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

by N.T. Wright

All doctrines, you see, are portable stories. We fold the stories up, like clothes for a trip, and we pack them into a suitcase so we can carry them easily into and out of discussions. But the point of carrying a suitcase isn’t because I like having a suitcase in my hotel room. (I wrote that sentence before this meeting, unaware that my suitcase was not going to be delivered by Delta Air Lines at the time of my arrival.) The point of having a suitcase is so that I can carry clothes, books, and personal items all together. The word “atonement” is a suitcase into which the longer biblical story is folded up. This is already done by Paul when he summarizes the gospel message in 1 Corinthians 15:3, beginning with “the Messiah died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.” It would be difficult to have discussions in which we replace the single word “atonement” by that eleven-word statement, still less its completion with Jesus’ burial and resurrection—just as it would be difficult to carry all my clothes, books, and other stuff onto the plane without the suitcase. So we pack it away, zip it up, call it “atonement”—then off we go into a hundred different discussions that are often more about the color and shape of the suitcase than about what is inside it. This is not just a point about the way we use particular words. It is doubly serious. First, if we fail to pay attention to the story, if we never take the clothes out and unfold them and put them on, we are missing th...