Theological Journal - March 17: Atonement

“No merely theoretical understanding is possible, for abstract theoretic understanding does away with the essential mystery by insisting on the continuity of merely rational explanation. But that is just what we cannot give of the awful fact of the descent of the Son of God into our hell and the bearing by the Son of God of divine judgement on our behalf, for all rational explanation must presuppose a basic continuity here between man and God, but that is just what the atonement reveals to be wanting by the very fact that God himself had to descend into our bottomless pit of evil and guilt in order to construct continuity between us and God” (Atonement: The Person and Work of Christ, 4).

As we draw nearer to Good Friday and the horror at Skull Hill we begin to think again of what happened in the death of Christ. To often in the church’s history the metaphors and images scripture used as raw material to fashion a “doctrine” of atonement. In such a doctrine the images and metaphors have been ordered, prioritized, and their internal logical relations and correlations with other images drawn out defended by rational procedures. And in recent years the dominant theory in the West, called Penal Substitutionary Atonement, has been subjected to rational criticism and deconstruction calling into question the too tight rational coordination and ordering of scripture’s various and varied metaphors and the different spheres of life from which they come.

Torrance would agree with such criticisms and even goes a step further than such critics. He questions in our citation today the possibility of such “merely theoretical understandings” of the event of Jesus’ death. For him such efforts assume a fundamental continuity between humanity and God such that this kind of effort can even be made. It cannot, he claims. Such continuity does not exist to enable us to make such a rational journey to understanding. All we have, and it is more than enough, is the testimony from Jesus’ life and especially his death itself in the varied contexts and images scripture writers used to bear witness to its reality and effects. His life and death, the Bible’s witness to his life, and the Spirit’s testimony to and use of that witness to persuade our hearts and minds of their truth provides from God’s side the only continuity of understanding available to us. To draw further rational connections or correlations from these images and metaphors to answer rational questions they raise (e.g. if Jesus’ death is a ransom, to whom was the ransom paid?) it doesn’t ask or answer.

I use “Jesus’ life and death” because Torrance was persuaded by the Eastern Orthodox view that Jesus’ atonement of humanity began with his birth and extended throughout his life and to his death and resurrection. The continuity Jesus brought into being between God and humanity is accomplished by his whole life and career.

We must, then, stick to images and metaphors given in scripture, the limits with which they are used and applied, and recognize that some of them will have greater resonance at particular times and places then others and we must think through our usage of them accordingly. At least that what I think Torrance would say.