Edgework

It is tempting at this point to begin delineating and critiquing the various atonement theories that have arisen over the course of church history. The problem is that when you look at the biblical text through the grid of an established theory, for example, the popular penal substitutionary theory, it is relatively easy to find what you are looking for to support your bias.

So before we get to atonement theories as such, we will attempt to allow the biblical text to speak for itself, an exercise that can prove to be very enlightening. We will first look at what the writers of the Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke – had to say.

First we take note that when Jesus began his ministry he did not give an explanation about how he would be accomplishing atonement. He simply states, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near” (Matthew 4:17) and then he went about “…preaching the good news of the kingdom” (Matthew 4:23). Everywhere he went he challenged people to join him in the kingdom way that offered hope and healing to all in need.

Early on in his ministry it became clear that Jesus’ message was threatening to the religious authorities who quickly began plotting to kill him. Jesus could read their intentions and on various occasions spoke openly about the fact that “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise” (Mark 9:31). However he does not use these occasions to explain how such a death would accomplish atonement for believers. And we notice that his disciples were not impressed with the thought of their leader being killed by his opponents.

On two separate occasions Jesus did expand somewhat on his impending death. In Mark 10:45 and its parallel text in Matthew 20:28, Jesus says, “For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” The term “ransom” in these texts is often pounced upon to support a “ransom theory.” But there is nothing in this text to lead us to believe that anything was paid to anyone, which “ransom atonement theories” include. It is interesting to note that the word “ransom” appears twice in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament; in Deuteronomy 6:6 and 15:13 where the Hebrew text and later translations usually use the word “redeem” as it applies to the redemption of Israel from slavery. It appears likely that Matthew and Mark were influenced by the Septuagint in recording this statement made by Jesus.

Furthermore, far from developing a theory of atonement in these texts, we take note that Jesus uses them to counter the request for James and John to be granted superior rank in the coming kingdom. (In Mark, James and John request it for themselves and in Matthew their mother asks on their behalf.) The point Jesus does make with this statement is that service in his kingdom is all about “giving” and not about “getting.” Look at me, he is saying. I am going about redeeming people from all kinds of bondage, not trying to secure a position of authority. You should be following my example.

There is a second instance in which Jesus speaks of the significance of his own death in the Synoptic Gospels. In Mark 14:24, and in parallel texts in Matthew and Luke, Jesus says in the context of the Last Supper, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” Again, this verse has often been lifted out of its context to “prove” that the only way God could forgive sins was to shed the blood of an innocent man and so appease his wrath. But such an assertion simply does not appear in these texts.

As in the ransom saying, discussed above, so here, the account in Luke makes it clear that this “blood of the covenant” saying is pronounced in a context in which his disciples are again trying to stratify their small community from greatest importance to least significant (Luke 22:24). So Jesus again reminds them that by his life and now impending death he has always been among them “as one who serves” (v. 27).

It also appears obvious that Jesus is borrowing this covenant language from the Old Testament story in order to help his disciples make sense of his imminent death. At the time when the Israelites affirmed the initial covenant God had made with them, Moses said, “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words” (Exodus 24:8). Furthermore, the prophet Zechariah had sparked hope of a renewal of the covenant at the end of the Babylonian exile (9:9-11). And Jeremiah had declared the Lord as saying, “The time is coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah (31:31-34).

In their book, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, Joel Green and Mark Baker state that “…Jesus was able to gather together Israel’s history and hopes and from them forge a view of himself as the one through whose suffering Israel, and through Israel the nations, would experience divine redemption…Jesus did not aim to be repudiated and killed; he aimed to charge with meaning his being repudiated and killed” (45). Further they insist that this covenant language focuses on the salvation of the people of God, not simply on individual salvation (46).

They also conclude that “…the line from the scant evidence for an atonement message in Jesus’ own words to the later atonement theories of Anselm or Luther is neither straight nor easily drawn” (45). In other words, the Synoptic Gospels do not in any substantive way support any of the atonement theories developed throughout the centuries of Christian history.