Is the Doctrine of the Atonement a Mistake?

Abstract

Abstract One can wish to honour a thinker because one agrees with his work or because one disagrees with it but nevertheless sees it as important and therefore as needing to be discussed. My own motivation in contributing to the present volume in honour of Richard Swinburne is the latter. He is a major figure in the philosophy of religion today, exercising his powerfully logical mind with immense energy, and is now producing in a series of volumes what will amount to a new summa of Christian dogma. My own view is that this new summa, produced at the end of the twentieth century, is a vast anachronism, representing the thought-forms out of which Christianity is developing rather than the kind of new thinking that is needed as we approach the twenty-first century. But Swinburne’s growing summa is nevertheless a very considerable intellectual achievement, and those who see this as misapplied should present reasons for so thinking. The present chapter attempts to do this on one particular topic.