The Mosaic of Atonement: An Integrated Approach to Christ’s Work
by Joshua M. McNall
Zondervan Academic, 2019
336 pages (paperback), $34.99
The Christian teaching that God has reconciled sinners by Christ through the Spirit has been central and pervasive in the worship, contemplation, discussions, and debates of every generation of the church age. This is certainly true of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Thus to say that the last hundred and fifty years has seen an abundance of publications on the subject of the atonement is not to say that such an abundance is exceptional.
What is exceptional about the twentieth-century discussions of the atonement, however, are the general categories within which those discussions have taken place. The late-nineteenth to mid-twentieth-centuries debates were dominated by appeals to and explanations of “models” and “theories” of the atonement, which were supposedly developed and articulated in various historical epochs. The late twentieth century witnessed various reactions to what was seen as the biblical and philosophical inadequacy, and historical relativity, of these various models and theories.
Over the past fifty years or so, the problematic nature of these nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries debates has become apparent. Retrieval movements in historical theology, the theological interpretation of Scripture, as well as a renewal of dogmatic interests have all contributed to dissatisfaction with the “models” and “theories” approach to the atonement. Some argue that it is best to drop the categories entirely. Others, however, see some utility in retaining them, so long as they are clearly defined and holistically appropriated.
Joshua McNall, in his Mosaic of the Atonement, prefers the latter. He argues that the “models, metaphors, and motifs” used by Christian thinkers down through the ages to “articulate the meaning of redemption” ought to be understood as “pieces” that can be fitted together (14). As the title suggests, the dominant metaphor of the book is that of a mosaic: “Unlike a photograph, whose tiny pixels present a seamless blend of color and shape, both puzzles and mosaics show us how the pieces fit together while also allowing each piece to retain a recognizable particularity” (21). According to McNall, when the four main models of atonement used throughout Christian history—recapitulation, penal substitution, Christus Victor, and moral influence—are pieced together, they reveal “a more holistic picture of Christ’s work” (74).
McNall argues that recapitulation, originally developed by Irenaeus of Lyon in the second century, “should be seen as a foundation” of the other models in that they “stand, both logically and biblically, upon ideas inherent within the view of Jesus as the true and faithful Adam and the true and faithful Israel” (75). Recapitulation provides “foundational presuppositions upon which [the other models] stand” (81). Christ’s substitution and victory and the Spirit-wrought moral transformation of those who are united to Christ presuppose the reality of the overarching biblical storyline: in Adam all have sinned; in Christ all are made righteous.
Penal substitution is, in McNall’s terms, “the hub—or beating heart—of this mosaic of Christ. It is propped up by the incorporative presuppositions of recapitulation (the Adamic feet), while supplying lifeblood to the outstretched arms (moral influence)” (173). It also, and importantly, relates to Christus Victor by explaining how God in Christ triumphs over sin, death, and the devil. His defense of penal substitution is one to be reckoned with, carefully ranging over the historical (ch. 4) and biblical (ch. 5) evidence, and then responding to the full range of contemporary (though not new) critiques of this model (ch. 6). Interestingly, McNall even defends what has long been considered an outmoded atonement motif. “Christ overcomes sin, death, and the devil not just by recapitulative obedience . . . and penal substitution . . . but also by leveraging satanic ignorance and self-deception against the very monster that would orchestrate his plunge into the great abyss of his own choosing” (228).
Atonement, McNall argues in part IV, “is praxis” and therefore “Christians are to embody atonement” (296–97). This is where the moral influence model comes into view. Recalling Irenaeus again, he suggests that those who have been, and are being, morally transformed by the Spirit are “leveraged for the ministry of reconciliation” where “new creation once again emerges out of chaos.” This aspect of atonement, then, relates to the telos of atonement, Christus Victor, as both the Spirit-wrought effect of the “already” of Christ’s victory and the Spirit-wrought means to bring about the “not yet.”
It is impossible in this brief review to detail all that is helpful in McNall’s book. So, let me highlight a few that I found especially so. In the first place, this project should be classified in the broad stream of theological retrieval. McNall very helpfully engages both Scripture and the historical interpretation of it, ranging widely and diving deeply in that engagement. His treatment does not come across as deconstructive or iconoclastic on the one hand, or as parroting (one particular version) of the tradition on the other. Rather, it reads as a serious engagement in the search for understanding.
Second, his treatment of penal substitution, while again bold and forthright, is helpfully balanced. Without coming across as uncomfortable with the notion of punishment or substitution, he deftly underscores the important theological principle of proportion: Penal substitution is not the doctrine of atonement, but an important part of it, a part that needs to be correlated with its other constituent parts if the mosaic of atonement is to be seen clearly.
Third, he helpfully integrates the New Testament theme of inaugurated eschatology with the doctrine of atonement: triumph, he says, is “the telos of atonement” (230). It is this telos that links Christus Victor to moral influence, because the victory comes in “stages”; and human testimony, a “suffering and sometimes stumbling obedience” (231), constitutes a part of God’s staged victory.
Finally, with respect to moral influence, McNall emphatically argues in chapter 13 that the influence is a work of the Spirit; it is not to be considered merely in psychological terms—for example, how a good story elicits psychological change in its reader. It is a Spirit-wrought transformation of disordered loves.
There are a good many interesting parts to this work as well: his defense of “a long-discarded element of atonement doctrine, the place of deception in the devil’s defeat” (ch. 8); his correlated and lengthy discussions of the historicity of Adam (ch. 2) and the ontic status of Satan (ch. 9); and his critical appropriation of Abelard and René Girard as “the positive and negative gestures of moral influence thinking” that make up “a crucial facet of atonement doctrine proper” (287), just to name a few. I’ll leave it to the reader to more fully pursue these interests.
There are a few places where I think the book is unsuccessful. McNall aims to steer between hierarchizing the models on the one hand and leaving them as disconnected and relativized on the other. Though he successfully avoids allowing one piece to swallow the others, even his metaphor of a mosaic requires that the pieces be put together in accordance with some logic. The logic, perhaps, does not evaluate; but it does order and orders entail hierarchy. (This is not a bad thing!) What McNall wishes to avoid, it seems to me, is disproportion of one model to the others. He has done this, but in so doing he has not avoided hierarchizing the models.
Second, placing moral influence, especially Spirit-wrought moral influence, under the category of atonement is rather to misplace it. The traditional reformed category of sanctification—as the application of the work of Christ by the work of the Spirit in the life of the believer—seems to this reviewer a much better fit. In this case, perhaps the book would be better titled The Mosaic of Salvation.
Third, and most importantly, I remain unconvinced that attempting to integrate various “models” of the atonement is the best approach to constructing a doctrine of atonement, much less that it is a helpful way to approach the history of Christian thought on the work of Christ. Better, I think, is a series of ordered, interrelated questions that engage exegetical, philosophical, traditional, and ethical considerations that proportionately shape and fill out the doctrine.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to think of a contemporary work comparable to this one. It is accessible yet thorough, ranging over biblical and historical studies and contemporary debates, all the while piecing together a compelling and integrated portrait of the work of Christ. For those interested in an accessible and thorough study of the work of Christ, this book is a good place to start.
Joshua Schendel is the new executive editor of Modern Reformation magazine.
