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The mystery of atonement and Swinburne's reparation theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2015

ALEXANDER HYUN
ALEXANDER HYUN*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA
*
e-mail: abhyun@wisc.edu
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Abstract

Traditional Christianity holds that Jesus Christ somehow helps to bring about our salvation. A ‘theory of atonement’ is a theory about how he does this. One influential and elegant theory of atonement is Richard Swinburne's reparation theory. In this article, I contend that this theory fails to satisfy an important condition of adequacy on theories of atonement that has been overlooked in the literature. I first argue that in order to be plausible, a theory of atonement must not imply that failure to believe in the correct theory of atonement greatly hinders one from being benefited by Christ's salvific work. I then argue that reparation theory does have this problematic implication.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 53 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 133 - 141
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

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