Christianity Today posted an article this week about a split between three evangelical groups in Britain. The split ends a 14-year partnership responsible for the largest annual British evangelical gathering. The reason for the split: disagreement about exactly how Jesus saves.

Three parties are involved—Spring Harvest, Keswick Ministries, and the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF). The Spring Harvest conference—the gathering they put on each year—brings together 55,000 Christians including a great many youth. Now its future is uncertain.

What makes this a particularly sad split is its cause: the doctrine of atonement. Atonement is the question of how Jesus' death and resurrection brings about salvation. It is a terrible subject to pick a fight over, for more reasons than one.

The question at the heart of the doctrine of atonement intrigues Christians of all stripes. We all believe that Jesus saves us, but how exactly does he do it? Some people think about it this way. Although God was angry at us for our sins, Jesus drew that anger upon himself and satisfied it when he died. We are saved from punishment because Jesus has experienced the punishment we had earned. We call this idea the "penal substitution" theory of atonement. God had good reasons for feeling angry with us, and that anger had to go somewhere—so Jesus took it into himself.

The Lamb of God

The penal substitution theory has its upsides and downsides. On the upside, the Bible says that something like this took place. Jesus is described as a sacrificial lamb that takes away the sin of the world, and if we look at the idea of sacrificial lambs in the Old Testament, we see that they were thought of us substitutes right back to Abraham and the Passover—dying in place of human beings to take away their sins. Paul says, in a profound and beautiful statement, "God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21, NET)

But the penal substitution theory has problems too. First, it explains nothing about how we opt into or out of Jesus' sacrifice. If Jesus absorbed God's anger, why would God still send some people to hell? It's as if Jesus absorbed God's anger conditionally, so that each of us has the chance to "sign up" for forgiveness or not. Well, most Christians believe that, but it doesn't really explain much. There's nothing quite like it in normal human law. How can God's anger be satisfied—but only on a per-person basis?

Christus Victor

The other theory of atonement at the heart of the Spring Harvest split is Christus Victor, otherwise known as the ransom theory. According to the ransom theory, Satan "bought" humanity when we sinned. Atonement means that Jesus bought us back with his blood. We had sold ourselves to Satan, but Jesus ransomed us.

Jesus himself said that he came "to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28), so the ransom theory rings true. But like the penal substitution theory, it gives an incomplete picture. Did Satan really enter into a bargain with Jesus, trading souls for blood? The Bible doesn't tell this story, and we're left to speculate. And again, how is it that Jesus paid for some people but not for others?

It's tempting to hammer out all the upsides and downsides to both theories, to debate their strengths and weaknesses, and to dredge the Scriptures for supporting evidence until one theory defeats the other in hand-to-hand combat and strides forth as the victor. The trouble is that life isn't that simple—God isn't that simple—what Jesus did on the cross isn't that simple.

Christianity's Dark Secret

I'm about to utter the dark secret of Christianity, the Fact that Dare Not Speak Its Name, the truth we are embarrassed to admit. Here it is. Christians believe that Jesus died for our sins, but we haven't the foggiest how it actually works. The gospel we package up and sell each week is something we only dimly grasp ourselves. We have a few theories—images really, mere metaphors—but we haven't got a clue how Jesus' blood dealt with sin. We know that in some cosmic way, Jesus' death plus our belief makes us pure in God's eyes. But as for the mechanics of that transformation—the technicalities of divine jurisprudence—we are out in the cold. We have only the dimmest glimmer of insight.

It's sad that Christian organizations would split over this question. How can you split over something you don't understand? Why part ways over a mystery?

The Mystery of Salvation

In the Christianity Today article, J. I. Packer is paraphrased as saying, "Penal substitution, Christus Victor, and other Scriptural views of atonement work together to present a fully orbed picture of Christ's work." In other words, picking a theory of atonement is not an either-or thing. Christ did something profound when he died for our sins. His death worked on many planes, in many ways—some of which we can begin to understand, others of which we cannot. Anyone who has read or seen The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has glimpsed the richness of atonement. Did Aslan die as a substitution for Edmund's sin? Yes. Did he negotiate a ransom payment to buy Edmund back from the witch? Yes. Did he fulfill the cosmic law concerning traitors? Yes. Did he transcend the cosmic law to fulfill the divine, creative law? Yes. C. S. Lewis understood that atonement is multifaceted. It cannot be boiled down to a party political statement, a theological soundbite.

Fundamentally, whatever other consequences it may have had, Christ's death was an interaction between Father and Son. In some mysterious way, the Father and the Son conspired together—and yet strangely in opposition with each other—to make sinful people utterly sinless. How can we understand what words they exchanged, what commodities changed hands, what legal precedences were invoked? Their negotiations, whether by whispers or shouts, are out of our earshot. We cannot comprehend the magnitude or method of what they did. So why would we argue about the mechanics of grace?

Who or What?

It's this word "faith" again. In recent years, Christians have got it into their heads that saving faith has to do with what you believe. It never did. It has to do with who you believe. Who do you think is trustworthy? Who will you bank on? Who will you invest in, spend your time with, imitate? "...That whoever believes in him will not perish..." Believes in his existence? No. Believes in the correct nature of his atonement? No. Believes in him—trusts him. Reckons he can get the job done. Dallas Willard suggests the word "confidence" instead of "faith": Do we have confidence in Jesus?

That's not to say confidence doesn't involve doctrine. Jesus can't get the job done unless he is fully man and fully God, and that's a doctrinal statement. But in the Bible, faith is not fundamentally about logical propositions—it's about who we decide to follow.

Salvation, then, is not about the technicalities of atonement, but about the Person who gives it to us. There is no point in arguing about the mechanics of grace; the only thing to do is to receive it. This is one gift horse whose mouth is best left unexamined.

So when I come before the throne of God and he asks me why he should let me into his kingdom, I don't plan to give him a treatise on Christus Victor or the penal substitution of atonement. I'm planning to say, "I don't know how it all works, but I trust Jesus to have made my way." It's like they say in business: It's not about what you know—it's about who you know.

Labels: faith