What Did the Cross Accomplish?: A Conversation about the Atonement

by N.T. Wright

No one metaphor, model, or theory can adequately make sense of the cross. This is obviously the case: otherwise Jesus would not have given his followers a ritual that contained multiple metaphors for his work on the cross. Might one metaphor or model be dominant and the others flow from it? Perhaps. That question needs to be left for another day. The multiplicity of metaphors in the Lord’s Supper requires that a full-orbed doctrine of the atonement will provide answers for how Christ’s death has addressed the dual problems of sins (multiple individual misdeeds that render one guilty before God, and thus need to be forgiven by God) and Sin (cosmic, nonhuman forces, whether satanic or institutional, operating on humans and dominating humanity). N. T. Wright and Simon Gathercole both allow for multiple metaphors of atonement in their respective works on the doctrine, albeit in different ways. We shall see how each scholar understands the atonement and how they interact with each other in the dialogue that is at the center of this book. Readers who pay close attention to each man’s position will be richly rewarded.