Atonement (novel) Atonement (novel) Atonement is a 2001 British metafiction novel written by Ian McEwan concerning the understanding of and responding to the need for personal atonement. Set in three time periods, 1935 England, Second World War England and France, and present-day England, it covers an upper-class girl's half-innocent mistake that ruins lives, her adulthood in the shadow of that mistake, and a reflection on the nature of writing. Widely regarded as one of McEwan's best works, it was shortlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize for fiction. In 2010, "TIME" magazine named "Atonement" in its list of the 100 greatest English-language novels
Substitutionary atonement technical use of the term "substitution" in discussion about atonement when it is used in "the sense that [Jesus, through his death,] did for us that which we can never do for ourselves". There are a number of differing theories that come under the umbrella term "substitutionary atonement". The four best known are the Early Church Fathers' ransom theory; Gustaf Aulen's version of the ransom theory, called Christus Victor; Anselm of Canterbury's satisfaction theory; and the Reformed period's penal substitution theory. Care should be taken when one reads the language of substitution in, for example, patristic literature, not to assume