On substitutionary atonement

It seems there is a growing tendency on the part of advocates of “progressive” Christianity to attack traditional Christian doctrine at what may be considered one of its weakest points, namely the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.

This means that human sin – understood as dishonouring and disobeying God – has estranged humans from God, and if they are to gain eternal beatitude they need to be reconciled to God by the intervention of Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross.

To illustrate the limitations of the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, its contemporary critics typically rely on their condemnation of the 11th century monk Anselm of Canterbury who sought to explain the process of divine-human reconciliation using the thought forms and language of his time.

Anselm said: Why did God become man?

His answer: Human sin had offended God’s honour and thereby alienated humankind from God’s presence and merited eternal punishment. Salvation required the satisfaction of God’s honour. Though this was something human’s should do, this was something only God could do. Hence, God provided the God-man Jesus of Nazareth to substitute for humans and by his sacrifice on the cross satisfy the just requirements of God’s honour and therefore attain salvation for sinners.

What do you think of this substitutionary doctrine of the atonement? In the light of more modern theories of human autonomy and agency it lacks credibility and we are wise to raise questions about it.

However, there is an enormous danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, for underlying this doctrine is the profound truth of vicarious suffering that runs through the Bible. By vicarious suffering is simply meant here suffering on behalf of another. I find it instructive to understand Jesus in the light of Isaiah 53. Jesus embodies the suffering servant portrayed by the prophet: “He was bruised for our iniquities, upon him was the chastisement that made us whole.” In powerful language, the evangelist John picks up this conviction that love for another entails the prospect of suffering for another: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15;13).

But you don’t need to be a Christian to know this. Recently, I explored with a friend Camus’ novel The Plague. Camus’ main characters, Rieux, the doctor and Tarrou, the international revolutionary, know that even in the midst of the desert love demands we be prepared alleviate the suffering of others and to die. Marcus Borg is probably right in seeing that ultimately politics – ecclesiastical and political – killed Jesus. Jesus’ identification with the ordinary proletariat made a murderous temple and imperial gang-up on Jesus inevitable.

The hard part for us is that Jesus’ vicarious suffering sets out a model for his followers. Bonhoeffer’s book on Christian ethics is properly titled The Cost of Discipleship. That is, to love another, to care for another, in their moment of need, is unlikely to be easy: it is more likely to involve a price to be paid.