Atonement, Law, and Justice , livre ebook

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221 pages

English

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Adonis Vidu tackles an issue of great current debate in evangelical circles and of perennial interest in the Christian academy. He provides a critical reading of the history of major atonement theories, offering an in-depth analysis of the legal and political contexts within which they arose. The book engages the latest work in atonement theory and serves as a helpful resource for contemporary discussions.This is the only book that explores the impact of theories of law and justice on major historical atonement theories. Understanding this relationship yields a better understanding of atonement thinkers by situating them in their intellectual contexts. The book also explores the relevance of the doctrine of divine simplicity for atonement theory.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Christian theology

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	12 août 2014
Nombre de lectures	3
EAN13	9781441245328
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0720€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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© 2014 by Adonis Vidu
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www . bakeracademic . com
Ebook edition created 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-4532-8
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
For Anthony C. Thiselton, my Doktorvater , with gratitude for all your writing, teaching, and friendship
Contents
Cover i
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Dedication v
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction xiii
1. Justice, Law, and the Cross in Patristic Thought 1
2. Medieval Atonement and the Legal Revolution 45
3. The Reformation: Luther, Calvin, and the Tradition of Penal Substitution 89
4. Modernity: Atonement and the Cure of the Soul 133
5. Atonement and the Postmodern Critique of Law 177
6. Atonement and the Perfection of Divine Agency 235
Notes 272
Ancient Sources Index 273
Author Index 277
Subject Index 281
Back Cover 287
Acknowledgments
This book was written during a sabbatical leave from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. I would like to thank the Trustees, President Dennis Hollinger, and the administration of the seminary for granting me this opportunity and for supporting our sabbatical program. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the Division of Christian Thought for endorsing my sabbatical application, and in particular my colleagues in the systematic theology department for shouldering the teaching load.
As a systematic theologian I often felt out of my league in having to write on historical theology. I was fortunate enough to find invaluable help and advice from my colleagues in the church history department, Gordon Isaac, Gwenfair Adams, and Frank A. James III. My colleagues in the department of systematic theology, Richard Lints, Patrick Smith, Don Fairbairn, and especially Jack Davis and David Wells read various parts of the manuscript and provided much needed feedback. I would also like to thank Sean McDonough for taking time to read part of the manuscript, and for our many and always stimulating conversations. My gratitude also goes to Jens Zimmermann and to an anonymous reader at Baker Academic for their comments on earlier drafts. My editors at Baker Academic Robert Hosack, Robert Hand, Jeff Reimer, and Bethany Murphy are to be commended for their expert attention and patience.
Thanks are also due to a number of students who have contributed to this project as it was unfolding. Two of my research assistants proved extremely reliable: Robert Frazier and Andrew R. Johnson. Former students Larry Locke and Matthew Wong also made helpful comments.
I am also deeply grateful to my colleague Meredith Kline for locating and obtaining countless inter-library loans and for suggesting a number of additional resources on the atonement.
None of my work would have been possible without the unflinching support and encouragement of my wife, Adriana, and our daughter, Hannah. I look forward to ways of atoning for depriving them of my mental and physical presence during the past two years.
This book is dedicated to my doctoral supervisor at the University of Nottingham, Prof. Anthony C. Thiselton. The writing of this project, in addition to other pressing deadlines, sadly prevented me from adding to a Festschrift presented to Tony by colleagues and former doctoral students in celebration of his extraordinary career and personal impact. I am still discovering the many ways, some visible, some subtle, in which I am indebted to him.
Abbreviations Anselm CDH Cur Deus Homo Augustine C. Faust Contra Faustum De Trin. De Trinitate Enchir. Enchiridion de fide, spe, et caritate Calvin Comm. Exod. Commentary on Exodus Comm. Isa. Commentary on Isaiah Comm. Rom. Commentary on Romans Irenaeus Ad. Haer. Adversus Haereses Gregory of Nyssa Or. Cat. Oratio Catechetica Ritschl, Albrecht JR The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation: The Positive Development of the Doctrine , ed. H. R. Mackintosh and Alexander Beith Macaulay (Clifton, NJ: Reference Book Publishers, 1966) Thomas Aquinas ST Summa Theologiae
Introduction
Atonement theory has been undergoing something of a renaissance over the past decade or so. While some excellent monographs have been written, few writers have embraced the task of writing a history of atonement theories. This is somewhat understandable, given the already-existing reliable and penetrating analyses from the likes of Ritschl and Dillistone, and more recently Fiddes, Schmiechen, and Weaver, 1 in addition to a number of notable edited volumes. 2
There are some gaps in these histories, though. With the exception of Weaver, none of these authors engages with the last thirty years or so of the conversation. The initial motivation of this work was to provide an introduction to the bewildering variety of recent proposals about the atonement. Another gap is that none of these histories have been written from a position sympathetic to the theory of penal substitution. While the reader will notice that I do not hesitate to critique certain aspects of this tradition, I am in broad agreement with a penal substitutionary model.
Nevertheless, the reader should not expect to find an exhaustive history of atonement thinking in the following pages. That task is quite clearly above my own expertise as a philosophical and systematic theologian. What I am trying to offer is, quite simply, a critical reading of the history of atonement theories . As opposed to a history as such, a “critical reading” engages with selected patterns, recurrent concepts, and attempts to discern broader themes, all from a critical perspective. My own angle is quite clearly connected to my theological sympathies.
I suggest that the history of atonement thinking could be read as an ongoing conversation with the history of thinking about justice and the law . Not that this should come as a surprise for the theologically astute reader. Numerous commentators have pointed out the influence of contextual theories of justice on atonement theologians. However, as far as I am aware, there has been no book-length study of this topic. 3 A few studies of the relationship between atonement and the law have indeed been written, 4 but most of them are apologies for penal substitution and thus do not apply themselves to other theories of atonement. 5
This book sets out to fill that gap. I have discovered that the cross-fertilization between the two intellectual discourses is quite extraordinary. I will attempt to tell the story of atonement thinking by connecting it to the development of law-and-justice theories. Let me make it very clear that I am not trying to explain the development of atonement theory by showing how it was influenced by changing juristic contexts. While such historical explanations are theoretically possible, they are extremely risky, not least because, as I will show, the pollination goes both ways. Not only are theologians influenced by the legal philosophies of their day, but theology also inevitably influences and changes legal structures and ideologies.
Yet explanation is not the only possible benefit of such a critical reading. Awareness of this ideational traffic yields a better understanding of atonement thinkers by situating them in their intellectual contexts (especially the juridic and philosophical dimensions of those contexts). In addition, exploring the way in which atonement theology influences the legal culture throws light on the significance of atonement thinking for important aspects of practical life (politics, law, penal systems, etc.). Clearly there is a dialectic here, for an understanding of “use” and “significance” at least contributes to—if it doesn’t entirely determine—an understanding of “meaning.”
The uniqueness of this book, then, is that it offers an interdisciplinary reading of the development of atonement theory from the perspective of its engagement with intellectual discourses relating to law and justice. This is not entirely unrelated to my own theological bias in favor of penal substitution. It is no accident that most of the books that have tackled this relationship defend this particular understanding of the cross. The doctrine of penal substitution belongs to a family of theories that prioritizes the place of justice in the understanding of the atonement. Both Anselm (satisfaction theory) and Calvin (penal substitution) argue that God could not simply gratuitously forgive us without compensating his justice in some way.
As my study will show, all atonement theories want to affirm that God preserves his justice in the process of redemption. But not all theologians operate with the same understandings of justice. Theories of justice and attitudes to law constantly develop and change. I propose to follow both of these intersecting trajectories.
But this project is not simply descriptive. It also asks: Have these writers properly described the action of God in Christ? I will very briefly summarize the constructive dimension of this pr