A Community Called Atonement: Living Theology
Ebook
Overview
Over the centuries the church developed a number of metaphors, such as penal substitution or the ransom theory, to speak about Christ’s death on the cross and the theological concept of the atonement. Yet too often, says Scot McKnight, Christians have held to the supremacy of one metaphor over against the others, to their detriment. He argues instead that to plumb the rich theological depths of the atonement, we must consider all the metaphors of atonement and ask whether they each serve a larger purpose.
A Community Called Atonement is a constructive theology that not only values the church’s atonement metaphors but also asserts that the atonement fundamentally shapes the life of the Christian and of the church. That is, Christ identifies with humans to call us into a community that reflects God’s love (the church)--but that community then has the responsibility to offer God’s love to others through missional practices of justice and fellowship, living out its life together as the story of God’s reconciliation. Scot McKnight thus offers an accessible, thought-provoking theology of atonement that engages the concerns of those in the emerging church conversation and will be of interest to all those in the church and academy who are listening in.
Top Highlights
“The kingdom of God, in short compass, is the society in which the will of God is established to transform all of life.2 The kingdom of God is more than what God is doing ‘within you’ and more than God's personal ‘dynamic presence’; it is what God is doing in this world through the community of faith for the redemptive plans of God—including what God is doing in you and me. It transforms relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the world.” (source)
“To be an Eikon means, first of all, to be in union with God as Eikons; second, it means to be in communion with other Eikons; and third, it means to participate with God in his creating, his ruling, his speaking, his naming, his ordering, his variety and beauty, his location, his partnering, and his resting, and to oblige God in his obligating of us.” (source)
“the atoning work of God of wiping away sins had everything to do with God creating a covenant-based community of faith.” (source)
“This hymn (Phil. 2:5-11) may well be the most complete statement of the atoning work that we can find in the entire New Testament. Again, the entire life of Jesus—birth, loving service, humiliating death, resurrection, and ascension—atones for cracked Eikons so that they might be led to the very presence of God in eternity. Until that time, Eikons are to live out the life God is working in them by living as Christ lived (2:13).” (source)
“Theologians, both in the Bible and after the Bible, have come up with five big metaphors for atonement: incorporation (into Christ, who recapitulated Adam's life), ransom or liberation, satisfaction, moral influence, and penal substitution. Which shall we choose? Do we need to choose? Yes we do. At each spot on the course we have to take a club from the bag and use it.” (source)
Product Details
- Title : A Community Called Atonement: Living Theology
- Authors:
- McKnight, Scot
- Jones, Tony
- Publisher: Abingdon Press
- Publication Date: 2010
- ISBN: 9781426713354