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It is hardly possible not to suspect the truth of this doctrine of atonement, when we consider that the general maxims to which it may be reduced, are nowhere laid down, or asserted, in the Scriptures, but others quite contrary to them.
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Part II : Opinions Relating to the Doctrine of Atonement, § I : That Christ did not die to make satisfaction for the sins of men.

 

Joseph Priestley

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As I conceive this doctrine to be a gross misrepresentation of the character and moral government of God, and to affect many other articles in the scheme of Christianity, greatly disfiguring and depraving it; I shall show, in a fuller manner than I mean to do with respect to any other corruption of Christianity, that it has no countenance whatever in reason, or the Scriptures; and, therefore, that the whole doctrine of atonement, with every modification of it, has been a departure from the primitive and genuine doctrine of Christianity.

 

Joseph Priestley

 

The God of Peace, the God of Truth will shortly seal this truth, and confirm this witness, and make it evident to the whole world, that the doctrine of persecution for cause of conscience, is most evidently and lamentably contrary to the doctrine of Christ Jesus the Prince of Peace.
Amen.

 

Roger Williams

 

I do not disbelieve that in some mysterious transcendental sense, as involved in the system of the entire universe, with so vast an arc that no faculty of man can apprehend its curve, that in some such sense the Catholic doctrine of the atonement may be true. But a doctrine out of which, with our reason, our feeling, our logic, I at least can gather any practical instruction for mankind — any deeper appreciation of the attributes of God, any deeper love for Him, any stimulant towards our own obedience — such a doctrine I cannot find it. I bury what I am to think of it in the deepest corner of my own heart, where myself I fear to look.

 

James Anthony Froude

 

I suppose there has been no subtler attack upon the Christian faith devised by its enemies in these last hundred years than the attack made in the name of "comparative religion". If you pick up a book on "Atonement", and plough your way through ideas of atonement among primitive tribes, pagan ideas of atonement, Jewish ideas of atonement, Christian ideas of atonement, you will find by the end of it that atonement, for the author's mind, has ceased to have any meaning. And he has been successful, in so far as he has managed to infect your mind with the wooliness which is the leading characteristic of his own. Comparative religion is an admirable recipe for making people comparatively religious.

 

Ronald Knox

 

Whenever our Lord speaks of the object of his mission and death, as he often does, it is either in a more general way, as for the salvation of the world, to do the will of God, to fulfil the scripture prophecies … or more particularly, to give the fullest proof of his mission by his resurrection from the dead, and an assurance of a similar resurrection of all his followers. He also compares his being raised upon the cross to the elevation of the serpent in the wilderness, and to seed buried in the ground, as necessary to its future increase. But all these representations are quite foreign to anything in the doctrine of atonement.

 

Joseph Priestley