Review of - Death of Death in the Death of Christ - by John Owen (original) (raw)
The Doctrine of the Atonement: Response to Michael Rea, Trent Dougherty, and Brandon Warmke
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2019
The doctrine of the atonement of Christ 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, in my book Atonement (OUP, 2018), I considered the doctrine afresh with philosophical care. Whatever exactly the atonement is supposed to be, in Christian theology it is understood as including a solution to the problems of the human condition, especially its guilt and shame. In Atonement, I canvassed the major interpretations of the doctrine that attempt to propound and defend a particular solution, and I argued that all of them have serious shortcomings. In their place, I explained and defended 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, I also discussed many concepts in ethics and moral psychology, including love, union, guilt, shame, and forgiveness, among others. At an author-meets-critics session at the American Philosophical Association Central Division, 2018, organized by Craig Warmke, three critics presented papers raising questions about one or another strand in the book. I am grateful to these critics, Michael Rea, Trent Dougherty, and Brandon Warmke, for their stimulating comments on this book. (I should add that I owe both Trent Dougherty and Michael Rea a special debt for their extensive help with the manuscript while it was in progress. Each of them worked through it carefully then and gave me extensive comments-Rea in writing and Dougherty in the course of a reading group and workshop that he organized. The book is undoubtedly better for having had the benefit of their comments while it was being completed.) The comments and questions of all three of these presenters at the APA session are helpful, and I am glad of the chance to clarify one or another element in the book further in consequence. I am only sorry that in the short space available to me here, I am able to comment on only some of the interesting issues they raise. II. RESPONSE TO MICHAEL REA Michael Rea's paper focuses on what, using Aquinas's terminology, I called 'the stain on the soul'. I argued that the stain could be removed by Christ's atonement and that God could forget the stain (in an analogous sense of 'forgetting') and thereby alleviate it. In his paper, Rea wants to call our attention to cases in which the stain on the soul stems not from a person's guilt, but from something else, such as a person's victimization at the hands of others or a person's suffering something, including something for which God might be blamed. Rea makes two claims about such cases, first that (a) Christ's atoning work cannot remove the stain in such cases,
Substitutionary and Exemplary Death of Christ: An Evaluation
Atonement refers to Christ's work of redemption on the cross to save humanity. Divergent views have been expressed about atonement and different theories have been formulated to answer the question as to what the death of Christ means to humanity. These theories have led to different controversies regarding the significance of Christ's death. This study seeks to ascertain the meaning of the substitutionary and exemplary aspects of Christ's death. The study further aims at answering the question as to whether any particular theory of atonement sufficiently encapsulates the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. To answer this question, the two most important theories of atonement namely the substitutionary and exemplary are looked at in detail in the light of other theories of atonement. The study concludes that none of these theories significantly explains what took place at the cross, since it does not assign any role to the Holy Spirit or humans.
Pacific Journal of Baptist Research, 2015
The Morling Conference in May 2014 comprised four lectures by me encompassing a range of topics and texts, based on my book Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church (Eerdmans 2012), followed by responses to each lecture: “Jesus’ Death and Christian Tradition: Ancient Creeds and Trinitarian Theology” (Graeme Chatfield responding); “Jesus’ Death and the Old Testament: Atoning Sacrifice and the Suffering Servant” (Anthony Petterson responding); “Jesus’ Death and the Synoptic Gospels: New Exodus and New Covenant” (Matthew Anslow responding); and “Jesus’ Death and the Pauline Epistles: “Mercy Seat” and Place-Taking” (David Starling responding). I thank each of my interlocutors for their respective contributions to the conversation. As readers will have discovered, two of the respondents were more favorable, and two were more skeptical, toward the Anabaptist perspective and particular arguments presented in my book. I will present my rejoinder in that order.
For the past two millennia, the death and resurrection of Jesus have dominated the thought of Christian theologians and exegetes, particularly when it comes to Paul’s perspectives on the matter. There have been theories and propositions to systematic theologies that have tried to make sense of what the New Testament (hereafter NT) writers were attempting to communicate regarding Jesus’ death, and what they envisioned it to have accomplished. This controversy raged on for centuries, each side having their set of texts that supposedly proved theirs to be the “correct” opinion. It is not the purpose of this essay to enter this controversy regarding atonement theories, but rather examine texts and cultural phenomena that antedate the epistemological presuppositions of the later arguments and compare these with familiar speech found in the NT. Rather than read these texts eisegetically through a systematized theological paradigm, I want to try and make sense of what those in the Second Temple period saw as having atoning or salvific qualities through the martyrdom of a righteous individual.
MACS Project, 2021
The Meaning of Christ’s Death: A Rapid Survey of the Multifaceted Significance of Christ’s Atonement Throughout Church History, along with an Overview of the Theory of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) and Its Critiques in Contemporary Culture
Perspectives on the Atonement: seeking an agreed way forward
Search: A Church of Ireland Journal, 2018
Perspectives on the Atonement: seeking an agreed way forward KNOWLEDGE is furthered by disagreement; but how that disagreement is expressed is crucial. Both ordained for the province of Armagh in 2012, but with contrasting perspectives, two Church of Ireland clerics engage with one another below on one of the most hotly debated topics in the Church today: that regarding nonviolent and cross-centered theories of atonement. Andrew Campbell: WHEN we look across the spectrum of western theological discourse over the early years of this century we see that the nature of atonement is a dominant subject for debate. Behind much of this debate is rejection of violence (namely the cross) as a means by which atonement is won. Over the last years of the 20th century and the early 21st century thinkers such as Rebecca Ann Parker, Rita Brock, Rosemary Radford Ruether and J. Denney Weaver have highlighted their problems with cross-centred atonement theologies. (By 'cross-centred' I refer to any view of the atonement in which the death of Christ is divinely ordained.) These nonviolent theorists reject the idea that atonement was achieved through a violent act perpetrated against Christ, leading to the now infamous claim that " divine child-abuse is paraded as salvific. " 1 This has given rise to nonviolent atonement theologies that deny that the death of Christ was divinely ordained. This shift away from atonement thinking centred on the cross can be traced to an ethical concern for those vulnerable to violence, due to its use to support violent and oppressive behaviour. 2 In light of these ethical concerns many of the nonviolent theorists in question offer variations of an atonement theology that rejects the notion of