Lent is traditionally a time of catechesis. One of the most basic questions any catechumen is likely to ask is “Why did Jesus have to die?” In what sense “have to”? Was this a necessity imposed by God? The Law? The devil? Moreover, even granted the necessity, further questions arise about the character of the action by which God reconciled the world through Christ’s suffering and death. What was the “mechanism”?—for as Kathryn Tanner and others have argued, atonement must have some inner logic to it, otherwise we are left not so much with mystery as muddle. Atonement is a good theme for Lent, offering rich fare for both prayer and theological meditation.
I teach a regular seminar on the doctrine of the atonement for students at both the master’s and Ph.D. level. The course is heavy on “greats.” We begin with St. Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, a truly great text, and one that would make a wonderful focus for study in an adult-education class. Athanasius depicts a God who creates human beings in his image, only to see them senselessly exchange life and communion with God for death—not just death, but descent into the ontological abyss of non-being. On the one hand, God owes sinners nothing: they fully deserve this fate. On the other hand, Athanasius insists that it would not be “fitting” of God to allow death to have its way with us. Hence the incarnation, whereby God refashions the imago dei according to its original model, the divine Word.
Athanasius is full of surprises, especially for those who come in with preconceptions about patristic theology. Atonement as incarnation? Yes—except that for Athanasius, incarnation is not some fuzzy union of divinity and humanity, but is effected only through the cross. His theologia crucis is deeply marked by the “pattern of exchange” (the term is Hans Frei’s) by which the Word takes on our human misery, and we are given the divine life and goodness that are by nature his.
It’s a motif that runs throughout the Church Fathers, as they play endless variations on a theme by Paul: so, for instance, “For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21); or “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9); or more darkly, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’—in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles” (Gal. 3:13-14).
Fittingness is also a theme in St. Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo, “Why the God-Man,” although there it is almost hidden under the guise of the divine “honor.” Anselm’s God is often portrayed as a petty tyrant, who demands the death of a victim as the only just recompense for his injured honor. The concept of “satisfaction” reflects an impersonal calculus of sin and judgment. It is not an appealing picture.
In a spirited defense of the archbishop that appears in the T&T Clark Companion to Atonement, Katherine Sonderegger shows that none of these charges is true. She shows that the textbook “Anselm” is a caricature; that the real Anselm portrays God as infinite Goodness and Mercy; that “honor” is not about God’s bruised feelings, but about God as the summum bonum; that sin in this context names a violation of cosmic order, a breach that must be repaired for the creature’s sake as much as for God’s (“God allows no disorder in his kingdom,” Cur Deus Homo, Book I, ch. 20).
Into this breach steps Christ, the obedient God-man. He makes satisfaction, offering to the Father the very death he does not owe, and makes it redound to the benefit of his human brothers and sisters. Little wonder that on hearing all this explained, Anselm’s interlocutor Boso irrupts with a heartfelt “Blessed be God!” (Book II, ch. 6). After reading Sonderegger’s account, no one should confuse Anselm’s atonement model with the early modern Protestant doctrine of penal substitution, from which it differs in fundamental ways. Penal substitution envisions a deflection of punishment from the sinner to Christ, while satisfaction is God’s fitting alternative to the régime of punishment. It is vicarious, “substitutionary” if you will, but specifically not penal.
An aside on the resource mentioned in the previous paragraph: the T&T Clark Companion to Atonement (ed. Adam Johnson, 2015) is an extraordinary volume. Its 103 essays cover the gamut of figures and topics in atonement theology, from Abelard to Torrance and from Angels to Wrath. (Full disclosure: I wrote the entries on Ecclesiology and the Book of Revelation. It was an interesting exercise to read the latter in light of its implied understanding of the work of Christ.)
The Companion is surprisingly affordable for a reference work. I would commend it to every priest and theologically interested layperson. Another book that belongs in every pastor’s library is Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2015). Rutledge explores a rich diversity of images/metaphors of atonement: substitution, recapitulation, the blood sacrifice, and so on.
Happily, her clarity of theological vision allows her to avoid the sloppy eclecticism that often plagues exercises of this sort. Another virtue of the book is its attentiveness to questions of justice. Where Sonderegger’s defense of Anselm is largely doctrinal, Rutledge’s is moral and political: from a victim’s perspective, it is important to say that history’s oppressors not simply be given a “free pass” into the kingdom. Genuine reconciliation requires the naming and exposing of evil. This is one aspect of what the cross accomplishes.
In recent years, my thinking about atonement has turned increasingly in the direction of sacrificial and cultic categories. We have a hard time knowing what to make of these. Protestant accounts of Christ’s “priestly work” have an odd way of defaulting to more familiar and comfortable judicial concepts. Even Karl Barth’s magisterial account of reconciliation in Church Dogmatics 4.1, §59, unfolds according to a forensic logic: Christ is “the Judge Judged in Our Place.”
And yet Barth’s scriptural imagination is such that he draws on a wide range of idioms to interpret Christ’s death, including that of sacrifice. In Barth, fittingness takes the form of dramatic necessity: as we read the Passion narrative, we see that everything that took place there “had” to happen, given Who God is; and yet it all happened freely, as an expression of triune love. Barth’s exegesis of the scene that unfolds between Jesus and the Father in Gethsemane has few rivals in the theological tradition. The effect is often profoundly moving. A Jesuit colleague once told me that he re-reads §59 every year as part of his Holy Week devotions. I can only say “Reader, go and do likewise.”
Modern works I have found useful in reflecting on the cultic realm are Ephraim Radner’s Leviticus (Brazos, 2011) and Gary Anderson’s That I May Dwell Among Them: Incarnation and Atonement in the Tabernacle Narrative (Eerdmans, 2024). Stephen Chapman’s essay on Old Testament sacrifice in the T&T Clark Companion is also excellent. All three scholars caution against reducing all sacrifice to the single model of atonement for sin. The prototypical rite in the Temple was the daily tamid, and it was not a sin offering.
This doesn’t mean the Temple sacrifices are without value for interpreting the death of Christ. On the contrary! But the connections must be made at a broader canonical level. Thus, Anderson reads the tamid intra-textually in light of the Akedah, the drama of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac, with which it has powerful resonances.
“The fire and the wood are here,” says a puzzled Isaac, “but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (Gen. 22:7). The wise preacher will know how to draw out the correspondences between the Temple lambs, the ram in the thicket, and the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; yet in such a way that these relations emerge naturally and are not forced.
Among the church’s great theologians, it is Thomas Aquinas who, perhaps more than any other, has placed “fittingness” at the heart of his account of Christ’s work. Indeed, in their historical survey Mapping Atonement (Baker Academic, 2022), Joel Scandrett and William Witt wisely single out this theme as the key to Thomas’s atonement doctrine.
The Angelic Doctor’s reflections are spread out across three long questions in Summa Theologiae III, dealing respectively with the Passion, the cause of the Passion, and the fruits of the Passion (Questions 46, 47, and 48). Unlike Anselm, Thomas does not try to identify a single underlying mechanism of atonement. Instead, he patiently expounds the doctrine one scholastic puzzle at a time, blending exegesis and theology along the way.
So, for instance: could God have delivered sinful humanity by some other means than the Passion? Yes, says Thomas. God could theoretically have delivered us by simply declaring an amnesty for sin. (Note: Theologians writing on atonement love counterfactuals of this sort, as they cast a sharp light on what actually happened.) It would not have been unjust for God to save humans in this way. But, argues Thomas, such redemption-by-divine fiat would not have been the most fitting answer.
The way God in fact chose—the Passion—is appropriate in myriad ways and at multiple levels. In unfolding the meaning of Jesus’ death, Aquinas can equally employ “Abelardian” language about the demonstration of divine love and “Anselmic” talk about satisfaction. He approvingly cites Cyril of Alexandria on the unity of Christ: “If any man does not confess that the Word of God suffered in the flesh and was crucified in the flesh, let him be anathema,” even while being careful to deny that the divine nature suffered (ST III.46.12). In his discussion of the depths of Christ’s human sufferings on the cross, Thomas can seem to anticipate Julian of Norwich or the early Luther, although admittedly in a more austere and intellectual key.
Most of all, though, Thomas returns again and again to the Old Testament, exploring the resonances between the two parts of the canon. Did Christ die at a suitable (i.e., fitting) time? Yes, for it was right that his “hour” should coincide with the Passover (ST III.46.9). Did he die in a suitable place? Yes, writes Thomas; “because Jerusalem was God’s chosen place for the offering of sacrifices to himself: and these figurative sacrifices foreshadowed Christ’s Passion, which is a true sacrifice, according to Ephesians 5:2: ‘He hath delivered himself for us, an oblation and a sacrifice to God for an odor of sweetness’ (ST III.46.10). Whereas Barth was liable to do his dogmatic exposition in the large print and his exegesis in the small-print excursus, Thomas mixes up the two.
I doubt that most readers will find the Summa the most congenial devotional reading. I, at least, find it hard to pray when I’m being put through my intellectual paces. But who knows? All good theology is finally rooted in prayer. In their different ways, all the theologians I’ve mentioned draw us into the reality of Christ’s Passion and death, and invite us to reflect on its meaning for our lives. Lectio leads to meditatio, which leads to oratio. May this Lent be for all of us a time of meditation on the great gift of our redemption.
Joseph (Joe) Mangina is professor of theology at Wycliffe College, Toronto.
