"There IS no theory of atonement "

Andrew Perriman:

The very fact that this controversy is so often approached as a debate about ‘theories’ of atonement has the effect of confining us to a rationalizing, modernist mentality that will inevitably miss the point. There is no theory of atonement – there are no theories of atonement – in the New Testament. What we have is a story about how the people of God found a means of escape from the historical impasse into which they were being driven by their persistent state of revolt against YHWH..

..What we cannot do is discard the narrative-historical setting as though it were merely the husk around some essential theory of atonement. Indeed the opposite is true: the narrative is at the heart of the matter, the theology is merely interpretation.

Evangelicalism will not settle the debate over the atonement, in my view, until it grasps the fact that not only is it the product of the narrative, it remains subject to the narrative. As long as it insists in dealing with abstractions, it remains a sub-biblical movement.

-link ,Andrew Perriman: