Ballou Treatise on Atonement

This is a very long work written as a sort of personal manifesto that ended up being used as a jumping off point for Universalism.  To me, it is one of the most important works in our faith, even though it has moments when, even in the newer translations, I lose track of it.  In this particular work, I am thankful for more modern translations/editions.

The gist here is that that there is nothing to atone for – or that atonement comes from God – God is the one that needs to get right with humanity, if anyone does.   A kind and loving God, one kind enough to create us would not put us in a state of persistent punishment.

Ballou relies heavily on scripture and appears to be an expert at it. He is clearly railing against the top-down religion and thinks his version of Christianity is valuable to the reader.  He very much seems to be trying to convert or convince the reader to make religious changes.  I’m assuming that he would assume that these ground-up changes would have implications on the church.

The whole book seems to be covered in “yea, but’s”.  He’s constantly going back to then-current thought to correct it, so I’m supposing that he was anticipating the arguments against him [or that he’d already heard them by the time he wrote this].

Sometimes when I read this, I get the feeling that he was freeing his soul. He was working out his thoughts – honing his argument maybe.  I often get the feeling that this is very private, that he may have been “writing to himself” and then later maybe decided to  publish it.