“On the Doctrine of Atonement” by Robert W. Jenson

Posted on 15 April 2022 by Fr Aidan Kimel

“For we can be reunited with the triune God only as we are fitted into the triune life. With some other sort of God matters might stand differently. But the biblical God is no sort of monad; we cannot be reunited with him as one might reunite two pennies by stacking them, or even as one might reunite two created persons by negotiating their alienation. Nor can the specifically triune God sustain any merely causal relation to the world, in any current use of ‘causal’; he cannot reunite us with himself by working on us to change us. The relation of creatures to this God is always their involvement with the three who are God — or an abysmal possibility, their disinvolvement.” ~ Robert W. Jenson

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3 Responses to “On the Doctrine of Atonement” by Robert W. Jenson

  1. johnnsw says:
    15 April 2022 at 7:29 pm

    Fr Kimel, Thank you for this and other recent posts arguing against Penal Substitutionary Atonement. I have saved Robert Jenson’s article. I did contribute a comment to your “If Atonement Ain’t Penal, Why the Cross?” post, where you helpfully quote Herbert McCabe. I think that my words there are consistent with what you, Jenson and McCabe are all saying.

    Years ago an article on the Atonement came to my attention via the Internet, probably from the Eclectic Orthodoxy site, where the writer concentrated on our being “in Christ” as being the real mechanism for the Atonement, along of course with what Jesus achieved in His life and death and resurrection, all for our sake, as the Father’s loving purpose. This is very close to what Jensen is saying in the closing section of his article. I am sure I saved it at the time, for it did impress me, but my attempts to locate it on my computer(s) have proved fruitless.

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  2. Rux says:
    16 April 2022 at 7:17 am

    There have been many blessings throughout this Lenten season. Things have really gone out with a bang with the past weeks posts on PSA. I am truly grateful and thankful.

    At the end of this piece by Jensen he states: ‘Thus it may indeed appear that we are reconciled to God by his being reconciled in himself – but that is a matter for another essay altogether.’
    Does anyone know if he did indeed follow up this idea with an essay or another work which discusses this compelling idea of our involvement in the motion of the trinity?

    Blessings this Easter.

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