It’s Passion Week: the perfect time to study atonement theories, eh? (As if I planned this; I did not.) Please take care of yourself as you read these texts. All of them deal with death and suffering in one way or another. I recommend taking breaks between reading each text, as you are able.

We have engaged with Anselm’s Satisfaction atonement theory earlier in the term, and we have seen glimpses of other atonement theories along the way as questions of salvation have emerged. But this week we will attend specifically to the question of, what of Jesus’ death was salvific?

We begin with a piece by Roberta Bondi which lays out some of the common atonement theories but through memoir. I read this in my theology class in grad school; it was the first time I had ever been introduced to theories beyond penal substitutionary atonement.

(Oh that typo in the title this week? In said theology class, the week we talked about atonement, a student accidentally referred to penal substitution as PENIAL substitution, or having to do with male genitalia. It’s about how all of us post-evangelicals felt about the atonement theory anyway–it was perfect.)

Then we turn to Andrew Sung Park’s foundational text on han. He discusses the heresy (“heresy”?) of patripassianism, the idea that God suffers. He reintroduces us to some “friends” from earlier this term, like Anselm.

Ruether’s chapter on “Suffering and Redemption” was another foundation text for me as I emerged out of evangelicalism. She offers a theology of the Cross that does not glorify suffering.

Walter Wink offers a non-violent theory of atonement.

Finally, un this short piece, Christiani imagines a “disability hermeneutics” of Revelation 5 (the image of Jesus as the slaughtered lamb).