The mystery of atonement and Swinburne's reparation theory

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.