The Atonement and the Sacrifice of Christ
As taught in the Christadelphian tradition
Christ's sacrifice as a representative offering in the mortal nature he shared.
The doctrine of the atonement lies at the centre of how any Christian tradition explains what the death of Jesus accomplished and how it touches the human condition. For the Christadelphian community, founded in the nineteenth century around the writings of John Thomas, the atonement is inseparable from two prior convictions: a particular reading of human nature after Adam, and a particular reading of the nature Christ himself bore. Christadelphians hold that Jesus shared the same mortal, fallen, dying nature as the rest of Adam's descendants, and that his sacrifice was therefore the offering of a true representative of the human race rather than the transfer of punishment from the guilty to an innocent and unrelated victim.
By the end of this lesson
- Explain how Christadelphians link their doctrine of the atonement to a particular reading of Adamic human nature and of the mortal nature Christ shared.
- Summarise the tradition's claim that the cross was the 'condemnation of sin in the flesh' through the offering of a true representative of Adam's race rather than a penal substitute.
- Trace the exegetical case Christadelphians make from Romans 8:3, Hebrews 2:14-17, Romans 6:9-10, and Hebrews 9:11-14, including the two senses they give to the word 'sin'.
- Identify how the BASF and John Thomas's Elpis Israel frame the atonement within a unitarian theology that denies the Trinity and the pre-existence of Christ.
- State fairly where the Christadelphian view differs from penal-substitutionary and Trinitarian atonement theology without resolving the disagreement.
Scripture
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