Redemptive Change: Atonement and the Christian Cure of the Soul

by R.R. Reno

Change is a daily fact of life, one that people often have a hard time embracing. But when change does come, people do want it to be meaningful to them and to have some enduring value for their lives. In Redemptive Change, R. R. Reno argues that modern culture fails to offer people the hope of meaningful and enduring change. He shows how modern philosophers have argued that people are self-sufficient, that they do not need God to complete their identities, and that whatever changes they experience are momentary and of no ultimate significance. Countering modern philosophy, Reno contends that the only meaningful change occurs in Christ. At the moment of atonement, people experience an enduring change that has momentous consequences for their lives. We matter, he says, only insofar as we are more dependent upon and changed by Christ. R. R. Reno is Associate Professor of Theology, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, and co-author of Heroism and the Christian Life: Reclaiming Excellence.

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Russell Ronald Reno III is the editor of First Things magazine. He was formerly a professor of theology and ethics at Creighton University.

A theological and political conservative, Reno was baptized into the Episcopal Church as an infant and grew up as a member of the Church of the Redeemer in Baltimore, Maryland. As an adult he was an active participant in the Episcopal Church, serving as Senior Warden of the Church of the Resurrection in Omaha, Nebraska from 1991–1995, as deputy to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1993, 1996, and 1999, and as a member of the Theology Committee of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops from 2001-2003. On September 18, 2004, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church.