The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition

by Colin E. Gunton

In a reissue of a masterly examination of both the Christian doctrine of Atonement and the nature and working of theological language, Professor Gunton reassesses the doctrine and the language in which it is expressed in the light of modern scholarly developments. He explains how the traditional metaphors of Atonement, drawn from the battlefield, the altar and the law courts, all express something of the meaning of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus-and examines their bearing
on human life in today's world.

Genres: Theology

236 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1989

About the author

Colin Ewart Gunton (1941-2003) was a British systematic theologian. As a theologian he made contributions to the doctrine of Creation and the doctrine of the trinity. He was Professor of Christian Doctrine at King's College London from 1984 and co-founder with Christoph Schwoebel of the Research Institute for Systematic Theology in 1988. Gunton was actively involved in the United Reformed Church in the United Kingdom where he had been a minister since 1972. He was arguably the most important British theologian of his generation.

Gunton's most influential work was on the doctrines of Creation and the Trinity. One of his most important books is The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity" (1993), and is "a profound analysis of the paradoxes and contradictions of Modernity." The One, the Three and the Many remains a "majestical survey of the western intellectual tradition and a penetrating analysis of the modern condition."

Reviews

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked the approach of looking at the different metaphors for the atonement. There are times where this book is nearly doxological, but other times it was boring. Still felt worth the read.

[John Breen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read (took a while with other reads becoming priorities ahead of this, not because this was boring though!) I enjoyed his account of theological metaphor and its role within the Scriptures, particularly his treatment of biblical metaphors that portray Christ as victor over the powers of evil, the embodiment of God's justice, and the definitive sacrifice for sinful humanity.

Gunton's thesis seems to be to push back against an overly forensic focus of salvation in the West that has privileged judgement and satisfaction at the expense of the relational dimensions of salvation (e.g., reconciliation, transformation, communion, new creation, etc). He wishes to return to a Trinitarian, relational and ontological understanding. Whilst he does not deny the importance of the forensic, he seems to consider it secondary or, at the very least, too narrow. Although there is likely truth to this, my concern is that the benefits that flow from justification (e.g. transformation, reconciliation, communion, and new creation) appear at times to be collapsed into justification itself, blurring the Reformed distinction between justification as God's forensic declaration of the sinner as right before God and their sanctification. His final chapter also seemed at times random and a bit soapboxy as he sought to give some practical outcomes of his work.

Overall, interesting, glad I read it. Helpful to think through more what is going on in Christ's atoning work and why it is described by the biblical authors in certain ways.

[Spencer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gunton notes that with more rationalistic approaches to faith, moral action got stripped down to raw principles and concepts. In doing so, the centre of biblical faith, the cross, was eclipsed.

Gunton argues that action must be understood through narrative, and narrative is understood through employments of metaphor. All meaningful action is metaphorical, and these metaphors give the cross' narrative its meaning. Thus, while in one literalistic way, Jesus was not "fighting" or "ruling" or doing anything priestly, these three domains of Old Testament language (war, law, and sacrifice) are applied to the actions on the cross to understand it. These metaphors, in turn, can and do get employed to understand the believers action as fighting evil, living justly, or living sacrificially.

Personally, I found Gunton hard to follow at times in this book. I like Gunton's thinking, but he can at times get a bit ivory tower.

[Kenosi · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of top 5 books i have read on atonement. Collin Gunton work is different from other atonement books in a sense that he engages with the enlightment scholars such as Hagel, Emmanuel Kant and Frederick Schleiermacher.

[Joseph Sverker]

I suppose it is no secret that I am interested in Gunton and to a large degree like his writing and thinking. It was some time ago now that I finished this book and my memory of it is very foggy. I remember thinking that there is kind of a difference in Gunton's books from the 80s and those that he wrote in the 90s. This somehow seems to be able to take his development in two separate directions. There is a possibility for him to go towards a fairly liberal stance and also, as what happen, for him to take a more, should one say, 'evangelical' route (evangelical is very, very loosely defined here, since Gunton never saw himself as evangelical and probably wasn't, most likely "traditional" might be a better word).

The two sections in the book the first about metaphors and the second about atonement (if I remember correctly) are quite interesting in themselves. However, I do recall that I didn't quite think that Gunton brought the two together quite successfully. One is able to see Gunton's emphasis on the personal and relational in the atonement section, yet I am not so sure in what way the metaphorical intersects with that.

[G Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've had enough Gunton... he has some great things to say, but this book cements in my mind that he is interested, regardless of what he says, in the abstract at ethereal... the ivory tower... not where I eat, live and breath.