A Community Called Atonement: Living Theology

by Scot McKnight

the present generation knows of a holistic human being in an interlocking society of connections where any notion of gospel or atonement must be one that is integrated and community-shaped if it is to be called “good news” at all.

The gospel we preach shapes the kind of churches we create. The kind of church we have shapes the gospel we preach.

The kingdom of God, in short compass, is the society in which the will of God is established to transform all of life.2 The kingdom of God is more than what God is doing “within you” and more than God's personal “dynamic presence”; it is what God is doing in this world through the community of faith for the redemptive plans of God—including what God is doing in you and me. It transforms relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the world.

we will argue here that atonement is only understood when it is understood as the restoration of humans—in all directions—so that they form a society (the ecclesia, the church) wherein God's will is lived out and given freedom to transform all of life. Any theory of atonement that is not an ecclesial theory of the atonement is inadequate—

then atonement is all about creating a society in which God's will is actualized— on planet earth, in the here and now of Mary and Zechariah.

But not so for Mary and Zechariah; inspired as they were by God's prophetic Spirit, for them the atoning, kingdom, saving work of God is justice and peace and a society wherein God's loving will is lived out.

For them, the atoning work of God of wiping away sins had everything to do with God creating a covenant-based community of faith.

The Beatitudes, however, are not a virtue list: they are a list of the kinds of people in the society Jesus maps for his listeners.

the work of God in Jesus and through the kingdom is to include the marginalized, to render judgment on the powerful,5 and to create around the marginalized (with Jesus at the center) an alternative society where things are (finally, by God) put to rights.

Jesus’ kingdom vision and atonement are related; separating them is an act of violence.

Atonement creates the kingdom of God.

When Jesus is transfigured, Luke tells us that Moses and Elijah speak of Jesus’ “departure,” which translates the Greek word exodus (Luke 9:31). The “exodus” death of Jesus leads his followers to freedom, and that freedom is what the kingdom is all about in Luke.

To be an Eikon means, first of all, to be in union with God as Eikons; second, it means to be in communion with other Eikons; and third, it means to participate with God in his creating, his ruling, his speaking, his naming, his ordering, his variety and beauty, his location, his partnering, and his resting, and to oblige God in his obligating of us. Thus, an Eikon is God-oriented, self-oriented, other-oriented, and cosmos-oriented. To be an Eikon is to be a missional being—one designed to love God, self, and others and to represent God by participating in God's rule in this world.

The atonement is designed by God to restore cracked Eikons into glory-producing Eikons by participation in the perfect Eikon, Jesus Christ, who redeems the cosmos.

That is, sin in the Bible is the choice to “go it alone,” to be “free” in the sense of independence, to achieve (like God) absolute freedom.

That is, eternity is the society created by God around Jesus Christ wherein God's people enjoy union with God and communion with one another, in a place where everything works as it did in Eden.

the atonement is designed for both an earthly realization and an eternal destination.

Atonement, if we read the Bible with its own emphases, is about creating communities of faith wherein God's will is done and lived out.

Thus, atonement is not just something done to us and for us, it is something we participate in—in this world, in the here and now. It is not just something done, but something that is being done and something we do as we join God in the missio Dei.

a metaphor of atonement is a set of lenses through which we describe God's acts of resolving sin and of bringing humans back home in their relationship with God, with self, with others, and with the world.

well, “God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.”

Incarnation means identification for the sake of liberation.

What ought to be emphasized here is that Jesus is the second Adam, not the second Abraham. To be the second Adam means Jesus has brought redemption for the entirety of Adam's line—for all humans. Adam and his line are given a brand new start, a new creation, “in Christ.”

“At the centre of Christian faith is the history of Christ. At the centre of the history of Christ is his passion and his death on the cross.”2

The cross, then, is not just a solitary act of one man, Jesus Christ, to redeem solitary individuals, you and me. Instead, it stands as a cosmological, spiritual, and political act of evil into which God enters to identify with humans in order to turn the cosmological, spiritual, and political powers on their head. The cross creates the kingdom as Jesus envisions it.

While the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost is pictured as the event that gave birth to the church as a self-conscious fellowship, the transformation of Jesus’ disciples from a terrified, hopeless, disappointed band to the bold preachers of Jesus as Messiah and the agent of salvation was caused by his resurrection from the dead. —G. E. Ladd1

A theory of atonement that does not flow into the resurrection is an atonement that rids one of the sin problem but does not transform life and this world.

this: the Last Supper was an act of liberation

The first understanding of Jesus is a complex story of both personal redemption and ecclesial recreation: it is the story of liberation from sin and oppression so God's people can live in the new community just as they were designed by God to live.

In fact, justification is an aspect of the redemption of the cosmos.

Justification must be understood as an expression of God's gracious love and gracious desire to be in union with God's people.

That is: God acted to join us to Christ, and by being “in” Christ we obtain the blessings of wisdom, righteousness [justification], sanctification, and redemption. The order: union with Christ (relational incorporation) entails righteousness.

human sin defaces the Eikon of God, a favorite image of early theologians, and sinks humans into corruption and death. But God, joining together humans and God in the incarnate Word, becomes what we are so that we might become what he is—so vanquishing death and drawing us into the very life and presence of God.

identification in order to remove sins and victory in order to liberate those who are incorporated into him so that they can form the new community where God's will is realized.

Atonement is praxis.

atonement is something done not only by God for us but also something we do with God for others.

The central question of a missional praxis is this: “How can we help?” This central question springs from a desire to go out into the community rather than an overwhelming drive to have the community come to the local church.

Wherever you go in the Bible, it is the same: the work of God is to form a community in which the will of God is done and through which one finds both union with God and communion with others for the good of others and the world.

Peter envisions a community of faith that creates opportunity for atonement by living a gospel life that is itself atoning. The fellowship of the Christians created a community wherein true justice was worked out, wherein healthy, loving relationships were the norm, and wherein response to the society was one of benefaction and compassion.

that someday God will establish justice and that this justice will be established, ironically, by the Lamb, the one who suffered injustice, who will be on the throne, reversing every form of unjust power ever seen.