Atonement

« Atonement As a theological concept, atonement articulates the acts by which relations between God and creatures, disruptedby human offence, can be restored.

Although other cultures show an awareness of the need for atonement, theChristian tradition understands it as provided by God's particular historical action in Jesus Christ.

At its centre isthe notion of reconciliation between God and his alienated creatures, which is achieved particularly by the death of Jesus.

The distinctive philosophical and other problems of atonement theology derive from two features inparticular: its claiming of universal significance for the historical life and death of Jesus of Nazareth (the problemof universality); and the moral difficulties, especially in the realm of human freedom and responsibility, which arisefrom the claim that he is the vehicle of atonement with God (the problem of human autonomy).

Although therewere many theologies of atonement before Anselm of Canterbury's, his systematic treatment is the fountainheadof much modern discussion, both Roman Catholic and Protestant.

Centring on the concept of satisfaction, it understands Christ as the God-man, satisfying both divine justice and human need by a free gift of his life.Criticisms of the formulation have centred on its understanding of sin and its tendency to understand atonementin external, transactional terms.

Subsequent discussion of the concept has also raised questions about Christ'ssubstitutionary and representative roles and about the relation between the justice and the love of God.

Asignificant proportion of modern thinkers have rejected the need for any concept of atonement at all.

They havepreferred instead to understand Jesus as an example to be followed ('exemplarism') or to concentrate upon theeffect his behaviour and example have on the believer ('subjectivism') - or to adopt a combination of both. 1 Atonement as moral necessity The word 'atonement' is a Christian theological coinage, supposedly the only one made by an English theologian ('at-one-ment').

Along with many of the words found in its conceptual field - such as'sacrifice' - its everyday uses are wide and general.

Thus criminals are sometimes said to suffer punishment 'toatone' for their crime.

This entry, however, will focus on the technical sense of the term, which applies primarily torelations between moral agents and the God to whom they are conceived to be responsible.

In atonement theology, God is supposed to be in varying ways the active agent and passive recipient of atoning action.

Most of theconceptual complications surrounding the topic derive from the various ways of construing this relation.

Theconcept of atonement, though developed in the Christian theological tradition in a number of related ways, isarguably of much broader provenance with respect to the moral and theological realities with which it purports todeal.

Its underlying insight is that moral offences bring about an objective disruption of patterns of interpersonal life- indeed, in some accounts, of universal order also - of such a kind that some form of reparation or restoration isnecessary if the resulting imbalance is to be corrected.

To atone for one's offence is to act in such a way that theimbalance is corrected or reparation made to the offended.

The specifically Christian understanding is that theimpact of cumulative human offence is such that atonement must in some way be provided by God himself, theagents of moral offence having been rendered impotent by the weight of evil.

Much ensuing discussion, particularlyphilosophical discussion, is centred on whether this can be conceived to take place without some violation of moralreality or human autonomy.

Classical Greek sources show that a need for atonement for wrong done is evidenced incultures not directly affected by biblical categories.

In Presocratic philosophy ( Empedocles (§2) , for instance) and Athenian drama there is a clear sense that moral agents are so bound up with both social and universal order thatoffence requires some form of atoning or purifying action.

The Oedipus cycle makes clear the relation between moral impurity - particularly that deriving from the spilling of blood - and social disorder.

The anthropologist René Girard(1977 ) has demonstrated the essentially rational way in which primitive religion understands and deals with violence as socially disruptive.

Of particular importance for an understanding of substitutionary or vicarious aspects of atonement thought is his treatment of the fact that purificatory or avenging violence is often inflicted on someoneor something other than the offender in order to break a cycle of revenge.

Girard's is important evidence for theclaim that matters of universal import underlie the particular forms of atonement theory in the Western Christiantradition.

In the Bible it is possible to discern a generally fourfold matrix within which atonement is understood.

Themoral offence which must be atoned for takes place in a network of relations between God, the offender, societyand the cosmic order.

Despite a range of interpretations of the opening chapters of Genesis the general pattern isclear.

The disruption of a due relation to God (Genesis 3) has consequences for both social order (for example, the story of Cain and Abel) and the human relation to nature (Genesis 3: 17-19).

It is for the sake of a restored socialorder based on a renewed relation to God that the cultic and legal order of Israel, with its inextricably relatedatoning and juridical institutions, is described in succeeding books.

It is in the light of such considerations that theNew Testament and later theological discussion of the death of Jesus and its atoning significance should beunderstood. 2 The Bible and the Fathers The New Testament, drawing as it does on a world of imagery deriving from the Old Testament as well as on non-biblical sources from the surrounding culture, contains the bases of the later, moresystematically articulated theologies of atonement.

Different writers centre their thought on the development of particular families of metaphor without drawing on one exclusively.

St Paul developed metaphors derived from thelaw in expounding the atoning significance of Jesus of Nazareth.

In the Letter to the Romans, his development ofthe theology of justification expounds the claim that the death and resurrection of Jesus are the way by which Godis able to forgive and renew while remaining true to moral reality.

It is noteworthy, however, that at a crucial stageof his argument he draws also on the imagery of the altar.

The Authorized Version of the Bible controversiallytranslates his word describing the atoning work of Jesus Christ as 'propitiation'; later translations, fearingsuggestions of substitutionary placation of an angry deity, tend to prefer 'expiation', implying more neutrally ameans of taking away fault or pollution.

All versions, however, draw on metaphors from the altar of sacrifice.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews develops a theology of atonement drawing largely on such imagery.

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