If Jesus' Crucifixion Is the Solution, What's the Problem?

Jesus' crucifixion—the death of the ultimate innocent victim—shows once and for all that the sacrificial system is bankrupt, proving that violence does not atone for violence.

German theologian Jürgen Moltmann suggests that Jesus' life and death is an act of solidarity between God and humanity. After trying to reunite with us through laws and sacrifice, through prophets and kings, God takes the ultimate step of reunification, becoming human. Jesus' cry from the cross—"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"—shows that in the crucifixion, God experienced the most human of all feelings: the absence of God. In so doing, God bridged the gap that sin had caused between us.

Coming to Conclusions
One benefit of the atonement not being a matter of orthodoxy is that Christians are free to hold more than one theory of how it works. For that matter, there's no requirement that a follower of Christ affirm any of these notions at all.

As with all theology, talk of the atonement is conjecture. God's truth is ultimately a mystery to which no human being is privy. However, as we approach Good Friday, Christians rightly consider the crucifixion and its implications. May we do so with grace and good humor.

For my part, it's clear.

I'm not interested in a God who needs to bargain with the Devil, or in a God who is bound to a legal system, no matter how just it seems to us. The crucifixion was the single most pivotal event in the history of the cosmos. In it, we see that the true character of God is love. God loves with an immensity that is hard to fathom. So much, in fact, that he forsook much of that divinity in order to find solidarity with you and me.

Editor's Note: Tony Jones recently published A Better Atonement: Beyond the Depraved Doctrine of Original Sin in which he more fully discusses these ideas.