Forgiveness and Atonement

Christ's Restorative Sacrifice

Jonathan Curtis Rutledge, Jonathan Rutledge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367742188
• eBook ISBN: 9781000556117
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This book analyzes the relationship between forgiveness, atonement, and reconciliation from a Christian theological perspective. Drawing on both theological and philosophical literature, it addresses the problem of whether atonement is required for forgiveness and considers important related concepts such as sin and justice. The author develops a sacrificial model of atonement that connects an understanding of Christian forgiveness with the biblical narrative of Christ's sacrifice and makes reconciliation between God and humanity possible. Offering a fresh and coherent argument, the book will be relevant to scholars of Christian theology, biblical studies, and the philosophy of religion.

1Value-Driven Inquiry and Exegetically Engaged Analytic Theology

DOI: 10.4324/​9780367754778-2

Can There Be Progress in Theology?

This book seeks to develop a distinctively Christian account of forgiveness, which when wedded with a sacrificial model for the death of Christ, explains how divine-human reconciliation might be achieved. Such a project is certainly a vast one, for the literature on these topics spans many academic disciplines—biology, psychology, philosophy, religion, political theory, anthropology, etc.—and has grown steadily since at least the beginning of the common era. Indeed, due to the daunting scope of such a project, one might rightly wonder whether we should expect anything new to be discovered.

As any academic understands, however, every area of study progresses, even if such progress is difficult for an outsider to discern. Philosophers, for instance, developed remarkable standards of logical rigor throughout the twentieth century that have since found applications in areas of study such as linguistics or computer science. And, of course, the hard sciences have not ceased to progress in their own obvious ways including, but not limited to, the development of quantum mechanics and continued work in the nature of time.¹ Such examples of progress in these disciplines indicate that legitimately new terrain might plausibly be found for an understanding of our topics concerning the nature of Christian forgiveness and a sacrificial model of atonement.

Value-Driven Inquiry in the Context of Theology

As we narrow our focus to the question of defining forgiveness, however, it is immediately worth asking why someone should care about defining forgiveness in the first place. After all, most of us seem to have an intuitive idea of what forgiveness is, and thus, it seems unnecessary (perhaps a waste of time even) to worry about finding a good definition.

To put the worry another way, someone might claim that trying to define ‘forgiveness’ is like trying to define ‘superhero’. Some people invested in the world of comic books and cinematic experiences might care whether, for instance, Batman could be rightly called a superhero (despite lacking superhuman powers). But that some people care what the definition of ‘superhero’ is does not imply that they should care about the definition of ‘superhero’. Nor does it imply that anyone else should care about getting the right definition of ‘superhero’, for no general agreement about how ‘superhero’ is defined is likely to matter for anything constituting human flourishing. Thus, in at least some cases, whether or not we have a good definition of a concept simply does not matter.

In other cases, however, getting agreement about a definition clearly does matter. Consider, for instance, the recent case of Pluto’s demotion from planethood (something which grated against the nostalgic sensibilities of at least a few millennials). In this instance, Pluto failed to satisfy the definition of a planet (i.e., a celestial body that primarily orbits the sun, possesses sufficient mass to be roundish, is warmer than –220°C, and has cleared its orbital path by either pulling nearby objects in or pushing them away) and was demoted from planethood in virtue of that.²

Faced with the prospect of disappointing most of the inhabitants of the world with the news that Pluto was not, by definition, a planet, scientists might have been forgiven had they simply changed the definition of ‘planet’ to avoid the possibility of a backlash. Indeed, they could have done so quite easily without entirely ruining the rest of the definition—which could have required them to reclassify a whole slew of other objects—by simply adding a new feature to the original definition of ‘planet’: namely, that something is a planet if “it is a celestial body which primarily orbits the sun…has cleared its orbital path by either pulling nearby objects in or pushing them away (with the exception of Pluto).” Had they done this, Pluto could have retained its status as a planet and the scientific community could have continued to classify planets otherwise precisely as they currently do.

Of course, sticking with the original definition of ‘planet’ in this case made, and still makes, more sense. But why did leaving the definition untouched make more sense? Presumably, the reason resided in something of value (i.e., something worth caring about) that was promoted by sticking with the original definition of ‘planet’. In this case, that value was probably something like this: the immense practical value of maintaining a well-defined and constant definition of a technical concept for the sake of previous and future research. That is, it would have been bad to change the definition because it would add an unnecessary (not to mention annoying) practical obstacle to anyone engaging in or reading about contemporary astronomy. Thus, in order to better support future research, the scientific community recognized that maintaining agreement about the definition of a planet was a better course of action than altering that long-held definition.

The decision to use a particular definition of ‘planet’, then, was one undergirded by the concerns of value-driven inquiry; that is, a type of inquiry propelled by one’s axiology. Such inquiry proceeds on the assumption that one need not claim of a given definition that it is the right concept of whatever one aims at (e.g., knowledge, planethood, or forgiveness). Instead, one defends the claim that the concept one has picked out as relevant to the inquiry at hand is valuable in some significant way and worth attending to in the context under question. Thus, fundamental to such an approach is first an identification of something that is of value (e.g., carrying on good research or being grounded in scripture and tradition) followed by some sort of argument that the relevant value is significantly promoted by the concept one identifies (e.g., sticking with a particular definition of ‘planet’ or, in our context, opting for a specific understanding of ‘forgiveness’).

In our present theological context, then, to engage in theologically value-driven inquiry concerning a definition of ‘forgiveness’ requires that we identify a theological value, which is promoted or serves as a precondition for the definition of ‘forgiveness’ we are after. That theological value is this: a concept is better (or more valuable) insofar as it is informed by both the Christian scriptures and the history of the development of doctrine within the Christian tradition. Thus, whenever one’s definition of forgiveness conflicts with either of those things (i.e., the deliverances of revelation in scripture or tradition), one’s definition is to some extent and in some respect inferior to another definition which does not conflict in that way. Indeed, this methodological theme of theologically value-driven inquiry is a recurring theme throughout this text.

Analytic Theology as a Research Program

In addition to situating this investigation within a value-driven paradigm, we also proceed from within the analytic theological tradition. Though there are currently no uncontroversial and substantive characterizations of the recent research project known as analytic theology, the following putative definition of the analytic tradition is helpful:

Analytic theology applies analytic (though not exclusively analytic) concepts and methods to theological issues and applies theological concepts and insights to issues that have traditionally been of interest to analytic philosophers. Although the analytic concepts and methods under question are wide-ranging, they include the utilization of logical and linguistic analysis and are read typically, though not essentially, against a background philosophical literature roughly beginning with the likes of Frege, Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein. Moreover, analytic theology recognizes the importance of (i) allowing its practitioners to include both nonpropositional items in the set of theological data and groups as possible subjects of discourse, as well as (ii) accommodating the social construction of a number of concepts that are important to the theological task with some notable exceptions such as the concepts of truth, objectivity, rationality, justice, and the good.³

According to the above definition, analytic theology is characterized by certain methods utilized by those who fall within the analytic tradition of philosophy, but it cannot be done in isolation from what might be called nonanalytic theology. The reason for this is that all theologians, whether analytic or not, are committed to a common theological task, and insofar as the object of theological study—i.e., God and everything in relation to God⁴—might resist some of the analytic tools currently in vogue, analytic theologians must be prepared to venture outside of stereotypically analytic boundaries if and whenever the object of their study demands it. In other words, analytic theology is best practiced when it is done both within a community of scholars diverse enough to include those who might powerfully challenge certain aspects of analytic methodology and in a way, which is sensitive to the fact that its object is a person (in the Christian tradition) rather than an inert scientific substance.

Although the above definition of analytic theology is helpful in many ways, those unfamiliar with typical analytic writings will likely find it insufficiently enlightening. As a supplement, then, analytic theology is characterized by the methods of logical argumentation, the construction and deployment of logical systems (deductive, inductive, and abductive), and the ability to draw upon a wide body of literature in philosophy when considering questions saliently connected to philosophy’s various subdisciplines: epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, philosophy of language, value theory, language, and logic. Such methods have proven extremely fruitful both within philosophy and when applied to specifically theological topics (e.g., Trinity or Incarnation).⁵

Having situated our discussion within the context of value-driven inquiry and analytic theology, let us begin with a discussion of the value of forgiveness generally. Such a discussion, however, benefits significantly if one provides a taxonomic background, which distinguishes different types of value from one another (e.g., intrinsic or instrumental value). Consequently, significant space is reserved for constructing such a taxonomy, but once that taxonomy is in place, we then consider the ways in which forgiveness appears to have value. Second, we turn to a brief consideration of reflective equilibrium, that is, the method characterizing the interplay between our intuitions concerning value, the comparative weights of our epistemic authorities, and the background theories we bring to such things. It is in this section that I address the idea of an exegetically engaged analytic theology since an appreciation of one’s epistemic authorities is central to it. Upon completing this foray into value theory, we then turn, in the next chapter, to a thorough survey of the biblical texts concerning forgiveness in order to ascertain what sorts of constraints on a definition of forgiveness might be required of us if, as I have been emphasizing, we desire a theologically value-driven account of forgiveness. Let us, then, turn to questions of the nature of value.

A Taxonomy of Value

In turning to a discussion of value, one might be inclined to think that we have entered the moral realm; however, the realm of value consists of far more than solely moral values. Despite, the fact that the realm of value encompasses more than the moral realm, why might someone be inclined to restrict the value to the moral alone?

I cannot hope to give a complete psychological explanation for why someone might be inclined to reduce all questions of value to questions about morality, but we can begin to see some such motivation by reflecting on our uses of the word ‘ought’. ‘Ought’ is a word that signals a shift to a context of normativity; that is, a context in which we want to know what should be done or how the world should be rather than to know what people will do or how the world is. That is, to employ the language of ‘ought’ carries with it a tacit commitment to comparative value, that one way of being is better than some alternative.

But the most existentially pressing contexts in which we ask questions about what we ought to do involve primarily moral considerations. Classic trolley problems in which you are asked to choose between pulling a lever to change the tracks of a trolley such that only one person is killed rather than five illustrate this superficially, but we face complex moral situations routinely. For instance, you might ask yourself whether you should always be driving your car to work given the ill effects your chosen mode of travel will have on the environment. Or perhaps you are unsure whether eating meat is permissible given systematic issues surrounding factory farming and animal welfare.⁶ These questions rivet us because we desire to be moral beings, but it is a mistake to treat the riveting nature of such questions as evidence that moral values exhaust the realm of value.

What other types of value are there? Things of value (i.e., things about which we care, to which we commit ourselves, or which are good for us) might be best explained in terms of their relation to any number of epistemic, aesthetic, practical, or psychological goods (to name just a few). Assuming that our valuing something for any of these nonmoral reasons is sometimes fitting, then it follows that there are types of value which fall into the category of the nonmoral.

As an example of a nonmoral value, we could consider something as mundane as a toaster. For a toaster can rightly be called ‘good’ qua toaster in virtue of possessing the property heats-bread-evenly. This property is clearly not a property concerned with moral value. Rather, it concerns practical value, and thus, any toaster in possession of the property heats-bread-evenly would be practically valuable given the use to which a toaster is normally put.

Consider also the practical value of positive self-talk. For instance, it is a part of the lore of baseball that if a player believes they are likely to get a hit at their next at bat, then they increase their likelihood of getting a hit to some extent. However, even the best hitters in all of baseball fail to get a hit most of the time, and thus, the belief that they a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Endorsements Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright Note
• Introduction
• 1 Value-Driven Inquiry and Exegetically Engaged Analytic Theology
• 2 Original Sin and the Biblical Witness Concerning Forgiveness
• 3 Forgiveness: A Christian Account
• 4 The Problem of Sin for Humanity and Its Members
• 5 Retribution and Restoration in the Narrative of Scripture
• 6 On Non-Retributive Penal Substitution
• 7 What Should We Expect from an Explanation of Atonement?
• 8 For Us, an Atoning Sacrifice
• 9 Forgiveness and Atonement: The Expanded Sacrificial Account
• Index