Christ’s Atonement:

The word atonement, from the verb ‘to atone’, means to reconcile, or to make “at one.”  Christ’s Atonement, therefore, is the Satisfaction of Christ whereby God and the world are reconciled and made to be at one. “For God indeed was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).   Christ’s Atonement was necessary due to our state of bondage to sin.  Man can not make this satisfaction for himself because the debt is far greater than he can pay.  Moreover, all the service that man can offer to God is already due to God solely because of God’s nature. Even a completely innocent man could not pay the ransom because then the sinner would be under obligation to his deliverer, and he would thus become the servant of a mere creature. The only way in which the satisfaction could be made, and men could be set free from sin, was by the coming of a Redeemer who is both God and man. His death makes full satisfaction to the Divine Justice because it is both eternal and something greater than all the sins of all mankind.

Reformed Conception of Atonement:

The Reformed conception of the Atonement takes the form of penal substitution and imputation.  That is that in Christ’s Passion and death, God the Father poured out all of His wrath for the sins of the elect on His Son.  Christ, then, bore the punishment of the Father’s wrath that the elect deserved for their sins.  In other words, God the Father imputed, or ‘transferred’,  the guilt of all sins (past, present, and future) onto His Son.  In doing so, God the Father punished Christ for all the sins of the elect with Christ acting as a penal substitution. Because the sins of the elect are now paid for, (through Christ’s having already been punished for them) and Christ’s sacrifice is sufficient for all believers, then the elect can never be punished for any sin that they might ever commit, because every sin they commit has already been punished.  

However, due to the fact that not everyone is saved, the logical conclusion of this position is that Christ did not die for everyone, but rather He died only for the elect, who were predestined by God to be saved.  Otherwise, if Christ’s sacrifice is completely sufficient for the forgiveness of sins and Christ died for everyone, it would mean God intended universal salvation -that no one would be condemned to hell- because all the sins of all people have already been punished, and therefore cannot be punished again.  The only other viable option would be that the saving act of Christ’s sacrifice is only applied to those who profess faith.  This, however, implies that we “earn” our way to heaven by having faith, but faith is only a result of God’s grace.  This means that God limits His grace only to those He predestined.

This Calvinist teaching that Christ only died for the elect, -referred to as “limited atonement”  -denies the fact that God wills everyone to be saved.  The idea that God willed that some would go to Heaven, but also willed that some would go to Hell is known as “double predestination.”  Calvin emphasized this by saying;

“By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestined to life or to death.”  –The Institutes of the Christian Religion, bk. 3, ch. 21, para. 5).

For John Calvin predestination meant that God positively willed that some go to heaven and some go to hell. Before each man is ever born, God has already decreed and ordained the eternal torment of those chosen for damnation. As John Calvin said:

“Those, therefore, whom God passes by he reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines to his children.” -The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ch. 23, para. 1.

Problems with the Reformed Concept:

The Reformed concept of atonement is problematic for multiple reasons.  

1. It denies true justice and implicates God the Father in the greatest injustice of all time.  By pouring out the punishment for all sin on an innocent man and then acquitting the guilty, God would be acting against His very nature, which is good and just.
2. It would also mean that God was divided against Himself; The Father could only pour out wrath on His own Word if the Son were another being.  This would create either polytheism or Arianism.
3. If God was only punishing Christ’s human nature, then it results in Nestorianism, i.e. that Christ was two persons, one divine and the other human.  These concepts all conflict with the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.
4. Double predestination and limited atonement are also problematic in that they deny any consequences of free will on behalf of the sinner.  The sinner is damned before even being born and there is nothing they can do about it. God then, who is supposed to be all good, is ultimately responsible for those who go to hell -rather than the sinners themselves.
5. Penal substitution also completely misunderstands “sacrifice of atonement”.  In the Old Testament, when the Jews made sacrifices of atonement, they didn’t only bring animals, but also fruit and crops.  The idea was not that God could “pour out punishment” and satisfy His wrath on a poor animal.  The idea was to offer something of value in order to show your greater love of God; similar to sacrificing your time to spend with a loved one.  As King David said “I refuse to offer a sacrifice that costs me nothing” (2 Sam 24:24).
6. Imputation is a theological construct that misconstrues the context of select Biblical verses.  Nowhere in Scripture does it state that our sins were imputed to Christ and that He was punished by God for them.
7. These concepts also clearly contradict Sacred Scripture, which states that God wishes all to be saved and Christ’s Atonement was sufficient that all be saved;

I John 2:1-2; “My little children, I am writing this to you so that you may not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.”  

John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”  

I Tim. 2:3-6: This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.”  

II Peter 3:9: The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

Catholic Conception of Atonement:

The Catholic conception of Christ’s Passion and Atonement is that Christ offered Himself up in self-sacrificial love to the Father, obedient even unto death, for the sins of all men.  Christ’s sacrifice was thus in imitation of the Old Testament sacrifices of atonement, but instead of offering some-thing of value, Christ offered Himself in loving obedience. In other words, at Christ’s Passion and death, it was not God who wished for punishment and crucifixion, but rather it was us who persecuted Christ.  Christ freely chose to allow us to do this to Him, modeling for us an act of true love by laying down His life for another, saying “forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).  Christ made satisfaction for our sins by using His human will to offer to God a sacrifice of love that was more pleasing to the Father than the displeasure of the combined sins of all men of all time. The Passion was not an act of the Father pouring out His wrath on His Son, but rather, the Passion was Christ’s greatest act of love -an act of self-sacrifice in loving obedience to the Father. Christ offered His entire life in obedience to the Father, preaching true love is the laying down of one’s life for another and then acting as an example for us by dying a martyr’s death of self sacrifice (1 Peter 2:21). Because of this act of love and obedience, God was pleased with His Son and greatly exulted Him (Phil 2:9).  Thus, Christ merited for us the grace we needed for our salvation; something we could not have merited on our own. 

In other words, while Christ’s Atonement culminated in His death on the cross, it actually entailed His entire life, dedicated to love, servitude and obedience to the Father, something we are called to imitate by picking up our own cross and following Him.  The Atonement began with the Incarnation when the Eternal Word took the nature of man.  Being both God and man, Christ became the Mediator between God and men.  Many of the early Church Fathers saw the Divine Incarnation as the foundation of Christ’s Redemptive work because, through the union of the Eternal Word with the nature of man, all of mankind was lifted up and “deified” so to speak.  Christ continued His Redemptive work through a lifetime of teaching and sacrifice in order to show us what love of the Father and holiness entails.  He provided a shining example of obedience, even obedience unto death.  Christ took our sin and willingly bore its consequence, which is death. Death is a curse because it is not natural, but Christ took the likeness of sinful man and subjected Himself to death for our sake.  He bore our iniquities not in the sense that God punished Him for what we did, but in the sense that He suffered the consequences of sin by entering into solidarity with us and suffering with us.

Because Christ’s Atonement was sufficient for all of mankind, the gift of saving grace is made available to all people, but it won’t have the same effect in every person.  It is our cooperation with that grace that transforms us and enables us to have faith, do good works, and offer self-sacrificial love even to our enemies, imitating Christ (1 Peter 2:21).  Those who accept God’s offer of salvation and remain in his friendship make God’s grace efficacious. God makes salvation available to all, even if all do not choose to receive it.  Those who refuse His grace do not do so because God wills them to Hell or because Christ did not die for them or did not win sufficient grace for them on the cross.  It is because of the choice made of their own free will to reject God’s grace and choose a life of sin over Him that their salvation is forfeit. God, who is omnipotent (all-powerful) and omniscient (all-knowing), knows from all eternity who will accept his gift of salvation and who will reject it.  God’s knowing how we will choose, however, does not entail his willfully predetermining how we will choose.  Rather, to God, everything is present.  Because He is outside of time, which He created, He doesn’t have to wait for history to unfold as we do to find out what is going to happen.  It is because of God’s omnipotence that His Providence over all of creation does not interfere with our free will.  As the Catechism puts it:

“To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination”, he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace” (CCC 600).

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