Transcript

One of the most important teachings of Christianity is that Jesus Christ, through His death on a cross, took away the sins of the world and redeemed all sinners.

Every Christian everywhere believes this.

But how did He accomplish this?

What specifically about His death on the cross made anything different than before?

While the New Testament offers many metaphors for what happened—that we were redeemed, saved, justified, set free, cleansed—there is no explanation in the New Testament as to what technically happened.

For this reason, theologians have presented many theories of atonement over the years, each with its own benefits and drawbacks.

What are these theories, and what do we make of them?

This is Catholicism in focus.

At face value and on a dogmatic level, the idea of atonement is quite simple: through our sin, we created separation from God, and so God sought to bring us back together—literally to be at one again.

Gotta love when the etymology of a word is the language you already speak.

Unfortunately, this is as strange as it may sound; the Catholic Church has never dogmatically defined how this happens.

For this reason, more than a few theories have been presented over the years, grouped loosely into one of three categories: substitutional, moral, and incarnational.

As the name indicates, substitutionary models emphasize the fact that Jesus served as a substitute for us.

His death paid something that we could not afford.

The most ancient in this category is what is known as the ransom theory, drawing from the metaphor used in the First Letter of St. Peter that you were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your fathers.

The theory suggests that Adam and Eve sold humanity into slavery because of their sins, and Christ's death paid a ransom to redeem them—literally buying us back.

It’s an incredibly common phrase that Christians use today, and the image itself makes a lot of sense.

But it does raise an obvious question: to whom is this ransom paid?

Who received the debt to set us free?

According to the patristic fathers that supported this theory, the debt was paid to Satan, who was tricked into receiving it.

Gregory of Nyssa writes, In order to secure that the ransom in our behalf might be easily accepted by him who required it, the Deity was hidden under the veil of our nature so that, as with ravenous fish, the hook of the Deity might be gulped down along with the bait of flesh.

Basically, because of our sin, Satan had a rightful power over us.

Seeking to set us free, Jesus came in the flesh, offering Himself in our place.

Satan let us go for this payment, but this, of course, was bait on a hook, as Jesus was perfect and without sin, meaning that Satan, having no right to possess Him, was forced to let Him go as well.

Where in the Bible does it say that Satan has a rightful claim over sinners, and why would God have to negotiate with him to save us?

It would seem far more logical that any ransom, if there truly was one, would need to go to God the Father, not Satan.

It was with that in mind that St. Anselm presented the satisfaction theory of atonement in the 11th century, largely influenced by the feudal world around him at the time.

Anselm interpreted our relationship with God as similar to a serf to a king, owing honor and service.

If a subject shames a lord with dishonor, he weakens his power, needing satisfaction to restore social order.

To simply forgive the subject without punishment is not possible, as the whole system of honor and shame would crumble.

Unfortunately for us humans, the only thing that we can offer God is our lives, which we owe God anyway; hence, there is nothing that we can do that goes above and beyond to make up for our sins.

We need a Savior.

What Christ did by taking on flesh and dying as a sinless man was offer something that He did not owe, paying what we could not afford.

Being God, His payment was infinite, thus saving all our sins, no matter what.

On the one hand, it makes more sense than the ransom theory, as payment should go to God, not Satan.

But it also presents a new problem: what sort of God demands His Son die so that His honor can be restored?

A few hundred years later, this problem was only further highlighted with the penal substitution theory, one promoted by Martin Luther and John Calvin, before being more concretely articulated by Charles Hodge.

As in the satisfaction model, a debt must be repaid to God; only it is not about restoring a sense of justice and honor in God, but rather in finding a source for God's wrath due to our sin.

Jesus took our place, taking upon Himself the curse of immeasurable pain that was rightfully ours so that we could go free again.

What sort of God is so filled with wrath that He demands that His Son die so that He can be satisfied?

While both the satisfaction and penal substitution models make sense in a juridical sense, offering a one-to-one exchange that preserves God's rights, it does leave the Christian wondering about forgiveness in light of Jesus' ministry, in which He freely healed the sick and forgave the sinner.

In reading how the Father unconditionally forgave in the parable of the Prodigal Son, why does God need repayment?

Substitution models don't have a clear answer for this.

It’s for this reason that others have taken an entirely different approach to atonement, instead suggesting that what Christ accomplished on the cross was morally significant.

It wasn't for the benefit of a cosmic being, God or Satan, but for us.

Fundamentally subjective in nature, these theories do not posit any essential change in ontology, soteriology, or eschatology—objective realities that change how the world works—but rather suggest that the event of the cross offers a divine witness meant to change the way that we approach God.

In both the moral influence theory proposed by Abelard and the moral example theory proposed by Fausto Paolo Sozzini, the cross was meant to be a sign of God's love for humanity—an unmistakable sacrifice intended to turn our hearts back to God.

In witnessing what Christ has done for us, we, as His followers, should be so inspired to do so for others.

Biblically, there's a lot to support this approach as well, particularly in the Gospel of John.

Jesus connects the cross with the Last Supper, the mandatum to love one another.

In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus explicitly says that we must take up our own crosses if we are to be His disciples.

There is certainly an element of imitation to the cross.

René Girard builds upon this with his scapegoat theory of atonement.

Unlike the substitution models in which Jesus is an actual scapegoat meant to take away our sins, Girard suggests that the witness of Christ being scapegoated by evil people—the victim of a heinous crime—is meant to expose the lie that violence solves our problems, awakening us to a peaceful, just existence.

Again, biblically, there is some truth to this approach.

Jesus' ministry continually undermined the futility of violence.

In the garden before His Passion, He admonishes those who use the sword to defend Him.

Furthermore, it places God on the side of the non-violent victim, freeing God from some of the moral issues found in the substitution theories.

Yet neither of these models are without their own issues, most notably the fact that they espouse a mild form of heresy called Pelagianism.

If all the cross did was teach a lesson, then it can be argued that some people may not have needed it, meaning that the cross doesn't add anything new to our salvation.

We possessed within us the power to be saved all along.

This is clearly problematic.

It’s for this reason that a third approach to the question has picked up some ground over the past century, even though its roots are fairly ancient.

Focusing on the incarnational significance of atonement, proponents of this approach look not just to the cross in isolation, but to the cross as it relates to Christ's life and resurrection.

Looking to the work of Saint Irenaeus in the second century, we see a heavy emphasis on the idea of recapitulation—that Christ's life was a retelling of the story of Adam with different results.

While Adam sinned because of a tree, Christ was obedient to the point of death on a tree.

For Irenaeus and other ancients, what was significant about Christ's life wasn't just that He died for our sins; it's that His perfect life of undoing sin included death, culminating in the resurrection.

This naturally changed the course of history, corrupted by sin, but more importantly, it intimately restored and connected us to God.

In taking on flesh and experiencing all that we experience, but sin—even death—Irenaeus posits that Christ became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.

In this way, the purpose of the cross is not suffering in itself; it does not pay a debt in itself; it is not even the most essential part of the plan of salvation.

What Christ sought to accomplish was the destruction of sin and death, and He did so by being sinless and dying Himself.

What matters, in a sense, is not so much how He died, but rather that He died.

For it was through death that the means of our salvation was truly accomplished—the resurrection.

For what does St. Paul say?

When we unite ourselves to Christ's death through baptism, we also unite ourselves to His life in the resurrection.

It is not because of the literal nature of the cross, the accidental reality of pain and suffering, as if God needed payment or a target on which to take out His wrath.

It's because Christ has divinized humanity, conquering sin and death once for all.

In 1931, Gustav Aulén incorporated Irenaeus' thought into a theory of his own: the Christus Victor theory of atonement.

For Aulén, the work of Christ is first and foremost a victory over the powers which hold mankind in bondage—sin, death, and the devil.

Because of this, more attention is given to the fact that we are enslaved by corporate sins, stuck in a broken history that we alone cannot fix.

In distinction to the other models in which Christ's satisfaction is the victory, Aulén responds that Christ's victory is the satisfaction.

It's a clever play on words and certainly an appealing model.

So what might we say is wrong with it?

Well, basically that it isn't the other models.

While the substitutional and moral models do bear serious flaws, they also capture an important aspect of our theology, deeply rooted in Scripture.

The apostles tell us definitively that the cross is a ransom; it is expiation for our sins; it is redemption, and it most certainly is meant to be imitated for the conversion of souls.

The fact that these incarnational models do not include explanations of this language, even at times refuting them, leaves it incomplete.

Which we could say is kind of the beauty of the process, is it not?

What we're dealing with in the theology of atonement is not an empirical fact; it bears no observational data to be studied.

It's a mystery.

It's a matter of wondering deeply into the heart of God and asking, How could God save a sinner like me?

The fact that we have so many theories, each capturing a facet of the truth, is to the benefit of our souls.

The fact that no one theory captures every facet of the truth invites us to keep searching.

Mysteries begin with a truth—that the cross atones for our sins—but are not meant to be solved.

We may never know how.

Sometimes all we can do is enter that mystery and allow our God to draw us deeper and deeper into His saving love.