Atonement: How You Look At It

In preparation for a seminar course I'm teaching at the end of this month, I recently read The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, edited by James Beilby and Paul Eddy (2006). This piece of IVP Academic's Spectrum Multiview series performs a wonderful service to readers seeking insight into multiple facets of atonement theory: It publishes four authors' perspectives on atonement, along with responses from the remaining three authors to each author's position. The book as a whole, then, constitutes a conversation between points of view.

I appreciated that the four views on atonement (penal substitution, Christus victor, healing, and kaleidoscopic) came from contemporary scholars describing their personal positions rather than offering historical surveys of atonement theories. The latter have their place (my hat is off to John Thompson, among others, who helped me to understand the significance of past generations' theologies), but I find arguments written for the present decade more engaging and more helpful in my search for clarity.

Atonement is one of the Gordian knots of Christian theology. The spectrum of imagery and logic used in the scriptures to elucidate how God and humanity are reconciled does not lend the topic to simple explanation. For a faith that seeks understanding, the atonement is an awfully elusive goose to chase.

Four Views offers a piercing analysis of four perspectives on the atonement. All four authors take the scriptures as the authoritative starting point; all four end up at different (though not entirely exclusive) positions. I received great illumination from the substitution, Christus victor, and kaleidoscopic perspectives; all three helped to enrich my own ruminations on the atonement. The healing view did not seem to me a cogent argument on par with the other three. I left that part of the discussion wondering why the editors did not choose a more classic view (such as recapitulation or exemplar). Of the other three however, each had very strong points for itself and could offer important criticisms of the others, which interaction helped me to learn what questions one must ask of an atonement theory to see if it is worth its salt.

It is rare that I read a scholarly piece in which the author has occasion to address another author directly. So I took some amusement from watching the rules of etiquette play out on the page. In his response to the other authors (all were male), each author offered a paragraph or two of affirmations about his colleague's work, then proceeded to poke a series of potentially lethal holes in his argument. There must be a scholarly Geneva Convention for how to criticize another scholar's writing.

Taken as a whole: an enlightening and helpful read. I recommend it to anyone interested in diving into the mystery of how Christ reconciles us to God.

~ emrys