“Death creates an economy that makes life precious. One of the ways of naming that preciousness is friendship.”
Stanley Hauerwas

‘Atonement’ as Justice in Western Law and Christian Thought

Cassandra Sharp


This year Ian McKewan’s best-selling 2002 novel Atonement was adapted for film starring Kiera Knightly and James McAvoy. The cinematic treatment confrontingly brings to life the story of Briony Tallis and her destructive role in the life of her older sister Cecilia and her lover, Robbie Turner. As both the storyteller and a major character in the narrative, Briony expresses deep remorse about her ruinous acts as a 13-year-old girl and says that her novel, to which she gave an ending very different from the reality, is her ‘atonement’. In this story, Briony, seeks atonement through fiction⎯by reuniting the two lovers whose lives had been wrenched apart⎯ in an imagined happy ending.

Atonement is of course central to a Christian understanding of the world with the claim that God achieves it, not through fiction, but through the reality of Jesus’ death. The film highlights the fact that the concept remains hard-wired into the human psyche regardless of religious belief. This article seeks to explore how the biblical concept of atonement may be detected within formal Western understandings of justice, and more specifically, theories of punishment.

What is atonement?

In Biblical terms the concept of atonement refers to the process by which humanity is returned to the status of being ‘at one’ with God after sin has compromised the relationship. As God cannot ignore sin, the question becomes: once the wrong has been committed, how can atonement be made?
  It is through retribution that God brings about restoration and enables atonement
  
 

The Christian understanding of the atonement is that God seeks restoration with his people and has achieved this through retributive actions. The Bible claims that the consequences of sin is death (Rom 6:23) – this means that God, as the lawmaker, requires that the wrongdoing or sin be dealt with via punitive measures. This claim is supported by both the Old and New Testaments. In Old Testament Mosaic law, God himself instituted the sacrificial system (and in particular the Day of Atonement) as a means by which wrongdoers could atone for their sins via animal sacrifices. In this case the innocent animal ‘took on’ the sins of the perpetrator. In the New Testament, the suffering and death of Jesus Christ is portrayed as fulfilment of the Day of Atonement ritual. At the heart of this portrayal is the presentation of Christ as the sinless substitutionary saviour, who in his death atones for the sins of all.

It is through retribution that God brings about restoration and enables atonement. Interestingly, these twin aspects of the doctrine of atonement are two major justifications for our criminal penal system.

Theories of punishment - Retribution and Restoration

In our criminal justice system, the question of guilt is paramount, together with the infliction of punishment upon the person found guilty of having transgressed the law. The two dominant reasons given for criminal punishment are retribution and restoration. Retributive theory says that the purpose of punishment is to give the offender what he/she deserves. This is a retrospective justification that links justice with desert, whereby offenders deserve to be punished in a way that is proportionate to the crime.

Perceived to be in opposition to retribution as a grand theory for punishment is restorative justice. Because crime is seen as a harm to the social fabric which requires repair, restorative justice works to effect that repair by bringing together all the relevant parties (victim, offender, wider community) and giving them a role to play in the process of restoration. The emphasis is on reconciliation and quite obviously requires the repentance of the offender, and the willingness to forgive on the part of the victim.

Rather than viewing these two theories as opposites, it can be argued that just as with atonement theory, they should be held together, in tension. As a society we feel the need for justice, and will demand this justice for lawbreaking through punitive measures, but this does not preclude the involvement of restorative practices within punitive measures.

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