Over the past few weeks, we’ve been exploring the most important ways Christians have understood the atonement — what it was God was doing in Jesus of Nazareth ‘for us and for our salvation’ — throughout history. Now it’s time to put some of the pieces together and offer some concluding thoughts. The atonement is … Continue reading Atonement through the Ages: Final Thoughts
In Friday’s post, we looked at the atonement perspective known as substitutionary atonement. We saw how it carried on with St. Anselm’s innovations in the doctrine, and pushed them further. It’s a perspective that focused on God’s justice, the seriousness of the problem of sin, and the great lengths God would go to resolve that … Continue reading Christ Our Victim: Nonviolent Atonement
Today we come to what is undoubtedly the most well-known and popular perspective on the atonement in Christianity today, substitutionary atonement, the belief that on the cross, Jesus took on himself the punishment from God that we deserved. It’s so common that for many contemporary Christians, questioning it is tantamount to questioning the faith itself. … Continue reading Christ our Substitute
In today’s post in this series on the history of the doctrine of atonement in Christianity, we turn primarily to the thought of one man, St. Anselm of Canterbury, an eleventh-century theologian whose thought revolutionized Western ideas on the subject. For the first thousand years, Christians had always conceived the problem of sin in a … Continue reading Christ Our Satisfaction: Satisfaction and Government
There’s an old saying that history is written by the victors. And this is true in theology no less than in the world of geopolitics. Controversies are all too often defined by the winning side, leaving the losing side not only voiceless but misrepresented and misunderstood. I say all this to start today’s post because … Continue reading Christ our Example: The ‘Moral Influence’ Corrective
Matthew Root 