Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission > Status Update

"Religion is not the "soul" of culture, nor culture the "body" of religion. Religions have bodies, and cultures have souls. It is rather the case that in dealing with any group of human beings, we are always dealing with socio-religious or religio-cultural entities. The common contemporary rhetoric of conflicts between religion and politics obscures the reality. Conflicts are never between politics and religion. Conflicts are always between rivals that are both religious and both political."

"Cur Deus Homo? At one level, my aim is the same as Anselm's. It is an attempt to unravel the rationality of the central claims of the Christian gospel: Jesus died and rose again to save us from our sins. Like Anselm, I assume that the gospel is true and probe to discover how it happened. How can the death and resurrection of a Jewish rabbi of the first century, an event in the putative backwaters of the Roman Empire, be the decisive event in the history of humanity, the hinge and crux and cross- roads for everything? Even here we can assume a partial that: because of the history of the church founded by Jesus, it is clear that his death and resur- rection changed a great deal, perhaps everything. Again, my question is about the mechanics: How did that happen?"

"That is one way to ask the question. Another is in terms of sacramental theology: the church cannot exist without rites, any more than any society. For there is no religious society, Augustine insists, whether true or false, whose separate members are not "coagulated" into common life by sacraments and signs. According to Augustine, old figural and prophetic sacraments are fulfilled in new sacraments, more powerful, easier and fewer than the sacraments of old (virtute maiora, utilitate meliora, actu faciliora, numero pauciora; Contra Faustum 19.13). Fine. I agree. But again my question is, Why do we need a dead and risen Christ to accomplish this? When Moses instituted the sacraments of the old law, there was opposition, occasional threats on his life, but in the end he survived to see Torah established. Why could Jesus not be another Moses? Why could he not be a teacher and founder of a new cultus and a new sect? Why does he need to die in order to institute new signs and sacraments for the new society he forms? Why the cross if the task is simply to relocate the sacred and change the rules of purity and sacrifice?"

"The problem is intensified when we add that this event is supposed to be the source of social, economic and political justice and peace. The problem becomes nearly impossible when Christians say, as we often have over the years (starting with Jesus, Lk 24), that these events form the fitting, even the inevitable climax, to that comprehensible history of political judgment and deliverance we read about in the Old Testament. This is what Israel's history was all aiming at? So: God destroys the world with water and rescues Noah; he demolishes Egypt and leads Israel through the sea to Sinai and to the land; he raises David and Solomon to glorify Israel among the nations; in his wrath, he casts Israel into exile, but then draws them back in love—he does all this, and the key to what this means is the life of a Galilean teacher crucified on a Roman cross, raised from the dead on the third day. This is the concluding chapter that ties up all the loose ends of the Bible's story? Something very odd is going on here."

Leithart's Criteria of a Successful Atonement Theory:

1.) Historically plausible. A successful atonement theory has to Show how the death and resurrection of Jesus is the key to human history which means that atonement theory has to provide an account of all human history. It has to be a theory of everything.

2.) Levitical: A successful atonement theology treats Jesus' death (at least) as a sacrifice, and it must be able to show that Jesus' sacrifice fulfills Levitical ritual in historical events.

3.) Evangelical: Successful atonement theology must arise from within the Gospel narratives rather than be an imposition from outside (even a Pauline outside).

4.) Pauline: Atonement theology must make sense of the actual words and sentences and arguments in Paul's letters.

5.) Inevitable: A successful atonement theology should leave an impression of inevitability: "Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory? (Lk 24:26). Jesus should appear to be the obvious divine response to the human condition. Like the denouement of a well-constructed drama, the cross and resurrection should emerge as the most fitting climax to the history of Israel among the nations, as the climax of a history of sacrifice.

6.) Fruitful: A successful atonement theology must offer a framework for making sense not only of the history of Jesus but also of the subsequent history of the church and of the world. It must, for instance, not shrink from addressing the apparent failure of the atonement, the palpable fact that the world Jesus is said to have saved is self-evidently not saved.