How the meaning of the atonement shifts, with an evolving faith
I understood the atonement of Jesus Christ pretty well for many years. And I know a lot less now than I used to.
Have you ever seen the old seminary video called “The Mediator”? It’s an ancient artifact now, but on my mission I used to show it to people all the time on VHS. It features Elder Boyd K. Packer telling a parable that’s ultimately about the atonement of Jesus Christ. I must have seen it a thousand times.
And more and more, this video—and the way we normally talk about the atonement—doesn’t match up with the merciful, loving God I am coming to know in my life.
The atonement of Jesus Christ is clearly at the center of what we believe as Christians and Latter-day Saints. Elder Tad R. Callister called it “the most supernal, mind-expanding, passionate doctrine this world or universe will ever know.” Elder Neal A. Maxwell said it is “astonishing,” “marvelous,” and “remarkable.” President Russell M. Nelson called the atonement of Jesus Christ “the greatest single act of love of all recorded history.”
In general, I think that as Latter-day Saints, most of us would say we understand the atonement reasonably well. Jesus suffered in Gethsemane and died on the cross, and lived again so that we can, too. He paid the price for our sins, in a way that only a God could. These are things we first learn in primary, and that continue to gain meaning for us as we get older.
But there is more than one way to see and understand the atonement of Jesus Christ. There are a variety of theories of the atonement, that change how we view both this sacred act and the character of God. I won’t take the time or space here to detail out the most popular atonement theories; that kind of summary exists elsewhere (I find this one to be concise and helpful). But I’d like to highlight what other atonement theories have added to my understanding of its significance and the character of God.
Latter-day Saints generally favor “penal substitution” theory
First, let’s go back to “The Mediator.” I can still hear Elder Boyd K. Packer’s gravelly voice telling the story in that video. It starts with a young man who took on a big debt, certain he would be able to pay it back later.
But when the debt comes due, he can’t afford to pay it back. He asks for mercy, but the creditor points out that that wouldn’t be fair—forgiving the debt would leave the creditor unpaid. He is interested in justice. Fortunately, a third person steps in (a savior, if you will). He pays the debt in full, and asks the debtor to be in debt to him instead, with more compassionate terms.
The story is based on the discussion in Alma 42 about mercy and justice. You’re probably familiar; the idea is that mercy cannot rob justice, and that both must be carried out to their fullest extent. The only way for both mercy and justice to be done is for a third party to step in. Thanks to Jesus Christ, this is how the creditor (in our case, God) sees justice through, while the debtor (which is us) is treated mercifully and doesn’t receive the punishment that would be just.
This is the root of penal substitution theory—it’s about someone (a “substitute”) taking on someone else’s punishment (“penal” is from the same root as “penalty”). Its beauty is in its logical completeness. Every i gets dotted and every t gets crossed. This is the happy ending in “The Mediator”:
And so it was that the creditor was paid in full.
He had been justly dealt with.
No contract had been broken.
The debtor in turn had been extended mercy.
Both laws stood fulfilled.
There’s just one problem, though. And that is that I don’t recognize the God in this story.
This theory does not describe the God I’ve come to know
I’ve been raised on this particular way of understanding the atonement all my life. It has been immensely valuable to me. But as I get older, and my connection to divinity becomes more relational and less transactional, I’m not sure it describes the God I see. It doesn’t mean the perspective is wrong, but it may be incomplete.
For penal substitution theory to hold, two things must be true: 1) God must find value in doling out punishments, and 2) sin must always require punishment. I’m not sure about either of these.
Does God find value in doling out punishment?
In October 2001, President James E. Faust told a story in General Conference1 about a hungry little boy who got caught stealing another boy’s lunch at school. The class had decided that anyone caught breaking the rules would be beaten across the back ten times with their coat off.
When Little Jim, the boy who had been caught, took off his coat, the class saw his “bony little crippled body” and that he had no shirt. The teacher hesitated, but then when he was about to start the punishment, Big Tom—the boy whose lunch had been stolen—stepped in and volunteered to take the beating instead.
The end of the story is dramatic:
After five strokes across Tom’s back, the rod broke. The class was sobbing. ‘Little Jim had reached up and caught Tom with both arms around his neck. “Tom, I’m sorry that I stole your lunch, but I was awful hungry. Tom, I will love you till I die for taking my licking for me! Yes, I will love you forever!”’
It’s another analogy for the atonement, of course. Big Tom—the very one who was wronged—can take the licking because he’s strong, and Jesus Christ can take our pain and punishment because he’s strong. Little Jim ends up feeling greatly indebted to Tom, whose grace he did not deserve.
But the question lingers, for me: When Tom stepped in and forgave the thief of his lunch, couldn’t the teacher have just decided not to hit anybody? What did the teacher gain by whipping Big Tom?
We talk freely in the Church about our Heavenly Parents as a kind, loving Mother and Father. We talk about repentance and forgiveness, and about our sins being washed away through baptism and the atonement of Jesus Christ. If these characterizations hold true, I would expect a God that forgives. Instead, we hold to this idea of a God insisting on giving out punishment for every mistake that has been made.
I understand the argument. If God is perfect, then God embodies all virtuous attributes. Justice is one of those attributes, so it can’t be short-changed; and in the end it’s not God’s choice to punish us, it’s our choice to sin and bring a need for just retribution into the world. This is an anchor in Alma 42: if “the works of justice would be destroyed, [then] God would cease to be God.”
But as my faith journey has taken unexpected twists and turns (as well as challenges in being a parent, challenges with mental health, etc.), my personal experience is not with an austere God who sits in unrelenting, unbending judgment. I don’t feel like that’s who my prayers go to. My experience is with a God who has wrapped me up in arms of love time after time, when I didn’t have any other way to make sense of things. It’s a God that I see every morning when I go for a walk, in the sun coming up over the mountains, the geese that land in a farmer’s field, and in every child of God that I pass on that trail.
I don’t know, personally, a God of punishment. I know a God that is a much more tender parent than that.
Does sin always require punishment?
The second half of this is that for penal substitution theory to hold, sin must always require punishment. Alma is fairly clear on this point—“there [is] a punishment affixed”—and I think the mapping of sin → punishment is one many Latter-day Saints would affirm. It’s certainly what I learned growing up in the Church.
But just as my view of the nature of God has changed, my perspective of sin has shifted a lot in recent years. Maybe it’s the experience that I’ve gained as a parent of teenagers, or maybe it’s the greater sense of my own inadequacies.
I don’t see mistakes as transactions. You’ve done x wrong, so you need to receive y punishment. I don’t see the judgment, after this life, as being a Good Place-style counting up of your good actions and bad actions and seeing which side of the ledger wins. Instead, more and more I see mistakes as inevitable parts of growth, as we learn to become like our Heavenly Parents.2
Analogies for this are so familiar that they’re almost not worth mentioning. When a child is learning to walk, you don’t punish them for falling; you help them get back up. Sinning while we learn to be holy is like falling while we learn to walk; I think our Heavenly Parents are less interested in punishing us than they are in helping us up so we can try again.
As Latter-day Saints we’re especially equipped to see things this way. If we believe in eternal progression—the idea that we continue to learn and grow and increase after this life—then we certainly believe that progression starts right here, right now. In that case, death isn’t a time when it’s determined where you’ll live for eternity; rather, it’s a checkpoint in an eternal journey that we don’t fully understand in this life.
If this is the case, and if sins are opportunities to learn rather than bad grades on our report card, then there may be natural consequences to our actions, that feel like punishments—substance abuse can lead to addiction, infidelity can lead to broken marriages, and breaking the law can lead to literal imprisonment. But these are less about God delivering cosmic justice and more about natural things that occur because of our actions.
You might disagree with me on this. You might disagree with me deeply. And I’m okay with that. We have the scriptures, and we have words of living prophets, but we’re talking about a topic that I’m not sure we’re capable of understanding fully, in this life. If we hang our hat on the discussion of justice and mercy in Alma 42, for example, are we assuming that Alma the Younger (its author) knew everything about the atonement? Do we assume that he knew more or less than we do now? Can we know anything of these things?
But the scriptures say…
Alma 42 is full of hard-line, legalistic language; it talks without wavering about laws, punishments, and strict obedience. While Alma talks about mercy, he talks about it in a deeply transactional way, and leans much more heavily into justice—and how mercy can’t stop the freight train that is eternal justice. Why is that? Why would Alma use this kind of language?
Well, if you’re looking for an explanation for legalistic language, don’t forget that he had been the chief judge. He was also talking in this chapter to his son, Corianton—the one who had “[gone] after the harlot Isabel” and done damage to their missionary effort. It shouldn’t be any surprise that a former judge, trying to keep his rebellious son in line, described the gospel in stark terms and highlighted obedience and punishment. When you take a step back, that’s very much in character for Alma.
We have to accept that Alma 42 is situational, and heavily impacted by its context—just like everything else ever said or written about the atonement of Jesus Christ. Just like what you’re reading right now, which is rife with my own cultural biases and context. Eugene England reminds us that no matter how pure a gospel truth seems, it is filtered through our human understanding first; it is “merely the closest approximation that inspired but limited mortals can receive.” It’s simply not possible to discuss the gospel—or any topic—absent of our own biases, and that’s as true of scriptural authors as it is of us.
So, how do we know who’s right? How do we know which version of the atonement is correct?
Atonement theories aren’t in competition with each other
The natural instinct is to try to land on which one is right. We love all the One True Things. Is Alma’s legalistic, no-BS version correct? What about a version that emphasizes God’s unconditional love and mercy? Is the concept of debt one that we should hang onto, or should we think more about the atonement’s transformational power?
The good news is that we don’t have to pick one. I’m not sure the atonement of Jesus Christ, the greatest act of love ever done, can be wrapped up in a few sentences. When we try to describe something infinite, we make it finite. Our human understanding just can’t get there. As St. Augustine said, “If you have understood, then what you have understood is not God.” (Sermon 117.5)
We tend to describe the atonement one way, as Latter-day Saints, and that’s largely as a payment of debt. But there’s also the idea, called moral influence theory, that the dramatic expression of love in the atonement changes us—not our ledger with God. Or there’s another, called Christus Victor, which suggests that Jesus Christ defeated death and sin, rather than paying a price for them. These both speak to me a bit, because they lean into my personal belief in a loving God (instead of a judicial God). My understanding of the atonement has grown more by exploring additional perspectives than by doubling down on the one I grew up with.
Which is, of course, the one in “The Mediator.”
That video was important to me at one point, and it helped me develop an understanding of the atonement of Jesus Christ when I was a young missionary and didn’t understand much of the gospel at all (or, at least, a lot less than I thought I did). There’s nothing wrong with it—it gives one perspective on the atonement. It’s just not the one that’s feeding me right now, as my faith evolves.
A while back I sat in a Sunday School lesson where someone commented, “I’m eternally grateful that we have the full picture.” I’m not sure we have the full picture. We probably won’t understand the depth and implications of the atonement in this life, and I’m pretty sure we actually can’t. But we can lean into the things we do know.
For me, that’s knowing that there’s a God who wraps me up in Their arms, and reminds me that things are going to be okay.
Found here, but it’s originally from President Gordon B. Hinckley: “Pres. Hinckley: Christmas a Result of Redeeming Christ,” Church News, 10 Dec. 1994, 4.
The nature of sin is probably the topic of its own essay. Many Christian thinkers do not view sin as a discrete action in violation of a law given by God, the way we commonly do in LDS circles—but rather as an orientation or posture toward God.
Richard Rohr describes sin not as actions, but as a disease: “How helpful it is to see sin… as a destructive disease instead of merely something that is culpable, punishable or ‘makes God unhappy.’ If sin indeed makes God unhappy, it is because God desires nothing more than our happiness, and the willing healing of our disease.”
Paul Tillich uses plain, clear words to communicate something similar: “Sin does not mean an immoral act… ‘sin’ should never be used in the plural, and not our sins, but rather our sin is the great, all-pervading problem of our life.”