A Community Called Atonement

I recently read Scot McKnight's A Community Called Atonement (Nashville: Abington, 2007). It gave me food for thought on three issues: the Kingdom of God, the image of God, and the role of Jesus' resurrection in the atonement.

The Kingdom of God.

McKnight defines the Kingdom of God as "what God is doing in this world through the community of faith for the redemptive plans of God--including what God is doing in you and me" (9, emphasis his). McKnight believes that the church plays an important role in God's transformation of all creation. It does so in that it models a just society that values all people, rich and poor, thereby influencing the broader culture.

I've encountered this line of thinking from a variety of sources: N.T. Wright, Tim Keller, and Brian McLaren. And it puzzles me, to be honest with you. Isn't that post-millennialism, the idea that the church will transform society for the better, and then Christ will come? My background is more pre-millennial, which says that things will get worse and worse prior to Christ's return (e.g., Matthew 24:12; II Timothy 3:13). In my own reading of Scripture, Christ will interrupt a world that's on a downward course. He won't be coming to one that's getting better and better under the influence of the church.

That's not to say that the church is not an alternative society, or that it shouldn't be salt and light in the world. Of course it should, for Jesus told it to be that (Matthew 5:13-16). And perhaps the church is also a microcosm of God's coming kingdom. Years ago, when I read the Gospel of Luke, I noticed its hope that the Messiah would soon come and vindicate the poor. What I thought that meant was that Jesus viewed his kingdom as imminent (Albert Schweitzer style): he was assuring the poor that their liberation was nigh, for he'd soon come and set up a kingdom that would topple the rich and powerful while exalting the lowly. As a believer, I had a problem with such an interpretation, since that didn't happen. Two thousand years later, the rich and powerful are still oppressing the poor and the lowly. But, in my mind, that was the best reading of the text.

Part of me considered another proposal, however: Perhaps Luke's Jesus expects the poor to find their relief and exaltation in the church. In Luke's other work, Acts, the disciples hold their goods in common (Acts 2:44; 4:32), and deacons help the poor widows (Acts 6). Indeed, the church was a place where the poor could be fed, where the first put themselves last so that the last could be first. But I recoiled from that interpretation because it didn't seem like a large societal transformation, the type that Jesus seemed to predict. Plus, I have a hard time equating the church with the just and egalitarian Kingdom of God, since it has a lot of cliques, social snobbery, and apathy about other people's well-being.

But I like what McKnight says: "[E]ternity is the society created by God around Jesus Christ wherein God's people enjoy union with God and communion with one another, in a place where everything works as it did in Eden...Atonement is the work of God to create and ready his people for just these things: union with God and communion with others in a place of perfection, with a society of justice and peace and above all worship of the Lamb of God on the throne" (27). For me, the church should be a place that prepares Christians for the paradise that Christ will one day create. And, since we are citizens of that coming kingdom, we promote and act on the values that will one day predominate in God's recreated world.

The Image of God.

Believe it or not, this issue has always stumped me. Are we created in God's image or not? I mean, God made Adam in the divine image, but Seth was in the image of his father, Adam (Genesis 5:3). I've heard this verse tied to the corruption of humanity after the Fall. So was Seth not in God's image?

At the same time, Genesis 9:6 says, "Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person's blood be shed; for in his own image God made humankind" (NRSV). James 3:9 has, "With [the tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God." And so I guess that everyone is made in God's image. That's why we shouldn't kill or curse another human being.

And, yet, Colossians 3:10 says that Christians are becoming renewed in knowledge after the image of God, as they put on the new man. They are coming to resemble Christ more and more in their attributes, and Christ is the true image of God (II Corinthians 4:4). So not everyone is in God's image, since not everyone is a moral Christian like Christ, right?

But McKnight cleared up my dilemma. According to him, we are all made in God's image, but that image had becoming defiled. It's still there, but it's defaced. We are cracked eikons (the Greek word for image). And atonement is God's way of repairing his image in us. So we're in God's image, but not fully, and that's what atonement is meant to correct.

Sounds pretty obvious, I know. But I'm still puzzled by one thing: Does Paul believe that women are made in God's image, or not (see I Corinthians 11:7)?

Resurrection and Atonement.

Evangelicals often emphasize the role of Christ's death in atonement, since that's what paid the penalty for sin (Romans 3:25). But the New Testament says that Christ's resurrection plays a big role in our justification before God:

Romans 4:25: "who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification."

Romans 10:9: "because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."

I Corinthians 15:17: "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins."

My question has always been: Suppose Christ hadn't risen from the dead? Wouldn't we still be justified, since his death paid our sin-debt?

On some level, McKnight addresses this by redefining atonement. He doesn't just treat atonement as God's forgiveness of sin. Rather, he views it more broadly as God's recreation of humanity, which reconciles people with himself and one another within the context of a body (the church).

But, even if I were to see atonement primarily in terms of forgiveness (a typical Protestant approach), I can understand (somewhat) why the resurrection is so important. The resurrection is my guarantee of a new life, both now and also in the hereafter. Christ could've paid my sin-debt, but how's that help me if I cannot become a new man before God, or if I have no hope beyond the grave? And Christ's resurrection was necessary for both, for Christ is the representative of the human race (Romans 5:14ff.). His goal is to do right what we did wrong (Sam Beckett style, only without the quantum leaps), and also to incorporate us into his recreation of the human race. He needs to be resurrected for us to be resurrected, in terms of becoming new creations and also surviving a literal death (Romans 6; I Corinthians 15). Otherwise, we still suffer the penalty for our sins (death).

This doesn't answer my question totally, since I wonder if the resurrection was necessary to pay my sin debt. The Bible seems to say that it was! Still, despite my lack of a full understanding, I have an appreciation for Christ pulling us out of the clutches of sin and death, which were holding us down. And he did this through his incarnation, death, and resurrection. Praise God!