Atonement for a Sinless Society: Engaging with an Emerging Culture
Overview
How can Christians communicate the meaning of the atonement in a society which has little sense of sin left? “Sin doesn’t really exist as a serious idea in modern life, wrote the journalist Bryan Appleyard. He is not alone in his views. Sin has become just as tainted, polluted and defiled in the postmodern mind as the word itself indicates.
Atonement for a Sinless Society is about an encounter between two stories: the story of the postmodern, post-industrialized, post-Christian “sinless” self and the story of Atonement played out in the Passion narrative. Alan Mann charts a way through the apparent impasse between a story that supposedly relies on sin and guilt to become meaningful, and one that fails to recognize the plight of humanity as portrayed in this way.
Drawing on cultural commentators, narrative therapists and contemporary theologians, Alan Mann shows that the biblical narrative needs to be re-read in the light of this emerging story so that it can speak meaningfully and sufficiently to a society which increasingly views itself as sinless.
Top Highlights
“To postmodern sensibilities, the crucifixion of Jesus was nothing more than a primitive, barbaric, pointless death.” (Page 3)
“The starting point for what follows is the desire to wrestle with the observation that we increasingly live in a ‘sinless’ society. That is, individuals no longer live with a sense of sin or guilt in the way that evangelists would wish them to in order to successfully communicate the atoning work of Christ.” (Page 4)
“To be self-centred is a twenty-first century virtue, for no ‘Other’ can be trusted to bring the ‘good life’ craved by the postmodern. One who fails at ‘project self’ (a failure defined by the individual’s own ideas of success based upon cultural and social influences) must gaze into the mirror and confess: ‘Against you alone have I sinned.’” (Page 21)
“We will see that the stories we tell seldom, if ever, attribute sin, guilt or wrongness to ourselves. In turn, geneticists, sociologists and psychologists increasingly legitimize our narratives and allow us to live in the confidence that we do no wrong.” (Page 5)
“Christian soteriology becomes the joining of the individual’s story with the story of the Christian community and, by implication, with the story of God.” (Page 7)
- Title: Atonement for a Sinless Society: Engaging with an Emerging Culture
- Author: Alan Mann
- Publisher: Paternoster
- Publication Date: 2005
- Pages: 224
