For What does Christ Die?: Jonathan Edwards on Divine Justice and Atonement—S. Mark Hamilton. Introduction. Jonathan Edwards’ doctrine of atonement has been the source of some recent and focused interest in the literature. Until recently, the majority of his interpreters had characterized Edwards’ doctrine as on the one hand, “Anselmian” by which is generally understood that Edwards subscribed to the doctrine of the absolute necessity of the atonement rather than what we might think of as full-orbed satisfaction model.