I spoke just now of the religion I was taught in my boyhood, some forty years ago. As that religion seems to be still very popular I will try to express it as briefly as I can.
Adam was the first man, and the father of the human race. He was created by God, in the likeness of God: that is to say, he was made "perfect."
But, being tempted of the Devil, Adam sinned: he fell. God was so angry with Adam for his sin that He condemned him and all his descendants for five thousand years to a Hell of everlasting fire.
After consigning all the generations of men for five thousand years to horrible torment in Hell, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, down on earth to die, and to go Hell for three days, as an atonement for the sin of Adam.
After Christ rose from the dead all who believed on Him and were baptised would go to Heaven. All who did not believe on Him, or were not baptised, would go to Hell, and burn for ever in a lake of fire.
That is what we were taught in our youth; and that is what millions of Christians believe to-day. That is the old religion of the Fall, of "Inherited Sin," of "Universal Damnation," and of atonement by the blood of Christ.
There is a new religion now, which shuts out Adam and Eve, and the serpent, and the hell of fire, but retains the "Fall," the "Sin against God," and the "Atonement by Christ."
But in the new Atonement, as I understand, or try to understand it, Christ is said to be God Himself, come down to win back to Himself Man, who had estranged himself from God, or else God (as Christ) died to save Man, not from Hell, but from Sin.
All these theories, old and new, seem to me impossible.
I will deal first, in a short way, with the new theories of the Atonement.