“…There is moreoever, a tendency for statements of the doctrine [of the atonement] in general to degenerate into rhetoric… Does it really concern us that Christ won on the cross a cosmic battle against the demonic, when we have the demons in our own times to overcome and do not necessarily see the connection between that battle and ours? …Does it, similarly, help us to be told that Christ bore the sins of the world on the cross, if we still have our own sins to bear? The crucial link that must be made is between the past historic event and life in the present, and mere statements of a past victory or sacrifice do not enable us to make it.”

Colin Gunton in The Sacrifice and the sacrifices