atonement

   The word 'atonement' is derived from 'at-onement' and thus refers to the state of being at one with something. The Christian doctrine of the atonement is that Jesus Christ provides for human beings the means to be made one with or reconciled to God, especially through his death on the cross. The doctrine assumes that human beings are alienated from God by sin and thus in need of reconciliation. There are two general approaches to the atonement. Subjective theories see the function of the atonement as epistemological (granting us knowledge of God's love and forgiveness) and volitional (motivating us to respond). While this approach is coherent, it seems to lose the unique nature of Christ's work insofar as the life of any virtuous individual could grant a comparable understanding of the love of God and motivation to respond to it - why would the crucified one have to be divine? Objective theories view the atonement as a unique work that provides the actual means of reconciliation to God. The philosophical challenge to this view is to explain this work in a metaphysically and morally plausible way. The most famous attempt to do this is found in Anselm's satisfaction theory in Cur Deus Homo ('Why God Became Human'). According to Anselm, human sin offends God, whose justice and honour require an infinite recompense. Humanity, however, is unable to provide payment, which leaves infinite (eternal) punishment as the only option. God the Son then becomes incarnate so that, as human, he can justly pay the debt, while, as divine, he is able to pay the debt. Critics object that the image of God paying a debt to himself does nothing to explain the logic (or morality) of the atonement. If a rich man were owed money, he might simply forgive the debt, but surely he would not be obliged to pay himself back on the debtor's behalf. Further, while one might find penal substitution to be the more apt analogy, this complicates things even more, for while I may justly pay your fine surely I cannot be justly tortured and killed to fulfil your sentence.

   See Anselm of Canterbury; grace; incarnation; sin

   Further reading: Anselm of Canterbury 2000; Brümmer 2005; Gunton 1989; Hill, Charles 2004; Swinburne 1989a