Throughout the first two episodes of Alpha Course, we watched its creators do everything except provide tangible evidence that could spark belief in their claims. The third video is no different. This time around, we watch Christians do everything except explain in concrete terms why Jesus just had to die. It’s like they’re trying to convince themselves of their own talking points.
Today, we’ll cover this video’s broader points, such as they are, and go over the various explanations Christians have invented over the centuries to explain the central idea of their entire religion. Because yes, the explanation has changed several times since someone first invented Christianity—and it’s obvious that most Christians don’t know about any of those changes.
(Series tag for Answering Alpha. This post and its audio ‘cast first went live on Patreon on 7/8/2025. They’re both available now!)
Overview of Alpha Course #3: Why Did Jesus Die?
On the Alpha Course’s official YouTube channel, you can find its Alpha Film Series. This is an evangelism-focused series that seeks to convert curious viewers by explaining the basics of Christianity. Here’s the third video in the series, “Why Did Jesus Die”:
This episode whisks viewers through the usual merry-go-round of evangelical-focused apologetic arguments that utterly fail to answer its own question.
While the video’s production values are good, it relies on emotional manipulation to try to convert viewers. That’s a perfectly valid approach within Christianity, wherein evangelism rarely consists of anything more than emotional manipulation attempts. It may also work on non-Christians who feel adrift or lonely or guilty for reasons they can barely understand.
But for most people, it will look like exactly what it is: baldfaced manipulation. That perception will likely prove to be a dealbreaker for younger adults these days, since they tend to spot that approach more easily than earlier ones did.
Today, we’ll check this video out, see where it makes mistakes, and analyze its claims.
We begin with an extremely Alpha Course mistake
First of all, we get the usual B-roll footage of cars driving and young adults giving garbled opinions about Jesus’ death. Then, Gemma and Toby return. Still in Jerusalem, they tell us (at 1:30) that Jesus’ crucifixion is “kind of like the logo of Christianity.”
Obligatory: No, it sure the hell isn’t.
To early Christians, the cross wasn’t anything to love or use for adornment. Instead, those wanting to ridicule Christians used it. Early symbol suggestions from Clement of Alexandria (about 150CE – 215CE) included fish, doves, ships “scudding before the wind,” and the like. They also used the Greek letters XP (Chi [X] and Rho [ρ]), which are the first two letters of how they spelled “Christ.”
In a way, it’s so indicative of the Alpha Course that its presenters immediately make this particular massive mistake. The Christianity they promote is very much a modern take on a centuries-old theme—and a variation utterly divorced from its own history.
Attempts were made, I guess..?
Here, we’ll look at the various non-answers Alpha Course offers to their own question, “Why did Jesus die?”
1:50: Toby says it’s because Jesus loves you.
2:15: Nicky says through a toothy grin that it’s because humans are Yahweh’s “masterpiece.” (Also, he advances a childish Appeal to Creativity, invoking humanity’s creativity as evidence of Yahweh’s existence. Creativity could be any deity’s calling-card—though it’s more likely the product of evolution’s many twists and lopsided deals.)
3:52: Nicky admits that even TRUE CHRISTIANS™ like himself offend Jesus and hurt people all the time. (Terrible people often focus on their religious fervor as a substitute for being a decent human being.) Toby and Gemma explain that these myriad offenses and hurts are called sins. And sins super-offend Jesus’ delicate little sensibilities. Sins have “consequences,” which they describe as “pollution” at 5:00. This pollution “spoils our relationship with God,” Gemma tells us.
5:49: Toby talks about sin in terms of heroin addiction and literal slavery, showing that neither of these presenters knows much about either.
6:00: Gemma claims that Jesus’ death has something to do with cosmic justice. She compares child molestation and other very serious crimes to sin, referring to them as sins rather than crimes. (See also: Moral leveling, where someone equates even the most horrifying real-world behavior to minor personal failings.)
7:00: Toby explains that sin creates a barrier between humans and Yahweh. Jesus’ death apparently brings down that partition by absorbing all of humanity’s sins and paying the price for them. Except not really—Christians still sin all the time, as all of our presenters have admitted.
10:00: Nicky describes Jesus as having “sacrificed himself” for humanity.
16:00: Nicky tells us Jesus died to defeat evil and to “remove” that partition of sin so humans “can come home to God.”
After 16 minutes, we are finally, blessedly finished with the pretendy game this video plays of answering its own question. Having (not) established the need for Jesus to die, the video’s creators now try to close the deal.
Other notable moments of Alpha Course #3
Starting at 2:00, Nicky Gumbel explains that “if you had been the only person in the world, Jesus would have died for you.” This exact idea was something a nun told me in Catholic Sunday School in the 1970s when I was eight years old. It sent me into complete hysterics. I’d seriously hope Yahweh would be smart enough to come up with something else if he only needed to save one person.
13:00: Toby describes watching his father die of dementia. He struggles hard with the Problem of Suffering and entirely fails to solve it. It’s heartrending to watch this poor guy try to brainwash himself with party lines. His ideology can’t engage honestly with human suffering. But he’s trying so hard to square that impossible circle.
17:00: Gemma tells us that Jesus paid the price for humans’ sin, so all humans need to do is “accept the free gift!” They all dance around the question of what happens if someone refuses the “free gift.” It’s hilarious! I know the creators of Alpha Course are Hell-believers to the core, but they can’t talk about Hell in an ecumenical evangelism series. Also, it’s funny to see such blatant emotional manipulation. This entire line of reasoning asks listeners to make an investment of their time and energy on behalf of this “free gift.” The “… or else” gets omitted, but I can see it still lurking in the corner.
In this same bit, Gemma quickly adds that Christians don’t get to just sin and “do what we like because we know we’ll be forgiven every time.” However, I’ve seen Christians use this exact rationalization many, many times.
21:50: A tough guy tells us about his conversion to Christianity. He converted while serving time in prison in the UK. He claims conversion completely changed his entire personality. Nowadays, he’s a hardworking family man with a wife and five kids. He tears up and almost admits that his family matters more to him than “the grace” he imagines he got from Yahweh. He catches himself, though, and says the party line instead. It’s not subtle in the least. I’m glad he values his family more than his religion.
22:00: Nicky does a series of impressive flip-flops. First, he explains that conversion doesn’t mean a change in personality or inclinations. Then, he says it totally does. From the way he describes it, belief doesn’t seem to do anything real at all for any Christian. But at the end of the video, he changes course and says belief changes everything. Dude needs to pick a gear and stick with it!
Alpha Course has some giant problems here
It’s so funny to me that in Christianity, often someone says the most harebrained thing imaginable—and all the sheep in the pews just nodnodnod along with it as if it all makes perfect sense.
Don’t expect Nicky Gumbel to explain the mechanism of penal substitutionary atonement. He couldn’t do it any more than he could explain how chlorophyll works or exactly how memories are formed in the brain. The explanations in Alpha Course #3 are as simplistic as telling a toddler that babies happen when a Mommy and Daddy love each other very much.
To Christians, this video is more than enough.
To heathens, however, particularly those who were never indoctrinated in the underpinnings of Christian belief (like the Just World Fallacy), the video raises a lot more questions than it answers. The most important of them might just be this one:
Why can’t an omnipotent god just forgive everyone regardless of whether or not they accept his not-free not-gift? Is this setup really the very best an omnipotent god could possibly manage?
I’m not even a god and I can figure out a half-dozen better ways of handling offenses to My Divinity. Just saying “No problemo, dude, I’m fine” would take care of 90% of what Christians consider sin. Instead, Christians have set up a system of justice that is monstrous and unfair—and chained their god to it while claiming it’s perfect and righteous.
I might also mention that it’s not much of a sacrifice if Jesus knew in advance he was resurrecting. In terms of 2nd-3rd century theology, him tricking Satan makes sense. But it’s not the message modern evangelicals in particular would want to send. Jesus having a bad half-weekend for humanity’s sins sounds ridiculous.
You want a real divine death? Check out the Norse god Baldur. That’s one god who died and stayed dead. In life, his nature as a god of truth and light made him a powerful ally that humans needed. When he died, his father Odin knew the end of the world was nigh.
The other big problem with Jesus’ death and resurrection
Last time, we talked about the main problem the Gospels face:
Plenty of literate people inhabited both Rome and Jerusalem during the Gospels’ critical years. Despite that fact, literally nobody during the years of 4BCE-35CE wrote a single word about Jesus, his miracles, his followers, or his teachings. Nobody. He and his religion are entirely absent from the historical record of those years. The second Alpha Course video provided dishonest answers to escape these messy facts.
But for now, let’s pretend the Gospels actually offer readers an accurate account of the birth, life, teachings, miracles, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
We still have a dealbreaker looming over us, unfortunately. The New Testament is not a good worldbuilding sourcebook. The earliest Christians argued like cats in a sack over every single detail of their belief system, most especially including the exact nature of Jesus and what his death/resurrection signified within the context of Christianity.
Some of those arguments wouldn’t be (sorta) settled for centuries.
Others would change answers as the centuries passed—and as Christian committees continued to refine their religion’s slate of beliefs.
The truth about the meaning of Jesus’ death and resurrection
In Alpha Course #3, our presenters seem to be aiming for an extremely simplistic version of penal substitutionary atonement.
This interpretation took flight around the time of the Reformation. It means that humans aren’t capable of sating Yahweh’s bloodlust and rage over our sin. So Jesus voluntarily died in our place. He took on our rightful punishment in our stead, paying the penalty for us. His status as a sinless human made that sacrifice possible—no human could do it, any more than any human could ever satisfy Yahweh for their own particular lifetime’s worth of offenses. Similarly, Yahweh is completely incapable of simply forgiving humans. He needs blood and death to calm himself down.
But if you noticed that reference to the Reformation, you might already be wondering what interpretations were fashionable before then. And you’d be right to wonder, because Christian leaders don’t tend to talk much about those other has-been explanations. I didn’t find out about them until long, long after my deconversion.
Here are a few of the other explanations:
- Recapitulation theory, 2nd century. Jesus rights the wrongs Adam committed, thus leading humanity to moral perfection and eternal life. Only Jesus could set humanity straight in this way.
- Ransom theory, created 2nd c., peaking from 4th-11th. Adam and Eve’s disobedience “sold” humanity to Satan. Satan held humanity for ransom. Jesus’ death paid that ransom—but he tricked Satan by not staying dead. Yes, like Aslan tricked the White Witch.
- Satisfaction theory, 11th-12th c. Christians grew increasingly uncomfortable with the notion of Yahweh owing or paying Satan anything. In this view, Jesus was so incredibly obedient to Yahweh that he made up for all the disobedience of humanity. His surplus of obedience made up for humanity’s lack, and so humanity escapes the penalty for dishonoring Yahweh. Here, Yahweh’s honor is the main offended party, not his justice.
- Governmental theory, 17th c. Yahweh wanted a way to forgive humans while still maintaining his credibility as the embodiment of justice. Through Jesus’ death, he showed how seriously he takes sin, so now he can totally forgive sin instead of punishing humans for it as he did Jesus.
- Christus Victor, 20th c. Rather than paying a penalty for humans or ransoming us, Jesus’ death marks his stunning victory over sin and Satan—and Jesus’ subsequent rescue of humanity. Rather than Yahweh using him as humanity’s whipping boy, he unites with Jesus to free us.
There are others still besides these. But these days, penal substitutionary atonement is the big one. Evangelism-minded Christians tend to go this route, so it’s the one most people will encounter in the wild. In that view, the crucifixion itself is the proxy for humanity’s just punishment for sin, and Jesus gets the punishment instead of humanity.
The changing meaning of the Resurrection is not something Alpha Course can tackle
It should be beyond obvious that deep-diving into an ever-shifting theological battleground is not what Alpha Course is designed to do. The entire series is nothing more than a bunch of quick sound bites and emotional testimonies. It tries to induce belief without any compelling evidence. Thus, the last thing any Alpha Course video will do is knowingly give viewers the (correct) impression that Christianity has always been made up as believers go along.
But in refusing to present the truth of Christianity, Alpha Course is setting any potential converts up for a collision with reality. In the past, evangelical leaders did that all the time. They expected their flocks to veer away from the collision—thus drilling down harder on their beliefs and reinforcing their affiliation with their tribe.
Back when Nicky Gumbel was an annoying little sprat who’d argue with a fencepost, the facts didn’t matter. Nobody could or would investigate Christian claims. And the available resources for those investigations were slim indeed.
Things are so different now. Anyone with half a mind and a smartphone can find out just where Alpha Course steers viewers wrong. Its creators can’t change tactics, though. Not at this point. Thankfully, converts and heathens aren’t really the ones paying their bills. Christians are. So all they need to do is convince their paying customers that their approach works.
That strategy, at least, still seems to be working.
NEXT UP: The Handbook for the Recently Deconverted rides again! See you soon! <3
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Endnotes: Tricking the devil and the return of Phil.
Though this movie scene is more of a mix of atonement theories, the tricking of the Witch makes it so distinctively “ransom theory” to me.
Also, until the very last moment I had “Toby” down as “Phil.” He just looks like a Phil, I guess. I think Gemma’s husband’s name is Phil, we learned in an earlier video, and she and Toby look like every squeaky-clean, virginal-yet-married youth-ministry couple I ever knew in evangelicalism. So my mind categorized Toby as Gemma’s husband Phil. No shade to the presenters; I’m sure they’re not involved or anything. It’s just a testament to how strange their dynamic seems to someone years out of evangelicalism.
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