The Atonement Doctrine and Its Problems

The Christian doctrine of atonement holds that humanity is in a state of original sin inherited from Adam, that this sin creates a debt to divine justice that human beings cannot pay by their own merits, and that Allah sent his Son to take on human nature and to suffer and die on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice that pays this debt on humanity's behalf. Salvation, on this account, consists in accepting by faith what Christ has done on one's behalf. Ibn Taymiyyah subjects this doctrine to both rational and scriptural critique, arguing that it is inconsistent with divine justice as understood in the Quran and the Torah, that it creates more theological problems than it solves, and that it misrepresents the message of Jesus himself.

The rational critique focuses on the concept of substitutionary punishment. If Ali sins, it is not just to punish Khalid in Ali's place, even if Khalid volunteers for the punishment. Divine justice, as the Quran repeatedly and emphatically states, is personal and individual: 'No bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another' (6:164, 17:15, 35:18, 39:7, 53:38). This principle, which Ibn Taymiyyah finds affirmed throughout the prophetic scriptures, is precisely what the atonement doctrine seems to deny. The idea that a perfectly innocent person, even a divine-human person, can bear the punishment for another's sins without the consent and repentance of the sinner contradicts the fundamental correlation between action and accountability that runs through the entire Abrahamic prophetic tradition.

Ibn Taymiyyah also notes a tension within the atonement doctrine itself. If Christ's suffering fully paid the debt of human sin, what is the role of human repentance, moral reform, and the Last Judgment? Christian theology has developed complex answers to this question, distinguishing between justification and sanctification, or between imputed righteousness and actual righteousness. But these distinctions, Ibn Taymiyyah argues, reflect attempts to rescue a fundamentally flawed model rather than coherent implications of a sound principle. The simpler and more consistent account of human accountability, one that runs through the Torah, the Psalms, the teachings of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, and the Quran alike, is that Allah forgives those who repent sincerely and reform their conduct, and holds accountable those who persist in wrongdoing, without requiring the suffering of an innocent intermediary.

On the scriptural side, Ibn Taymiyyah points out that the theology of atonement as fully developed in Christianity owes much more to the letters of Paul than to the teachings of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels. Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels teaches repentance, prayer, mercy, and following the commandments. His frequent references to forgiveness of sins do not presuppose an atonement framework but are entirely consistent with the standard Old Testament model of repentance and divine mercy. The Pauline innovation of a cosmic transaction of sin and redemption represents a theological development that goes well beyond what Jesus is recorded as teaching, and that owes something to Paul's Hellenistic intellectual environment as well as to his personal religious experience. Ibn Taymiyyah's argument is that Christianity, in its developed form, is as much the religion of Paul as the religion of Jesus, and that these two strands of early Christianity are not entirely continuous.