Atonement

by Eleonore Stump

The doctrine of the atonement is the distinctive doctrine of Christianity. Over the course of many centuries of reflection, highly diverse interpretations of the doctrine have been proposed. In the context of this history of interpretation, Eleonore Stump considers the doctrine afresh with philosophical care. Whatever exactly the atonement is, it is supposed to include a solution to the problems of the human condition, especially its guilt and shame. Stump canvasses the major interpretations of the doctrine that attempt to explain this solution and argues that all of them have serious shortcomings. In their place, she argues for an interpretation that is both novel and yet traditional and that has significant advantages over other interpretations, including Anselm's well-known account of the doctrine. In the process, she also discusses love, union, guilt, shame, forgiveness, retribution, punishment, shared attention, mind-reading, empathy, and various other issues in moral psychology and ethics.

Genres: Theology, Philosophy, Christianity, Religion

560 pages, Hardcover

Published January 29, 2019

About the author

Eleonore Stump is the Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, where she has taught since 1992. She has published extensively in philosophy of religion, contemporary metaphysics, and medieval philosophy. Her books include her major study Aquinas (Routledge, 2003) and her extensive treatment of the problem of evil, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford, 2010). She has given the Gifford Lectures (Aberdeen, 2003), the Wilde lectures (Oxford, 2006), and the Stewart lectures (Princeton, 2009). She is past president of the Society of Christian Philosophers, the American Catholic Philosophical Association, and the American Philosophical Association, Central Division.

Reviews

[Jonathan Badgley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fitting to finish this on Easter. Stump develops a view of atonement (“at one ment”) that is incredibly sensitive to both scripture (my understanding of it, at least) and to the experience of being human. She builds on all of the rich concepts she developed in her previous book on the problem of suffering, Wandering in Darkness, which includes analyses of guilt and shame, the human psyche, shared attention, the role of narrative in knowledge, and how suffering can be used in recreation and redemption. Her view of atonement (“Marian” view) extends the thomistic view, that Jesus’ passion and death is doing something to us rather than satisfying God in some way (a la Anselm), to include how Jesus’ passion and death creates unity between Jesus and humanity and is part of the means of our surrendering to God.

I’m partial to her view and to Aquinas’ view. I have grown uneasy with substitution (and specifically penal substitution over the years) because I don’t think it does very much at all to explain our life in the spirit and the growth that one can experience as a Christian. (Maybe this is because I grew up in Calvinist spaces that had little room for the NT on spiritual life of christians, I.e., spiritual fruit and gifts). I’m finding this need to connect god’s work with how christians grow especially important as I learn more about trauma and our lived experiences of our own evil and the evil of others. We physically encode these burdensome experiences, and those that are traumatic enough can rule our lives causing us to stumble through cycles of reenactment with even more personal and interpersonal pain. To plug another book, How the Body Keeps the Score tells a great story about how our physical bodies can play a role in healing from trauma, and gives strong ground for the possibility of healing in this life (and I think really highlights the absolute power of the incarnation). Substitutionary views of atonement seem to lack vision on how we are healed; these views claim the healing of course but lack the details to make the gap between God is not angry and our healing. And such an explanation needs to be given because the ministry of Jesus (and the disciple’s ministry in acts) is one of constant healing and physical immediacy. Jesus and his disciples are close enough to touch and be touched by those in suffering, and those in suffering are transformed from their guilt and shame. Whatever the atonement story says, it should explain how the passion and death of Jesus accomplish this in a /satisfying/ way.

What I’m most excited about the book is that her analysis of how her view works with scripture is not entirely complete (though she does cover a lot of ground in her defense of her view’s coherence with scripture), because that leaves space for her readers to test out the view and all its machinery with scripture. After reading Wandering in Darkness, I spent a lot of time thinking about how her view might apply to the difference of experience between Peter and Judas, and how her view might apply to the earliest chapters of genesis, particularly the story of Cain and Abel. Not surprisingly (given how well her views work in those stories), she did address those two bits of scripture directly in Atonement, but there is surely still more to say about them. I’m looking forward to applying her view of atonement to more of scripture and getting more meaning out of the text.

I’m also interested in seeing how Stump’s view of atonement might be blended into the new perspectives on paul (Wright and Hays, in particular since I’ve read them). Stump’s exploration of atonement views contrasts Calvin, Anselm and Aquinas on readings of Paul (Romans, etc), but those readings are missing the past 100 years of biblical studies that has radically transformed our understanding of Israel and the early church. How might the conceptual world of the early church (as Wright and Hays describe it) work with her view Marian view of atonement? How does her view of atonement fit into the story of Israel as conceived by the early church (assuming new perspectives)? How does it work within the broader social and political contexts? I think Jon Levenson’s work on the “beloved son”, who suffers for the salvation of his family, would play a key role in such an explanation.

I’m also interested in how some other alternative views of atonement might be folded in to hers. Thinking particularly of Rene Girard’s views that relate to atonement. It was a video of him describing what a real flesh and blood Peter must have felt the night of the crucification and the day on the beach when Jesus finds him again that led me to thinking so much about Peter and Judas as symmetric.

It’s not an easy read (emotionally or intellectually but it’s great writing, and there are plenty of fun references (Tolkien and CS Lewis) and examples to keep things grounded.

[Danny Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stump's mischaracterisation of Anselm is pretty rough, but her original arguments are devotionally beautiful; her reconciliation of the justice and love of God is especially brilliant. In all, I feel like the book promised more than it delivered on—Wandering in Darkness still remains the (far) superior work.

[Thomas Zwilling]

It's the worst-kept secret in theology that the different theories of the atonement are generally not mutually exclusive. Stump spends a fair amount of time in the book trying to rule out Anselmian theories of the atonement (most prominently Anselm's own and penal substitution theories), which claim that Christ's death pays some kind of debt or punishment owned to God, and these sections are generally much weaker than the portions spelling out her own theory of the atonement, which is creative, fruitful, and orthodox, and so far as I can see does not require rejecting Anselmian considerations entirely.

But this is no reason not to appreciate the reflections on the atonement's connections to guilt, shame, the lingering effects of sin in the world, and especially Stump's most important original contribution, the theory that in his passion and the cry of dereliction from the cross, Christ was empathically experiencing the psyches of every person as they sinned throughout history, and the importance of this experience for God's reconciliation to sinners and sinners' reconciliation to each other.

[Aaron Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

I should immediately clarify that I really didn't begin to enjoy this book until Chapter 8. The book is 11 chapters and divided into four parts. Part 1 was an emphasis on Anselm and Aquinas views of atonement, it was okay. Part II is where I nearly threw the book out and really didn't enjoy any of it. Part III & IV ended up being some of the most profoud reading I had ever experienced. Dr. Stump introduces a new idea of what the crucifixion offers that is profoundly beautiful and needs to be shared with the masses. Unfortunately, one has to wade through seven chapters of a book that doesn't feel like it's going to get any better, BUT IT ABSOLUTELY DOES. There's a lot of things to jumble in this book, which speaks to Dr. Stump's rich depth of understanding, but it can be overwhelming at times. Should you choose to take on this book, and I think you should, it will be well worth the journey. It is perhaps the most complex book I've read as it lead me through the full gambit of emotions unlike any book I've ever experienced. Incredibly frustrating at times, but astoundingly beautiful and life giving. I think all of it should be experienced in it's entirety.

[Wayne's · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the best book on the atonement but certainly it shows how all the theories fall short in great detail.

[Arnoud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely original.

[Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 stars for content. I strongly agree with her. But this book is mind-numbingly repetitive between chapters, within chapters, and even within paragraphs, making the same point in *exactly the same words*.

Toward the end, the chapter on sacrifice finally breaks that pattern and is unforgettably vivid in contrasting the concepts of sacrifice in the Iliad and the Bible.

I strongly recommend this book but wish more of it had been like that chapter. It should have been either about 30% shorter, enriched with reformulations, examples, metaphors, and questions, or expanded to discuss aspects of atonement she says she omitted for lack of space.