This post is by Lee Wyatt, who blogs at Marginal Christianity.

Sometimes the Answer is Right in Front of Our Noses: A Compelling Case of for “New Covenant Atonement” by Michael Gorman

In the welter of talk and writing about “atonement” during the last fifteen years or so, a few things have become clearer while others have taken on a murkier hue.  It is clearer to most now that the variety of biblical images for atonement must be respected and brought into conversation with one another.  No longer can or should one image for atonement rule over, overrule, or rule out the others.  One writer has suggested the image of “kaleidoscopic” as the best one we have to work with now.

It is clearer to most now that unless a penal or substitutionary view is rooted in the eternal love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and the triune God’s electing from all eternity to be for us, such views are morally and theologically unacceptable.  Even so, a good number of recent writers remain unwilling to have a penal or substitutionary odor of any kind in their theories of atonement (most recently, Tony Jones).

What has become murkier is whether there is or should be an image that can integrate and draw the contributions of all the various images into a coherent whole.  Some, reacting to the hegemony of the penal substitution model that has reigned as the default model of atonement in the west for so long, want nothing to do with another “hegemonic” image (whatever that might be).  They prefer the free play of each model in their thought.  Others claim that such an image, whether a good thing or not, simply doesn’t exist within the pages of the New Testament. [Read more...]

Darrin W. Snyder Belousek teaches philosophy and religion at Ohio Northern University and Bluffton University. He taught previously at various church-related colleges—Louisburg College, Bethel College, Lithuania Christian College, Goshen College, and St. Mary’s College. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and has studied at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary. He has published many articles, both scholarly and popular, in diverse areas—theology, consistent ethic of life, war and peace, social justice, ethics and economics, and philosophy of science. He has also served the church for seven years in mission assignments through voluntary service and international teaching.

Does—or should—atonement theology have practical implications for the church’s mission in the world today?  Is penal substitution the only, or even the best, biblical understanding of the cross?

Scot has invited me (Darrin W. Snyder Belousek) to introduce my book, Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church (Eerdmans 2012).  This book challenges the church to rethink the cross—to reexamine the standard evangelical theology of penal substitution atonement and to reorient our thinking about justice and peace from the perspective of the cross.

My first intuition that something was not quite right with the penal substitution theory—the idea that God has dealt with our sins by having reckoned our sins against Jesus and punished him with death in our place on the cross—came about twelve years ago, while questioning the death penalty.

I had become convinced, based on Jesus’ teaching (“Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone”), that Christians should not support capital punishment.  But I was wanting to press the question deeper, to the core of Christian faith—the cross.  Jesus’ death, after all, was a death penalty.  If there was a definitive Christian answer on the question, it must be found there. [Read more...]

In the last decade or so atonement theories grabbed the center of theological discussion. Which theory was best? Penal substitution, the essence of the atonement for much of conservative Protestants and evangelicalism, was asked to sit down a while so that other theories could be given attention, including the classic Christus Victor theory so well sketched by Gustav Aulen. And then along came Abelard’s moral theory and Grotius’ (and Finney’s) governmental theory, and Rene Girard got folks into scapegoat theory — well, this led to much discussion. I have myself weighed in on this one in both Jesus and His Death and in A Community called Atonement.

Excepting both Abelard and Girard, this entire discussion is driven by soteriology and by “mechanics.” That is, atonement theories ask how God acts when atonement, or salvation, is accomplished.

Tom Wright thinks there’s another way on the whole atonement theory discussion, and I think it is fair to say that Tom’s chapter, “Kingdom and Cross,” in his new book How God Became King, will be the launching pad for both Tom and for many to retool how atonement theories are discussed.

Put differently, when Story becomes the driving force, when gospel emerges only from that central Story, how do we now describe atonement? Is it just a soterian gospel that needs the classic atonement theories? Does the soterian gospel demand a mechanical (and limited and de-Story-fied) atonement theory? Are there other ways?

Well, Tom says Yes. I take this chp by Wright to be a sketch, and may well entail yet another book by Tom to flesh this out in ways more complete. But right now it looks like this: [Read more...]

This from Thomas Finger, A Contemporary Anabaptist Theology, 361-362, where we find one of Anabaptism’s finest theologians seeking to do justice to both the Anabaptist tradition (which he says was most centrally Christus Victor) and to the Bible, articulates his own view as follows:

What do you think of this explanation of atonement? Adequate? Sufficient? Need more?

Christus Victor conceives death as the inevitable consequence of transferring one’s ultimate allegiance from God, the source of life, to less powers who are likewise turned toward death. Since these powers are stronger than anyone, no one can avoid death on their own. Though death, or final separation from God, at bottom results from turning from the God, the powers, so to speak, actually administer it, or inflict this punishment.

Since Jesus walked the human path as God intended, he inevitably opposed the powers — but in the peaceful way consistent with it. The powers, however, ultimately operate by violence. Jesus, a true human who remained within human limitations, was weaker than they. Consequently, they inflicted violent death upon him. Because their punishment finalizes separation from God, Jesus experienced death in this sense. Did this accomplish something we could not do for ourselves?

Jesus passed alone through the horror of final separation from God, but he was raised to life by his Father through the Spirit. Consequently, when people joined to the risen Jesus are dying, this one who was crucified accompanies them. They are not abandoned to death but are finally raised to life. People under death’s dominion cannot do this for themselves.

Perhaps the most perplexing issue in the historical Jesus debate of the last two decades was how to make a solid connection between Jesus’ kingdom vision and the crucifixion as an atoning death. How, some of us were asking, do we get from Luke 4:16-30, Jesus’ inaugural kingdom sketch, to Romans 3:21-26? Many historical Jesus scholars said there was no sound connection — those early Christians more or less made that atonement theology up because it did not come from Jesus. Others suggested Jesus died a tragic life because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time; others said it shows his exemplary love. A more recent view is that Jesus was the ultimate scapegoat who exposed the sickness of the systemic powers. In Tom Wright’s new book Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters, he provides the fullest expression of his view on how to tie kingdom to cross as atoning. (If you’d like to see my view, you can read it at Jesus and His Death.)

He goes fast — you can read it on pp. 179-189 — and I will try to capture it in an even simpler sketch. It can be called a “new/fresh perspective on the cross.”

How does Tom Wright’s sketch here help us in the atonement theory discussion? Does this take us forward?

Jesus over and over anticipated his own death, and in Mark 10:45 he opens up new soil by showing that his death will be a new kind of power. When Passover came Jesus revealed even more, and to do so he gave his followers a meal — “with a radical difference” (180). This mean pointed forward (not just backward) to the great sacrifice; is the real Exodus; the real return from exile; the new covenant; sins would be forgiven; a great jubilee moment; the era of blessing. His disciples participate in that event by sharing the meal. This is a new kind of presence of God — in bread and wine. It is a new Temple, and a new vocation as the royal priesthood.

“Jesus has taken Israel’s destiny upon himself and will now take Israel’s fate upon himself, so that Israel’s vocation can be accomplished” (181). He finds this best sketched in John 18-19 [after the jump I have the whole text], and he shows the interplay of Rome, Jewish leaders and the love of God in the cross.

So what models are we to use? Tom says it is easy to belittle the death: man crushed by system, example of love, just representative, transaction … yet, each of these says something right: he is an example, it is love, he did represent, there is a penal representation and substitution… but… there’s more, and if we want to get inside Jesus and his time to see what he was doing we need to explore this:

[Read more...]

The 5th chp in Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, is called “Dying to Live.”  I am asking that you pause quietly and slow down enough to pray this prayer as the way to approach this entire series:

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing:
Send your Holy Spirit and pour into my heart your greatest gift,
which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue,
without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you.
Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,
now and for ever. Amen.†

In this chp Rob seeks to communicate into today’s idiom the significance of the cross and resurrection. Which means he’s touching on atonement theory, surely one of the most discussed topics of our day, but he shifts the conversation from atonement theory to another topic. More of that below.

How would you explain what Rob says about cross and resurrection in this chapter? Do you think it is adequate? Do you see a shift in topic — from salvation and atonement theory to moral theory?

The big theme of this chapter is that the Bible speaks of the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection through a variety of images, each designed in different ways to speak to humans/Israel/church. In other words, this chp enters into atonement theory. Bell then proposes looking at the cross through the lens of elemental features of the universe.

Here are the atonement images in the Bible: Sacrifice, reconciliation, justification, victory, redemption.

Which is the correct one? His answer, “Yes.” Which is to say, each is true. Rob Bell then tries to get to the bottom of atonement theory. Here are his words: “The point then, as it is now, is Jesus. The divine in flesh and blood. He’s where the life is” (129). [Read more...]

A theologian friend sent this to me. It is by Gordon Coulter, and is an exploration of biblical ideas on atonement through an experience with cancer.
By Gordon L. Coulter, Ed.D., with James S. Miser, M.D.

“What can wash away my sin?  Nothing but the blood of Jesus:

What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

O!  Precious is the flow that makes me white as snow;

No other fount I know, nothing but the blood of Jesus.”1

For those raised in the church and Sunday school, the words of the above hymn of the church have meaning, and in most cases can be properly understood and interpreted.  Although it still may be understood for those raised during the same time-frame but not raised in Sunday school and church, for the millions of post moderns unfamiliar with the doctrines of the Christian Church it presents a problematic message.  To so many the idea of blood may be repulsive, unnecessary and confusing.

“Atonement, in Christian thought, is the act by which God and man are brought together in personal relationship.  The term is derived from Anglo–Saxon words meaning, ‘making one,’ hence ‘at-one-ment.’  It presupposes a separation or alienation that needs to be overcome if human beings are to know God and have fellowship with Him…The most common Old Testament expression of atonement was the sacrifice and offering up of the blood of the victim…Life was in the blood(Lev 17:11).  The Old Testament language continues to find expression in the New Testament, especially the term ‘blood’…Throughout the New Testament it is made clear that the work of Christ, primarily at the cross, is what provides atonement.”2 [Read more...]