In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Atonement by Eleonore Stump
  • David L. Whidden III
Atonement. By Eleonore Stump. Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xv + 536. $80.00 (hard). 978-0-19-881386-6.

In the beginning of the last chapter of Atonement, Eleonore Stump states that the entirety of her argument "is an explanation of the love of God" (378), a summary statement which also provides her primary criterion for judging atonement theories alternative to hers. For Stump the atonement shows how the life, passion, and death of Christ "takes God's love to be maximally expressive of God's nature and central to the atonement, and . . . God's forgiveness to be God's love in operation towards human beings suffering from guilt" (ibid.). She arrives at these concluding remarks through a rigorous work of philosophical theology, yet one that works from broadly orthodox theological commitments, which she explores for an understanding of how Christ's atonement removes the guilt and shame consequent to human sin and thus unites humans to God.

Stump begins by investigating previous atonement theories, which she divides into two main types, Anselmian and Thomistic. Stump criticizes Anselmian types (which include Anselm, Luther, and Calvin) because they "locate the main obstacle to a solution to the problem of human sinfulness in God's justice or God's honor or some similar divine attribute" (21), while Thomistic types "locate the obstacle to a remedy for human sinfulness in human beings themselves" (22). She also notes some problems with the Thomistic approach, especially the "connection between its solution to the problem of sin, on the one hand, and the passion and death of Christ, on the other" (27), though she generally expands upon Thomistic ideas as she develops her own account. In her second chapter, which treats of the central problems of guilt, shame, and satisfaction, Stump argues that an evaluation of atonement theories requires fidelity to biblical texts, a moral psychology, and an ethical theory. Her preferred ethical theory is Aquinas's, which emphasizes love and relationship in its normative account of human acts (39). If love, understood as willing the good for the other and desiring union with the beloved, is the central virtue of Thomistic ethics, then the guilt of sin breaks our ability to will the good for the other and shame breaks our desire for union with the beloved. A fully Christian account of the atonement must account for both guilt and shame in reuniting humans with the greatest good, God.

In this Thomistic ethical system, love is obligatory and forgiveness for sin is unilateral and unconditional on God's part. Stump therefore develops her attack on Anselmian theories in chapter 3 by arguing that these interpretations are "antithetical to God's love" (109) because satisfaction is required as a precondition of forgiveness and reconciliation. The required satisfaction is seen as a requirement of God's justice or honor, which seems to place an obstacle or [End Page 471] limitation on God's loving forgiveness, and has the additional problem that it minimizes our efforts to reconcile with those against whom we have sinned. Instead, Stump argues that human satisfaction, which should benefit those we have sinned against, follows from God's forgiveness and God's central attribute of love. Consequently, Stump claims that "the God of the Anselmian interpretation is not a loving God," and so the Anselmian approach is "unsalvageable" (115).

Over the next four chapters, Stump develops the philosophical foundations necessary for her own positive account of atonement. Since the goal of love is union with the beloved, in chapter 4 she describes what is required for union and indwelling with God. The purpose of the cross is union with God in this life (117), a union that comes from the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, which raises the question of how an omnipresent God can be in union with particular humans. Consequently, Stump develops a theory of indwelling and union as a function of shared attention and personal presence that comes from a kind of empathy and mind-reading. This position, however, creates an additional problem of how the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is...

pdf

Share