“Atonement language includes several evocative metaphors: there is a sacrificial metaphor (offering), and a legal metaphor (justification), and an interpersonal metaphor (reconciliation), and a commercial metaphor (redemption), and a military metaphor (ransom). Each is designed to carry us. . .to the thing. But the metaphor is not the thing. The metaphor gives the reader or hearer an imagination of the thing, a vision of he thing, a window onto the thing, a lens through which to look in order to see the ting. Metaphors take us there, but they are not the “there.”
“Knowing that the metaphor is not the thing leads to important implications, not the least of which is to admit in humility that we can have proper confidence in the God who atones by indwelling each of the many metaphors that lead sus to the God who atones. We need each of them. We need justification and sacrifice and substitution and satisfaction and ransom and recapitulation and incorporation and imputation because each, in its won language game of metaphorical exploration and imagination, leads us to the core of it all: reconciliation (which is a metaphor) with God, self, others, and the world.
“Perhaps most radically, we are bound to our metaphors..."—A Community Called Atonement, p. 38 (italics his)
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1 comment:
Interesting. Yes, I do remember this in a review of the book.
I meet with a guy who insists on just one meaning to the atonement, something like overcompensation of justice flowing over to Jesus from God and to all who believe in Jesus.
I look forward to reading this for better understanding, but also hopefully to better engage my friend.
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