Book Review: A Community Called Atonement

Scot McKnight (www.jesuscreed.org) is a significant participant in the conversation of the Emergent Church. A Community Called Atonement, a title conspicuously lacking no meandering academic subtitle, is McKnight’s in-print addition to the emergent conversation, and the initial publication of the new Living Theology series edited by Emergent Village’s Tony Jones, and published by Abingdon Press. As such, McKnight’s work seeks to fulfill the desire of Tony Jones for the Living Theology series that it “talk about the best theology around…in ways that are approachable for many people” (ix).

McKnight begins his work with a metaphor: just as golf is a game requiring numerous clubs for different kinds of shots, so does the “atonement game” require us to “understand the value of each club” (xiii), by which McKnight means the numerous biblical images of atonement which “play out the fulsomeness of the redemptive work of God” (xiii). Whether or not there is a single bag to hold all the atonement images is one of the questions McKnight seeks to answer. As the title suggests, McKnight is concerned about atonement being lived out, and specifically in community. This means that atonement must “work.” It must not only be lived out, but it must facilitate its own being lived out.

McKnight grounds this belief in a Lukan reading of the Kingdom of God. “If [covenanted community where the covenant God’s will is lived out for each and every person] is Jesus’ vision, and atonement is one way of speaking of what God’s redemptive work in this world is designed to accomplish, then the creation of a community where God’s will is done is inherent to the meaning of atonement…. Atonement creates the kingdom of God” (13). This discussion is focused on the Trinity, anthropology, and sin. McKnight desires to develop his theology of atonement first on God, moving quickly to restoration of humans in three other directions so that humans, or “eikons,” are properly “God-oriented, self-oriented, other-oriented, and cosmos-oriented” (21). This combines both objective and subjective elements: “Atonement spools from the (objective) act of what God for us into (the subjective) fresh and ongoing acts by God’s people” (28). Atonement both reconciles and commissions people to be reconcilers.

McKnight follows this by defending the appropriateness of metaphors. He says, “The effect of seeing metaphor as possibility is that metaphors are not in need of decoding or unpacking by of indwelling” (37, emphasis in the original). But while metaphors form ways of life, they also encourage humility. They are always limited. This humility should enlarge our understanding of two things: the multiplicity of sin and the expanse of atonement. “Our grasp of atonement is partial; the God we are grasping for is complete and whole. In God there is absolute truth; in our articulations there is always something lacking, something partial, and something still yearning for yet more. A proper confidence in the God who atones reminds us of this and keeps us humble—and in conversation as we work this atonement thing out in each generation” (49). This means that each and every image of atonement is useful, to be considered, and to be used in the appropriate manner and at the appropriate time. It also means that the whole life of Jesus—incarnation, crucifixion (in part considered as penal substitution), resurrection, and Pentecost must be kept in play. This leads to McKnight’s unpacking of Passover, justification, and recapitulation as atonement stories.

Having developed each of these atonement images/stories, McKnight asks whether there is a bag in which one can carry the whole bunch. He offers the phrase “identification for incorporation” to carry the full set of atonement clubs: Jesus identifies with humans; Jesus incorporates humans in his death for liberation from sin. This means that “Jesus died for them, with them, and instead of them” (107). Jesus takes on our death so that his life might be given to us. This full-orbed statement of Jesus’ death leads McKnight to consider how recapitulation, Christus Victor/ransom, satisfaction, and penal substitution can all fit into this description.
Finally, McKnight unpacks living atonement as fellowship, justice, and mission, being shaped by the Word and in the church’s practices of baptism, eucharist, and prayer.

McKnight’s book has two immediate qualities. First, it is structured and reads conversationally. This is not to say it is unconsidered or naïve, but that it is meant to foster conversation and community. It seeks to encourage more voices rather than to offer a final word. Second, it is gracious and non-polemic. Even for those who will disagree with McKnight will find him amiable. I believe McKnight’s idea of atonement being participatory would have benefited from interaction with Radical Orthodoxy, specifically John Milbank’s unpacking of Colossians 1:24 and Paul’s suffering what was lacking in Christ’s afflictions. However, this interaction would have been difficult to handle in the popular style of McKnight’s work, which may have contributed to Radical Orthodoxy’s absence. Also, I would have enjoyed a consideration of the Ascension as an atoning moment, especially since this event is often ignored and unconsidered by many church-going believers.

As the initial installment of the Living Theology series, A Community Called Atonement has succeeded in bringing good theology to a context accessible to many people. This book is appropriate in a number of contexts: as a supplementary text in an introduction to atonement theology course for undergraduates; as a primer for preachers reconsidering their preaching of the atonement; and, most importantly, as a text for small communities to discuss, consider, and by which to be spurred to actions of atonement.