Atonement is the word most often used to capture the scope of all that Jesus accomplished on the cross. It doesn’t have a clear definition. Pastor and theologian N. T. Wright explains:
“In the English language the work of dealing with sin is commonly spoken of as ‘atonement’. Because this word occurs in many passages in English translations of the Bible, it is easy to imagine that it carries a single and obvious meaning. It does not. Like many theological terms, it is shorthand. Some people say ‘atonement’ when they mean ‘what Jesus achieved on the cross.’”
N.T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began (pp. 68-69)
The Bible tells us repeatedly that Jesus died “for our sins” and includes endless example verses that point us to facets of atonement. But the Bible never explains the logic or the mechanisms of atonement. Just how can it be that Jesus’ death on the cross accomplished reconciliation? Again, N.T. Wright says:
“These questions are not, of course, new. We are only the latest in a long line of people who have wrestled with the meaning of the cross down through the years.”
N.T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began (p. 18)
Theories of the atonement are attempts to understand just how Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection have made God’s new covenant a reality for Christians. We’ll look at five of the theories proposed over the past 2000 years:
The Ransom Theory
Christus Victor View
Satisfaction Theory
Penal Substitution Theory
Healing View
The Penal Substitution Theory is the most recent, originating during the Reformation. Some version of each of the others has been in circulation since the second and third centuries, the time of the earliest church fathers. They’ve been revised and updated multiple times.
The question all the theories are trying to answer is how, logically, did Jesus’ death make it possible for mankind to be forgiven and reconciled to God? I don’t think the Bible answers that question directly. We still see only a dim reflection of the whole of reality, and God’s thoughts are higher than ours. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to reach a deeper understanding, only that we have to remember that our answers and theories won’t be completely correct.