In Chapter 3 of “Christology and Science”, Leron Shults works with the interdisciplinary study of theology (specifically atonement theories) and the study of social structures. Our theories about atonement answer the deepest concerns of abandonment and isolation and reflect on how particular cultures understood reconciliation of individuals with their larger communities. The particular rules for atonement have closely followed the social structures surrounding each theologian. Anslem lived in a world of Knights and castles, where honor provided a kind of social glue and the codes of chivalry were the key to maintaining a well-ordered society. Teutonic law required that serfs obey their lords on whose land they were allowed to live. Those who dishonored their lords by breaking a law had to provide a satisfaction to the injured party or be punished accordingly. Anslem formed an atonement theory to fit that world. Calvin’s penal substitution model of atonement continued this line of thinking but wrapped it in a 16th century Genevan jurisprudence. Late modern Christianity has again wrapped this theory in a more familiar metaphor of a modern court of law.

However well we master social rules, however many goods we acquire, our deep longing for loving and just relations with others never seems to be satiated. We are still haunted by the fear of being banished from or suffocated by the social structures of our communities, and so we live in this ambiguous tension that is moral desiring.
…
The doctrine of atonement is about a way in which divine justice is manifested in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in such a way that we are now invited to participate within the reign of divine peace precisely by sharing in the loving agency of God that overcomes sin and death. p. 65

Atonement theories developed long before modern science questioned Plato’s theories about substance and form. There is no uniquely human “stuff” out of which we are formed. There is no “human” atomic element. Before we learned this, our early Christian theologians had deeply embedded platonic dualism into the theories of atonement. Most agreed that the human “stuff” had been corrupted at the fall of Adam and Eve, and through Christ, the very substance of humanity had been healed. Some drew from Aristotle’s understanding of the perfect human form and through Christ this form (a definition or meta-human) was corrected. Either way, theologians have mostly accepted these out dated metaphysics and the focus of atonement has primarily been shifted to debates about who receives this atonement and exactly what we can do (or not do) in order to be atoned.

All of these theories hang on the mistakes of substance dualism and a literal interpretation of “The Fall”. Those theories focus squarely on the categories of “us and them” and miss the core of what it means to follow Christ as a means toward reconciliation. The irony is hard to miss. The doctrine of at-one-ment lost focus on reconciliation and union. It became to mean the violent exclusion (and in some theories the endless torture) of the other. Even worse is it’s fixation on individual salvation that results from our modern western individualism. We’ve lost the core message of atonement as reconciliation with community.

The question here is not whether there are (or should be) differentiations but whether a harsh separation between us and them ought to be the driving force behind the Christian doctrine of the atonement. Must soteriology be rooted in a basic negation of the other? Must we define (our) salvation in a way that requires (their) damnation? Is violent exclusion the only way for God’s justice to be manifested? p. 87

Postmodern conversations about atonement tend to have less emphasis on picking a “correct” metaphor to describe atonement, but rather on celebrating the variety of symbolic stories that convey our need for reconciliation. It seems to me that atonement theories have taken so many different forms because there are so many different reasons for separation. Treating all broken relationships with a single metaphorical story of hope would be like treating all illness with a single medicine. We need more than one parable.