I wanted to take a moment to recap the atonement work I’ve been doing on Substack recently. I’ve been producing a lot of atonement-related content, and I know it can be easy to get a bit lost in it all (I know because Tory tells me often). So, here’s a brief recap of what I’ve done so far.

Articles

I’ve written a series of articles that explore the foundations and history of atonement theories. If you’re intrigued by this conversation but don’t know where to start, I’ve written an initial post entitled Understanding the Atonement, Pt. 1, where I discuss a few key foundational ideas we need to keep in mind whenever we begin this conversation—including what the word atonement means, what kinds of problems atonement is attempting to address, and what the most essential atonement truth might be.

In the next three posts, I dove into some of the more well-known atonement theories throughout history.

I started by exploring recapitulation theory—arguably our oldest known atonement theory, and one that has genuinely captivated my imagination (I can’t help but talk about it; every time I’m on a podcast, I somehow turn it into a recapitulation theory pod—sorry not sorry). This theory is associated with Saint Irenaeus of Lyons—an absolute boss—and it frames atonement around participation in the life, way, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In Jesus, the human story is restarted or renewed so that we can participate in it as we were always intended to.

In the second post, I looked at Ransom and Christus Victor theories of atonement. I took these two together because Christus Victor most likely emerged out of Ransom and shares a key thematic similarity. Chiefly, they both understand atonement as the way in which God “frees” humanity from an evil power. Ransom, as the name implies, suggests that Christ on the cross is God’s ransom payment to the devil on our behalf. But—and this is where the two theories diverge—Christus Victor argues that the cross is not a payment to evil, but the counterintuitive defeat of evil.

Finally, in my most recent post, I explored Satisfaction and Penal Substitutionary (PSA) theories of atonement. These theories (especially PSA) are the most well-known today, so I spent a bit of extra time offering a response. I genuinely believe both can be beautiful articulations of the good and loving atonement story. At the same time, I’ve often seen them absolutized and weaponized in painful and deeply limiting ways.

Podcasts

As I’ve been releasing written content, I’ve also been producing episodes of the Prodigal Pastor podcast that explore atonement.

In my first atonement episode, I talked with Dr. Mark Baker, who provided a helpful introduction and foundation for the conversation. Mark has written a number of great resources on atonement that I highly recommend—you can find them here.

In our second episode, I chatted with Dr. Michael Gorman. Gorman has been hugely influential on my own theology, and I can’t express how grateful I am for him. In this episode, we explored his book The Death of the Messiah, the Birth of the New Covenant, a work that helps place atonement within the broader story of the Bible.

Third, I interviewed Dr. Greg Boyd. I know I say this a lot, but Greg Boyd has been such a gift to me as a writer, theologian, and pastor. I’ve been reading Boyd for years, Missio is part of a network of churches with him, and I serve on a theology writing and research team alongside him. Despite all my attempts to secretly manufacture proximity, we’d never actually had a one-on-one conversation. In this episode, I finally get to do that—but more importantly, we talk about how the cross shapes the way we read the Bible, see God’s work, and even think about atonement (huh? It’ll make sense when you listen, I promise).

Fourth, and finally (for now), I interviewed Dr. Jennifer Garcia Bashaw. Dr. Bashaw is a new friend, but I’ve been reading her work for a while. My first encounter with her was through her book Scapegoats, where she takes a theory of atonement proposed by one of my favorite philosophers, René Girard, and applies it to the broader story of Jesus. She recently released a new book entitled Serving Up Scripture, which is an excellent guide to studying the Bible. In this conversation, we talk about both books. We explore how to read the Bible, she offers a helpful and succinct summary of Girard’s work, and she brings the two together to help us make sense of the cross in Scripture.

I hope you’ve found this series of essays and podcasts helpful. It’s been a fun project, and I’m planning to continue it. I’m not entirely sure where all of this will lead. People keep asking if I’m working on a book about atonement (okay, like two people), and honestly—not really. I’d be open to it someday, but right now I just want to make this theology as accessible as possible.

If you’ve found this helpful, let me know in the comments. And if there are questions you’d like me to explore or areas you feel are still underdeveloped, I’d love to hear that too.

Thanks all!

This week on Prodigal Pastor, I sat down with Dr. Jennifer Garcia Bashaw—a New Testament scholar, professor, and author of Serving Up Scripture and Scapegoats. I’ve really enjoyed engaging with Jennifer’s work, especially her new book Serving Up Scripture where she offers a really beautiful and helpful idea: reading the Bible is less like solving a puzzle and more like cooking a meal. We all bring something to the process—our background, culture, assumptions—and those things shape what we “make” with the text. The goal isn’t to eliminate that influence, but to become aware of it and to read in community, especially alongside voices we’ve historically ignored.

I originally reached out to Dr. Bashaw because I wanted to talk about her book Scapgoates In which she explores one of my favorite thinkers Rene Girard and applies his work on scapegoating to Scripture, Throughout her book, Dr. Bashaw, show us how Jesus exposes our tendency to push blame and violence onto others—and what it looks like to read the Gospels with fresh eyes.

If you’re trying to read the Bible more honestly, more thoughtfully, and more like Jesus, this is a conversation worth your time.

When I cook for others, I try to impress.

I curate a wine list that I hope a guest calls “fancy,” even though it cost 25 dollars. I get creative with sides, I chiffonade the basil, I julienne the carrots, I concassé the… well I don’t actually know what that word means. I learn food preferences and allergies so I can accommodate. I hand whip cream with a homemade blueberry simple syrup to top a gluten-free lemon olive oil cake. I set the coffee pot on a timer to brew just as guests are ready for dessert.

Going the extra mile when cooking feels like an easy way to practice abundance. Fold the napkins with a sprig of lavender. Make a playlist to set the vibe. Pick squash blossoms from the garden to plate with the food. Give a toast, get sappy with it, remind the guest you love them.

None of this is necessary for a good dinner party, but all of it feels like a way to give a little more. To provide a tangible taste of grace. And it’s a nice way to leave your dinner guests a little impressed.

But here’s the question I am wrestling with, when, if ever, does an attempt to impress become a problem?

I’ve been thinking about this because I’m also a pastor and leader of a local church. I want folks who attend Missio to feel the same kind of love and welcome that guests around my table feel. I want them to experience a bit of goodness, taste a bit of grace, and know that they are wanted.

If I’m honest, I want them to be impressed.

But when I say I want people at church to be “impressed,” it hits different than when I say it about dinner guests, right?

To say you want a church to be “impressive” can feel performative. This post is coming out a week after Easter, and my social media is filled with elaborate services—an unfortunate side effect of being a pastor—that include Cirque du Soleil-style trapeze artists and worship teams rewriting pop songs to be about resurrection. That feels impressive, some might even call it abundant, but is that what we’re after?

The word that comes to mind is “performative.” It feels to me that there is something different between performance and abundance. Both can be impressive, but in very different ways.

I want to lead and pastor abundantly. I want our church to be a place where everyone feels a deep sense of belonging. I want our staff team to feel empowered to lead creatively. I want our board to operate in mutuality. I want the table—literal and figurative—to overflow with goodness.

And I’m also an enneagram 4 theater kid who wants everyone to clap at his talky routine.

So how do I, we, discern the difference between abundance and performance?

Here’s what I’m wondering, maybe:

Abundance is about others.

Whereas,

Performance is about me.

Abundance is about centering the experience of the whole table. The meal is prepared for the people who will eat it. Dietary needs and preferences are accounted for. It’s not that my desires or preferences as a cook are ignored, but they are purposed towards the facilitation of everyone’s experience.

The pastor and writer, Frederick Buechner wrote,

“vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”

That feels like abundance.

Performative cooking however is about centering my own experience over and above that of others. It’s cooking what I desire, despite the dietary needs and preferences of others. It makes the meal about the affirmation of my own ego instead of the curation of something collective.

In the same way, performative leadership is about the ego. It might say the right things, but it says them to be perceived a certain way. It talks about shared leadership, welcoming tables, and mutual power—but when threatened by the actual gifts of another, it gets defensive and protective.

Abundance is different. Abundant leadership is about the participation of others. It seeks to elevate the gifts of others and does the work when threatened. It’s the emulsion of gladness and need.

You can taste the difference.

But this returns me to the Buechner quote and the phrase, “deep gladness.”

There’s something here, something harder to name that distinguishes between performative and abundant cooking, leadership, and even life

A whole host of words come to mind as I try to articulate what I’m feeling. Words like generous, playful, and open. What I’m trying to say is that abundance is a gift, truly given. For a gift to be true, it cannot intend to elicit a specific response. Gifts that are intended to produce an outcome are not gifts, they’re bribes.

One of my favorite Christian writers is the Episcopal priest, author, and chef (all the best ones are), Robert Farrar Capon, who in his book The Supper of the Lamb wrote,

“Food is the daily sacrament of unnecessary goodness, ordained for a continual remembrance that the world will always be more delicious than it is useful. Necessity is the mother only of clichés. It takes playfulness to make poetry.”

That’s abundance.

Deep gladness.

It’s goodness for goodness’s sake not to be measured in efficiency, usefulness, or outcomes.

Just given.

Abundance in life, cooking, and leadership is the emulsion of deep gladness and the needs of the table.

An emulsion is the mixture of two unmixable parts (like oil and water), stabilized by an emulsifier. I like this metaphor because it implies a tension. It is difficult to mix gladness and need. Hard to bring your full self to the table with others. It often doesn’t work, the emulsion can break, and ego can float to the top.

This metaphor also implies the presence of some kind of third agent, and emulsifier. It’s why you might add a little egg yolk, lecithin, or xanthan gum to the mix. So if this metaphor holds true, what might be the binding agent of gladness and need in the abundant emulsion? Well, I’m a Christian writing in Eastertide, so I’m predisposed to say love.

What do you think?

After a full stretch of conversations on atonement, this week’s episode of Prodigal Pastor takes a different turn—into rest.

In the week following Easter, we practice Sabbath as a community at Missio Dei, making space to breathe, reflect, and “rest into resurrection.” This episode is an extension of that rhythm.

In this episode, I sit down with my friend and fellow pastor Scott for a wide-ranging, unhurried conversation about fly fishing, spirituality, discipleship, and the kinds of practices that form us over time. What begins as a conversation about being on the water becomes something deeper—a reflection on presence, patience, and the quiet ways God meets us in the ordinary.

This isn’t a typical episode—and it’s not meant to be. It’s slower. More spacious. A bit like standing in a river.

Whether you fish or not, this conversation is an invitation: to step away, to pay attention, and to receive rest in whatever wilderness space you can find.

We’ll be back soon with more episodes in our atonement series. For now—take a breath, and enjoy the conversation.

• Introduction and foundation

• Recapitulation Theory

• Ransom and Christus Victor Theories

In this post we’re turning our attention to the two most familiar and controversial atonement theories: Satisfaction Theory and Penal Substitutionary Theory.

Before we dive in, I want to explain a tension I feel when discussing these theories, especially Penal Substitutionary Theory (PSA). If you grew up in western evangelical-ish churches then PSA is probably the atonement theory you’re most familiar with. I was having lunch with a friend recently who grew up in one such church and didn’t know PSA was one theory among many until he was well into adulthood. For many of us PSA has been the assumed atonement theology, talked about not as theory but fact. In many of these churches, to discuss other theories let alone question or critique PSA is treated like an assault on the very foundations of Christian faith. This is THE reason I began this series discussing the difference between gospel, atonement, biblical atonement images, and atonement theories. And it is one of the primary reasons I think a historical survey of the different atonement theories throughout Church history is helpful. My goal is to turn down the temperature on our atonement discussions by, hopefully, treating atonement theology with a bit of epistemic curiosity and above all, humility.

Let’s get into it.

Satisfaction Theory

Atonement theology took a stark turn in the medieval era. The reasons for this are myriad and complicated, but suffice it to say, the world changed greatly with the fall of Rome. An ordered Empire descended into chaos. A unified governing structure fragmented and with it a new set of questions emerged.

Let me try and illustrate this in a simple example that will help us understand how atonement theology changed.

Rome, as we think of it, collapsed in the 5^th century, marking the beginning of the medieval period, also referred to as the dark ages. Calling the medieval period the dark ages is a bit melodramatic, but it illustrates the way people perceived the loss of Rome. For many, it was like a great light had gone out. The stability, power, and order of the Empire was gone, and in the aftermath, Europe was carved up and divided among Feudal Lords.

Where there had once been a vast empire of connected roadways and legal codes, with Caesars and elected senators, and citizens. There were now smaller, unstable kingdoms ruled by Kings and Lords, occupied by peasants and vassals.

This change of governing structure changed the way medieval peoples related to the world.

In Rome, people were citizens of an empire and bound together as a people of Rome by the structures of empire. A Roman citizen’s relationship to Rome was akin to a modern person’s relationship to a democratic nation-state. But a medieval European was not a citizen of an empire they were a subject of a king. What had once been structural and abstract—citizens bound to an empire—became personal and hierarchical—people bound to a king.

In medieval Europe, power and honor and wealth were controlled by hierarchical relationships. For example, land and power were largely controlled through hierarchical relationships. Kings leased land to Lords who in turn granted peasants access to the land in exchange for labor.

As a peasant in medieval Europe, your relationship with your Lord was paramount but it was a different kind of relationship than the one you would have with a government—personal not legal. In structures where power is personal and hierarchical, relationships are measured in honor, loyalty, and shame. Your peasant job is to honor your Lord and prove your loyalty so that they will protect and care for you. Upset, dishonor, or displease your Lord and well… you’re up a creek. There is little you can do to fix the problem. How can you restore honor? Or how can you pay him back? You’re a peasant far below his status. How can you possibly satisfy the wrath and justice of a king?

Here’s why this matters. In the eleventh century, some five hundred years into the medieval period, Anselm of Canterbury starts to write about the atonement. Where previous atonement theories had defined the great problems facing humanity as:

• A misalignment with our divine nature and intention – Recapitulation

• Enslavement to the forces of evil – Ransom & Christus Victor

Anselm reframes the problem: the deepest issue is not misalignment or bondage, but a broken relationship to the King—a failure of honor that creates an unpayable debt. It’s not that Anselm rejected previous theories, but he placed the emphasis on our Feudal like relationship to God. Accordingly, we are peasants entirely dependent on our Lord. But due to our sin, we have dishonored our Lord and accrued an impossible debt. On our own, we are helpless to restore honor, repay debt, and/or—here’s the key word—satisfy the demands of our King.

“Every sin must be followed either by satisfaction or by punishment.”
— Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, Book I, Chapter 15

This is where the cross comes in.

Anselm believed that God was not a fickle or cruel feudal Lord, instead God is merciful and good. What does God do?

Anselm wrote:

“No one but God can make this satisfaction, and no one but man ought to make it; it is therefore necessary that a God-man should make it.”
— Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, II.6

In Jesus, God becomes man, lives perfectly, and as our substitute (a key word) takes our place of judgement and offers the perfect life of obedience humanity failed to give, satisfying what we could not.

As the medieval age came to an end and the enlightenment began, Satisfaction Theory grew in popularity because it had the feeling of a more empirical understanding of atonement. Latter theologians like Thomas Aquinas would refine Anselm’s thinking and it would become foundation of the theory introduced by the protestant reformers.

Penal Substitutionary Theory (PSA)

In the sixteenth century the protestant reformers developed Satisfaction theory into Penal Substitutionary Theory (PSA). PSA relies heavily on legal metaphors (penal as in penal code—you animals), which we’ll talk about later. In this theory, God is envisioned less a Feudal Lord and more as a cosmic Judge. Sin is seen as violation of the perfectly just Law of God and as such, incurs upon sinners a just punishment. Like satisfaction theory, PSA argues that God and God’s law are so good and so perfect, so above us, that any sin against the law is worthy of death. It’s kind of like the difference between threatening a pigeon vs. threatening your neighbor vs threatening the president of the United States. The office and perceived value of each incurs a different penalty. God and God’s law are the most perfect and thus incur the greatest penalty. Because of this great differential, humans are unable to pay the penalty for sin, but thanks be to God, God steps into our place, as Jesus, and offers up his own life to pay for our sin.

The reformers were shaped by satisfaction theory and the nature of medieval power relationships. But they were also living in a world where the Catholic church had introduced the practice of indulgences—a practice in which Christians could pay money to the Church to buy forgiveness for sins. Martin Luther found this practice abhorrent, manipulative, and self-serving. In studying the bible, he came to the realization that God alone was the judge and that therefore no human authority could hold sin or debt over us. God was not just the judge but also the one who chose to pay the penalty of our sin, thus forgiving us in full. Therefore, no one should be required to pay for sins that God had already paid it all in full. Luther’s rediscovery is a beautiful and contextual application of atonement theology which brough great relief to an already poor and indebted populace.

Objections

As a protestant Christian living in America, I am deeply indebted to the legacy of the protestant reformers. The reformers work redistributed spiritual power and authority to the people. It sought to free us from the shackles of authoritarian religious structures and imbue us with both the imagination and ability to read the Bible and engage God for ourselves without clerical mediation. These, and more, are wonderous gifts.

With that said. I am now going to offer three objections to the Satisfaction and PSA theories of atonement. This section will be slightly longer than the critical evaluations in previous posts because these two theories have had such a dominant hold on the theological imagination of western protestants. Additionally, and more substantially, I do believe these theories, devoid of their context, have tended to malform our images of God. I wrote about this more extensively in my book Prodigal Gospel and so won’t belabor the point here, but Satisfaction theory and PSA, in modern articulations, emphasis a kind of divine appeasement. I.e., the idea that God must be appeased by the punishment and death of his son. And herein lies my greatest objection to these theories.

Objection 1: Who is God?

In our first post on atonement, I explained how the reformers were wrestling with an important question about God. In previous atonement theories, God, through the cross, was overcoming an outside evil. In Ransom theory, for example, God makes an exchange with the satan to “ransom” humanity from our enslavement. The reformers saw this as a logical paradox. Why would God, the infinite creator, need to negotiate with a devil? Can’t God just unthink the satan? As a response to this objection, Satisfaction theory posits that God does not have to satisfy an outside evil but instead must satisfy his own perfect nature and law. Because God is the ultimate being (the Feudal Lord or just Judge) he is the only one that could possibly require satisfaction. Now, I understand why this shift happened, but I am not convinced it solves the problem and in fact, I think it creates a far bigger one.

Satisfaction theory and PSA argue that God is perfect, therefore all sin is against God and because God is also just, he must punish sin. But this raises an even more important question than Ransom theory does. What kind of God “has to” do anything? Is God a slave to God’s own nature? It’s in my nature to want a burrito, but I can refuse. Can’t God?

Whenever our theories about God say God “must” or “can’t” we have entered dangerous territory. God is God and therefore can do anything. But if God, “must” punish us because of holiness, righteousness, or justice then we risk speaking of God’s justice as something external to God, rather than an expression of God’s own character revealed in Jesus. And we’ve fallen into the same trap as Ransom theory by limiting God’s power and freedom.

Objection 2: Appeasement

PSA and satisfaction theory especially, tend to represent God as wanting or needing a kind of appeasement. The argument goes, God’s just wrath towards sin must be appeased or sated. As Anselm said, sin must be either punished or satisfied. But I think this conflates God and a Feudal Lord too much. A Feudal Lord may demand appeasement when his honor is slighted, but does God? If a parent demanded that their wrath be appeased by the suffering of a child for them to be forgiven, we would call that child abuse which is why a major criticism of satisfaction theory is that it amounts to a kind of divine child abuse. I.e. to forgive us, God takes out his anger on Jesus.

Proponents of satisfaction theory might argue in response that God has every right to be angry. Sin destroys what God loves and thus it would be unloving for God to simply tolerate sin. Which, at one level I agree with. I believe God is deeply grieved by sin because it harms and destroys what God loves, us and the world. But what does appeasement or satisfaction have to do with that? Destroying something you supposedly love to make yourself feel better isn’t love… Right? Right.

Here’s what I think. In an attempt to elevate God above the forces of outside evil, proponents of satisfaction theory and PSA have unintentionally made God much smaller. We made God like a feudal lord or an archaic pagan deity. But God is not like a feudal Lord who demands appeasement when wronged. That’s a thing we do to one another. But God is God. God does not require or need appeasement. God’s wrath does not have to be satisfied by the suffering of another for us to be forgiven. That’s paganism. That’s how Baal, and Zeus, and Odin, and Molech, and Mamon, and we function. But that’s not how the God of the bible functions.

We have a bad habit of projecting ourselves onto God. Writer and pastor Brian Zahnd says this beautifully, writing,

“If left to our assumptions and projections, we will imagine God as unreachably aloof and horribly violent, as our pagan ancestors imagined the gods.”

He goes onto say,

“but the lifeless body of Christ upon the tree shatters our pagan illusions. At last we have a true image of God. It is a shocking and perhaps unsettling image of God, but it is a true image—the true image (The Wood Between the Worlds).”

In making the cross about appeasement we have lost the plot. The writer of 1 John 4:10 reminds us of what the cross means writing,

“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

The writer goes on to say, God is love. Meaning, the cross is the ultimate revelation of God’s love for us. Whatever theory or mechanism of atonement we settle on, we must remember that the cross is first and foremost a divine revelation of love. Where Baal or Molech demanded sacrifice, God offers it. When we demand blood, God gives it. Where we turn to a sword, God picks up a cross.

Objection 3: Wrong Courtroom

My final critique of PSA relates to the legal metaphors used to support the theory. Martin Luther and John Calvin were both trained as lawyers in a western European legal system. The enlightenment legal system is the basis of our own which is why the imagery of PSA has such purchase today. But here’s my rub, the Bible wasn’t written in a world of western penal codes.

Now, the Bible is filled with legal metaphors to describe atonement. These images are important for understanding the cross, but here is the thing, the legal system in ancient Israel was VERY different than the legal system of post-enlightenment Europeans. Our legal systems focus on proper administration of the law, but the ancient Hebraic system was about upholding covenant relationship.

Let me illustrate the difference

Say you stole one of my chickens (rude). Under Utah Code §76-6-412(1)(b)(iii):

“Stealing a chicken is classified as a third-degree felony. This offense is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000 regardless of the chicken’s actual value, due to it being classified as specialized agricultural theft.”

Even though I was harmed by your action the theft is primarily understood as an offense against the state law. You’re required to pay a fine to the state and potentially serve prison time. What is the outcome? Legal guilt is declared and justice is administered.

Now imagine we are ancient Israelites and you steal my chicken:

I couldn’t find a verse about stealing a chicken specifically, but the Torah (Old Testament Law) says in Exodus 22:1

“Whoever steals an ox or a sheep… shall repay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep” (We can reasonably assume from this that stealing a chicken would result in a similar kind of repayment).

Immediately we can see a difference. Stealing my chicken is considered a harm against me and a breach of covenant relationship therefore the punishment is about restitution—the victim is compensated (and then some), the wrong is made right in tangible ways, and the community is repaired. That’s because the goal of Torah is the preservation of covenant community not the administration of the law.

What we’re seeing here aren’t just two different legal systems—they’re two different visions of justice.

Western

• Legal = law → guilt → penalty → punishment → not guilty

Hebraic

• Legal = covenant → breach → restoration → making things right

From this simple example, we can see how PSA was shaped by a western framework more than a biblical Hebraic one.

PSA

• Sin is law breaking → we are guilty → penalty is death → Christ takes our punishment → so we can be declared not guilty

In our western framework, the hoped-for outcome is to be declared “not guilty” before the law. But in the Hebraic system the intended outcome is for things to be made right. Which leads to an important question, how might our atonement theory change if it was rooted in a Hebraic legal framework instead of a western one?

We’ll explore this in a latter post but what if atonement is not primarily about penalty, but about restoration? What if the cross is not the place where God balances a legal equation, but where God, in Christ, enters our brokenness to heal, restore, and reconcile? Not simply to declare us not guilty—but to make us whole.

Our atonement theories need to engage the legal metaphors of the Bible BUT, they need to engage the actual legal system of the Bible instead of forcing our legal system onto the Bible.

Conclusion

I have so much, honestly too much, more I could say about these theories, but we’ll stop here so that you can go to bed. So let’s wrap this up. What should we do with this?

First, we should recognize the valuable contribution these theories have made. Each theory makes sense in context, and each offered something meaningful to the world in which they came. Luther’s rediscoveries would have felt deeply liberating and still can. No one including religious authorities can hold sin over us because God has canceled the record of debt and forgiven the penalties of the law, yes and amen.

Second, at the same time, we need to once again recognize that these theories, PSA especially, are one small and relatively recent part of atonement theory history. This is not the oldest theory, it was not the one held by the apostles, and it is still a minority theory not shared by Catholics, Orthodox, anabaptist, and other Christian traditions. I do not say this to criticize folks who hold this theory but to—like I have in each post—encourage us to hold our theories with humility and curiosity and in recognition of history, tradition, and the broader Christian community.

Third, with that said we need to be careful about applying a western legal framework to the Bible. Our system, and that of Luther’s, would have been entirely foreign to the writers of the Bible who were shaped instead by a Hebraic covenantal system. I believe atonement theology is living and can thus speak in and through our western legal system but, we must recognize that when we do that, we’re applying atonement to a new and foreign context. That means we shouldn’t universalize our system and thus absolutize PSA as the model of atonement for all time. It literally cannot be.

Finally, above all, we must remember that the cross is first and foremost a revelation of God’s love. All our theories and best attempts at explaining the mechanism of the cross must live in service of love. And not an abstract easily redefined love, but the kind of love we witness in the actual life of Jesus. A love that heals, that moves towards the margins, that makes space at dinner parties, that confronts religious systems and includes the outsider. If our atonement theories don’t look like Jesus, we have a problem.

Alright ya’ll, I’ll stop here.

If you’ve read this far, thank you, and if you’ve kept up with each atonement post you deserve a trophy.

I’m going to continue writing about atonement theology (along with other things) but am going to change tactics. I’ll explore some biblical images and themes that will shape how we see atonement. And then, in the end I’m hoping to offer a constructive model that might help you think about, navigate, and explain atonement.

Hopefully I’ll write a few more fishing stories too.

I recently sat down with Greg Boyd, whose work has deeply shaped my thinking. In our conversation we talked about his new book and how the cross changes everything.

The Cross at the Center

Greg calls the cross the “center of the center.”

Not just part of the story—but the lens for the whole story.

Because how you interpret Jesus shapes how you interpret everything else.

If God looks like self-giving, enemy-loving love on the cross…
then Scripture, the kingdom, and even justice start to look different too.

Reading the Hard Parts of the Bible

One of the most helpful ideas Greg offers is this:

Read Scripture the way you read the cross.

On the surface, the cross looks like violence.
But by faith, we see God revealing love through that violence.

So what if some of the harder passages in Scripture are doing the same?

Not showing us exactly what God is like on the surface,
but revealing human brokenness—and God’s willingness to meet us there.

Rethinking the Cross

We also talked about atonement.

Instead of the cross being about God needing to punish someone,
Greg frames it this way:

The cross is God absorbing violence and overcoming it with love.

Not retribution.
Restoration.

So What?

If this is true, then Christianity isn’t just something to believe.

It’s something to participate in.

A life shaped by the same love we see on the cross.

So maybe the question is:

What would change if we really believed that God looks like Jesus—crucified?

It is hard to express how grateful I am for Gorman’s work. Gorman is your favorite theologians, favorite theologian. His writing and teaching have shaped me for years, and this conversation gets at some of the reasons why. We talk about what atonement means, why many popular models can feel too narrow, and how the cross is not only the source of salvation but also its shape. Along the way, we explore participation, transformation, reconciliation, and why the work of Jesus matters not just for individuals, but for communities and the whole life of faith.

If atonement has ever felt confusing, abstract, or flattened into a single theory, I think this episode offers a bigger and more beautiful vision.

When we told friends we were vacationing in the Keys they responded with bemused smiles. Why the Keys? Mexico is right here, it’s cheaper, easier to get to, and it isn’t Florida. No one ever said that outright, it’s just what I interpreted from their tepid grins. When I told fellow anglers where we were headed however, they simply nodded with a kind of knowing smile. Because they knew the truth. We were headed to Key West in search of ghosts—grey ones in fact.

A bit of context might be in order.

The Keys hold a certain ephemeral pull for anglers that, I think, began with legends of Hemingway fishing off his boat the Pilar in the 1930’s. But for me and for fellow fly anglers, the Keys took on legendary status in the tales of authors, poets, and musicians like Jim Harrison, Tom McGuane, Hunter S. Thompson, and Jimmy Buffet from their time fishing the keys in 1960’s and 70s. I don’t know how to express to you the aesthetic pull these scions of rowdy American literature have on me. If you’ve never wanted to ride shotgun with Kerouac, I’m not sure you’ll understand the pull I feel when I see grainy photographs of Thompson, McGuane, or Harrison chasing tarpon in the 1960s.

Ever since, when trout fishing slows in winter the obsessed and the privileged head south in search of Tarpon, Permit, and bonefish—and this year, I wanted to be one of them.

I had, until this point, never even held a fly rod in salt water. But I’d watched a lot of videos. I’d seen anglers standing on the raised platform of a flats boat, fly rod bending impossibly as line screamed from the reel, pulled by the force of a forty-pound adolescent tarpon careening skyward out of the water. One video and I knew I had to try.

There are all sorts of fish you can cast a fly to in the saltwater flats of Key West. Tarpon and permit are the popular it-fish of the water. They’re big, fast, and shiny. Exactly the kind of fish vacation-dads show pictures of to their coworkers. You can also fish for barracudas, long and smelly, who fight like tarpon and possess razor sharp teeth. Technically you can fish for sharks too, but I am uninterested in playing tug-of -war with hundred-pound shredder. I had come to Key West for none of these illustrative targets, now don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to fish for Tarpon or Permit, but I didn’t feel I had quite earned that challenge yet. Instead, I had come to Key West for bonefish, aka the grey ghost.

If I am honest, I don’t quite understand the appeal of bonefish. I feel it but I can’t explain it. The heart wants the fish it wants. They possess none of the features that are traditionally thought to allure an angler. They are not as elegant as trout or as venerable as salmon. They’re not as powerful as steelhead and they do not fly like tarpon. On average they are a three to five pounds. They travel in small schools and are skittish, but will give chase to flies with wonderful names like Gotchas, Crazy Charlies, and Clouser Minnows—which, according to dubious wisdom, resemble shrimp or minnows.

Why then the fascination? Here are some guesses.

First. They are grey. Stay with me on this. Bonefish are grey, making them nearly impossible to see for the untrained eye, hence the nom de guerre, grey ghost.

Second. They swim. Don’t laugh. Unlike trout, bonefish are constantly moving. They don’t hold up in deep holes or sit in the current to eat. This means, unlike trout, you cannot cast to where you think a bonefish will be. And, unlike trout, you cannot repeatedly cast to them. You get one shot. One opportunity. Do not... sorry, forever a millennial. Instead, bonefish is a sport of sight casting, but that begs an important question, how do I sight cast to a skittish ghost?

Third. They are far away, requiring an angler to cast 60, 80, 100 feet. I’m from Utah and am unaccustomed to fishing a river that is even 60 feet wide. Casting for bonefish is a new skill for a trout angler, and an illustrious opportunity. You use a heavier weighted rod, with heavier line, and heavier flies, which requires learning a different cast to cover the distance. You also never leave the fly to “drift” over the fish. With trout, the drift is everything. You’re trying to imitate the way an insect naturally floats upon the water. But bonefish chase. Once your fly hits the water, you must immediately begin stripping the line to imitate a swimming minnow. Slow down or oscillate speed, and bonefish lose interest.

Fourth. They live in the ocean which means that fishing for bonefish is an activity greatly expedited by boat. The boats in question are specially designed vessels with extremely shallow drafts allowing them access to the flats. Once you’ve arrived to a flat, a favorite haunt of bonefish, guides will turn off their boats and stand on an elevated platform pushing the boat with a long pole, like you’re on a romantic venetian gondola ride where everyone is wearing sun hoodies and Oakleys. From their elevated platform the guide is on lookout for signs of fishiness—a technical term. Once they see what they are looking for, if they see what they’re looking for, they will direct the angler in meticulous code that assumes I know how to read a clock, “Eleven o’clock, one hundred and twenty feet out, start casting (to what… it doesn’t matter just do as they say), more line, cast, now strip strip, faster, strip (excuse me sir), aaah spooked em. That’s kind of how it goes, at least for me.

Fifth. Bonefish are fast. Once they take the fly, if they take the fly, and once you’ve successfully set the hook with a final strip of the line, if you set the hook—they bolt straight to Cuba taking your line with them leaving you in a daze as your line whistles from the reel.

What I’m trying to say is that fishing for bonefish is thrilling. You stand on a boat with your be-spoakledly gondolier, blind casting to skittish ghosts that swim like lightening. You’re hunting for phantoms—the chance to say hello to a specter before releasing it back to the wild.

What else could you want?

We arrived in Key West at a strange time for our planet. A once in a generation cold front had blown into Florida leaving the ground littered with frozen iguanas. The day we arrived, temperatures were nearly the same as Utah which was experiencing historic warmth. These were not ideal conditions for fishing. Like the tourists who visit, bonefish prefer water a comfortable seventy degrees, but the cold front had dropped local water temperature to the low sixties pushing the bonefish to deeper, warmer waters. The wind further complicated conditions. We were scheduled to fish Thursday, but thirty mile an hour winds turned the normally placid flats tempestuous forcing us to reschedule for Sunday. By the time Sunday rolled around conditions had improved but expectations were still low. Water temperatures were creeping towards the high sixties. Possible but not ideal conditions. Our guide—a seventh generation Conch (that’s what you call someone from Key West, which is as delightful as it sounds offensive) and third generation fishing guide—was honest about our prospects, which I appreciate in a guide. I would rather a bit of a pessimism so that if I fail, I can blame conditions rather than an optimist who leaves me nothing to blame but myself. Give me something for the story.

This is where fishing for trout and bonefish share many similarities. Expectations are a fickle thing. We all show up with expectations. It’s the expectations that got us there in the first place. But show up with too many expectations and you can expect to be disappointed. Show up with too few expectations and you may never have the faith or courage to cast again. Maybe the secret is in what you expect, in holding possibility lightly, and in the practice of honing hope.

Who knows, I was hoping for bonefish.

We arrived at the dock at 9am. The temperature was a humid sixty-five degrees which felt fine to me but was absolutely not warm enough for our guide or my wife. Our guide, a native Conch as I will continue to mention for the fun of it, was accustomed to warmer weather and arrived in full waders, parka, beanie, gloves, and face wrap—all of which Tory coveted greatly. We boated to our first location and were pleasantly surprised by the signs of fishiness. From our perch we could see sharks, lemons and bonnethead, as well as barracudas. I am new to this and wasn’t sure if this was a positive or negative sign, but our guid said predator activity was an indication of warming water, aka fishiness. Surprisingly encouraged by the presence of so many teeth our guide assumed his position on the elevated platform to search for what we had come. Thirty minutes in, he spotted a small school of bonefish. Hurrah. Oh, they're swimming away. A little while later, he spotted another. Two hundred feet out, one o’clock. I took my position on the bow of the boat, fly rod in hand waiting for instructions. Then I heard it, my time had come, my glorious opportunity to put all those hard years of fly fishing to show. One hundred and twenty feet out, start casting, more line, more line, cast, now strip… they’re gone. You gotta strip faster. Things proceeded like this for a while. Eleven o’clock, coming in fast, start casting, go, too long… you spooked em. And again. One o’clock, eighty feet out, now, aaah too short, they turned… And again. Strip strip… ahh you gotta start stripping right away.

The first two hours of fishing for bonefish was a performance in humility for an audience of two, our Conch guide and Tory who shivered behind me as I sweat under the pressure of stripping for all these beady-eyed, boneheaded, bottom feeding, shrimp eating spirits.

After I had successfully frightened away all the bonefish from our first flat, our guide led us to another. Again, moral was boosted by the presence of carnivores in the water and quickly our guide spotted another small school of bonefish. Our ritual commenced. But this time, this time, would be different. I had learned. I had grown. I had drank a beer. I would not leave this flat empty handed—well technically I would leave empty handed, because I want to conserve bonefish populations, but I would leave triumphant! I took my position and waited for the Conch on the stern to issue his commands. Eleven o’clock (great I know this one), a little more left (well…), one hundred feet out and swimming towards us, start casting, a little more line, cast, now strip strip, strip, he took it, long strip! Now let go. The water flashed, the rod buckled, and the line began to scream as a ghost gave chase. There was a bonefish on my line. If I wasn’t for our guide’s enthusiasm and line careening, I wouldn’t have even known what happened. The take was quick, the set subtle. But the race, the race was worth the wait. The fish made it to international waters before he began to tire enough that I could start reeling him in. Once he slowed, I’d begin retrieving line until he decided he still had some flight in him. Finally, I reeled him back to the boat, where we could safely net him and keep him hydrated without too much fear of a prison break.

And there it was, my first and… only bonefish of the trip. Expectations are a fickle thing, eh?

We fist bumped, took our photos, and released our ghost. There it was.

We fished a few more hours that day, but signs of fishiness were scarce. Even the predators had seen enough of my casting and headed to deeper water for a reprieve.

If you’ve read this far you might be wondering what the point of it all was. That’s a fair question. I don’t really know. Maybe this is story about learning something new, about sharing something you love with the person you love, or about the practice of holding expectations appropriately. I’m not totally sure.

What I do know for certain, however, is that one was not nearly enough.

In this episode of Prodigal Pastor we are starting a new set of conversations about the atonement. If you’ve been following my Substack, you know that we’ve been exploring atonement for the last few weeks. As I’ve written this series, I have found that I turn to certain authors repeatedly. One of those is Dr. Mark Baker who I got to interview for this episode of Prodigal Pastor.

I enjoyed getting to talk with Mark because though I’ve read him for years I’d never met him. But what I love about meeting folks is that every time I meet a theologian I respect, I learn how their stories shape their thinking. This was true for Mark.

Mark shares the story of becoming a scholar shaped by mission work in Honduras, where poverty, violence, and “toxic theology” forced deeper questions: Who is the God we believe in? What kind of God does our atonement story portray?

From there, we explore what atonement means (“the saving significance of the cross and resurrection”), why Christians often collapse a wide biblical vision into a narrow framework, and how the New Testament offers a multiplicity of images—liberation, shame and welcome, redemption, union with Christ, and Christus Victor triumph over powers. Atonement isn’t a single metaphor. It’s the heart of the gospel told in many faithful languages, for many kinds of human need.

Check out my conversation with Dr. Mark Baker, I think you’ll find it helpful. Below are some of his resources.

Resources Mark Recommends

• Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (Mark Baker & Joel Green)

  • In-depth biblical grounding + history + contemporary application

• Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross (Mark Baker, editor/author)

  • Practical, contextual “new imagery” approaches (sermons, poems, teaching examples)

• Mark’s website: profmarkbaker.com → Atonement Resources page

  • Includes a lecture/article on Hebraic vs. Western courtroom assumptions

  • Additional videos and examples (including honor/shame contextual work)

Without further ado, let’s jump in.

Ransom Theory

Ransom Theory is our second oldest atonement theory and though officially documented a century later than Recapitulation Theory was probably on the scene much earlier. This theory is credited to Origen of Alexandria (3^rdcentury) and Gregory of Nyssa (4^th century).

At the heart of Ransom Theory is the idea that humanity has become enslaved to sin, death, and the devil. Like a conquering empire, these forces, defeated humanity in Genesis 3, taking us and our very will captive. Try as we might to free ourselves from enslavement, this axis of evil was too great a power for humanity to overcome. God though, deeply loves his people, and therefore conspired to free us. To do so, he offered up his son, Jesus, in exchange for our life. The devil, seeing an opportunity to deal a major blow to the power of goodness takes the deal and agrees to the exchange. But what the devil did not know was that Jesus would rise again from the dead pulling the ultimate Oceans 11 style switcheroo on the devil. Just as the devil thought it had won the day, the lights were turned on to reveal the devil was holding an empty bag.

Spoiler Alert

One of the most well-known expressions of this theory comes from C.S. Lewis’s The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobewhere Aslan exchanges his life for Edmunds. In the book, Edmund betrayed his brother and sisters, which meant that–––according to the law of Narnia––his life was forfeit to the witch. To free Edmund, Aslan offered his life in exchange for his to fulfill the demand of the law. The witch, seeing an opportunity to defeat the power of good forever, took the deal and killed Aslan on the stone table as a substitute for Edmund. But the witch did not know that the deep magic of Narnia held a secret clause, that when a willing and innocent victim gave their life for a traitor the stone table would break and death itself would “work backwards.” Thus, Aslan was resurrected and the witch defeated.

Context

Like all atonement theories, Ransom Theory emerged from a context. In ancient Rome, slavery was normative. Scholars estimate that nearly 15-25% of the Roman empire was comprised of enslaved peoples and that up to 30% of the early church were enslaved peoples who had converted to Christianity.

Early Christians, under the boot of Rome, felt the effects of an enslaving power. They saw, firsthand, how a conquering empire wielded its power over the will of the conquered. And they knew, from experience, how difficult it was to overthrow the enslaving tyrant on their own. Atonement as Ransom speaks to the environment of the early church and offered a kind of living metaphor with deep resonance.

This image also had deeply liberating implications and, at times, inspired Christians to press back against systems of slavery. The early church advocated against the practice of slavery and, at its best, treated enslaved peoples as equals within the fellowship of the congregation––records indicate that enslaved people held substantial positions of leadership in the early church.

With that said, it’s also important to note that while I believe Ransom Theory can and did inspire to the church to advocate against systems of slavery it could also be spiritualized and disconnected from material concerns to make spiritual freedom the priority over and above material freedom. The language and metaphor at the heart of Ransom Theory can make it a potent theological frame antidote to the forces of oppression, but that’s IF it holds to the truth that our earthly life matters.

Critiques

Ransom Theory is a beautiful atonement theory and offers a compelling image of sacrificial love. But certain features of this theory open it up legitimate criticism.

The first and primary critique is simply this, why does God have to negotiate with the devil, death, or any other force of darkness when none are God’s equivalent? If God wanted to rescue us why didn’t God just unthink the devil? Why go through the rigmarole of exchange and death? C.S. Lewis handles this issue by talking about the deep magic of Narnia that gives the witch authority. But I, and lots of theologians throughout history, don’t find that answer particularly satisfying. Why would God grant the devil authority over us through the law? Is the devil a just judge? And, if God is all knowing, why would God invent a system that someday would have to be broken by the death of his son?

This is why the latter reformers (Luther and Calvin) argued that the ultimate problem was not Satan’s claim over humanity, but humanity’s standing before God’s justice––we’ll tackle this on another post.

The second critique of this theory relates to the way it presents the atonement as a kind of shell game God is playing. The entire mechanism (the how) of the atonement is a trick. The devil takes the bait believing Jesus will die, but in the end, is tricked by the power of resurrection. And that, honestly, just feels weird. The entire thing feels mischievous, which I like narratively, but find a little disturbing theologically. What does it mean about God’s nature if God is willing to play so loose with the truth? Does God really need to play tricks with such a lesser being? And, if it’s to honor the law, we’re back at our original question of why? Why write a law you must deceive to get what you want?

Both critiques come to down to questions about God’s nature. Is God powerful and is God good? If God is powerful why negotiate with the devil? If God is good, why play loose with the truth and the law to win? I don’t think either critique necessarily means we should toss Ransom Theory, but they help explain why the theory falls out of broad usage.

Now We’re Talking… Semantics

One final critique, which is less of a critique, and more of an important semantic note is that the word our English Bibles translate Ransom does not necessarily convey the meaning we infer upon the word ransom. Stick with me for a second.

The Greek family of words we translate as ransom are as follows:

• ἀντίλυτρον (antilytron) – “corresponding means of release”

• λυτρόω (lytroō) – “to redeem / set free”

• ἀπολύτρωσις (apolýtrōsis) – “redemption / release”

These words can be translated as “ransom” but that carries with it the notion of exchange (i.e. money exchanged in a ransom payment) whereas the most direct translation is “the means of release” or simply “release.” The emphasis of this word is the outcome of “release” not necessarily the “how” of release.

Here’s a good example of this:

The NIV Bible translates this word in Mark 10:45

• “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Whereas the Common English Bible chooses to translate it like this:

• “For the Human One didn’t come to be served but rather to serve and to give his life to liberate many people.”

Same root word, different translations, different implications.

Here’s why this matters. The word itself does not explicitly say “how” it instead focuses on “what” i.e. release. To understand the “how” we are thrust back into the world of theories and constructing from metaphor, imagery, and narrative a “how.” But the word we choose will shape our theory. Ransom implies an exchange, but liberation brings a different implication. Which is why other theories see the atonement more like a rescue mission to liberate humanity from darkness rather than a ransom paid to darkness in exchange for humanity.

Liberation vs. Exchange

Because of this another theory of atonement began to emerge, today we call it Christus Victor. Truthfully, it’s a bit hard to draw a clear line between these two theories or to categorize them chronologically because they share similarities like language, supportive passages, and imagery. Part of the reason it’s difficult to dissect these two theories is that the “title” Christus Victor is a 20^th century invention by a Swedish theologian named Gustaf Aulén. Aulén, through study of the early Church writings, concluded that there was a separate and distinct theory of atonement within the larger category of Ransom Theory. This theory, while sharing much with Ransom Theory addresses the key shortfalls of Ransom Theory. Today, Christus Victor is a widely held view of atonement made popular by the writings of well-known scholars like, N.T Wright and Scot McKnight.

Like Ransom Theory, Christus Victor identifies the problem as the enslavement of humanity to the forces of darkness. Like Ransom Theory it argues that humanity is unable to rescue itself from enslavement. Where it differs from Ransom Theory is in the means of “release.” Christus Victor says that, on the cross, Jesus defeated the powers of death. Jesus did not negotiate or trick evil, he overcame it with sacrificial love. The resurrection was not a shell game to pull the wool over the devil but was instead the definitive power of God overcoming the power of evil, i.e. life and love vs. sin, and fear, and death.

The key distinction here is that in Ransom Theory God pays the devil but Christus Victor understands the atonement as Christ’s decisive victory over the powers of sin, death, and the devil through his death and resurrection.

Key Passages

Below are a few key passages that can, honestly, be used to support either theory. I’ve put our key word in bold so you can see how a simple translation choice can have a big impact on the way we read these verses. If you read each of these verses in different English translations (I’d suggest NIV, NRSVue, and CEB) you can see these choices play out. As you read, try substituting the additional words and reflect on the way it shapes meaning.

• 1 Timothy 2:5-6 “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom [means of release] for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time.”

• Colossians 1:13–14 “He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred[ransomed/released/liberated] us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

• Mark 10:45 “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom [to liberate/means of release] for many.”

Translators have a tricky job. They must decide which word makes the most sense based upon historical research and context. But their choices have an impact. That’s not a bad thing but it is a real thing we must consider as we study and read.

Each of these passages comes within an important context. In 1 Timothy, this passage is a part of a larger argument about Jesus’ role as a mediator between God and humanity. It reads, almost like a credal statement that the early church might have rehearsed together. Colossians likewise reads like a statement or a hymn the early church might have sung and is a beautiful encapsulation of our faith. But the verses themselves and the larger context focuses a lot on Jesus’ authority over all things. That lends credence to Christus Victor, and the idea that the cross is a victory over evil. The Mark passage is maybe the most peculiar. Jesus is describing the purpose of his death but immediately preceding this verse, Jesus overhears his disciples arguing about who will be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. In response he says, don’t be like earthly rulers who wield power coercively, but instead,

“whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many” Mark 10:43-45.

Jesus is connecting his atoning sacrifice with power and specifically, a different kind of power than is wielded by the authorities of their day and ours. It is a revelation of God’s power AND, in context, an invitation for us to pick up a different kind of power––a cross shaped one.

That doesn’t mean this passage can’t support Ransom Theory or Christus Victor, but it should color how we see those theories and more importantly, how we understand the Atonement as a whole.

Why this Matters Today

There is a lot more that could be said about these theories especially Christus Victor. It is one of the most helpful and rooted theories of atonement. I’ll attack a few recommended resources below for further study.

But, with all that said what’s are take away here?

First, each time we explore atonement theories I hope to show you, in a broad way, how biblical interpretation and theology works. Translators, teachers, and theologians are making informed choices than impact the choices we make. That’s not bad, I am so grateful for the work of translators and theologians, but we got to remember we don’t read tabula rasa. We are always reading with and from community whether we realize it or not (I discuss this with Dr. Dennis Edwards)

Second, as I’ve already mentioned, I like looking at the history of atonement theories to see how they develop overtime. In post 2, we explored Recapitulation Theory which shares some meaningful elements with these two theories but at the same time is very different. That means the Church’s primary view of atonement has changed overtime. Does that mean atonement has changed? No, but it should make us a bit humbler about our theories. I also think it’s beautiful because we are invited, with our tradition, to continue interpreting and applying the atonement in humble, creative, and contextual ways today.

Finally, Ransom Theory and Christus Victor remind us that the atonement is not only about forgiveness, but about freedom.

These theories name something many of us feel intuitively—that sin, death, fear, violence, addiction, and injustice are enslaving powers. They shape our lives in ways we cannot simply think or behave our way out of. They hold us captive.

The good news of the cross, according to these theories, is that God does not merely forgive us from a distance. In Christ, God confronts the forces that enslave humanity and overcomes them through sacrificial love and resurrection life.

This matters because it reminds us that evil does not get the final word. Death does not get the final word. Fear does not get the final word. Love does.

Christus Victor in particular reminds us that the resurrection is not just proof of life after death, but a declaration that the powers of darkness have been defeated.

And if Christ has defeated these powers, then we are invited to live as liberated people—no longer enslaved to fear, sin, or death, but free to participate in the life of God.

Alright, that’s enough of that for now.

Let me know if this was helpful or if I missed anything.

Leave a comment with any question, thoughts, or outburst of emotion!

Additional Resources:

Podcasts:

• OnScript Podcast — Episode 200: Fleming Rutledge — The Crucifixion, Advent, and the Powers

• Beer Christianity Podcast — Episode 42: “Christus Victor vs Penal Substitution” (with N.T. Wright)

• How Does the Christus Victor Model of Atonement Deal with Sin? (podcast) with Greg Boyd

Article:

• Christus Victor View of the Atonement by Greg Boyd

Books:

• Gustaf Aulén — Christus Victor

• Fleming Rutledge — The Crucifixion

• Michael J. Gorman — Atonement: A Guide for the Perplexed

• N.T. Wright –– The Day The Revolution Began

Each episode has been about how we approach and read the Bible. But, more specifically, each episode has focused on a way of studying the Bible that has an impact on the way I read and teach the Bible. I wanted to capture and distill, in an accessible format, some of the most valuable insights and what I believe are missing pieces to our modern study of the Bible.

I love the Bible. I love to read it, study it, and teach it. But as a student of the Bible I am wrestling with my own questions and confusions and as a pastor, who gets to the talk about the Bible for a living, I get to hear other people’s frustrations, confusions, and (let’s call it) strange interpretations. My goal, with these first five episodes, has been to provide some tools and frameworks that have helped me engage with the Bible well.

Jesus Centered with Meghan Good

In our first episode with Meghan Good, we explored what it means to read the Bible with a “Jesus-centered” lens. To read, Jesus-centeredly means that Jesus is the ultimate Word of God and as such is the interpretive key for understanding the Bible. We read and wrestle with the text in light of God’s ultimate self-revelation in Jesus. We compare images of God from the Old Testament to Jesus, remembering that God has always looked like Jesus. We contrast, question, and engage ethics, tradition, and culture with Christ at the center. This does not resolve every question or unease as we read. It shouldn’t and at times will raise new questions. But we always remember that Jesus is the revelation of God’s love. And therefore, love gets the final word.

A Narrative Arc with Tim Geddert

In our second episode we talked with Tim Geddert about reading the Bible as a story. The Bible is not a textbook or a science book; it is a story about God’s faithful love and commitment to humanity that begins in a garden, ends in a garden city, and all of it held together with Christ at the center. Reading the Bible as a story helps us read and study in context. It helps protect us from falsely correlating things like Israel and America. And it reminds us that we have inherited a living story that we are invited to continue living and improvising within.

Rereading the Stories of Women with Ingrid Faro

In our third episode we heard from Ingrid Faro about her new book Redeeming Eden. In our conversation, and in her book, Faro helps us reread the stories of women in the Bible showing us how women have been misinterpreted, mistranslated, and mistreated throughout time. This episode felt particularly important because one of the key criticisms I hear about the Bible is how it represents women. This is a fair and important criticism to attend to because the Bible has, throughout time, been wielded against women and marginalized communities. In this conversation, Faro shows us how much we’ve missed by reading and interpreting through patriarchal and archaic cultural lenses.

Reading in Community with Dennis Edwards

In our fourth episode we talked with Dennis Edwards. Edwards was a professor of mine in my doctoral program and I wanted to talk with him specifically about reading the Bible with community. The Bible cannot be read alone nor was it intended to be read in isolation. We are always reading the Bible from our tradition even—especially—when we don’t realize it. The way we translate words, the theological lens we apply, even the translations we use are all artifacts of tradition. That’s not bad, but it is important to recognize it because tradition shapes how we interpret and read. Edwards helps us identify the traditions we read from and teaches us to broaden our community to include voices from the margins.

Reading Apocalypse with Jeremy Duncan

And in our fifth episode we heard from Jeremy Duncan about how we read and interpret the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation and apocalyptic literature in the Bible can be very difficult to read and interpret because they are filled with strange, cryptic, and often violent images. These texts, especially in the American context, have been interpreted in wild ways and used to justify strange politics. Revelation felt like such an important book of the Bible to discuss because it’s kind of the perfect case study of everything else we discussed. Jeremy provides us with some important tools for reading the book of Revelation and through those tools shows us how it is not the violent anxiety-inducing book it is often presented as, but instead a hope-filled revelation of the sacrificial love of Christ.

There it is, our first five episodes intended to help us read and study the Bible well. I have another set of interviews we’ll be releasing soon. But, before we get to that, let me know what you thought about our first series. Were these episodes helpful? What did I miss? Are there other questions or conversations about the Bible you’d like me to have? Or what would you like to explore next?

Leave a comment to let me know.

Thanks for listening so far.

On the newest episode of Prodigal Pastor, I talk with my friend Jeremy Duncan (pastor at Commons Church in Canada and author of Upside Down Apocalypse) about the book of Revelation—especially how it has often been interpreted and wielded in American evangelical culture: rapture talk, Zionism, escapism, and the whole “Jesus came in grace but he’s coming back with a sword” vibe.

Jeremy offered a few “rules” that are immediately helpful:

• Read Revelation through the lens of Jesus (the Jesus we meet in the Gospels).

• Don’t stop mid-story—Revelation loves to flip the image at the last second.

• Violent imagery doesn’t equal violent intent.

• Read in cycles, not timelines (it’s thematic, not a step-by-step chart).

One example we walked through is Revelation 19: Jesus on a white horse, covered in blood, sword imagery everywhere. It’s the scene people use to justify a violent, vengeful Jesus. But Jeremy argues John is intentionally subverting the expectation. Jesus doesn’t show up after trampling enemies, blood splattered on his clothes. He shows up alreadybloodied—his own blood—carrying a “sword” from his mouth: his testimony. And then (this matters) the story keeps going: the gates of the New Jerusalem never shut, and even “the kings of the earth” still come in. The book refuses the neat revenge fantasy.

Maybe my favorite moment was when Jeremy said Revelation functions more like prophecy than apocalypse. Not “the future is fixed,” but “you can still change course.” It confronts despair—and it also confronts our temptation to use the tools of empire to get “good outcomes.”

Revelation, read well, doesn’t make us obsessed with the end.
It makes us faithful in the middle.

Check out my conversation with Jeremy and let me know what you think1

In this post, we’ll turn our attention to a theory. I had originally intended for this post to be about several theories but… I got carried away and wrote about just one. I’m not sure if we’re setting precedent here or if I just had a lot to say about this particular theory.

If I end up writing this much about each theory, we’ll be here for a while because there are a lot of atonement theories out there. I recently taught a class on atonement theories and covered 12. I don’t plan to cover all of them here because that would be a book and I charge for that kind of thing. My goal is to explore a diversity of theories because I think it can be a helpful way to see the breadth and width of atonement theology while also showcasing how contextual our theories are.

Historic vs. Contextual

We will start with a set of familiar theories. Sometimes these are referred to as the historic theories in contrast to “contextual” theories. This is a bad categorization because it presupposes that some theories are not “contextual” but as we’ll see, all atonement theology is shaped by time and place. We have a bad habit of thinking the familiar is normative and the unfamiliar cultural. I.e. my tradition is historical, theirs is cultural. When the truth is, all theology is contextual.

This isn’t meant to diminish any theory or approach. I genuinely believe that this is a good and beautiful thing and it’s why I like to showcase the history and diversity of theories. It helps see how theology can be a living tradition, a place where faith engages with culture in real time.

So, without further ado, let’s jump into our first theory.

Recapitulation Theory Overview (Irenaeus, 2nd c.)

One of our earliest known atonement theories is linked to the church father, Irenaeus of Lyons, from the 2^nd century. Irenaeus was a boss (do we still say that?) worth studying because his writing represents some of the earliest, post-apostolic, theological reflections that we have (St. Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp who was a disciple of the apostle John) and is a good window into the theology and thinking of the early church.

In Recapitulation theory, Irenaeus argued that in his birth, life, and death Jesus “renewed” the human story by becoming a “new Adam” and “new Israel” who succeeded where humanity (old Adam and old Israel) had failed. In his success, Jesus made a way for humanity to reenter a renewed story.

At the heart of Recapitulation theory is the idea that Christ “refreshes,” “redoes,” or “restarts” the human story by entering and living it. In the humanity of Christ, the story of humanity was “renewed” for all of us so that we, in Christ, can live renewed.

I think about it like this: In the Lord of the Rings (you had to know a LOTRs references was coming), humanity, as represented by Isildur, gave into the power of the One Ring. Failing to destroy the ring, humanity’s story goes awry. They become a scattered and defeated people. Humanity existed on the brink until a new heir arrived. Aragorn, Isildur’s heir, shows up and does what Isildur did not by refusing to give into the power of the ring. Because he succeeded where Isildur failed, he was worthy to take up the throne and restore humanity. Isildur’s (humanity’s) story is recapitulated in Aragorn, meaning it’s relived but this time in goodness.

Now, I need to make an important caveat at this point, “story” is my language/metaphor to help us understand this theory. Irenaeus’s language wasn’t story, but it was similar, he used the metaphor of “summing up” humanity. Which is where the word “recapitulation” comes from and would often speak in the language of history, growth, and restoration which is why I like “story” as a metaphor to capture the central idea here.

One final summary point. Recapitulation theory is unique amongst atonement theories in that it emphasizes our response as a living participation in the way of Christ. Many atonement theories stop at the accomplished work of Christ, but Recapitulation theory is not just about what Jesus did but about how his accomplishment makes way for us to join in his life. He refreshed the story so that we could take back our role as characters within the drama, so to say. In this way, Recapitulation Theory lends itself to formation and discipleship in beautiful ways.

Key Passages

There are verses all over the New Testament that speak to this theory, here are a few:

• Romans 5:12–21 “For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”

• 1 Corinthians 15:21–22, 45–49 “For as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”

• Hebrews 2:14–18 “Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things…”

• Ephesians 1:9-10, “he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will.”

The Problem to Be Solved

In our first post about the atonement I said we could very loosely categorize the problem an atonement theory is trying to solve as either objective or subjective. Recapitulation theory immediately disrupts that binary. In one sense, Recapitulation theory is objective because Jesus is “redoing” or “restarting” the human story on our behalf. However, Recapitulation theory is also subjective because it emphasizes our involvement in the story. This does not mean salvation begins with our inner experience or effort, but that what Christ has accomplished becomes real for us through lived participation. The better category for Recapitulation theory might be participatory. I like this word because it names the overlap of objective and subjective in this theory. In Jesus, God participates in our story so that we can participate in God’s.

Context

Recapitulation theory emerged amidst a heated theological debate with Gnosticism. To keep this brief, Gnosticism was a popular philosophy that had made its way into the Christian church. Gnosticism taught that the material world was a cage and that our physical existence—bodies, families, food, etc.—was something to be overcome, transcended, and eventually left behind. For Gnostics, enlightenment or salvation was about merging with the immaterial “other.” For some this looked like disembodied spiritual enlightenment for Gnostic Christians it looked like going to a spiritual heaven when you died and leaving material concerns behind (uh oh, sounds like Gnosticism hasn’t gone anywhere).

For Gnostic Christians, the purpose of Jesus’ death was to rescue them from the human condition. But through Recapitulation theory, Irenaeus argued that Jesus had come to heal the human condition. The goal was not escape but renewal.

Recapitulation theory pushed back on Gnosticism by emphasizing the embodied materiality of Christ. For Irenaeus and early Christians our bodies matter, the life we live on earth matters, childhood, and play, and rest, and green hills matter. That’s why Recapitulation theory emphasizes Christ’s entire life and our active participation in his life.

This may seem like a small or niche issue but the debate over materiality raged in the early church for hundreds of years. Irenaeus, his peers, and later students actively debated their counterparts about this issue until the 5^th century. These debates, largely, were the cause of the early church councils where theologians debated the nature of Jesus and thus, the nature of salvation.

Criticisms

Recapitulation Theory fell out of popularity as the questions of early Christianity changed. Questions about the humanity of Jesus were “settled” at the councils and were replaced with questions of politics, law, and guilt—in the 4^th century, Augustine of Hippo shifted the focus of atonement to the issue of guilt.

Recapitulation Theory didn’t simply disappear; it was, in a sense, absorbed into other atonement theories. Most theories articulate, in some way, that Jesus is a “new Adam” or a “new humanity.”

If we we’re to name key criticisms of this theory I think we could identify 2:

First, Recapitulation theory seems to downplay the actual event of the cross. The cross, according to some critics, seems like an accidental or unintentional event in the life of Christ—one that is not needed for Jesus to “renew” the story of humanity. I.e. the line of criticism goes, “why couldn’t Jesus just live perfectly to save us? Why did he need to die at all?” A response to this criticism would be, because the cross is Jesu's’ most perfect act. It is the moment love meets violence and overcomes it. It is the ultimate moment in which Jesus refuses the power of the ring, so to say.

Second, Recapitulation theory seems vague regarding issues like sin and justice. This is an important criticism to keep in mind. What does this theory say to issues of sin and justice? Does the cross mean anything about evil in the world? Is it a victory against violent empires or racism? Does it forgive debts etc.? Irenaeus would say, “yes!” But something important to note here is that Irenaeus primarily conceived of sin as something that corrupted our ability to participate in the story. Sin malformed us, alienated us from God and others, and wounded us. Atonement overcomes sin through Christ’s act of solidarity with us (restoring relationship) and through his renewing work that heals us and invites us to be reformed into a new story.

Why this Matters for Today

When I set out to write this post, I didn’t intend for it to be one long essay on Recapitulation theory. But the more I dove in the more I found myself taken by this theory. I’ve long been an Irenaeus stan (do we still say that?) and this theory showcases why. His work and writing are beautiful reminders that the good news of Jesus is participatory. In Christ, we are invited into a renewed story, a story we participate in writing with our lives. Hopefully that has come across in all these words.

In summary Recapitulation Theory is a beautiful theory of atonement, and it is worth studying. Here are a few reasons why I think it’s worth studying.

What would you add?

First, it is arguably our oldest known atonement theory and probably best represents the thinking of the early church. This is worth paying attention to as we compare later theories to each other. Like I mentioned earlier, Irenaeus was a student of Polycarp who was a disciple of the Apostle John and that’s just cool.

Second, this theory helps us see how contextual a theory of atonement can be. This theory was engaging with the questions of the 2^nd century world. This is true of all the theories we will study together. This isn’t a bad thing; it’s the beauty of a living theology that can engage with new questions.

Third, this theory is deeply rooted in a view of human development and formation. Meaning, Recapitulation Theory invites us to follow Jesus in a way that few other theories do. It calls us to live like Jesus as participants in the new story and to be formed more deeply into our new story.

Fourth, this theory takes physical matter, bodies, history, and human life seriously. I think it has a lot to offer us as we think about trauma, physical health, ability and disability, age and more. If nothing else, it reminds us that the lives we live and the story we tell now, matters.

Fifth, this theory takes the entire story of Jesus seriously and helps us place atonement within the broader story of the Jesus’ life.

Alright, that’s enough of that for now.

Let me know in the comments if you found this helpful, interesting, and if you want more deep dives into atonement theories and theology.

Peace.

I recorded a conversation with Dr. Dennis Edwards, New Testament professor, pastor, and a very formative voice in my own journey of learning to read Scripture.

I wanted to talk to Dr. Edwards about what it means to read Scripture in community. This is something we miss in western Evangelical spaces. But the Bible is a book written to community, from community, for community and can only be read and understand from within that context.

In this conversation, Dr. Edwards offered a vision of reading Scripture in community.

• With tradition: We’re not the first people to wrestle with the Bible. The church has been interpreting Scripture for centuries, and we need those voices—not as unquestionable authority, but as conversation partners.

• With present communities: Different social locations notice different details in the text. That doesn’t mean “anything goes.” It means we become better readers when we listen widely.

• With trained guides: Scholars and pastors can help with language, history, and context—not to control the Spirit, but to keep people safe and oriented, like a river guide or climbing guide.

• With attention to the margins: The Bible itself rises from the underside of power. To read it faithfully, we have to hear voices that our world (and sometimes our churches) push aside.

One line that stayed with me: the “might makes right” posture has baptized itself into parts of American Christianity—and it’s simply not the way Jesus operates. The gospel is cruciform. Kenotic. It’s power expressed through humility, love, and faithfulness.

If you’ve felt disoriented by the tradition you inherited, this conversation is a reminder: maybe your stream got too narrow. The wider tradition is full of living water.

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