It is an instance of fides quaerens intellectum that the universal church confesses the irreducible fact that Jesus saves and yet, on the basis of the range of biblical imagery, has held open the question of exactly how this redemption is secured. The present volume by Oliver Crisp, professor of analytic theology and director of the Logos Institute at the University of St. Andrews, offers a ‘representational union account’ of Christ's work as his most recent contribution to this central task of reflecting on the atonement (p. 179). The argument is rich and stimulating, broadly Reformed in its convictions, and the product of ongoing revision over the last fifteen years. In what follows, I will briefly describe the structure of the argument and then offer some appreciative concerns and comments.
The argument builds naturally in three parts. Part 1 addresses preliminary issues, starting with a taxonomy of those ‘different levels of theological explanation’ encompassing motif and metaphor, doctrine, model and theory (p. 32). This is followed by discussion of the kind of necessity that attaches to God's costly work of atonement. Might not God simply have resolved the situation by sheer will and no payment at all, or perhaps by treating some form of payment as if it were more valuable than it actually is? Crisp concludes that, contrary to such voluntarist notions of divine justice as acceptilatio or acceptatio, God's work in Christ ‘must have an intrinsic, objective moral value…at least proportional to the sin it atones for’ (p. 46).
Part 2 displays the author's expert grasp of the Christian tradition. Four approaches to atonement are each given their own chapter: moral exemplarism, ransom, satisfaction and penal substitution. This part is wide-ranging and resists easy summary. Readers will want to consider Crisp's defence of an ‘extended’ version of exemplarism; the curious sidelining of physical or ontological theories in discussion of the patristic era; his appreciative reading of Anselmian theology, wherein Christ ‘generates a merit that may be applied to human sin’ (p. 112); and his concession that a substitute might legitimately bear the penal consequences of another's sin, though not the culpability itself. These sketches are patient, grounded in primary texts and informed by contemporary debates. They are also intended to demonstrate that within each traditional approach ‘something seems to be missing’ (p. 5).
The third and final part would supply that missing element. Crisp begins with a distinction. A better model of redemption, he argues, must convincingly describe both the mechanism of atonement and the consequences that flow from it. Each aspect is developed in turn. The mechanism is Christ's act of representation, whereby the incarnate Son offers penance – an ‘extended apology’ – on behalf of God's elect (pp. 199, 203). This resonates strongly with an Anselmian view, though the key distinction between ‘being held accountable for’ and ‘being responsible for’ is provided by the social ontology of J. R. Lucas. Distinguishable from the mechanism of atonement are the consequences which flow from it. In short, it is ‘union with Christ’, effected by an infusion of the Holy Spirit, which accounts for the way in which individuals are both regenerated and incorporated into the church. This is the realisation of God's decision from eternity, a secret work of the Spirit in which human beings are ‘entirely passive, but not quiescent’ (p. 216), and apart from which there simply would be no church.
While the argument as a whole is deferential to scripture's authority, there is very little primary engagement. Partly this is due to space limitations. However, this is also a consequence of the mode of argumentation, which favours philosophical clarification of received views, concern for minimum conditions for success and a focus on internal coherence. The cost is not just that the reader is distanced from scripture's own idiom, but that the content of the gospel is disadvantaged. For example, the ‘corruption only’ view of original sin is partly defined this way: ‘a person born with this defect will normally inevitably commit actual sin on at least one occasion provided that person lives long enough’ (p. 163). True enough. And the argument is eminently clear. However, this is quite far from the Apostle Paul's own desperate cry, ‘Who will save me from this body of death?’ (Rom. 7:24). If scripture is indeed the norma normans of theological reasoning, the arguments within the book will be most instructive for readers already well-versed in how scripture speaks.
A second concern is the limited consideration given the relationship between blood, death and forgiveness. This too is an exegetical matter. It is also a large-scale theological question about the way in which God deals with and accompanies his people throughout covenant history. Early in the book, expiation and the scapegoat are identified among those biblical themes for which exemplarism cannot account. Unfortunately, these themes are never returned to and integrated into Crisp's own proposal. Why exactly is Jesus’ death to be included as part of his vicarious penitence, as Crisp writes, and how does it serve expiation in any biblical sense, unless Jesus’ death was at heart an act of bearing the penal consequences of the fall? As Crisp acknowledges, this is a difficult teaching. Among other things, however, it would help explain why the sacraments – which facilitate union within the church – are so deeply permeated by language of dying and rising.
All that to say, this is a tremendously stimulating book. It is finely tuned, and a model of balance, cogency and mature judgement. Crisp leans hard into both the aseity of the triune God and a supralapsarian Christology that recognises theosis not as a substantial sharing in the divine life but as the dramatic end of all God's perfecting works. Most important, it is a book that reminds us that pursuit of the truth is more important than drawing parochial boundary lines or producing something novel.
