Mar/Apr 2003

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Our late modern culture has become increasingly sensitive to the dangers of abusive structures and institutions that foster self-interest, domination, exploitation, and other forms of violence. Atonement theologies have followed this trend with an increasingly apprehensive stance toward traditional notions of covenant curse, divine justice and wrath, and penal substitution.

Of the many recent examples of atonement theology that illustrate this trend, three books published in the last five years are representative. Joel Green and Mark Baker, in Recovering the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament and Contemporary Contexts, argue that we need to do justice to the "diversity of voices" in the Bible and that we must recognize that not all the New Testament models and metaphors are equally suitable for our situation today. In particular, they are troubled by the uncritical acceptance of penal substitution among North American evangelicals. C.J. den Heyer, a Dutch New Testament theologian with a Reformed background, strikes a more radical chord in Jesus and the Doctrine of the Atonement: Biblical Notes on a Controversial Topic. He states that he can no longer identify with the "old confessions and dogmas": "I know the old and familiar truths of faith, but they no longer move or inspire me. The words and images have lost their significance. The excitement has slowly ebbed away." Finally, from a feminist perspective, Darby Kathleen Ray harks back to the patristic ransom model of the atonement in her book Deceiving the Devil: Atonement, Abuse, and Ransom. She believes that the other models of the atonement tend toward individualism, the idolizing of power, and and the valorizing of suffering.

Indeed, Ray has little use for ...