THE ACTUALITY OF ATONEMENT

A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition

Colin E. Gunton

www.continuumbooks.com

Copyright © T&T Clark Ltd 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of T&T Clark Ltd.

First published 1998

ISBN 0 567 08090 0

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

In Memoriam

George Bradford Caird

1917–1984

Vivian Gerald Hines

1912–1987

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

1. PATTERNS OF RATIONALISM

I Where We Stand

II Redemption by Reason: Immanuel Kant and the Rationalism of Morality

III Translation and Reduction: F.D.E. Schleiermacher and the Rationalism of Experience

IV Metaphor and Concept: Hegel and Conceptual Rationalism

V Rationalism and Rationality

2. METAPHOR AND THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE

I The Dynamics of Mataphor

II Words and the World

III Words and the World

IV Metaphor in Theology

V Language in Action

3. THE BATTLEFIELD AND THE DEMONS

I A Divine Human Victory

II The Old Testament and the New

III The Language of Demons

IV The Language of Victory

4. THE JUSTICE OF GOD: A CONVERSATION

I Overlaps

II Anselm of Canterbury

III Beyond the Legal Metaphor

IV The Justice of God

V Justice, Justification, Judgement

VI Two Twentieth Century Theologies

5. CHRIST THE SACRIFICE: A DEAD METAPHOR?

I The Problem

II The Bible and the Metaphor

III Edward Irving and the Priestly Self-Offering of Christ

IV The Logic of Sacrifice

6. THE ATONEMENT AND THE TRIUNE GOD

I Relation

II God: in the Beginning

III God: in the End

IV Subjective and Objective

V Representation and Substitution

VI Two Systematic Questions

7. THE COMMUNITY OF RECONCILIATION

I Perplexity

II Truth

III Victory

IV Judgement

V Forgiveness

VI Community

VII Praise

References and Bibliography

Index of Subjects

Index of Names

PREFACE

In his The Atonement and the Sacraments (1961, p. 216), Robert S. Paul remarked that ‘When Horace Bushnell spoke of an annual harvest of books on the Atonement, he was perhaps exaggerating, but by the end of the nineteenth century this was becoming literal fact.’ It was not very different with the years between then and the publication of Professor Paul’s book, which closely followed J.S. Whale’s splendid Victor and Victim, one of the inspirations for this study. Since then, however, the flood has declined to a trickle. Perhaps the one major theological study in English has been F.W. Dillistone’s The Christian Understanding of Atonement, recently reprinted, but now nearly twenty years old. Indeed, it has recently been argued, in the article by Colin Grant so entitled, that there has taken place ‘The Abandonment of Atonement’ (Grant 1986). Other matters have ...