Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 The claim
- 2 On having lived too long and seen too much
- 3 The work of Christ (On trying to conceive how ‘things are not as they were’)
- 4 Two recent contributions
- 5 Creating an atonement model
- 6 The person of Christ (On trying to conceive how the Word became Flesh)
- 7 A moral demand: conditions for real reconciliation
- 8 Anthropocentricity, imperialism, and evangelism: an ethical postscript
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Creating an atonement model
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 The claim
- 2 On having lived too long and seen too much
- 3 The work of Christ (On trying to conceive how ‘things are not as they were’)
- 4 Two recent contributions
- 5 Creating an atonement model
- 6 The person of Christ (On trying to conceive how the Word became Flesh)
- 7 A moral demand: conditions for real reconciliation
- 8 Anthropocentricity, imperialism, and evangelism: an ethical postscript
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
It is commonplace to insist that no single atonement model will do justice to every Biblical image and theological concern. What follows is no exception. It is but a brief outline of one possible picture of how God saves through Christ, drawing on various strands of Scripture and tradition, but making no claim to exhaust all of them. As will now be apparent, the point of it is to help demonstrate that there are ways of conceiving how universal possibilities of salvation may be constituted by the particular event of Christ, without inflicting unacceptable violence on our moral, theological, and conceptual sensibilities.
As far as traditional models are concerned I have already offered a cursory indication of their chief characteristics, and their vulnerabilities. Since Gunton and Fiddes, amongst many others, have dealt with them so fully, I do not intend to add more than passing reference to them, but will concentrate instead on this attempt at another, positive, picture. In doing so, it should be clear by now what we are bound to look for: a soteriological achievement in the Christ event which includes, but goes beyond, revelation, and which creates possibilities for all time and space. I take it for granted that we should also be alert to all the traditional concerns of atonement theory on the way: that is, we require a model which also illuminates the paradox of salvation by divine grace, yet involving our cooperation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Atonement and IncarnationAn Essay in Universalism and Particularity, pp. 51 - 68Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991