repeating words like redemption, sacrifice, reconciliation and indeed atonement itself, we hear them (as many readers have pointed out) as basically saying the same thing, reducing their specific content to the status of metaphors or models which can be explored or even played off against one another—distant and somewhat vague gestures to a single but fuzzy reality. Actually, it’s worse than that. The analogy doesn’t go far enough. In the case of Western atonement theology, we are more in the position