Community Called Atonement Book

Despite a number of major flaws (on which more anon) this was a really good and important book. If more in the emergent/emerging movement wrote stuff like this, I would feed a whole lot better about the movement as a whole. Alas, instead we get McLaren.

At any rate, this book argues that no one view of the atonement does justice to Jesus' death on the cross, but that instead He did them all. They are all necessary to our understanding of the cross, but that none may claim an absolute or "central" position. Jim Jordan has pointed out the three important themes of Scripture are forgiveness of sins, holy war against Satan, and maturation into glory - and that none are "central" but that rather all are central. Each of the three classical views of atonement match with each element of Jordan's observations. The penal substitution gets our sins forgiven, the Christus Victor view matches with the climax of holy war against Satan, and Abalard's view of the cross as our example (which is really closer to the cross as something to which we are "impressed" "shaped" "stamped" and "conformed to" by the Spirit) is a match with the idea of maturation into glory. But that's not in the book, that's just me thinking out loud.

Not only does the book seek to bring together all of the major atonement theories, but McKnight manages to do so reasonably and solidly under the theme of "union with Christ." "I suggest that we think about atonement as identification for incorporation" (107). In other words, Christ identified Himself to us in order that we might have our sins removed and receive His righteousness - and all through incorporation into "union" with Christ's body.

But he is not content to leave atonement there, but rather points to the understanding of the New Testament and the early Church Fathers that atonement was not merely something that happened to me in a single moment of time, but actually creates a community of atoned-for ones who are to extend atonement to the world (1 Cor. 5:18-20). "atonement is something done not only by God for us but also something we do with God for others. . . . atonement is praxis" (117). "The work of God is to form a community in which the will of God is done and through which one finds both union with God and communion with others for the good of others and the world" (119).

There are several problems with the book. Chapters 5 and 6 are pretty obnoxious, being an appalling approach to metaphor in which McKnight argues that each view of the atonement is really a metaphor that tries to communicate something that was going on behind each theory. He'd be better off to say that each view of the atonement is a dimension, or aspect, of Christ's work on the cross. The way it is its just going to confuse and hinder.

A second problem is in his discussion of the New Perspective on Paul (much of which is helpful). It really is more of a problem I have with the New Perspective that McKnight agrees with them on. He repeats the old divide between justification as "getting in" and "staying in" the covenant, but this is really like saying justification is about "being" unified with Christ, not "how" one is unified with Christ. Framed in this way, the whole distinction is nonsense. Justification is about both getting in and staying in union with Christ.

Chapter 18 started as a stinker too, although some good things were said in the second half. He leads the charge against "Bibliolatry" or the "tendency for some Christians to ascribe too much to the Bible" (143). Funny, that. Pretty sure it's the Word of God. You know, a manifestation of Jesus. At any rate, he gets the progression utterly backwards and argues (essentially) that the church precedes Scripture, rather than the orthodox view, which is that the Scripture, as the Word of God "breathed" by the Spirit (2 Tim. 3:16) creates the Church, who then attests to the power of the Word.

Anyway, in light of the oodles of positives with the book these are important but tangential points. Atonement is identification for incorporation, and, as he argues in the final chapter, the identification of us with Jesus occurs at baptism (Rom. 6) and our incporporation into Christ is nourished in the Lord's Supper, so that we might carry atonement into the world as the community of the atoned-for ones. And that is a glorious thing.