ATONEMENT

ATONEMENT. Classically defined as the reconciliation of human beings with God through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, the doctrine has received much less attention in the East than in the West, especially since the Middle Ages (with the possible exception of post-Petrine Russia). Atonement may be rooted in many Old Testament concepts, whether it be the sacrificial system, the sacrifice associated with the establishment of a covenant, or the Isaianic expectation of a “suffering servant.” These themes all reverberate in the New Testament, not only in Heb, but in relation to the sacrificial system (Mk 10:45: “to give his life a ransom for many”; Rom 3:25; IP1:18–19), the establishment of a new covenant (Eucharistie words of institution, and the Johannine parallels between the Lamb of God and the Paschal lamb), and the “suffering servant” as Jesus’ self-identification (Lk 22:37), and his identification by the emerging church (I Cor 15:3; Acts 8:32–35).

Later, Origen, probably under the influence of gnosticism (qq.v.), developed the doctrine to include Satan: Satan had rights over humanity because of the Fall, and Christ’s death was a necessary ransom payment. Remarkably, Origen’s view of atonement was not accepted by the Cappadocians in the East, probably due to the influence of Athanasius’s (qq.v.) theology of the incarnation: God became human so that we could become divine. Origen’s view was accepted in the West, i.e., by Hilary of Poitier, Augustine (q.v.), and Leo, but with a sensitivity toward the defeat of Satan in the victory of Christ’s Resurrection (q.v.). The addition of Satan to the equation notwithstanding, the Eastern Fathers and Orthodox theologians today would prefer the balance struck between the Cross and the Resurrection-to which they quickly append the Transfiguration.

Since the East holds a different theology of “original sin” (q.v.) from the West, the atonement most likely did not take on the same immediacy as in the West, which typically separated it from the Resurrection and the Transfiguration. When Augustinian original sin dictated the “necessity” of the Incarnation to satisfy conditions of redemption-someone without “original sin” must be born to satisfy the equation-the atonement fit into this “negative” description without reference to the corresponding “positive” theologies of the resurrection and the transformation of life.

Contrary to this, the entire patristic (q.v.) tradition on the atonement sees Christ as representative of humanity rather than as a substitutute for it. The representative does those things that are paradigmatic for every person-Transfiguration, Cross, and Resurrection. The actions of Jesus are considered “normative” for Christian life, and not merely a “miraculous” intervention that has nothing to do with subsequent Christian behavior. It should be pointed out that this position is not merely an Eastern interpretation, but the synoptic Gospel tradition: After Peter’s confession of faith, the Cross, the Resurrection, and the Transfiguration occur together as the centerpiece of Mk, Mt, and Lk. Some theologians of the Eastern Church would go beyond this to say that the Incarnation would have occurred even without the Fall, because God (q.v.) is self-revealing and desirous to bring humankind to himself. This understanding evaluates theologies that focus exclusively on original sin and the atonement as null and void.