The atonement is a topic of considerable theological interest at present. It has been for some time. Mapping Atonement is an addition to the secondary literature that attempts to give an historical and theological overview of the doctrine. It is clearly written, engaging and focuses on close readings of primary texts in translation. Witt and Scandrett cover some of the best-known models of atonement, including the incarnational view of Irenaeus and Athanasius, Christus Victor in Gustaf Aulén's work, Anselmian satisfaction, the ‘divine love’ view of Abelard and the Wesleys, ‘fittingness’ in Aquinas, penal substitution in Calvin and Charles Hodge, moral exemplarism in Hastings Rashdall and atonement as reconciliation in Barth. The final chapter, which attempts to bring the discussion up to date, considers some recent evangelical proposals and then discusses the work of Thomas Torrance, ending with some reflections on central issues in atonement theology.
The authors are to be commended for their careful, nuanced treatments of the various theological positions they discuss. Eschewing caricatures which bedevil much popular atonement theology, they consistently point to the complexity of the views upon which they focus. Patristic theology is not all about Christus Victor; Anselm is not a flat-footed medieval; Abelard is not a mere moral exemplarist; Aquinas has a rounded doctrine of atonement not just a milder version of satisfaction; Calvin's doctrine is multi-faceted (though Hodge is rather baldly forensic); Rashdall's views are of a piece with his liberal Anglicanism and idealist philosophy; and Barth's doctrine in Church Dogmatics IV/1 is a kind of masterclass in how to think about the shape of atonement theology. Torrance too, comes in for praise for his handling of reconciliation in holistic terms. This is all to the good and will commend the book to professors and tutors teaching classes on atonement theology.
Naturally, there are questions that could be raised regarding the particular doctrines covered. For instance, in chapter 6 the authors begin by distinguishing penal substitution from satisfaction – but as versions of broadly the same sort of atonement doctrine. This is surely a mistake. As they make clear, the mechanism for atonement in satisfaction is Christ's merit, not punishment, whereas in penal substitution it is (at least, classically) punishment. It is odd to think that satisfaction and penal substitution are versions of the same doctrine if they are distinguished by incommensurate means of atonement.
A second issue concerns the distinction between constitutive and illustrative models of atonement – a recurring theme in the book. According to constitutive models, Christ's work somehow effects reconciliation with God. According to illustrative models Christ's work illustrates salvation already available. Moral exemplarism is the paradigm of this latter approach. But, as the authors conclude at the end of chapter 7, in the case of Rashdall's view atonement drops out of the discussion altogether because Christ's work does nothing to bring about human reconciliation with God. Thus, somewhat paradoxically, the paradigm of illustrative models of atonement is not a model of atonement at all. It seems to me that this is true of Rashdall's account. But it is not true of moral exemplarism as such, at least some versions of which do amount to atonement doctrines.
A third concern is that aside from passing remarks about ‘cosmic child abuse’, there is no serious engagement with worries about divine violence raised since the 1980s by feminist, Mennonite, and Girardian theologians. Given the importance of these issues in the recent atonement literature, this seems like a significant omission.
This brings me to the question of the treatment of atonement theology of the last thirty or more years. If this work had been billed as a textbook in atonement theology to the middle of the twentieth century, there would be little to complain about. But the discussion in the final chapter is odd. The focus on the controversial work Pierced for Our Transgressions is strange because it perpetrates some of the caricatures about the pre-eminence of penal substitution that the authors seek to avoid. Joel Green and Mark Baker's Recovering the Scandal of the Cross is a more important book, but the first edition dates from 2000 – more than twenty years ago. Tom Wright's The Day the Revolution Began is a fairly recent publication (2016), but it is also a more popular treatment of the topic. By contrast, the works that have had the most impact in the past fifty years are passed over in silence. (Here I am thinking of contributions by the likes of Jürgen Moltmann, Joanna Carlson Brown and Rebecca Parker, Colin Gunton, Kathryn Tanner, Eleonore Stump and of biblical scholars like Michael Gorman and David Moffitt.)
No one textbook can cover all the bases, and this work does a good job of providing readers with an overview of many of the most important historic accounts of atonement up to the twentieth century. I certainly profited by reading it and will recommend to students that they consult it – perhaps before reading some more recent work on the topic.
