Penguin,
Little Timmy breaks a lamp. His father sees it, takes off his belt and says, "Who did this? Whoever's responsible is getting a beating."
Josh, Timmy's older brother, says, "Timmy did it, but he's so little that if you beat him, you'll kill him. I'll take responsibility; beat me instead."
The father could have decided not to beat anyone, but instead, he says, "Well, I know you didn't do it, but this belt's not going back on until someone gets beaten. Now hold still."
The picture of atonement presented by most Christian theology has exactly the same moral implications as the analogy I gave. The only difference is that "Josh" is asked to take the beating for billions upon billions of Timmies.
It really depends on whose version of atonement you are looking to. No doubt something like what you said above is taught by many Christians today, but I think it is not sufficient:
This idea that God
had to punish someone as though under an obligation beyond his control does not seem to make sense to me. He could redeem us all by a mere thought, were that his will. He does not do so because such a redemption would amount to something like
the repudiation of human nature. It would forget us as human beings and render the saved person something other than a saved human.
As the adage goes of St. Thomas Aquinas,
"grace does not destroy nature, but uplifts and perfects it". Human freedom is fundamental to Christian theology (in my evaluation). It is also fundamental to what we mean by human being. We are "lifted out", so to speak, from the animal world and given the ability to be a kind of regent for God- to participate in his creative work, which is a labor of love, which is his being. Love is naturally creative, being in his image, this is the bottom impetus for the labor of human society. It imitates God's creative act and mirrors his inner life [as a Trinity].
The other side of this is the dark mess we have made with this responsibility and our emergent and seemingly primordial propensity towards destruction. Human choice has introduced sin and evil. Left on our own, we have permanently crippled ourselves in sin.
Desiring to preserve human nature, desiring not to subvert the freedom of beings in His image [
who have it precisely because they are as such] , desiring not to save us without our consent, God instead takes the path that goes into the problem itself, into its heart as it were, rather than dismissing it away through his power.
That is to say that the only way for God to confront the problem of human hubris without removing our option for it is to confront it with humility. The only way to confront the rampant human urge for power, while leaving humans able still to lust for it, is to give Christ in total submission. The only way for God to confront the destructive drive in human kind is to submit himself [in His Son] to the very power of that destruction, see it through to the other side, and turn an instrument of devilish cruelty into the symbol of divine life.
The atonement means that God has dug a tunnel through our own selves so that following him is at the same time a journey through our selves. We can't find God unless we also confront man's more gruesome face, but the Good News is that we find God [in Christ] already there having overcome it through submission.
There's a great paradox here, and I'm probably creating confusion...which is good because the Atonement is not meant to be so straightforward as is often portrayed.
St. Augustine said:
"He, who for us is life itself, descended here and endured our death and slew it with the abundance of his life. In a thunderous voice he called us to return to him...he did not delay, but ran crying out loud by his words, deeds, death, life, descent and ascent- calling us to return to him. And he has gone from our sight that we should return to our heart and find him there"
