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Making sense of the atonement
By Kenneth J. Collins

One of the leading themes in Scripture is the passion and death of the Messiah, the sacrifice of the Suffering Servant. In fact, in some gospel accounts, almost a quarter of the material is devoted to the careful telling of this historical event. Little wonder, then, that the cross of Jesus Christ, who is the one and only mediator between God and humanity, is at the center of evangelical faith and witness. While other theological traditions such as Eastern Orthodoxy have preferred to emphasize the incarnation, evangelicals have stressed the cruciality of the cross for Christian life and practice.

From Augustus Toplady's hymn "Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me" in the eighteenth century to Fanny Crosby's "Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross" in the nineteenth century to the old beloved African American spiritual "Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)?" revised in the twentieth, American evangelical churches have resounded with the songs of the death of Christ.

Recognizing that the atoning work of Jesus Christ, foreseen in the Old Testament and expressed in the New, is so rich in significance, evangelicals have an almost natural appreciation for the several theories of the atonement that have surfaced in the church throughout the ages. Each theory of the atonement, of course, as a theory is a human construct, an artfully conceived creation put forth in order to best explore the witness of Scripture to the full range of meaning concerning the death of Christ. Five major theories have emerged that illustrate this range.

First of all, the ransom theory, held by Origen (185-254) and Augustine (354-430) and designated the classic theory in Gustaf Aulen's work Christus Victor, maintains that humanity was enslaved to Satan, as the ruler of this world, and therefore needed to be delivered from this bondage by the ransom of the death of Christ. But when the question, "To whom was this ransom paid?" was posed and seriously considered, difficulties with this theory began to emerge. By the time of the Middle Ages, several scholars, Anselm among them, criticized the notion that Satan has any rights with respect to humanity or redemption, a troubling notion that could possibly be deduced from the classic view.

Second, the Latin theory championed by Anselm (1033-1109), archbishop of Canterbury, was promulgated in his groundbreaking text Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Human), and this work constitutes perhaps the best expression of the satisfaction theory of the atonement. In this view, the death of Christ, in some sense, satisfied the offended honor of God. Here the "Godward" aspects of the atonement, the elements that pertain to the satisfaction of divine justice, are amply treated, but some have suggested, even in Anselm's own age, that the "humanward" aspects of a mediated relation, that is, how human rebellion and resistance to God can be overcome, are left largely unexplored.

Third, the weakness of the satisfaction theory, interestingly enough, became the strength of the moral influence theory or the subjective view of the atonement. Advanced in a thoroughgoing way in the twelfth century by Abelard (1079-1142), French scholastic and rival of Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), the moral influence theory sees the grounds for the necessity of the atonement, not in God, but in humanity. In other words, human sin, rebellion, and even outright hatred of God must be overcome in the human heart by a magnificent display of the humble, sacrificial love of God so evident at Calvary. But as Anselm had his critics, so too did Abelard. The chief complaint was not only that divine justice and holiness in this setting are hardly addressed but also that if the atonement were indeed "subjective," could not an easier, less costly way have been found by an omniscient God to demonstrate divine love other than the humiliating and wrenchingly painful death of Christ?

Fourth, the governmental theory expounded by Jacobus Arminius (1559-1609) in the sixteenth century and by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), a Dutch jurist, in the seventeenth focuses on the integrity of the moral order, which is vigorously maintained by God through a public demonstration of the punishment of sin, a demonstration that also serves to deter the ongoing practice of evil. This view, though centuries old, is sometimes expressed even today among Wesleyan Arminian evangelicals as they reflect on the full significance of the death of Christ.

Finally, the atoning work of Christ considered chiefly as a penal substitution on Anselm's satisfaction theory, whereby Christ was not only our substitute at Calvary but also the bearer of our just and righteous penalty, can be found in the writings of Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-1564) as well as John Wesley (1703-1791). In this view, Christ is one with the Father ("God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them" [2 Cor. 5:19]) and yet as the sole and unsurpassed mediator is one with sinners ("He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him" [2 Cor. 5:21]).

Though the evangelical faith as proclaimed in America today resonates with several of the theories of the atonement just outlined, some key leaders have insisted that the substitutionary atonement theory lies at the heart of the evangelical faith and witness. Theologian J. I. Packer, professor at Regent College, affirms that substitutionary atonement is "a distinguishing mark of the world-wide evangelical fraternity (even though it often gets misunderstood and caricatured by its critics)"; it takes us to the very heart of the Christian gospel. Moreover, Alister McGrath, professor of historical theology at Oxford University, observes, "Evangelicalism places a special emphasis on the centrality of the cross of Christ. The cross is the unique and perfect sacrifice that covers and shields us from the righteous anger of God against sin." And the Cambridge Declaration, which emerged out of a seminal conference of evangelical pastors, teachers, and leaders in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1996, declares, "We deny that the gospel is preached if Christ's substitutionary work is not declared and faith in Christ and his work is not solicited."

Many theological liberals (and even some younger evangelicals) find the language of substitution remarkably troubling, especially as it highlights both the penalty of the death of Christ as well as the wrath of God. Indeed, according to John Stott, acclaimed British evangelical, "No two words in the theological vocabulary of the cross arouse more criticism than 'satisfaction' and 'substitution.'" In its most stereotypical and exaggerated form, penal substitution supposedly embraces such troubling assertions as "God abuses his Son, glorifies suffering, and encourages victims to be subservient." Richard Mouw, scholar, churchman, and president of Fuller Theological Seminary, points out that "liberals would accuse [evangelicals] of adhering to a slaughterhouse religion in which a primitive deity could get over his anger only if he smelled the blood of his enemies-or a fitting sacrificial substitute."

Two prominent evangelical scholars who have done more to lay aside some of the stereotypes, half-truths, and outright muddled thinking that have at times informed the criticism of a penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement are John Stott and Richard Taylor. Stott, for instance, in his classic work The Cross of Christ, first of all notes that the "Bible everywhere views human death not as a natural but as a penal event. It is an intrusion into God's good world and not a part of his original intention for humankind." Second, Stott explores the historical reality of the Passover in terms of not only its Old Testament setting but also its New Testament significance. He demonstrates how this sacrifice, the death of the Passover lamb with all its typological meaning, richly informs the death of Christ.

Stott also carefully draws a relation between the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53-in which the theme of penal substitution is strong-and the person and work of Christ. "It seems to be definite beyond doubt, then, that Jesus applied Isaiah 53 to himself," Stott observes, "and that he understood his death in the light of it as a sin-bearing death." Beyond this, Stott suggests that it is only when the sacrifice of the Passover lamb and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 are separated from their New Testament explication that criticism of the substitutionary atonement can take root.

In fact, contemporary views that repudiate penal substitution have little basis on which to draw the appropriate connections between the Old Testament and the New with respect to a crucified Lord who is sacrificed on the altar of a cross. Thus the temple offerings, the Levitical priesthood, the Passover lamb, and even the Pentateuch, in a sense, are all left dangling in their Old Testament context with little significance for Christian believers. But Stott draws the proper balance, explores the typological relations, and demonstrates the continuity of the two covenants in his pithy statement: "For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone. God accepts penalties which belong to man alone."

To clear up any lingering misunderstanding, Stott insists that the "Judge and Savior are the same person." That is, "We must never characterize the Father as Judge and the Son as Savior. It is one and the same God who through Christ saves us from himself."

This last statement may prove to be a puzzle to some contemporary believers who have sentimentalized the love of God and thereby have mistaken it for a divine indulgence of sinners left in their sin or have assumed that the Most High does not take sin seriously. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught us so many years ago, just as there is such a thing as cheap grace, the kind of grace that entails "the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner," so too is there cheap love. It is the kind of love that lacks seriousness, pays no price, and in the end "tolerates" evil-all of this in the name of kindness, affability, and social grace.

As a corrective to these grievous misunderstandings, Nazarene scholar Richard Taylor affirms that God is holy as well as loving and that holiness governs the way love functions. "It is never a love ungoverned by holiness," he cautions. "Holiness requires that sin be costly, [and] love bore the cost." While making it clear that it is not his purpose to minimize the relation of the cross to the love of God but to "establish the relation of the cross to God's integrity," Taylor holds both the love and the holiness of God in a careful, well-nuanced tension, a tension that is expressive of the sophisticated biblical witness itself. Consequently, all sentimentalized versions of the atonement, which fail to take seriously the holy love that informs the integrity of God, ultimately falter in failing to recognize the God with whom we have to deal. In other words, the Most High is uncannily holy, distinct, set apart, the One whose eyes are too pure to behold evil, the One of whom the author of the book of Hebrews exclaims, "It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (10:31).

For Taylor, then, precisely because God is holy, the Most High cannot simply wink at sin, for to do so would be to deny the beauty and the integrity of the divine nature itself. Instead, sin must be judged, and part of the richness of the good news of the gospel is that Christ as the unique mediator between God and humanity bore the judgment, suffered the curse, and paid the penalty that should have rightfully fallen on all humanity. To those evangelicals, especially in the Wesleyan communion of faith, who have basically denied that the death of Christ was indeed a penal substitution in their preference for a version of the governmental theory of the atonement, Taylor offers this caution: "If Christ's blood was not primarily penal in nature and directly a means of satisfying the moral and legal claims against the sinner, but rather merely a means of proclaiming God's wrath against sin for the sake of upholding moral government, then the connection between Christ's death and the Old Testament breaks down."

In a way remarkably similar to Stott, Taylor adds that in this setting "the continuity between Christ's blood and the shedding of blood in the Old Testament disappears."

In light of the contributions of both Stott and Taylor, it is clear that many evangelicals see the cross at the center of their faith. Redemption, though free by God's grace, remains costly. Jesus Christ, despised and rejected by many, bore that cost in humble, obedient sacrifice precisely because a holy God so loved the world. Such truths are often found on evangelical lips as they proclaim the gospel; such truths are often cherished in their hearts as they minister to a hurting world. Again, the death of Christ is precious in evangelical eyes, for it is a death that removed the temple curtain to unveil a God of holy love, a love that is serious in its sacrifice and joyous in its forgiveness and embrace.

Kenneth J. Collins is professor of historical theology and Wesley studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is the author or editor of nine books, including Exploring Christian Spirituality. This article is excerpted from The Evangelical Moment: The Promise of an American Religion with permission of Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2005.



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