Atonement

Judaism

(Heb., kapparah). Reconciliation with God. According to Jewish belief, human sin damages the relationship with God and only the process of atonement can restore it. According to biblical teaching, sacrifice was the outward form of atonement (Leviticus 5), provided human beings also purified themselves spiritually (e.g. Isaiah 1. 11–17). After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, (the only means of atonement were prayer, repentance, fasting, charity, and full restitution.See also DAY OF ATONEMENT.

Christianity

In Christian theology, atonement is the reconciliation (‘at-one-ment’) of men and women to God through the death of Christ. The word was introduced by W. Tyndale (in 1526) to translate reconciliatio.

Although there have been no official Church definitions of the doctrine of the atonement, there have been many accounts of how the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus effect for others the forgiveness and reconciliation with God which he clearly mediated to many during his lifetime and ministry: in other words, these accounts attempt to answer the questions of what the death of Jesus adds to his life, or of how the ‘atonements’ effected in his life are still achieved after his death. In general, these accounts claim that the death of Jesus universalizes what would otherwise have been a local and restricted transaction. There are five major accounts falling into two groups, objective and subjective theories. Objective theories claim that something factual has been done for us which has dealt with the reality of sin, and which we could not have done for ourselves. The penal (or juridical) theory claims that Christ has borne the penalty instead of us, so that God can now forgive freely: sin, being an infinite offence against God, required a correspondingly infinite satisfaction which only God could make (see ANSELM). Literally interpreted, this may lead to claims that Christ is a substitute for each individual who deserves the penalty, hence substitutionary theories of atonement. Equally objective are sacrificial theories, which claim that Christ is the sinless offering who makes a universal expiation of the stain of sin—or, with less biblical and religious warrant, that he propitiates the deserved wrath of God; in neither of these cases is Christ a substitute: the New Testament seems to think more in terms of Christ as the representative of human beings. Again objectively, the atonement has been understood as a victory (perhaps by way of being a ransom or a ‘bait’) against evil and sin personified in the Devil: this is often called the classic or dramatic theory, also the Christus Victor theory (the title, in English, of G. Aulén's influential article, subsequently book, Den kristna forsonnigstanken, 1930/1). Subjective theories, also known as moral or exemplary theories, claim that the extent of God's love revealed in Christ and especially in his acceptance of a brutal and unjust death, move us to repentance. This theory is especially associated with Abelard. All these theories have an individualistic emphasis, as has the missionary appeal based on them. The advent of the sociology of religion has led in the 20th cent. to an increasing stress on the corporate nature of atonement, on the death and resurrection of Christ, recapitulated in baptism and the eucharist, constituting people as his body. This social understanding of atonement has been expressed especially through Liberation Theology.

Atonement (‘at-one-ment’). In Christian theology, man's reconciliation with God through the sacrificial death of Christ.

The need for such reconciliation is implicit in the OT conception of God's absolute righteousness; its achievement is represented as dependent on an act of God Himself, whether by the appointment of a sacrificial system by which uncleanness might be purged, or by the giving of a new covenant. In the NT Christ is reported as speaking of giving His life as ‘a ransom for many’ (Mk. 10: 45); in the earliest Christian teaching His death is proclaimed to be ‘for our sins’ (1 Cor. 15: 3).

The Fathers developed the doctrine of the NT but posed new questions. For Origen, the death of Christ was the ransom paid to Satan, who had acquired rights over man by the Fall. St Athanasius held that God the Son, by taking our nature upon Him, had effected a change in human nature as such. The general patristic teaching is that Christ is our representative, not our substitute, and that the effect of His suffering, obedience, and resurrection extends to the whole of humanity and beyond. In the 11th–12th cents., with Anselm's Cur Deus Homo, the emphasis shifted. The role of Satan gave way to the idea of the satisfaction due to God for sin. The death of Christ was then seen not as a ransom paid to the devil but as a debt paid to the Father. At the Reformation M. Luther rejected the satisfaction theory and taught that Christ, in bearing by voluntary substitution the punishment due to man, was reckoned by God a sinner in man's place. In reaction against the exaggerations of this ‘penal theory’ arose the doctrine, defended by the Socinians, which denied the objective efficacy of the Crucifixion and looked upon the death of Christ primarily as an example to His followers. In 1930, however, G. Aulen defended the traditional theme of Christ's victory as the ‘classic idea’ of redemption and Barthian theology has renewed stress on the Cross as the centre of the Christian creed.

46. Atonement

1. Murgatroyd, Sir Despard atones for each of his daily crimes by performing a good deed every afternoon. [Br. Opera: Gilbert and Sullivan Ruddigore ]