Rethinking atonement with an emphasis on trust

In Protestantism’s understanding of salvation, justification by faith has played a central role in framing theology. A glance at the systematic theologies of the last 400 years shows that justification is typically the doctrinal lattice around which all of the theology is constructed—and this is certainly the case with recent atonement theories. What goes missing in much discussion of the atonement, in Teresa Morgan’s view, is by faith.

What role does faith play in atonement models? Morgan, in her three groundbreaking studies of faith as trust (and a fourth in preparation), has not only sought to justify the importance of trust in understandings of atonement, she has turned trust into a model of “at-one-ment.” The challenge she will need to meet is to elaborate whether atonement remains an objective event resolving objective realities or a subjective experience of redemption that has generated theological terms to explain the experience of the event. Morgan wants at-one-ment theology to broaden beyond just Good Friday to include what God was doing in the world through Christ—from incarnation to glorification.

Morgan’s studies of trust are intricate, deeply informed, exegetically alert, and breathtaking—but it will take a patient reader to work through all three texts (Roman Faith and Christian Faith, The New Testament and the Theology of Trust, and now Trust in Atonement). This latest book interacts with a wide range of studies about trust: philosophy, sociology, psychology, theology, conflict resolution, trauma, and pastoral care. Trust, she shows, is both complicated and a fertile field for theological study. Her specialty is the Pauline paradigm as approached through the Greco-Roman world, with much less attention to the Jewish world.