The Doctrine of the Atonement: Response to Michael Rea, Trent Dougherty, and Brandon Warmke (original) (raw)

2019, European Journal for Philosophy of Religion

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,