Gregory the Great's Moralia in Job has been said to mark a transitional phase in the development of atonement doctrine. I argue that the Moralia cohesively portrays Christ's redemptive work as achieving something in two directions: towards God, a vicarious payment of humanity's debt of punishment; towards humanity, an efficaciously convicting and restorative example. This sustains a spirituality in which exacting and self-denying moral effort rests on freedom from judgement and on the death accomplished by the Mediator. Engaging the Moralia in this manner illuminates patristic exegetical sensibilities and proves instructive about how the fathers fit into later taxonomies of atonement models.

Examining intercession and anamnesis in the Anglican Eucharist first, a theology of the world in which its brokenness as embraced by the compassion of Christ, is seen to undergird intercession, whereby a ‘natural’ link is found with the anamnesis. Turning to the historical background of relationship between these two topics – in the Early Church, noted are two particular forms as recorded by Justin Martyr and Cyril of Jerusalem; in the English Reformation, it is seen that intercession was maintained as a part of the canon (and therefore had some connection with the anamnesis), and then, the modern period displays a departure in Anglican provinces from the Reformation order with only a loose principle, or none, maintained in its position between Word and Sacrament. The retrieval of Christ overcoming the powers of evil in his redemptive work, as recorded in Hippolytus’ liturgical form, has made its way into the modern liturgy, providing implications for the connection between anamnesis and intercession. The liturgiology of the Orthodox Church strengthens the theme. Present concerns regarding the Anglican practice of Eucharistic intercession are raised and improvements are suggested. It is concluded that, theologically, intercession and anamnesis hold an intimate connection in the Eucharist.

Repentance is central to the message of Christianity. Yet, repentance has received little analysis in recent scholarship despite being emphasized by the church fathers. In particular, there has been minimal effort to understand the necessity of repentance in light of Christ’s atoning work. With this as the background, I explore fundamental questions such as repentance’s definition, scope, and role in salvation history. Furthermore, I attempt to more precisely outline repentance’s role in Christ’s salvific work. Underpinning the project is my view that repentance should be understood as metanoia or transformation. This transformation of repentance is ordered toward divine metanoia – participation in Christ. In developing repentance, I put forward a synthesis of Thomas Aquinas’s framework of penance and John McLeod Campbell’s account of Christ’s vicarious repentance. Through this synthesis, I attempt to make sense of the relationship between repentance and atonement. I finish by suggesting that it would be appropriate to conclude that Thomas would endorse a vicarious repentance account of the atonement and hint at how it might fit into broader soteriologies.

The phrase blood of Christ has traditionally been interpreted as and used interchangeably with Christ's sacrificial death. As such, Jesus’ death is seen to be more crucial to salvation than his incarnation and resurrection. The blood of Christ language in the New Testament books of Hebrews and Romans echoes Old Testament cultic atonement language. Given recent and ample exegetical biblical scholarship that suggests blood of Christ language might refer to Christ's incarnational, resurrected life, we should explore the resulting soteriological implications. What salvific significance is there to the cross if Jesus Christ entered the Most Holy Place with his lifeblood flowing in his veins as David Moffitt asserts? I propose that the cross reveals God's legal and moral authority to forgive sin without minimising the law.

In analytic theology, corporate and/or communal accounts of moral responsibility are gaining recognition as a useful resource in numerous debates. One of the areas to which they have been applied is the atonement. It is thought that when Christ is atoning for the human community, one evades concerns about justice because it seems permissible for a member of a group to suffer punishment for the group's actions even if they are not morally responsible for these themselves. To establish the moral responsibility of the human community, one can either adopt group agency or utilize a non-agential form of group moral responsibility. I shall explore the latter option here and shall outline the understanding of communal sin undergirding the model.

Thomas Aquinas's vision of atonement is generally considered more conceptually expansive than Anselm of Canterbury's. Where Aquinas's multipartite account of Christ's passion incorporates a variety of biblical motifs, Anselm appears to narrow the focus to satisfactory debt-repayment alone. This article proposes two approaches for reframing the comparison between the two accounts. I argue first that both Anselm and Aquinas considered debt-repayment necessary but not sufficient in itself to accomplish all that is needed for the remittance of sin and the restoration of humanity. For Anselm, as for Aquinas, Christ must also liberate captives, defeat the devil, amend Adam's sin by recapitulation and win merit in which his members participate. The first reframing thus locates Anselm in much closer proximity to Aquinas than has generally been supposed. The second reframing throws light on a significant divergence between the two. I argue that the kenotic trajectory of abasement and ascent, pictured in the Philippian hymn, is put to strikingly different use by each theologian. This second reframing throws into sharp relief Aquinas's emphasis on Christ's suffering as a theological priority which Anselm does not share. Looking to Anselm's Benedictine context, I contend, yields one possible means of accounting for this departure.

Doctrines of the atonement have tended either to elevate the status of one biblical metaphor or to gather together various metaphors into a unified concept or chorus of equal metaphors. The purpose of this article is to shed light on how the biblical metaphors function, using by way of reference the contrasting interpretations of Charles Hodge and Joel Green, who tend towards opposing theories of language based on naïve realism and idealism respectively. Drawing on the work of Colin Gunton, I recommend a mediating approach based on a critical realist theory of language which aims to steer a middle course between rationalism and relativism. Such an approach, which values the epistemic and revelatory potential of metaphors, is facilitated by a more integrative theological method with respect to scripture, reason, tradition and experience.

The burden of this essay is to show that Friedrich Schleiermacher's theology of the atonement and account of Christ's soteriological work as priest is marked by recognisably Reformed commitments and logics that both build from and critique John Calvin and later Reformed scholastics. The essay contends that it is when Schleiermacher departs strongly from orthodox conclusions regarding substitutionary atonement that he mostly clearly appeals to key aspects of Reformed theology. Put differently, when Schleiermacher critiques the material content of Reformed orthodoxy, he does so by drawing on other doctrinal claims that are fundamental in Reformed thought: the divine decree, union with Christ, the import of sanctification and the interconnection between dogmatic expression and Christian piety. Schleiermacher presents creative solutions to theological conundrums, particularly those that plague Calvin and the later Reformed tradition about the relationship between God's eternal decree of grace and the appeasement of divine wrath on the cross.

As a devotional part of the eucharistic liturgy, the Agnus Dei also carries a missional aspect. Exegeting the verse Jn 1.29 (‘Behold the Lamb of God…’) two major theories of the atonement are seen to be involved and are applicable to the meaning of the Agnus Dei. These two theories of the atonement (ransom and substitutionary) in their relationship to each other are noted, and a primary emphasis on the ransom theory and its background of the Passover is argued for. The Passover Lamb focus is seen as liberative and missional. This leads to seeing the Agnus Dei in its referring to the redeeming death of Christ (‘Lamb of God’) as appropriately accompanied by the fraction of the bread. The history of the Agnus Dei and its Eastern Orthodox roots are brought to bear, as are our modern Anglican liturgical forms.