ABSTRACT
This chapter serves two primary purposes. First, it addresses how the illustrative sacrificial explanation of atonement primarily addresses a narrow understanding of atonement concerned mostly with normative issues of sin. Nevertheless, we next detail the ways in which forgiveness – both human and divine – helps address the remaining obstacles to atonement, broadly construed, alongside other conceptual machinery within one’s theological tool kit – e.g., the Holy Spirit or retellings of the life of Christ such as those found in the Eucharist. Although it is not the goal of this chapter to fully, adequately address how union between God, Humanity, and its members is achieved, it at least gestures in some promising directions for achieving that goal.
