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

by N.T. Wright

One thing that we must be clear on is this: the conciliar church is not the earliest church: the canonical church is.15 Historically speaking, Nicaea was further from Jesus than we today are from George Washington. One benefits from reading patristic theology, but the earliest written Christian theology is found on the pages of the New Testament. This means that the wrong way to teach about the atonement is to start with a survey of atonement theories. The study of atonement theories is useful, but theories are not the best starting place.16 In fact, the use of the term “theory” for the doctrine of the atonement is, historically speaking, a relatively recent phenomenon. To my knowledge, no pre-Enlightenment theologian ever spoke of his teaching on the cross as a “theory.” Instead, they professed what they understood Scripture to teach concerning the significance of Jesus’ death. There is a heuristic benefit to classifying theories of the atonement so long as one is conscious of the fact that theories are nothing but shorthand terms for ease of reference, not first-order theological statements. We should never make the mistake of thinking that arriving at the meaning of Christ’s death is a simple matter of choosing between “theories,” like choosing one flavor out of thirty-two flavors at an ice-cream shop.