Tim Samoff // Weblog (old)

September 29, 2007

[Book Review] A Community Called Atonement

It would be irresponsible of me to tell you that A Community Called Atonement, the new book by revered theologian, Scot McKnight, was important. Why? Because it is not just important. No, A Community Called Atonement is probably one of the most important Christian books to be published in this theological generation.

From the very first page of this compendious, 156-page book, A Community Called Atonement is steeps itself in metaphor — both literary and theological. McKnight makes no apology for this and, in fact, claims that the reality of atonement is a metaphor itself. But, before defining the breadth of that metaphor, he begins with this one:

At a dinner table one night a companion asked me which of my golf clubs was my favorite. I had never been asked that question, and it struck me as odd.

McKnight goes on to say that his answer formed around the fact that he has different favorites for different situations (i.e., a 3-iron for 200 yards, a driver for the tee box, etc.). Of course, this seems like a logical answer, doesn’t it? But, he continues:

But I once played with a man who did have a favorite club. And it was the only club he carried. That solitary club had to be adjusted so that it could be flat like a putter and angled like irons.

When the man who only carried one club was asked why he preferred to play that way, he answered, “I’m too lazy to carry a bag of clubs.” Because of this, McKnight concludes that this man wasn’t a very good golfer either.

Now, I’ll admit that I don’t even like to play golf, but the metaphor is a good one. If carrying only one club around to play golf (a game that presents the player with a variety of different — and difficult — situations) isn’t a good idea, why would we think that adhering to one theory or view of what atonement is? Wouldn’t it be more appropriate, as McKnight puts is, to see our Bible as a big bag of images that we can pull from “to play out the fulsomeness of the redemptive work of God”?

But, as stated earlier, McKnight doesn’t just stop with real-life metaphor in order to point to the all-encompassing atonement of our faith. Scot McKnight also views atonement as a grand metaphor of our faith:

Atonement itself is a metaphor for everything and anything God does for us to make us what he wants to make us in light of who we were, who we are, and who we are meant to be.

Yes, atonement — the amends, the expiation, the indemnification, the payment (to take heavily from the thesaurus) that is God’s plan — is, in reality, the basis of the Christian story. Consequently, the concept of atonement is the metaphor for our entire faith system.

Throughout A Community Called Atonement, McKnight delves into some lofty theological treatises, from his Lukan Thread, to a more in-depth look at various metaphors that compose our reality (Eikons, sin, the cross, redemption, incarnation, etc.), to the atoning moments of our faith story. In fact, as you might notice, the crux of McKnight’s thought-process is that our lives, intertwined with our faith, can be completely described by the metaphor of “a story” — an eternal unfolding of God’s plan for His creation.

Sure, the idea of our faith as “a story” is not a new one (especially to those of us in Emergent circles), but when put in the perspective of the metaphor of atonement it is profound.

In response, McKnight continues to lay out the certainty of story throughout the bible. And, as you might guess, our faith isn’t comprised of just one story, but it is “a story with many stories”: stories God’s creation, of the prophets of old, of Jesus, the disciples, the Reformers; us…

However, these various stories of atonement, whether we look to Jesus and Passover of to Paul and justification (and he himself had other stories), or whether we look to the early fathers or to the Reformers, compete with each other. They compete not by fighting with the others in order to gain mastery but by being language games that are not easily assimilated to one another.

This returns us to the gold metaphor:

Each club in the bag performs its own task. It is impossible to swing two clubs at once.

But, as McKnight poses, there is a “bag” designed to carry all of the clubs. This brings us to his suggestion that we think of atonement as identification for incorporation. Think of the description of Jesus in Hebrews 2:

Jesus identifies with humans: “he had to become like his brother his brothers and sisters.” Jesus incorporates humans in his destruction of death and the devil and liberates those held captive by being a faithful high priest for them (representing them before God as priests do). Jesus identifies and makes possible incorporation because he “shared flesh and blood” and because he became a “sacrifice of atonement”... Which means that Jesus died for them, with them, and instead of them…

In light of this revelation, McKnight then delves into how identification for incorporation can embrace all of the different models of atonement.

But what does one do with their new “bag” of clubs? Is all of this just so that we can feel good about the fact that we embrace varying theories of atonement so that we can argue with different sets of people? No, in fact, Scot McKnight’s next appeal is that we actually go out a play the game, that the next metaphor atonement covers is how we use it: fellowship, justice, mission, living the story, baptism, Eucharist, prayer…

In summation (as if you hadn’t already gotten it by now), atonement is the embodiment of God’s ultimate plan. Atonement is our reality.

Posted at 08:29 am

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