Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
161
Extract 4: John Hick, ‘Atonement by the Blood of Jesus?’ (1993)
Taken from: John Hick, The Metaphor of God Incarnate (Westminster
John Knox Press, 2006), Chapter 11, Atonement by the Blood of Jesus,
pp.112-127.
The term ‘atonement’ is so deeply embedded in Christian discourse that almost
every theologian feels obliged to have a doctrine of some kind under this heading.
And yet the word is so variously used that some of these doc trines have little in
common except the name. In it s broad et ymologic al meaning, at-one-me n t
signifies bec oming one wit h God – not ontologic ally but in the sense of entering into
a right relat ionship wit h our c reat or, t his being t he proc ess or st at e of salvat ion.
But in its narrower sense atonement refers to a specific method of receiving
salvat ion, one presupposing t hat t he barrier t o t his is guilt. It is in this context that
we find t he ideas of penalt y, redempt ion, sac rific e, oblat ion, propit iat ion, expiat ion,
sat isfac t ion, subst it ut ion, forgiveness, ac quit t al, ransom, just ific at ion, remission of
sins, forming a c omplex of ideas whic h has long been c entral to the Western or
Lat in development of Christ ianit y.
In this narrower sense, Jesus’ c ruc ifixion was an ac t of atoning, or making up
for, human sin. On the other hand, in the broader sense in whic h atonement simply
means salvation, or entering into a right relationship with God, Jesus’ death may or
may not be separated off from his self-giving life as a whole as having a spec ial
signific anc e of it s own. As a rough approximation we can say that the broader
sense has been more at home in the Eastern or Greek development of Christianity
and the narrower in its Western or Latin development.
In my view it would be best, in the interests of clarity, to restrict the term
‘atonement’ to its narrower and more spec ific meaning. The basic notion is then
that salvation requires God’s forgiveness and that this in turn requires an adequate
atonement to satisfy the divine righteousness and/or justic e. T his at oning ac t is a
transac tion, analogous to making a payment to wipe out a debt or cancel an
impending punishment. In the bac kground there is the idea of the moral order of
the universe whic h requires that sin, as a disruption of that order, be restored
either by just punishment of the offender or a substitute, or by some adequate
satisfac tion in lieu of punishment.
I am going to argue that in this narrower sense the idea of atonement is a
mistake; although of c ourse the broader sense, in whic h atonement simply means
salvat ion, is vit ally import ant.
In so arguing I am, I think, reflecting a widespread contemporary perception.
Indeed were it not for its recent revival by some Christian philosophers who, unlike
most contemporary theologians, tend to see c hurc h doc trine as a set of immutable
truths, one c ould easily think that the notion of atonement, in its narrower sense,
had largely died out among thoughtful Christians. For modern t reat ment s of
salvation seldom c entre upon Anselm’s doc trine of satisfac tion to c anc el the insult
to God’s majesty caused by creaturely disobedience, or the penal-substitutionary
idea of an imputed justific ation won by Christ’s taking upon himself the punishment
due for human sin.