Zoom Lens Atonement Theory

Many years ago, I critiqued traditional sacramental theology for overusing the zoom lens. Many debates and many theological formulations focus on the metaphysics of the bread and wine, and ignore other critical features of the Eucharistic event – the gathered church, eating and drinking, the specific type of food and drink, etc. The answer to “What happens in holy communion?” has often been an answer to a different question, “What happens to the elements?”

Something similar is going on in traditional atonement theories. In Anselm, the transaction of the cross takes place between Father and Son, the Son acting on behalf of humanity but not explicitly involved with human life. Jesus gives His perfect life to the Father to pay a debt He did not owe, a gift so infinite that it exceeds the debt that humanity owes and makes satisfaction. In sacrificial theories, Jesus offers Himself as His own sacrifice to the Father. For Calvin, Jesus pays the ransom by the whole course of His obedient life. In Christus Victor theories, the human drama often fades out as the camera moves past the curtain to show the battle behind the battle.

The issue is not that these are wrong; these elaborations of atonement theory all reflect important biblical truth. The problem is that they are incomplete. The behavior of Jesus’ disciples play no significant role. Sometimes, even Jesus Jewish and Roman executioners are outside the frame of the camera. It’s as if for the three hours of the crucifixion, there is no world; there is only God and Jesus. It is an empty-stage account of the atonement, a single spotlight on the cross against a dark background. We need a crowded-stage account of atonement, because the stage was actually crowded (see the Bosch painting in the header).

The zoom lens inevitably distorts what is happening on the cross. Take the notion of penal substitution, for instance. A zoom-lens atonement theory captures only the Father and Son, the Son suffering the penalty that humanity deserves, a penalty inflicted by the Father. The punishment Jesus suffers in the cross comes directly from the Father, and it becomes difficult to parry the charge that we are saved by an act of divine child abuse. We have a hard time explaining how divine justice can be revealed in the manifestly unjust act of the Father punishing His innocent Son, a Son He knows perfectly well is utterly innocent.

When we pull back the camera and include the human actors in the frame, things look very different. Jesus suffers unjust punishment, but it is not inflicted by the Father. It is inflicted by Jews and Romans. The Father is not uninvolved, which would be impossible. But the Father’s involvement is negative, passive, permissive. He gives His willing Son over to unjust human courts, and does not send in the legions of angels to rescue Him. And the Father is involved in reversing the injustice when He raises the unjustly condemned Jesus from the dead.

From beginning to end fulfills the purpose of God; this is how He always intended to save us, by sending His Son to bear the punishment we deserve, the punishment we inflict. The wide-angle lens does not leave out the “predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God” that is enacted in the cross of Jesus. But neither does it leave out the human beings who nailed Jesus to the cross with godless hands (Acts 2). God accomplishes His purpose through the sinful acts of Jesus’ executioners.

We could run other aspects of atonement theology through the same analysis. Each time we would find that a wide-angle vision, one that includes all the actors and episodes of the gospel, will clarify and illumine problems, changing the questions even if they are not wholly answered.