Atonement

Atonement, in Christian theology, the expiation of sin and the propitiation of God by the incarnation, life, sufferings, and death of Jesus Christ; the obedience and death of Christ on behalf of sinners as the ground of redemption; in the narrow sense, the sacrificial work of Christ for sinners. In the theology of many, including nearly all Universalists and Unitarians, atonement signifies the act of bringing people to God, in contradistinction to the idea of reconciling an offended God to his creation.

The three principal theories by which theologians attempt to explain the atonement are the following: (1) the Anselmian or sacrificial, that the atonement consists fundamentally in Christ's sacrifice for the sins of humanity; (2) the remedial, that God, through the incarnation, entered into humanity so as to eliminate sin by the ethical process of Christ's life and death and make the human race at one with himself; and (3) the Socinian or moral influence, that Christ's work consists in influencing people to lead better lives. The sacrificial theory takes two general forms: (a) the governmental, that Christ's work was intended to meet the demands of the law of God and make such a moral impression upon humans in favor of the divine government as to render their forgiveness safe; and (b) the satisfaction, that it was intended to satisfy divine justice and make the forgiveness of humanity possible and right. Each of these theories has been further developed many times.