Defining Christianity

"The Christian faith is a specific form of dependence on God, and to cavil [raise trivial and frivolous objection] at the atonement is to begin the process of gradually abandoning that sense of dependence. It is to refuse to allow it to be conditioned by Christ at the central and vital point, the point at which the sinner is reconciled to God; and if we can do without Christ there, we can do without Him altogether. The process which begins with denying that we owe to Him and to His death the forgiveness of sin, ends by denying that He has any proper place in the gospel at all. It is neither from His own lips, nor from the lips of any of the apostles, that we so learn Christ."

Denny, James. The Death of Christ. Cumbria: Paternoster, 1997. p. 40