Christ’s Atonement is at the center of our theology in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I want to argue here that understanding Christ’s Atonement as an embodied Atonement has profound implications for the relationship between Christianity and philosophy. As a philosopher myself, I propose that understanding Christ’s Atonement as an embodied Atonement can help us identify some of the limitations of philosophy when it comes to matters of faith – limitations which were embedded from the very beginning of the philosophical tradition with Socrates and Plato.
I want to begin by quoting a set of scriptures: the first is from the gospel of John, chapter 3:16: ‘For God so loved the world, that He gave His Only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.’
Now, John chapter 1:19: ‘Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world.’
Now, Isaiah 53:5-7, 9: ‘But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed … He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth … he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.’
And finally, Alma, chapter 34:8-10: ‘Behold, I say unto you that I do know that Christ shall come among the children of men, to take upon him the transgressions of his people, and that he shall atone for the sins of the world; for the Lord God hath spoken it. For it is expedient that an atonement should be made; for according to the great plan of the Eternal God, there must be an atonement made, or else all mankind must unavoidably perish; yea, all are hardened; yea, all are fallen and are lost, and must perish except it be through the atonement which it is expedient should be made. For it is expedient that there should be a great and last sacrifice; yea, not a sacrifice of man, neither of beast, neither of any manner of fowl; for it shall not be a human sacrifice; but it must be an infinite and eternal sacrifice.’
Here in these scriptures, with the notion of ‘what does it mean to make an atonement’ as a backdrop, we have the themes of ‘the world’, of ‘sin’, of ‘sacrifice’, of Jesus as the ‘Lamb of God’ and the ‘suffering servant’, of the ‘infinite and eternal’ vs. the ‘finite and the temporal’; we also have the notion of ‘death’, and finally, the notion of God’s love.
Now, the philosopher in me has already made a retreat. This list of concepts is too long, and in any case, where would I even start? As a philosopher, I assume my added value in thinking about Christ’s Atonement would be to approach this topic in a philosophical way; but as I have thought about philosophical approaches to Christ’s Atonement, I have come face to face with some long-standing anxieties I have about what philosophy can and cannot do when it comes to matters of faith. And I consider Christ’s Atonement to be, ultimately, a matter of faith.
Now, this article is not the place to hash out the relationship between philosophy and theology. However, I wonder if, as a philosopher, I can locate in the beginning stages of my discipline a sort of orientation that might end up acting as a limiting factor in the way that philosophers can approach the Christian concept of ‘Atonement’. I am thinking specifically of the figure of Socrates, and the way in which he approached philosophical inquiry. I want to argue here that there are two key concepts in Socratic inquiry which point to its difference from Christian thought – namely, Socrates’s notion of love, and his notion of the body. I will argue, too, that these notions of love and the body are closely tied to Socrates’s notion of death, and play an important role in his understanding of his own death, which was a defining moment in the history of philosophy.
Now, since the notions of love and death are also key concepts in Christ’s atonement, I propose that comparing Socratic love and death with Christ’s love and death will prove fruitful in helping us to philosophically approach this challenge of thinking through ‘what it means to make atonement.’ Specifically, I will argue that Socrates’ love leads to a flight from the body, as well as a flight from this world. By contrast, Jesus’ love leads Him to lay down His body, and save this world. I will argue that this contrast is important to the notion of Christ’s Atonement, in the sense that Christ’s act to save this world is an act of mediation and reconciliation between this world and the Heavenly world, the finite and the infinite, the imperfect and the perfect.
I want to start out by making some general statements about the attitudes that we see in Socrates and Jesus about their respective deaths. One of the clearest pictures we get of Socrates’s notion of death is in that trilogy of Platonic dialogues, the Apology, the Crito, and the Phaedo. In the Apology, we get Socrates’s reasoning as to why he accepts the punishment of death from the Athenian state – also referred to as the Athenian polis. He refuses to stop practicing philosophy in the polis, because this would be to violate the commands of ‘the god’, or the divine spirit that Socrates feels has given him a divine mandate to go around philosophizing with his fellow citizens. [1] This is a task which Socrates sees as the best service which he could provide to the city, as practicing philosophy with his fellow citizens is to improve the state of their souls. Since the choice given to him by the Athenian state is to stop practicing philosophy or die, Socrates willingly chooses death. [2]
In the Crito, we learn that Socrates has no regrets over the morality of this decision, and indeed, that he values the moral condition of his soul far more than anything the Athenian state could do to his body. [3]
In the Phaedo, Socrates’s friends come to visit him the night before he dies. Thus, this becomes an occasion for Socrates to philosophize about death. We learn in the Phaedo that Socrates defines death as the separation of the soul from the body. [4] And we learn that not only is Socrates not afraid to die, but he welcomes death. [5] In the act of death, Socrates’s soul will finally be free from his body, which drags down his soul and prevents it from gaining knowledge. It is here that Socrates gives us that strange but famous phrase, that ‘to practice philosophy is to practice for dying and death’, [6] signaling a strong notion of dualism between body and soul that, I suggest, has haunted philosophy ever since. For Socrates, philosophical inquiry is best done without the body, and Socrates looks forward to shedding the body with his death. Since the body drags the soul down, we can assume that without the body, the soul will be able to ascend – specifically, to ever higher notions of knowledge. [7]
When it comes to the way Jesus approached His death, we can see that there is an analogous situation regarding the way that Socrates’ and Jesus’ deaths come about: both are put to death as the result of an grossly unfair juridical trial, that was brought about through intense political and social pressure, due to the moral and spiritual threat that each was perceived to be. Furthermore, as David Dusenbury notes in his work I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus, neither Socrates nor Jesus had to die in the way that they did; they each passively accepted – or did nothing to stop – the events that led to their respective deaths. [8]
However, there are disanalogies as well. As we just noted, Socrates seems to cheerfully welcome death; but we do not see a similar cheerfulness in Jesus with regard to His death. [9] On the contrary, Jesus expresses deep anxiety over His death. He begs His Father to ‘let this cup pass from me’; but also expresses resolve to do His Father’s will, which Jesus understands as the divine command that He must give up His life for the sins of the world. [10]
But it’s not just that Jesus understands he must give up His life; it’s that he also understands that with His death, he has to somehow overcome death. The Christian explanation here is that Jesus overcame death by descending below all things, and that Jesus had to descend below all things in order to conquer all things. The Apostle Paul tells us that all things must be put under Christ – that Christ shall put down all rule, and all authority, and all power … until he has put all enemies under his feet. And then, very powerfully, Paul tells us: ‘the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death’. [11]
So, whereas Socrates sees his death as a freeing of his soul, a shedding of what makes him weak, and an ascent of his soul, Jesus seems to see his death as a lowering, as a descending, and as an act of utmost vulnerability.
Furthermore, there is, of course, no talk in Socrates of ever re-uniting with his body; but for Jesus, he announces that if someone were to destroy ‘this temple’ – meaning His body – he would raise it again in three days. [12] And during his ministry, he tells his disciples that he will lay down his life in order to take it up again. [13] Thus, we see that the sharp dualism between mind and body that pervades Socrates’s perception of his death does not seem to carry over into Jesus’ perception of His death.
With that first comparison in place regarding the notion of death and the body, I now want to look at their respective notions of love. Regarding Socrates’ notion of love, a good place to look is in Plato’s Republic, Book V. Here, Socrates tells us that the way we can tell if someone is a philosopher is by examining what they love. Simply put, a philosopher is someone who loves the truth, or what he calls the ‘sight of truth’. [14] Socrates goes on to explain that truth is akin to knowledge, and that knowledge is the epistemological state associated with things that share a certain ontological status – the status of ‘being’, or ‘what is’. [15] Of course, the text here is referring to Plato’s theory of the Forms - the purely intelligible, non-physical, eternal concepts of ‘what a thing is', which reside in a transcendental realm. As intelligible concepts, they can only be accessed rationally, and never physically. The philosopher loves the Forms and continually pursues them, pushing his soul upward toward these concepts which are associated not only with Truth and knowledge, but also with Beauty and Goodness.
For Socrates, the philosopher is contrasted with what he calls the ‘sight lover’, or ‘the lover of sights and sounds’. [16] These sight lovers are those who are in love with their senses - or more specifically, the kind of information that comes in through their senses. In that way, their focus is on the body, rather than on the rational mind. And, as it is with the rational mind that we access the Forms; it is, by contrast, with the body that we interact with the particular – an enmattered and imperfect manifestation of the Form. Because the particular is enmattered – or, in other words, embodied – it is therefore subject to change, and thus has a different ontological status to the Forms: that of ‘becoming’, rather than ‘being’. Thus, Socrates argues that the particular is in a ‘constant state of flux’ – it is both ‘what-is-and-what-is-not’; [17] that is, it can appear to be one thing in one context, and appear to be its opposite in another context. [18]
In this way, the particular is also associated with a different epistemological state. To understand the Form is to have objective knowledge; but any understanding one gains of the particular can only be classified as ‘opinion’ [19] – a partial and subjective view of a thing which can only speak from experience with the imperfect, fluctuating particular, not the perfect, unchanging Form.
Now, as a reminder, what I want to stress here in this discussion of Forms and particulars is the Socratic notion of love. The Greek word here is eros, which, of course, is the Greek word for romantic love. The sight lover ‘loves’ the particular – this is what he desires. [20] He has no interest in the Forms, to the point where he will even deny the existence of the Forms. In this way, his love for the particular blinds him to the truth. This person, Socrates says, cannot be a philosopher. For the philosopher, his love – his eros – is directed toward the Forms, the toward the ‘things that are’. [21] That is, his love is directed toward the truly beautiful, the truly just, and the truly good. It is a love which desires, and chases, what is perfect.
Thus, I suggest that in Socratic philosophical inquiry, we as philosophers are tasked with loving the perfect. We are tasked with making the ascent to see the true, the good, the beautiful, and the perfect. In this tradition, loving the imperfect does not make sense. And we are also left wondering how to make sense of our embodiment, since our bodies do not seem to be useful in loving this ‘disembodied perfection’.
I want to pivot now to discussing Jesus’ notion of love; but before I do that, I want to pick up on this strong dualism in Socrates’ thought, that we are seeing again here in his notion of love. I said earlier that a Socratic dualism does not seem to carry over into Jesus’ perception of His death, but this is not to deny that Jesus, of course, also speaks of the distinction between the body and the soul. For instance, in Matthew 10:28 Jesus says ‘And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul ….’; in Luke 12:4, the same idea reads: ‘Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.’ Dusenbury comments on these verses as pointing toward a dualism not only of the body and the soul, but of dual authorities, or kingdoms: ‘There is authority over the body and tangible, fungible things – the life of the body; and there is authority over human life itself – the soul, which gives life to the body. Jesus seems to be a legislator of the life of the soul, and his sayings in Luke 12 seem to call his hearers to a kingdom of the soul and a future body.’ [22] Thus, according to Dusenbury, Jesus makes a distinction between His kingdom, which concerns itself with souls, and the kingdoms of the earth, which concern themselves with the body, in the sense that political power is, ultimately, about coercive power over the body. Importantly, during His mortal mission, Jesus refused to take on and exercise this kind of coercive, juridical power which has to do with the control of the body – a refusal we see foreshadowed in the temptation of Jesus in Matthew chapter 4.
Despite these insights, however, I want to argue here that we do not have a Socratic ‘flight from the body’ in what we might call the philosophical theology of Jesus. And we see this precisely in the act of Jesus’ Atonement. For, Jesus’s Atonement is what we could call an embodied Atonement. One evidence for this is in how each of the gospel writers try to get their audience to perceive Jesus’ Atonement. For each of them, in their own ways, portrays Jesus as the ‘suffering servant’ that we see described in Isaiah. The innocent Lamb of God physically suffers in agony as He sweats ‘as it were drops of blood’, [23] as He is scourged, as He is given a crown of thorns, as His body is stripped and exposed, as He carries His cross, as He is crucified, as a sword is thrust in His side. The detailed description of Christ’s Passion by each of the gospels points to the sacrifice of His physical body, making clear that what Jesus meant by ‘laying down His life for His friends’ was giving Himself up physically. We could also note that this was accomplished by making Himself subject to the kingdoms of the earth, politically.
And yet, all is not lost – indeed, it is very much the opposite. For, ‘with His stripes we are healed’. As He ‘pours out His soul unto death’, He numbers Himself with the transgressors – that is, He is numbered with us. Note how these scriptures, which describe Jesus’ interaction with physical suffering and physical death, also bring us as mortal, physical beings into the picture. And here is where we can return to our earlier question of Jesus’ notion of love. For Jesus’ notion of love – the driving force of His embodied Atonement - is a love which reaches out and brings us to Him.
Where Socrates’ notion of love is eros, Jesus’ notion of love is agape, translated as God’s love, or divine love, or Christlike love, or charity. As we have seen, the philosopher’s eros aspires to ascend to the realm of the transcendent. But Jesus’ agape seems to operate in the realm of the immanent: ‘For God so loved ‘the world’ – meaning, this world, which is not the transcendent world. For God so loved this world of particular, individuated, and embodied children of God. Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the particular, individuated, embodied children of God.
Again, as we have seen, the philosopher’s eros loves the perfect – the world of Forms where no one ever does ‘injustice to one another nor suffer[s] it’. [24] But the realm of the immanent is our imperfect world - full of imperfect, particular, embodied persons – who do both suffer injustice, and cause it. Whereas Socrates says that the philosopher does not want to come back down into this immanent realm once he makes the ascent, it is clear that Jesus’ agape absolutely makes the descent and operates in this realm. Agape loves the imperfect, not just the perfect. And because agape loves the imperfect, it can also redeem the imperfect, and thereby enable the ascent of the imperfect to the perfect. Thus, agape is both immanent and transcendent – it both reaches out, and it lifts up.
I want to speak here to the connection I have just posited between loving the imperfect and redeeming the imperfect. Clearly not all acts of ‘loving the imperfect’ are redemptive love. This would especially be true in the case of someone like the sight-lover, who loves indiscriminately and cannot distinguish between what is truly good – which would be the proper object of his love - and what merely appears to be good. And in any case, the sight-lover would not even recognize the need for redemption, since he denies the existence of a standard by which a thing could be judged in the first place. No, agape as a redemptive love of the imperfect has to be something else; it would have to be a love which maintained the distinction between the imperfect and the perfect, between the finite and the infinite, while at the same time mediating the distance between them. This seems to me to be precisely what Christ’s Atonement is all about.
Furthermore, this mediation is an enabling mediation – that is, it makes something possible which was not possible before. And what it makes possible is precisely the ascent of the imperfect to the perfect. In that sense, Jesus’ agape as redemptive love is a descending love which loves first, enabling a transformational ascension within the imperfect one who is loved. In other words, agape is the love which transforms what is loved, so the focus is on the child of God as loved.
By contrast, for Socratic eros, the focus is on the philosopher as the lover. There is no previous act of being loved which ignites the philosopher’s love. The philosopher qua philosopher does not experience the act of being loved. The philosopher loves the Forms, but the Forms do not love him first – or ever. Thus, eros for the philosopher is a focus on the philosopher’s activity, or on what the philosopher can do; whereas Christian agape for the child of God is first passive – that is, it is first received, before it can be active in the recipient. As 1 John 4:19 states: ‘We love Him (meaning Jesus), because He first loved us’.
And it is here on this point that I think we see a profound difference between the philosophical approach and what we could call the approach of faith. I just suggested that the focus in Socratic eros is on the philosopher’s activity, or on what the philosopher can do. Perhaps another way of saying this is to say that the focus is on what the philosopher can do for himself. Kierkegaard, in his work Philosophical Fragments, noticed this feature of human self-sufficiency in the Socratic approach. Kierkegaard points to the idea that Socrates considered himself an ‘intellectual midwife’ – that is, through his philosophical questioning of others, Socrates saw his role as helping others discover the truth. But, Kierkegaard notes, Socrates also believed that gaining knowledge was actually a process of recollecting what one already knew. At the same time, Socrates insists that he is only a midwife. Thus, he cannot give life to anyone; he can only be present as one gives birth themselves – in this case, an intellectual birth to a state of knowledge. Because passing from a state of ignorance to a state of truth is a kind of re-birth, Kierkegaard notes that this re-birth in Socratic midwifery is one in which the philosopher gives ‘birth to himself.’ [25] In this way, Kierkegaard argues, when the philosopher is re-born, he owes nothing to any human being for this re-birth. [26]
By contrast, in Christian agape, the focus is on what is done for us by Jesus. I have argued that agape as a redemptive love is an enabling love – specifically, a love which enables a transformational ascension within the imperfect one who is loved. But this transformational ascension is nothing other than the Christian re-birth – the new life in Christ which the disciple receives as they accept Christ’s atoning, mediating sacrifice for them, personally and individually. In this way, Christ is the One who gives life to us, spiritually begetting us as His sons and daughters. Thus, Kierkegaard notes, in the faith approach, we owe everything to Christ. [27]
I have just pointed to this fundamental distinction between the philosophical approach and the approach of faith, in that philosophy has embedded in it a kind of self-sufficiency regarding the ascent to a state of truth. This self-sufficiency is incompatible with the approach of Christian faith, which asserts that we need Christ’s redemptive love to enable us to make that ascension to a state of truth, from our current state of imperfection to a state of perfection.
I admit that I have been quite hard on Socrates here, so in closing I do want to acknowledge that we owe Socrates a great deal for getting us to think philosophically about truth vs. falsehood, reality vs. appearances, the temporal and the eternal, the imperfect vs. the perfect. Yet, for Socrates, the hyper-focus on the perfect leads to a flight from the body, as well as a flight from this world. Indeed, Kierkegaard notes that when the philosopher gives birth to himself, he forgets ‘everything else in the world’. As Kierkegaard puts it, the philosopher ‘because of himself, forgot the whole world’. [28] This rings true to me.
By contrast, Jesus’ in His agape does not forget the world, but instead makes His atoning sacrifice in which He descends to save the world. To continue with Kierkegaard on this point, when we are re-born in Christ, we owe Christ everything. But with this re-birth, the disciple of Christ does not forget the world; rather because of Christ, ‘[the disciple] must forget himself’. [29]
Furthermore, this agape does not lead to a flight from the body, but rather to Christ’s laying down of, and then a return to, the body – now immortal and glorified. That Jesus takes up His body again as part of His Atonement is a beautiful incarnation of the concept that Christianity is not an abandonment of this embodied world, but a mediating act which saves it into a transformed, renewed and perfect state.
NOTES:
[1] Plato, Apology, in Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, trans. Grube, G. M. A (Indianapolis, 1984), lines 30a6-b4. [Back to manuscript].
[2] Apology, lines 39a1-b7. [Back to manuscript].
[3] See Plato, Crito, in Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, lines 46b1-48b1. [Back to manuscript].
[4] Plato, Phaedo, Plato, Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo, lines 64c4. [Back to manuscript].
[5] See Phaedo, lines 63e7-64a4. [Back to manuscript].
[6] Phaedo, lines 64a4. [Back to manuscript].
[7] See Phaedo, lines 65a1-d1. [Back to manuscript].
[8] Dusenbury, D. L., I Judge No One: A Political Life of Jesus (Oxford, 2023), pp. 60-61. [Back to manuscript].
[9] For a discussion on this point, see Dusenbury, pp. 43-50. [Back to manuscript].
[10] See Matt 26:38-39. [Back to manuscript].
[11] 1 Corinthians 15:26. [Back to manuscript].
[12] John 2:19-22. [Back to manuscript].
[13] John 10:17-18. [Back to manuscript].
[14] Plato, Republic, in Plato, Complete Works, ed. Cooper, J. M. (Indianapolis, 1997), lines 475e3. [Back to manuscript].
[15] Republic, lines 477a7. [Back to manuscript].
[16] Republic, lines 476b2-3. [Back to manuscript].
[17] Republic, lines 478d3-5. [Back to manuscript].
[18] Republic, lines 476d1-5. [Back to manuscript].
[19] Republic, lines 476d7. [Back to manuscript].
[20] Republic, lines 480a1-3. [Back to manuscript].
[21] Republic, lines 500b6. [Back to manuscript].
[22] Dusenbury, p. 104. [Back to manuscript].
[23] Luke 22:44. [Back to manuscript].
[24] Republic, lines 500c1. [Back to manuscript].
[25] Kierkegaard, Soren, Philosophical Fragments, in Kierkegaard’s Writings, VII, Volume 7: Philosophical Fragments, or a Fragment of Philosophy/Johannes Climacus or De Omnibus Dubitandum Est, eds. Hong, H. V. and Hong, E. (Princeton, 1985) p. 19.
[Back to manuscript].
[26] Kierkegaard, p. 19. [Back to manuscript].
[27] Ibid., p. 19. [Back to manuscript].
[28] Ibid., p. 19. [Back to manuscript].
[29] Ibid., p. 19. [Back to manuscript].
Full Citation for this Article: Hamilton-Bleakley, Holly (2026) "What does it mean to make an Atonement? Christ’s passion, Socratic defense, and embodied suffering.," SquareTwo, Vol. 19 No. 1 (Spring 2026), http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleBleakleyAtonement.html, accessed <give access date>.
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