An exploration of Hugo Grotius theory of atonement and its relevance to churches of Igbomina East Baptst Association, Kwara Baptist Conference

Abstract

The benevolent act of God has been exposed to man from time immemorial, but the inability of man to acknowledge God’s love and the relationship created a vacuum between God and humanity, resulting in pain and grief for man on earth. In the reality of this existential problem, man began to seek for freedom from crisis and solution from the shackle of sin and this could only be by atonement. Atonement is the voluntary substitutionary, sacrificial death of the divine-human Messiah and is therefore required as an imperative way of restoring the lost relationship between God and man. However, a good number of authors have identified and discussed various theories of atonement, such as ransom theory, scapegoat theory, satisfaction theory, and penal substitution theory. This study thus presented and argued that Hugo Grotius’s theory of atonement is the most suitable method of presenting the love and righteousness of God to memebers of churches of Igbomina East Baptist Association. The choice of the study of the study includes the researcher’s participation in the Doctrine of God seminars, the challenge of misconstrued ideas of Hugo-Grotius’s disposition on the extent of salvation, and the current dichotomization in the local church on whether salvation is for a particular group of people or everyone. The specific objectives of the study as discussed in work are: the historical overview of atonement and its biblical data, the relevance of Hugo-Grotius theory to contemporary time, the conceptual clarification of atonement and church, and the supremacy of Christ’s atoning work over the African perspective. The work employs an analytical and empirical design method, questionnaire was used as its instrument for data collection, and Chi-Square statistical analysis was used for the formulated hypotheses. The survey was conducted in nineteen churches in Igbomina East Baptist Association, Kwara Baptist Conference and covered five local governments’ area of Kwara. Among 200 adminstered qustionnaires spread across the association, 190 were retrieved. The research found out that the supremacy ofChrist’s atoning work is essential to the Christian faith, with 96.3% strongly agreeing, the respondents declared that the church is a divine creation and 98% ticked true. Similarly, 95% affirmed that salvation is unlimited, while 94% ticked true on some perception about church and atonement. The highest percentage of affirmation, 100% reflected the essence of government theory as it revealed the effectual power of Christ’s death in the holiness of God. The research thus recommended that gospel ministers should disseminate the message of the cross effectively to all and sundry, the church should embark on consistent teaching on the doctrine of salvation in the reality of the existential human problem of sin and emphasize the place of personal experiential knowledge of the saving grace of Christ. The church should recognize and acknowledge the African knowledge of God as a basis for the presentation of the gospel to the Africans in a contextualized manner. The research also recommended that individual Christians should make judicious use of his or her God-given power to govern and to also live in freedom efficiently.