The atonement
Definition
William Tyndale first coined atonement from two words ‘at one’, and so atonement means ‘to set
at one’ or ‘to reconcile’.
In Christianity, atonement is the process by which men and women are reconciled with God,
through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
Reconciliation was necessary because all people sin. Genesis 3 tells how sin first came into this
world when the devil successfully tempted Adam and Eve.
As we are all ‘seminally present in the loins of Adam’, all humans have ‘original sin’ and it
separates us from God.
There are lots of theories to describe atonement, but most use the two terms expiation and
propitiation.
Expiation: What Christ did on the cross - he paid the penalty for human sin.
Propitiation: the result of what Christ did on the cross - he averted God’s wrath.
Early models (sacrifice and ransom)
In the Old Testament, it was common practice to sacrifice to restore a broken relationship
between people and God.
In Leviticus, a priest symbolically lays the sins of the community upon a goat, which is then cast
into the wilderness.
The Epistle to the Hebrews is the most extensive New Testament treatment of Jesus’ death as
a sacrifice. It states that through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, human sin was taken away ‘once
for all’. Jesus’ death was thus a complete expiation, a final atonement for sin.
Early Christian theologians, such as Augustine, believed that as humans had nothing pure
enough to be sacrificed, God provided the sacrifice for them, as he did with the goat in the story
of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis.
However, it could be argued that sacrificing his son, for as a sacrifice to restore an arbitrary
sense of justice isn’t omnibenevolent.
A variant of the sacrificial model is the ransom model. The Gospels indicate that Jesus himself
thought of his death as a payment to save humankind.
Definition
William Tyndale first coined atonement from two words ‘at one’, and so atonement means ‘to set
at one’ or ‘to reconcile’.
In Christianity, atonement is the process by which men and women are reconciled with God,
through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
Reconciliation was necessary because all people sin. Genesis 3 tells how sin first came into this
world when the devil successfully tempted Adam and Eve.
As we are all ‘seminally present in the loins of Adam’, all humans have ‘original sin’ and it
separates us from God.
There are lots of theories to describe atonement, but most use the two terms expiation and
propitiation.
Expiation: What Christ did on the cross - he paid the penalty for human sin.
Propitiation: the result of what Christ did on the cross - he averted God’s wrath.
Early models (sacrifice and ransom)
In the Old Testament, it was common practice to sacrifice to restore a broken relationship
between people and God.
In Leviticus, a priest symbolically lays the sins of the community upon a goat, which is then cast
into the wilderness.
The Epistle to the Hebrews is the most extensive New Testament treatment of Jesus’ death as
a sacrifice. It states that through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, human sin was taken away ‘once
for all’. Jesus’ death was thus a complete expiation, a final atonement for sin.
Early Christian theologians, such as Augustine, believed that as humans had nothing pure
enough to be sacrificed, God provided the sacrifice for them, as he did with the goat in the story
of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis.
However, it could be argued that sacrificing his son, for as a sacrifice to restore an arbitrary
sense of justice isn’t omnibenevolent.
A variant of the sacrificial model is the ransom model. The Gospels indicate that Jesus himself
thought of his death as a payment to save humankind.
