Pictures of Atonement
A New Testament Study
Ben Pugh
PICTURES OF ATONEMENT
A New Testament Study
Copyright © 2020 Ben Pugh. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Cascade Books
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-5362-9
hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-5363-6
ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-5364-3
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Names: Pugh, Ben, author. |
Title: Pictures of atonement : a New Testament study / Ben Pugh.
Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2020 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: isbn 978-1-5326-5362-9 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-5326-5363-6 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-5364-3 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Atonement—Biblical teaching | Jesus Christ—Crucifixion | Atonement | Redemption | Sacrifice
Classification: BT265.2 P84 2020 (print) | BT265.2 (ebook)
Manufactured in the U.S.A. September 8, 2020
Unless otherwise stated, Scripture taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). Copyright © 1989, National Council of the Churches of Christ. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
To: The staff of the Hallward Library in the University of Nottingham. I continue to find this library the very best place in which to get books written.
Acknowledgements
As I now come to the end of the Atonement Project, I want to acknowledge again, like I did at the start, the influence of Barrie Taylor who, in 1992, sparked in me the desire to study the atonement in as much depth as possible.
There are two other people whose chats were particularly helpful. Dr Sandra Brower introduced me to Douglas Farrow’s Ascension and Ecclesia. He didn’t get much of a mention in this book as things turned out but it was his work that first stimulated me to think of the cross from the viewpoint of the ascension, a viewpoint which later became the Pentecost Standpoint, the backbone to the thought-experiment that is this book. Then there is Dr Ed McKenzie whose constant interest in my books was very flattering and whose awareness of all the scholarship I was engaging with in this volume was really helpful. He helped confirm what I was thinking and helped to navigate me to the most important sources.
With this volume I did something I have not done before and that is let someone read it before it’s completely polished. I wanted my friend Peter Hayter to read it and tell me what he thought. He represents what seems to be the main, or at least the most appreciative, audience my books have attracted so far: informed, interested non-academics. I am completely delighted with this and delighted that he was able to read it for me and give comment.
I would also like to thank, once again, my amazing editor with Cascade: Dr Robin Parry who has edited all three atonement books and whose encyclopedic knowledge and watchful eye has saved me from embarrassing myself.
Last but not least, my wife, Pearl, was completing her PhD in dietetics at the same time I was completing this book. Having her as a fellow traveler along a similar road (though hers far more demanding and stressful) has been a great comfort in what can be a lonely endeavor.
Introduction
This biblical study of atonement is the third phase in my Atonement Project. So far, I have been using the “Wesleyan” quadrilateral, but have ended up using it in this order: reason and tradition first, then experience, then Scripture. The first volume came out in 2014, which was my Atonement Theories: A Way Through the Maze. I concluded this book with what I termed the Incarnation Criterion. By this I meant that the Christ of the cross is the prime criterion for judging all theories of the cross: his person defines his work. I named Irenaeus, Anselm, John McLeod Campbell, and P. T. Forsyth as especially noteworthy examples of this incarnation-eye-view of atonement. To let the Father define the work, I pointed out, results in difficult moral problems that too easily impugn the Father as demanding and inflexible. To let our humanity define the work, results in theories, such as the Moral Influence theory, that are inadequate for explaining the extremity of the solution offered. To place the person of Christ himself at the center compels us to attend to him who is the God-Man of Chalcedon, the bridge and mediator between the divine and the human.
My second volume came out in 2016 and was called: The Old Rugged Cross: A History of the Atonement in Popular Christian Devotion. In it, my aim was to analyze what has been happening on the ground. How, if at all, have these atonement theories helped ordinary Christians to live more devoted lives? The key concept I came up with was the Participation Imperative. By this I meant that the one assumption that underlies the church’s most formative engagements with the cross has been the assumption that Christ is the representative human. He suffers with our sufferings and dies our death yet raises us up to newness of life with him. The church’s use of Eucharist, metaphor, and art has been all about the attempt to re-present, and hence to participate all over again in, the events of Gethsemane, Calvary and the tomb. Even within the evangelicalism of the nineteenth century I discerned a shift away from the strictly forensic theories of atonement to which it remained ostensibly committed and in the direction of the ever-increasing use of the word “blood” instead of “cross” or “Calvary.” The atonement thus became liquefied and applicable. The hymnody and preaching of the nineteenth century was famously filled with the invitation to wash and bathe in this blood—a subjective participation to counterbalance the objective penal substitution.
In the first volume I was a historical theologian, then, in the second volume, I became a church historian, and now I change hats again, but in a way that gets me back to my true first love: I am wearing the hat of a biblical scholar. I like to live dangerously, always feeling like I am a guest at other people’s debates, a visitor wondering around other people’s countries of well-honed expertise, a foreign piece of mail sitting in a clearly-labelled pigeon hole. Even while writing Atonement Theories—which, of all the books I have written, most falls within my areas of proven academic expertise—I quickly became an intruder in other people’s cherished specialisms such as Anselm studies, Luther studies, and Calvinism. Similarly, in the second volume I knew that my only well-practiced area of specialism was in the Pentecostal part of the story. Again I was an intruder tiptoeing through the quest for the historical Eucharist, Anglo-Saxon literature, and medievalism, trying not to disturb the natives. Strangely, though, with this biblical volume I feel like I am coming home. And that is for two reasons. One is that my personal meditations on the Word have centered on the themes explored here since as far back as April 1992. I am writing about a biblical
