...But I still believe in God. I believe that if you look at my life, you'll only sometimes see what I believe. I believe that if we have two coats, we should give one away (though I don't do it). Today I don't believe in anything; tomorrow who knows. I sometimes believe in God- one who existed before time, beyond gender or fathom. Maker of heaven and earth and ginger (all good things), whales, two-hundred-foot cliffs, cloud banks, shipwrecks, And in Jesus Christ, God's only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost- how? Born of a fourteen-year-old, Mary, scared out of her wits. Was crucified, dead, and buried, and I used to believe in the penal substitution theory of atonement, but now I just see a violent death and struggle to see how violence can ever be redemptive... He descended into hell, or was hell all around him all the time? The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into safety of abstraction, away from having to feel this, from dealing with this, And sits, maybe sprawls, on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. I believe in me; I believe in the Spirit, Sophia, wisdom... The holy catholic (i.e., everybody) Church; The Communion of saints; does this mean me? LOVE The Forgiveness of sins (but I still feel shame); (don't you?) The Resurrection of the body. I believe in singing the body electric And the life everlasting, A life we find right here in our midst

None,” Einstein said. “Relativity is a purely scientific matter and has nothing to do with religion.”51 That was no doubt true. However, there was a more complex relationship between Einstein’s theories and the whole witch’s brew of ideas and emotions in the early twentieth century that bubbled up from the highly charged cauldron of modernism. In his novel Balthazar, Lawrence Durrell had his character declare, “The Relativity proposition was directly responsible for abstract painting, atonal music, and formless literature.” The relativity proposition, of course, was not directly responsible for any of this. Instead, its relationship with modernism was more mysteriously interactive. There are historical moments when an alignment of forces causes a shift in human outlook. It happened to art and philosophy and science at the beginning of the Renaissance, and again at the beginning of the Enlightenment. Now, in the early twentieth century, modernism was born by the breaking of the old strictures and verities. A spontaneous combustion occurred that included the works of Einstein, Picasso, Matisse, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Joyce, Eliot, Proust, Diaghilev, Freud, Wittgenstein, and dozens of other path-breakers who seemed to break the bonds of classical thinking.52 In his book Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc, the historian of science and philosophy Arthur I. Miller explored the common wellsprings that produced, for example, the 1905 special theory of relativity and Picasso’s 1907 modernist masterpiece Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.

pitch axis theory, which I learned in high school from my music teacher Bill Westcott. It is a compositional technique that was actually developed at the turn of the last century, so this is something that had been around for a long time. I remember Bill saying, "I'm going to teach you this very cool compositional technique," and he sat me down at the piano, and he went, "Watch this: I'll hold this C bass note, and then I play these chords, and each chord will put me in a different key, but it will sound like C 'something' to you . . ." I was fascinated by it, because I thought, "That is the sound I'm hearing in my head." To me it sounded very "rock," because rock songs don't travel around in too many keys, and it was the antithesis of the modern pop music that had been around for fifty years. It was the total opposite of most commercial jazz, but not all jazz, as I learned when I started really listening closely to modern jazz. I realized, "Wow, John Coltrane is using pitch axis theory. Not only is he doing that, but he’s going beyond it with his 'sheets of sound' approach," where in addition to building modes in different keys off of one bass note, he was building modes off of notes outside the key structure as well. He had taken it a step further. But that’s not what I was looking for, except for in a song like "The Enigmatic," which has that sort of complete atonal-meetspsycho melodic approach. I was more interested in using the pitch axis where you really could identify with one key bass note, in a rock and R&B sort of fashion. Then all the chords that you put on top would basically put you in different keys. So on Not of This Earth, you have these pounding E eighth notes on the bass, and your audience says, "Okay, we're in the key of E." But the chords on top are saying, "E Lydian, E Minor, E Lydian, E Mixolydian in cyclical form." And I thought, "Well, this gives me great melodic opportunities, I'm not stuck with just the seven notes of one key. I've got seven notes for every different key that I apply on top of this bass note." And I just love that sound, so I applied it to quite a lot of my music.

That apocalyptic dimension of Jesus’ self-understanding defies every attempt to “de-historicize” Him—to abstract His teaching from the existential setting of His life and death. Although many writers, especially in recent times, have engaged in such attempts, they have invariably changed the Gospel into some theory of ethical and religious philosophy—a theory quite separable from the person of Jesus Himself. Whatever else may be said of “the historical Jesus,” He was certainly motivated by apocalyptic concerns. Moreover, it is perhaps the case that a renewed attention to this apocalyptic dimension of the Gospel—“a special and extreme mode of presenting the drama of saving history” (Von Balthasar)—is particularly needful today by way of response to the secular messianisms, utopian hopes, and revolutionary impulses of modern culture and politics.

We might notice, for instance, that theories of atonement, of the meaning of the cross, are not simply a set of alternative answers to the same question. They give the answers they give because of the question they ask. If the question is, How can I get to heaven despite the sin because of which I deserve to be punished? the answer may well be, Because Jesus has been punished in your place. But if the question is, How can God’s plan to rescue and renew the entire world go ahead despite the corruption and decay that have come about because of human rebellion? the answer may well be, Because on the cross Jesus defeated the powers of evil, which have enslaved rebel humans and so ensured continuing corruption. Please note, these and other possible questions and answers are not mutually exclusive. My point is that reframing the question will mean rethinking the various answers we might give and the relationship between them.

As It Ever Was ... So Shall It Never Be Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory and Violence in The Cabin in the Woods

I, too, want to advocate for a theological stance that takes a pastiche approach. Each of the theories above, and the one below, come from a certain context. Each was developed in order to solve a contemporary problem with the atonement. Each did that, albeit imperfectly. So I’d like us to embrace them all, realizing their shortcomings.

The acceptance of guilt and debt is the mark of a negative image and the wait for atonement is the mark of a reflector.

The message for us, then, is plain. Forget the “works contract,” with its angry, legalistic divinity. Forget the false either/or that plays different “theories of atonement” against one another. Embrace the “covenant of vocation” or, rather, be embraced by it as the Creator calls you to a genuine humanness at last, calls and equips you to bear and reflect his image. Celebrate the revolution that happened once for all when the power of love overcame the love of power. And, in the power of that same love, join in the revolution here and now.

The Atonement as the Whole Story If you ask anyone from that 74 percent of Americans who say they have made a commitment to Jesus Christ what the Christian gospel is, you will probably be told that Jesus died to pay for our sins, and that if we will only believe he did this, we will go to heaven when we die. In this way what is only one theory of the “atonement” is made out to be the whole of the essential message of Jesus. To continue with theological language for the moment, justification has taken the place of regeneration, or new life.8 Being let off the divine hook replaces possession of a divine life “from above.” For all of the talk about the “new birth” among conservative Christians, there is an almost total lack of understanding of what that new birth is in practical terms and of how it relates to forgiveness and imputed or transmitted righteousness.

But it is a sad and fatal mistake to treat those other ways [atonement theories] as though they lay on the same plane with this one foundation way [penal substitutionary theory]; in reality the other "theories" of the atonement lose all their meaning unless they are taken in connection with this blessed "theory".

Over time I began to see the cross in a much deeper way—not as a mere factor in an atonement theory equation, but as the moment in time and space where God reclaimed creation. I saw the cross as the place where Jesus refounded the world. Instead of being organized around an axis of power enforced by violence, at the cross the world was refounded around an axis of love expressed in forgiveness.

Conversely, animals can be quite sensitive to human music. There are stories of dogs who hide under the couch for piano works by atonal composers but not for those by, say, Mozart. One music teacher told me that her dog would heave an audible sigh of relief if she stopped playing complex, fast-moving pieces by Franz Liszt and proceeded to something calmer. And there are reports of cows that produce more milk listening to Beethoven (although, if this is true, shouldn't one hear more classical music on farms?). Birds listen as carefully to sounds as any musician. They have to, because they learn from each other. Many birds are not born with the song they sing: the symphonies they offer us for free in forests and meadows are cultural. White-crowned sparrows, for example, develop their normal song only when they have been exposed early in life to the sounds of an adult of their species. Many songbirds have dialects-differences in song structure from one population to another. One theory about this is that if a female can tell from a male's song that he is a local boy, she may prefer him as a mate, as he may be genetically adapted to regional conditions. Given the variability in song from location to location it is hard to maintain that birdsong is instinctive in the usual sense. There is room for creativity and modification. Some individuals act as star performers, setting new trends in their region.

I know no better atonement theory than this: By his wounds we are healed.

(All sorts of things follow from this. We might notice, for instance, that theories of atonement, of the meaning of the cross, are not simply a set of alternative answers to the same question. They give the answers they give because of the question they ask. If the question is, How can I get to heaven despite the sin because of which I deserve to be punished? the answer may well be, Because Jesus has been punished in your place. But if the question is, How can God’s plan to rescue and renew the entire world go ahead despite the corruption and decay that have come about because of human rebellion? the answer may well be, Because on the cross Jesus defeated the powers of evil, which have enslaved rebel humans and so ensured continuing corruption.

Subatomic research had now proven categorically that all matter was interconnected . . . entangled in a single unified mesh . . . a kind of universal oneness. “You’re telling me the ancients sat around discussing entanglement theory?” “Absolutely!” Peter said, pushing his long, dark bangs out of his eyes. “Entanglement was at the core of primeval beliefs. Its names are as old as history itself . . . Dharmakaya, Tao, Brahman. In fact, man’s oldest spiritual quest was to perceive his own entanglement, to sense his own interconnection with all things. He has always wanted to become ‘one’ with the universe . . . to achieve the state of ‘at-one-ment.

Furthermore, unless Jesus had some interpretation for his own death, it is difficult to explain how the theology of atonement arose in the early church. Long ago, Schweitzer criticized Wrede’s nonmessianic theory on the grounds that resurrection would never constitute Jesus as Messiah in the mind of the church,5 and the validity of this criticism still stands.

Feminist critique of the cross as a symbol has been a hallmark of modern theology, as writers have argued that the image of the crucifixion has been used as a justification for abuse and even violence against women and marginalized peoples. The argument focuses on the way that the traditional Christian emphasis on Christ’s suffering has been used to encourage meek and submissive self-sacrifice (especially of women) or simply to validate and even glorify suffering more generally. Some even take the position that the cross and the medieval atonement theory that lauded it are sadomasochistic.34 A more widespread view among feminist theologians is that Christian theology has been suffused with patriarchal values and often used to oppress women and that Jesus’s admonition to “take up your cross” could be understood as a justification for tolerating abuse.

like me, to be alive is to be overly aware, with no filters, no defense, like it’s always raining acid and you have no skin. The question then becomes how much awareness can you take?” “Georgia said it was usually about feelings of anger, shame, and guilt.” “All of the above,” he said. “Things I’ve done in the past haunt me. That’s the thing about the past; it won’t ever leave you the hell alone. It’s noisiest at about three in the morning when I can’t sleep for agonizing over the shitty things I’ve done. In theory, I can atone for my bad behavior, as long as my victims are still alive. Unfortunately, I feel the most guilty about things I didn’t do when I had the chance, for people who are now gone. And that’s just guilt; we’ve still got anger and shame to deal with.” “I guess I never thought about the difference between shame and guilt.” “Shame is an unslayable dragon. How can you atone for who you are?” “But what’s wrong with who you are?

put that theory into practice. I believe that by ‘waiting on the Word’, in every sense of that phrase, waiting on the true Logos, the meaning behind all meanings, and attending closely to the way that meaning is imaginatively bodied forth in poetry, we can begin to unfold a little more of the mystery of our faith, to unpack and open out the contents of those technical words, Incarnation and Atonement. It is my conviction that to do theology well we must bring the poets to the table along with the theologians, and listen carefully to what they say.

The first quotation is on the teaching of Jesus in the synoptic gospels. Having referred to theories of the atonement 'which deal in "satisfaction" or substitution, or make use of "the sacrificial principle"', Hunter proceeds: 'It is with this type of theory that the sayings of Jesus seem best to agree. There can be little doubt that Jesus viewed his death as a representative sacrifice for "the many". Not only is His thought saturated in Isa. liii (which is a doctrine of representative suffering), but His words over the cup — indeed, the whole narrative of the Last Supper — almost demand to be interpreted in terms of a sacrifice in whose virtue His followers can share. The idea of substitution which is prominent in Isa. liii appears in the ransom saying. And it requires only a little reading between the lines to find in the "cup" saying, the story of the Agony, and the cry of dereliction, evidence that Christ's sufferings were what, for lack of a better word, we can only call "penal".

He became an obedient human person, and because of his passion for God’s will for him, he collided with the will and purpose of the Roman Empire and with the Jews who colluded with the empire. He is not crucified because of some theory of the atonement. He is crucified because the empire cannot tolerate such a transformative, subversive force set loose in the world.

WHAT IS QUANTUM? Quantum literally means "how great" or "how much," but in fact it represents the smallest discrete unit of the consciousness fluid area. The perception of the subatomic waves of light, sound, and energy gives us the most amazing experience of wholeness, of being completely connected to at-one –atoned with the whole sacred web of life. Light waves called photons are quanta, brilliant light strands, the string theory "strings." Sound, energy and all life travel in waves as well. The electron spin and wave structure of the quantum waves makes a change as we set a goal. We are sending out reverberations all over the field. There is an intrinsic strength in our life when we are mindful of this realm of wholeness and are grateful for it; there is a profound spiritual liberation open to all.

The amount of holiness possessed by the believer does not give him peace. Even perfect holiness would not remove guilt. Repentance does not atone for the crime of murder. It does not still the murderer’s conscience; nor does it satisfy the sense of justice in the public mind. It is the πρῶτον ψεῦδος of Romanism, and of every theory of subjective justification, that they make nothing of guilt, or reduce it to a minimum. If there were no guilt, then infusion of righteousness would be all that is necessary for salvation. But if there be justice in God then no amount of holiness can atone for sin.

But where do these ideas come from? They are all derived from the writings of the Middle Ages—not works of academic theology, which generally were critical of such highly visual and dramatic approaches, but the popular religious literature of the age, which took pleasure in a powerful narrative of Satan’s being outmanoeuvred and outwitted by Christ.[615] According to these popular atonement theories, Satan had rightful possession over sinful human beings. God was unable to wrest humanity from Satan’s grasp by any legitimate means. Yet what if Satan were to overstep his legitimate authority, and claim the life of a sinless person—such as Jesus Christ, who, as God incarnate, was devoid of sin?

But where do these ideas come from? They are all derived from the writings of the Middle Ages—not works of academic theology, which generally were critical of such highly visual and dramatic approaches, but the popular religious literature of the age, which took pleasure in a powerful narrative of Satan’s being outmanoeuvred and outwitted by Christ.[615] According to these popular atonement theories, Satan had rightful possession over sinful human beings. God was unable to wrest humanity from Satan’s grasp by any legitimate means. Yet what if Satan were to overstep his legitimate authority, and claim the life of a sinless person—such as Jesus Christ, who, as God incarnate, was devoid of sin? The great mystery plays of the Middle Ages—such as the cycle performed at York in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—dramatised the way in which a wily and canny God tricked Satan into overstepping his rights, and thus forfeiting them all. An arrogant Satan received his comeuppance, to howls of approval from the assembled townspeople. A central theme of this great popular approach to atonement was the “Harrowing of Hell”—a dramatic depiction of the risen Christ battering the gates of hell, and setting free all who were imprisoned within its realm.[616] All of humanity were thus liberated by the death and resurrection of Christ. In Narnia, Edmund is the first to be saved by Aslan; the remainder are restored to life later, as Aslan breathes on the stone statues in the Witch’s castle. Lewis’s narrative in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe contains all the main themes of this medieval atonement drama: Satan having rights over sinful humanity; God outwitting Satan because of the sinlessness of Christ; and the breaking down of the gates of Hell, leading to the liberation of its prisoners. The imagery is derived from the great medieval popular religious writings which Lewis so admired and enjoyed.

The task of the Church, I suggest, is not to determine which is the theory of the atonement, or which theory of the atonement has pride of place among others. Rather, following Thomas (who stands clearly in line with the majority position of the history of theology), we ought to witness to the fittingness of the atonement: to demonstrate how the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ brings together a wide array of benefits for the sake of the reconciliation of all things to God, that we might have as full an understanding as possible of the work God accomplished in Christ.

N. T. Wright cheekily remarked that Jesus, in speaking of His death, did not give us an atonement theory; He gave us a meal.

Theories of atonement do not need to be superimposed on an abstract narrative about Jesus, as has so often been attempted. They grow out of the real-life Jesus stories we already have. It is astonishing that the four gospels have been so underused in “atonement theology.

N. T. Wright argues: “If the main purpose of Jesus’ ministry was to die on the cross, as the outworking of an abstracted atonement-theology, it starts to look as though he simply took on the establishment in order to get himself crucified, so that the abstract sacrificial theology could be put into effect. This makes both ministry and death look like sheer contrivance.