In 2016 a Silicon Valley start-up launched “The Juicero Press” for the bargain price of $600. All you had to do was load in your juice pouch and this WIFI connected, hi-tech gadget delivered 4 tonnes of force to produce “organic cold-pressed juice everyday at the push of a button.”
You don’t need one of these
It wasn’t long, however, before users discovered they could also just squeeze the pouch by hand and achieve the same result. The Juicero company shut down after only 16 months.
The Juicero Press was a classic case of “over-engineering”, a product trying to solve a problem that no one actually had. Just because you can combine sophisticated circuitry, electrical motors and WIFI technology into a high end juicing product - that doesn’t mean anyone needs you to.
The same principle can be applied to Christian theories of atonement. These are well meaning theoretical ideas that go by different names and which try and explain exactly how the death of Jesus bridges the gap between God and humanity. When you put them together though, they are more likely to confuse than to enlighten.
Did God offer Jesus as a kind of ‘ransom’ to purchase our freedom from the devil? Or did the death of Jesus ‘satisfy’ the honour of God impugned by a sinful humanity? Then again maybe a wrathful God ‘substituted’ Jesus in our place and punished him instead of us so that we could be forgiven. Or does Christ ‘defeat’ death itself by rising from the dead and so become “Christus Victor” on our behalf?
A lot of work has gone into these arguments, but in reality they are over-engineered pieces of theological gadgetry that don’t produce anything you actually need.
Yes, with a bit of effort, smart people can indeed fashion a ransom-captive or penal substitution theory from a bit of Hebrews here and a slice of Colossians there. But that really doesn’t mean you have to buy one.
The problem is that all these theories are assuming the need for something called “propitiation”. That is just a fancy way of saying they are all different ways of trying to explain how the death of Jesus reconciles God with humanity.
But what if no reconciliation were needed in the first place? What if the only barrier between humanity and God was the one we imagined to be there?
How would God then convince a reluctant humanity that, in fact, there was no separation and that “nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God”?
Well, perhaps God could become one of us. An incarnation of the divine, right here on earth. Fully God and fully human - literally no separation to speak of. That would be a great start. An advent worthy of celebrating every year!
And then what if that God-human closed the supposed gap even further and went straight to live with those we assumed to be farthest away from God? What if this divine presence welcomed those outcasts with open arms and told them their alleged sinfulness was simply “forgiven” on the spot? What if he also told them not to worry about being overlooked by others, because as far as God was concerned, they couldn’t be any closer to the Kingdom of God already?
Would we get it then? Or would that only anger those of us who insisted we were God’s favourites, and that those “others” should be kept at arm's length lest they drive God away?
Maybe if the God-human told parables about powerful and wealthy rulers who simply forgave the debts of their servants with no atonement needed - asking only that they pay the generosity forward? Would it start to sink in then?
And what if there were a story about a son who squanders his father’s generosity and finds himself in a prison of his own making? And then that son starts to make his way home armed with a whole atonement theory of his own about how he would win his father’s favour back. “I’ll do a substitution one,” he thinks to himself. “I’ll swap my status as a son for that of a hired servant. That way, my father will be able to take me back into the household without losing face.”
It turns out, however, that the father was never one for atonement theories. Before the son can even get the words out, he is embraced and pulled into the love of God without a moment’s hesitation.
In that moment, the son realised what Jesus wants us all to discover - that there really is no propitiation for love.
Would a story like that help us to understand there is no actual separation between us and God? Or would we identify with the older brother, brimming with pious indignation? “What about justice?” we cry. “Surely there has to be some atonement? You can’t just forgive without some mechanism for explaining the debt away!” Surely it can’t be that simple.
So off we sulk, away from the bright welcome table and back to the gloomy theological library in search of some rational explanation for the mechanics of God’s love.
Even when Jesus has his life threatened by the religiously insecure, he refuses to back away from them. As they hoist him literally broken and bleeding onto the cross, he embraces them anyway. “It’s ok,” he reassures them, “I know you don’t realise what you’re doing, and you are forgiven still.”
What a gospel that would be. Surely enough to convince us that our assumptions of the divine have been wrong all along, and that God never needed to be placated in the first place. There’s a reason that Jesus himself never taught a model of atonement - because none was ever needed.
So you can study all the atonement theories you want, but you’re only going to end up with a very expensive juicer that you don’t even use. That’s because the gospel itself shows that God never needed a blood sacrifice in order to forgive us. Our religious ancestors were starting to suspect this even in the Old Testament : “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.” Ps 51:16
It turns out that the cross was never God’s wrath poured out on Jesus - the wrath was always ours. It was ours because we just couldn’t accept the outrageous message of grace that Jesus offered, and so we killed him to hide our own nakedness.
But such fig leaves are no match for God’s relentless love, as the resurrection shows. This is truly the only Good News any of us needs, and spilling endless ink over the mechanics of the cross won’t add any value to the life of faith. Yes you really can be a sincere follower of Jesus without signing up to any atonement model at all.
All you have to do is embrace the simple message that God has always loved you and the cross shows how Jesus would stop at nothing to bring you that truth. Complicated theories of atonement only muddy the water and you’re better off without them.
Unfortunately, they tend to get everywhere. Like expensive gadgets that no one actually needs, once they’re made people will start to market them with gusto. They may be born in theological institutes, but atonement theories show up in hymns, sermons and CS Lewis books aplenty. After all the effort gone into making them, you better believe that the church industrial complex really wants you to buy one, and preferably the latest model.
But Advent gives me hope. At Advent, we can reset the system and go again with the start of a new liturgical year. It’s an opportunity to receive the incarnation with fresh and innocent hearts as though hearing the story for the first time.
Maybe this time we can receive the Christ child not as a sacrifice waiting to be made in order to appease an angry God, but as a profound expression of the love of God we already have.
Let us therefore not reduce Christ to a mechanism of reconciliation that suits one atonement model or another. But let us instead repent of our own religious insecurities and live deeply into the example and teachings heralded by the advent of our Emmanuel.
Make what you want of the cross, but it is the life and teachings of Christ that really open our eyes to the presence of God everywhere.
The name very Emmanuel, after all, does not mean “God might be with us if only we could understand how it works”.
It has always meant, quite simply, that “God is with us” already. Maranatha.