Episode Details

Atonement … aka, salvation. The whole point behind Christianity.  In fact, the main reason we have religions of any kind.  Atonement is basically about finding a way to God.

Given that this is so central, you might think that the Christian church would have had a unified understanding about this right from its earliest days, or that even Christ himself made this idea crystal clear.

Think again! 

Christian theologians have had all kinds of ideas on why Jesus needed to come to earth. Here are seven of the more popular views, some VERY different from the others.

One of the earliest views focused on Jesus’s life and teaching: he came to show us humans a better way to live (Moral Influence Theory)

Two other views also widely held from the earliest days of the Christian church focused on his death.  Jesus gave his life as a ransom payment for humans, paid either to Satan or to God himself (Ransom Theory), or as a trick to defeat the powers of evil and to free mankind from their bondage (Christus Victor).

A thousand years later, Anselm of Canterbury wrestled with Ransom Theory’s idea that God was in debt … either to Satan or to himself.  Anselm changed the direction of arrows: it was we humans who were indebted to God. We had robbed from God’s honor and inherited a stain of sin, and Christ’s death satisfied the justice of God. Hence: Satisfaction Theory of atonement.

A few hundred years later, Dante gave us vivid imagery of a fiery hell of torture, and John Calvin, Martin Luther, and the Reformation movement put a magnifying glass on God’s wrath. Out of this came a view of God as a vengeful monster who consigned humans to death, hell and eternal torment; Christ stepped in as a substitute to receive that penalty and appease God’s wrath … Penal Substitution Atonement.

Methodists later softened this PSA view into what is called Governmental Theory of atonement: Christ doesn’t take the full