Atonement in Theology and Literature

Some theology of atonement and “at-one-ment” has talked in terms of love rather than justice or punishment, and the Oxford philosopher J. R. Lucas said that we need to be led out of our egocentric predicament by love. A study of George Eliot’s Silas Marner, Jane Austen’s Emma, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and Ian McEwen’s Atonement reveals only partial truth in that adage, for human complexity resists being encapsulated in a neat theological formula. C. S. Lewis’s distinction of four kinds of love proves helpful in dealing with our ambiguities.