A Theology of Atonement

Atonement (kpr) as it is defined within the Levitical system is often conceived of in a manner which is roughly correct in terms of its gist, but quite mistaken in terms of its specifics.  It can more accurately, I believe, be summarised as follows.  (1)  The purpose of the sacrificial system is not, for the most part, to deal with ‘moral transgressions’, but to purify the Tabernacle (and those associated with it) when a very specific type of transgression occurs, namely an unintentional transgression or a transgression of a ceremonial nature.  (2)  The blood of OT sacrifices is not normally applied to ‘sinners’;  rather, it is applied to those who serve in the Tabernacle, or to the vessels or altar of the Tabernacle, or to the Tabernacle itself.  As mentioned above, its primary concern is the purification of God’s sacred space.  (3)  The sins of believers are completely forgiven in the OT;  hence, David can confidently proclaim, “As far as the east is from the west, so far does [the LORD] remove our transgressions from us”, and Paul can ground the doctrine of justification in David’s statements of his forgiveness (Rom. 4.7-8 cf. Psa. 32.1-2).  The OT believer does not obtain forgiveness through sacrifices (or even through ‘sacrifices infused with Christ’s power’).  He obtains forgiveness in exactly the same way as the NT believer, namely through faith in God insofar as God has revealed himself.  (4)  The sense in which the OT sacrificial system foreshadows the sacrifice of Christ is, therefore, as follows:  just as specific animal sacrifices put right specific ‘ceremonial issues’ in OT times, so now Christ’s sacrifices deal with all sin, be it ceremonial or moral, intentional or unintentional.  As such, Christ’s is a better sacrifice than the OT’s in every conceivable way.

The aim of this book is to place in the hands of mainstream Evangelical believers, for the purposes of their outreach, a viable soundbite alternative to the standard substitutionary account of the Christian hope, based on a proper understanding of Christian sacrifice and Eucharist, and to give them some understanding of its theological basis.

I am aiming to open the eyes of fellow Evangelical Christians to the existence of a better, non-substitutionary, account of our Christian hope.  This becomes available to us when we properly understand the sacrificial and Eucharistic basis of the Christian salvation event (such as found in in a range of Anglo-Catholic, Roman Catholic and Orthodox writing (e.g. Gregory Dix, Alexander Schmemann, F.C.N. Hicks, Robert Daly, Louis Bouyer).

Two key features are: the presentation throughout the text of alternative 200-words accounts of the propositional basis of Christian faith; the development of this apologetic against the wider background of understandings of sacrifice to be found in non-Christian belief systems (as discussed in religious studies and anthropology). 

The book is directed to reflective Evangelicals in the pews who, like me, feel the compulsion to pass on their faith to others, but are distanced from the public evangelical outreach of our church because the doctrine of substitutionary exchange is something we cannot accept personally, let alone disseminate to their relatives and friends.  We find ourselves brought up against the discrepancy between a truth we see expressed in our collective worship and in the lives lived around us and the official account of that truth offered by the leadership.

Also it is directed to the growing constituency of more sacramentally-inclined Evangelical leaders – those who will have been challenged by Walker & Parry, Deep Church Rising (SPCK 2014);  Belcher, Deep Church (IVP 2009).  My aim here to push this discussion of ‘deep worship’ (John Colwell et al.) over the brink of a commitment to a sacrificial and Eucharistic understanding of the Gospel-event.

The present note contains a number of observations about the OT’s conception of a ransom.  The OT does not, as far as I am aware, contain any exact and comprehensive foreshadows of how Christ died as our ransom.  But its discussion of ransoms (particularly in its legal corpus) elucidates a number of important principles of divine justice, which can be pieced together to form a helpful backdrop against which to view Christ’s death.