Barth on the atonement

Barth's extended discussion of "atonement" or "reconciliation" is all the more remarkable given the thoroughly liberal cast of his education. The central section in his Church Dogmatics IV.1 is entitled "The Judge Judged in Our Place". The entire section is imbued with the language of guilt, judgement and forgiveness. On the cross we see God exercising a rightful judgement on sinful humanity. The cross itself exposes human self-delusions: that human beings want to be their own judges.

For Barth, the cross of Christ represents the locus in which the righteous judge makes known his judgement of sinful humanity and simultaneously takes that judgement upon himself:

What took place is that the Son of God fulfilled the righteous judgement on us human beings by himself taking our place as a human being and in our place undergoing the judgement under which we had passed…Because God willed to execute his judgement on us in his Son, it all took place in his person, as his accusation and condemnation and destruction. He judged, and it was the judge who was judged, who allowed himself to be judged…Why did God become a human being? So that God as a human being might do and accomplish and achieve and complete all this for us wrongdoers, in order that in this way there might be brought about by him our reconciliation with him, and our conversion to him.

This is strongly substitutionary of course. God exercises his righteous judgement by exposing our sin, by taking it upon himself, and thus by neutralising its power.