Participatory accounts of atonement, which are once more being
discussed in biblical and theological literatures, emphasize the unity of
Christ’s work in a way that includes the Incarnation. Whereas satisfaction and
penal substitutionary accounts normally distinguish the Incarnation as the
condition of atonement, so that it is the death of Christ on the cross that
actually does the atoning, participatory accounts usually maintain that both incarnation
and atonement are two phases of one divine work. This sort of approach goes
back to the Greek Fathers, such as Athanasius and Irenaeus. It presumes that
the goal of Atonement is reconciliation and union with God in theosis or divinization,
and the mechanism to this end is the Incarnation, life, ministry, death, and resurrection
of Christ. In one version of this view Christ is said to recapitulate and heal
each phase of human life, before dealing with the curse of sin on the cross,
where he defeats sin, death, and the devil. In the Greek Fathers, there is also
the idea that Christ enters the state of death and destroys it from the inside
out, so to speak, thereby paving the way for human redemption. Some
contemporary participatory accounts of atonement borrow some of these patristic
ideas and aspects of others, later views of atonement in a kind of mashup
account that has various different aspects. But fundamental to all participatory
accounts is the idea that atonement brings about reconciliation with Godself so
that human beings may participate in the divine life in theosis. How that comes
about is a matter about which there is some difference of opinion. (Oliver
Crisp, “Christology and the Atonement,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Christology, ed. Timothy J. Pawl and Michael L. Peterson [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2025], 225-26)
