The next book in my research is A Community Called Atonement by Scot McKnight (2007). The title and the blurb online enticed me with the promise that the text would bring together matters of atonement and ethics in Christian theology--the precise topic of my seminar at the end of this month.
A Community Called Atonement attempts to build an understanding of atonement that moves beyond the simplicity of penal substitution which has gripped the thinking and preaching of much of the last fifty years of Evangelical Christianity. Using the metaphor of a bag of golf clubs, McKnight builds an argument that in order to play the full game of atonement, one must have more than just a driver or a putter. One's atonement theory must include more than a narrow forensic view of Jesus' death on the cross. It must include Christus victor, recapitulation, and part of the exemplar theories of atonement. In this, McKnight approaches the view called "Kaleidoscopic" in Joel Green's part of Atonement: Four Views (see earlier post).
What is even more tantalizing is McKnight's attempt to bring ethics into atonement. He argues that an atonement theory is incomplete unless it includes "missional praxis" in the form of fellowship, justice, mission, scripture, baptism, eucharist, and prayer. In what increasingly seemed to be a reaction to decades of "four spiritual laws" theology, McKnight's book brought every theological, ecclesial, and ethical facet of the Christian life into the "golf bag" of atonement. It seemed to me, by the end of a work that functioned more like a systemic theology than topical study, McKnight's atonement could be identified with just about any piece of Christian theology. Fellowship exists in the Church "for atonement"; "Scripture plays an atoning role in the life of the church"; and "the Lord's Supper is a praxis of atonement."
It sounds beautiful and poetic to make every aspect of Christianity a part of God's mysterious work we call atonement. As many authors have shown, describing atonement as a mechanism or event out of which the rest of Christianity flows presents difficulties of logic, metaphor, and language. But McKnight's approach to avoiding the classic difficulties by expanding the definition of atonement results only in a neologism for atonement that contains too much stuff to be meaningful. There's no use in talking about atonement if atonement can refer to anything at all.
Yes, atonement should be the font of the Christian life. God's reconciling us to the divine is central to the good news of Jesus Christ. I agree that if justice, fellowship, mission, and all the marks of the Church do not flow from us, then we probably have not grasped atonement. But saying that many things result from atonement is not the same as saying that atonement includes those many things in itself.
The only place where McKnight offers useful precision is in his attempt to describe the "bag" that carries all his "atonement clubs." He chooses a modification of the recapitulation theory, calling it "identification for incorporation." God taking on flesh in Christ ("identification") leads to our being "in Christ" through faith ("incorporation"). I would have appreciated more expansion of this new term. Without that expansion, I am left to suspect that it does not differ much from the recapitulation theories of Irenaeus and Athanasius, to which McKnight enthusiastically directs our attention.
Despite its limited usefulness in describing a precise theory of atonement, A Community Called Atonement reminds us, with erudite zeal, that atonement is not a legal fiction for the comfort of the individual believer. Atonement, rightly understood, opens the door to transformation of the individual, the Church, and society into the image of God. May it be so for us!
~ emrys
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