Edgework

I have come a long way from those days in early childhood in which I was first terrorized by the certainty of hell and finally giving in to being “saved” by believing in the penal substitutionary atonement theory. Of course I didn’t know about theories at the time – I was simply responding to biblical truth as it was taught in my church.

Fast forward a half-century and you will find me in a new and broader place as these essays reveal. The journey has been long and sometimes dangerous. To be discovered would have sullied my reputation, cut short my service within my church community and imperiled my livelihood. So my burnout in 2002 came as a gift in that I could now study and write more freely than before.

I regularly meet people who are at the place I was at in the 1950s and 60s and I am tempted to twist arms to bring them onto my page. But I know better by now. God will be gracious with them as he was with me. All I can do is bear witness to what I have seen and heard. And I do so with joy because, from my perspective, I truly have something to sing about. I have discovered that God is actually better and more merciful than I could ever have imagined in my wildest dreams as a young Christian.

So what is the future of atonement? First, I will say where I think it will be going for me. The “building materials” I identified at the outset of this series have become for me solid foundation stones on which a healthy view of atonement can rest. I am tempted to say they are non-negotiable. But I will rather say I see them as reliable pillars supporting a credible platform on which to construct credibible understandings around the question of atonement. I suspect my harshest critics will find fault with some of these starting points. Before rejecting them, I would urge such readers to review some of my earlier essays in which I have defended them at greater length. In all cases, these positions are supported by a variety of contemporary thinkers and writers. I don’t take credit for any of them.

I think in the future I will be suspicious of any “theories” of atonement, especially those portraying a vengeful and vindictive God or the God the Father pitted against God the Son. The gospel, as I now see it, is not a “theory” about what effect Jesus’ life and work had. It is the Good News of the Kingdom of God Jesus came to proclaim. As I have noted, when you let the biblical text speak for itself without looking at it through grids provided by various theories of atonement it doesn’t naturally lead to one or another theory. All the metaphors, images, parables and teachings about the life and work of Jesus simply form a kaleidoscope of color and meaning related to the Jesus story. That was sufficient for the first century of Christian history and I suspect it should be sufficient for the 21st century as well.

One perspective on atonement that I hope to do more work on is the one that developed within the Franciscan Order, which I wrote about in the last essay. It seems to me that their insistence that Jesus infuses all of creation with love makes the salvation story even more beautiful. I think I will do well to keep listening to Richard Rohr to help me think through the ramifications of this radical notion of cosmic love in terms of how it affects understandings about atonement.

In any case, my future journey with atonement will rest on the solid biblical revelation that “God is Love” and that “…his mercies endure from everlasting to everlasting.” While on the surface this series is about atonement, in truth it is even more about who God is. And as I have said earlier, my insights about who God is and how he is constantly in the process of bringing all things together in him (Ephesians 1:10) have been greatly enhanced through this study.

So much for my journey on atonement. I suspect, however, that for a significant segment of conservative Christians, their future will involve a doubling down on the penal substitutionary atonement theory. Not only that, they will pronounce all other views to be misguided, if not heretical. The New Calvinist movement represented by John Piper and company, is a case in point. In recent years at least some evangelical church communions have reasserted penal substitutionary atonement to be biblical dogma. It is an unfortunate dynamic of history, it seems to me, that whenever something more beautiful than the status quo emerges on the horizon, a common reflex for many is to reject it outright and strengthen their resolve to stay with what they now believe.

Granted, one does not want to be tossed about by every wind of doctrine. The Bible even warns about that (Ephesians 4:14). At the same time there is a biblical mandate to “…grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). When we look back on the history of Christianity it becomes clear in hindsight that there have been times in which it became apparent that certain understandings of biblical truth needed to change, as it did in the case of slavery.

As I look over the Christian landscape, including much of evangelicalism, I notice that a reformation has been underway for at least 30 years by now. Of course there is resistance and counter-reformation happening everywhere as well. But the reformation has begun and right at its heart is a rethinking of atonement, because in the end atonement rhetoric touches on virtually all other aspects of Christian faith and practice.

I hope I can live long enough to see a substantial flowering of the reformation now under way.

Resources for Further Study

• Aulén, Gustaf. Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1931.
• Baker, Mark D. (ed.) Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross: Contemporary Images of Atonement. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006.
• Baker, Sharon L. Executing god: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught about Salvation and the Cross. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013.
• Berkhof, Hendrick, (translated by J. H. Yoder). Christ and the Powers. Waterloo: Herald Press, 1962.
• Chalke, Steve and Mann, Alan. The Lost Message of Jesus. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003.
• Green, Joel B. and Baker, Mark D. Recovering the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament and Contemporary Contexts. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000.
• Grimsrud, Ted. Instead of Atonement: The bible’s salvation Story and Our Hope for Wholeness. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2013.
• Grimsrud, Ted. Triumph of the Lamb: A Self-Study Guide to the Book of Revelation. Kitchener: Herald Press, 1987.
• Hardin, Michael. The Jesus Driven Life: Reconnecting Humanity With Jesus. Lancaster: JDL Press, 2010.
• Jacobs, Donald R. Pilgrimage in Mission:The Mennonite Perspectives on the Christian Witness Worldwide. Kitchener: Herald Press, 1983.
• Jersak, Brad. A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel. Pasadena: CWRPress, 2015.
• Jersak, Brad. Her Gates Shall Never Be Shut: Hope, Hell, and the New Jerusalem. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock, 2009.
• Jersak, Brad and Hardin, Michael (ed.). Stricken by God: NonViolent Identification and the Victory of Christ. Abbotsford, B.C.: Fresh Wind Press, 2007.
• McLaren, Brian D. A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions that are Transforming the Faith. New York: Harper Collins, 2010.
• Rohr, Richard. Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi. Cincinnati: Franciscan Media, 2014.
• Weaver, J. Denny. The Nonviolent Atonement. Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 2011.
• Weaver, J. Denny. The Nonviolent God. Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 2013.
• Smith, Christian. The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011.
• Toews, John E. The Story of Original Sin. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications, 2013.
• Toews, John E. and Nickel, Gordon. The Power of the Lamb. Winnipeg, Kindred Press, 1986.
• Wink, Walter. The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium. New York: Double Day, 1998.
• Wright, N. T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection and the Mission of the Church. New York: Harper Collins, 2008.
• Yoder, John H. The Politics of Jesus. Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1972.
• Young, Paul W. The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity. Los Angeles: Windblown Media, 2007.