LDS Perspectives on the Atonement?
Author: Blake T. Ostler
Date: 2024-07-26T02:03:32+00:00
Keywords: review;atonement;Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints;LDS;Mormonism
Description: Abstract: Latter-day Saint Perspectives on Atonement promises to provide new perspectives on the atonement that reflect awareness of scriptural and theological scholarship. The essays on the scriptural background are solid. The essays providing theological perspectives are uneven, at best. Indeed, the theological essays show little awareness of the major works in philosophical theology in the last sixty years—with one notable exception. Moreover, a feminist perspective that argues against seeing Christ’s blood that he shed as an appropriate basis for atonement theory receives the greatest atte
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LDS Perspectives on the Atonement?

Blake T. Ostler

Review of Deidre Nicole Green and Eric D. Huntsman, eds., Latter-day Saint Perspectives on Atonement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2024). 344 pages, $35.00 (paperback).

Abstract: Latter-day Saint Perspectives on Atonement promises to provide new perspectives on the atonement that reflect awareness of scriptural and theological scholarship. The essays on the scriptural background are solid. The essays providing theological perspectives are uneven, at best. Indeed, the theological essays show little awareness of the major works in philosophical theology in the last sixty years—with one notable exception. Moreover, a feminist perspective that argues against seeing Christ’s blood that he shed as an appropriate basis for atonement theory receives the greatest attention. This review elucidates, explores, assesses, and critiques these approaches.

The collection of essays found in Latter-day Saint Perspectives on Atonement1 is a welcome effort to fill the major lacunae of serious works addressing the key and central role of Christ’s atoning work in the Latter-day Saint tradition. In saying that there is a lack of serious work about the Atonement, I do not mean to imply that there is not a plethora of works that address the Atonement. However, they are not theologically or philosophically informed regarding theories and models of atonement in Christian history. This book attempts to be just that: a theologically and philosophically informed treatment of the issues related to the Atonement.

However, LDS Perspectives is also a major disappointment from the standpoint of addressing issues of Latter-day Saint philosophy and theology. Indeed, it is not an understatement to say that eleven of the dozen essays in the book address the Atonement in complete ignorance of the important and abundant work in philosophical theology in the last sixty years. Except for Benjamin Keogh’s excellent essay on relational atonement and feminist theology, these essays fail to interact with the current discussions in philosophical theology.

LDS Perspectives is divided into two major parts: (1) scriptural and historical foundations, and (2) theological explorations. The historical discussions are generally solid and informative and necessarily introductory and cursory. The theological discussion is uneven. In this review I will provide a necessarily short commentary on each of the essays in LDS Perspectives.

Atonement in the Old Testament

T. Benjamin Spackman’s essay (pp. 15–30) addresses the meaning of two words in Hebrew related to atonement, broadly considered: kippur (כִּפֻּר), meaning to expiate or atone for ritual impurity, and yasa (יָשַע), a verb meaning to save in the special sense of saving from present threats and dangers and not future salvation. He also analyzes the equivalents of “redemption” in English as they relate to kinship terms.

Spackman’s treatment is informative and competent. He claims that most Americans only know of the meaning of “redeem” from the grocery store redemption of coupons (pp. 18–19), but he ignores the legal process of redeeming property that has been lost after a foreclosure. Of course the legal process of redemption of property in Anglo-American law is a close analogue of theological redemption because it refers to redeeming or buying back the property after it has been lost through foreclosure. That is what redeem means in the scriptures—to reclaim or redeem a person after they have become lost. Spackman’s essay is informative at an introductory level.

Latter-day Saints and the Atonement in the New Testament

Eric D. Huntsman addresses the concept (as opposed to the mere word) of “atonement” in the New Testament (pp. 31–67). The overview is competent, scholarly sound, and generally informative at an introductory level. Huntsman is well-versed in critical biblical scholarship and his treatment of the texts is a welcome corrective to evangelical-influenced assessments that have dominated Latter-day Saint approaches to scripture.

However, one will look in vain for more recent developments in New Testament scholarship. For instance, Stephen Burnhope’s excellent treatment of the nature of atonement2 has particular insight and meaning for Latter-day Saints, but it is not mentioned or referenced. In addition, the work of mentioning or citing the work of David Moffitt3 would have added a very needed corrective to the focus on merely the death of Jesus in atonement and expanded the discussion to Jesus’s entire ministry, death, resurrection and ascension. Such a discussion is particularly meaningful to Latter-day Saints because the Book of Mormon and the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants expand the reach of atonement in a similar way to Christ’s entire mortal ministry, death, resurrection and exaltation with the Father. Even the article by Noel Reynolds comparing the New Testament and the Book of Mormon views of atonement is ignored.4

One, of course, cannot expect a chapter-length article to address all scholarly developments that are of interest to Latter-day Saints, but completely ignoring such work is puzzling to say the least. On the other hand, it is quite understandable that the discussion is cursory and introductory, especially given space constraints. Moreover, Huntsman does provide a helpful index of New Testament “soteriological terms” at the end of his article (pp. 50-59). Huntsman’s chapter is one of the best in LDS Perspectives.

Atonement in Early Christianity and the Middle Ages

In her chapter, Ariel Bybee Laughton addresses developments regarding models and theories of atonement in early Christianity and the Middle Ages (pp. 68–93). She provides a very good introductory overview of the most notable church fathers and medieval theologians. She provides nuance and more detail of various views regarding each thinker in footnotes.

Nevertheless, she claims that both Tertullian and Justin Martyr “largely understood Jesus’s atonement as an act of penal substitution” (p. 71). That is a major mistake. Tertullian does speak in terms of satisfaction of sin; however, it is not Christ appeasing an angry God, but the repentance and contrition of the sinner that satisfies the demand of justice. Tertullian’s uses of “satisfaction” come primarily in the contexts of repentance and good works, particularly baptism and martyrdom, which allow Christians to make satisfaction to God.

This theme is expressed most clearly in De Paenitentia (“On Repentance”). For example, the individual accomplishes satisfaction in relation to the demands of the devil through repentance:

Thus he who, through repentance for sins, had begun to make satisfaction to the Lord, will, through another repentance of his repentance, make satisfaction to the devil, and will be the more hateful to God in proportion as he will be the more acceptable to His rival.5

Tertullian explains that repentance is the “price” of forgiveness:

Further, how inconsistent is it to expect pardon of sins (to be granted) to a repentance which they have not fulfilled! This is to hold out your hand for merchandise, but not produce the price. For repentance is the price at which the Lord has determined to award pardon: He proposes the redemption of release from penalty at this compensating exchange of repentance.6

He also argues that confession of sins is necessary to satisfy the demand for change necessary to turn away sin and assuages of God’s wrath:

This act, which is more usually expressed and commonly spoken of under a Greek name, is exomolo’ghsis, whereby we confess our sins to the Lord, not indeed as if He were ignorant of them, but inasmuch as by confession satisfaction is settled, of confession repentance is born; by repentance God is appeased. . . . All this exomologesis (does), that it may enhance repentance; may honour God by its fear of the (incurred) danger; may, by itself pronouncing against the sinner, stand in the stead of God’s indignation, and by temporal mortification (I will not say frustrate, but) expunge eternal punishments.7

A similar argument is made in De baptismo, showing that Tertullian believed that confession of sins “make[s] satisfaction for our former sins,”8 and in De Oratione Tertullian argues that God accepts repentance (penitence) as satisfaction of what is due as a result of sin.9

There is a hint of substitution doctrine in Tertullian’s Scorpiace according to J. N. D. Kelly, it is Christ who “delivered Himself up for our sins.”10 Even so, Laughton’s blanket treatment of the early church fathers is misleading.

Similarly, Laughton misunderstands and misrepresents Justin Martyr’s thought on atonement. While Justin Martyr spoke of the curse that Jesus bore because he was hung on a “tree” (Deuteronomy 21:22–23), the curse that Jesus bore was not a uniquely atoning punishment met out by God and suffered to appease his wrath. Thus, Laughlin misunderstands the nature of this curse in Justin Martyr’s thought.

Laughton is not alone in claiming that Justin Martyr supports a penal theory of atonement. Steve Jeffery, Mike Ovey, and Andrew Sach claim that penal substitutionary theory stretches back to the earliest fathers of the church.11 These three authors attempt to support their interpretation of Justin and his supposed support of penal substitution by quoting from the Dialogue with Trypho:

If, then, the Father of all wished His Christ for the whole human family to take upon Him the curses of all, knowing that, after He had been crucified and was dead, He would raise Him up, why do you argue about Him, who submitted to suffer these things according to the Father’s will, as if He were accursed, and do not rather bewail yourselves? 12

Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach conclude without further assessment of passages from Justin:

In summary, Jesus took upon himself the curse of God that had rested upon ‘the whole human family.’ This explains why he was crucified even though he himself had committed no sin. It also amounts to a clear statement of penal substitution: although Christ was innocent, he bore the curse due to sinful humanity, enduring in his death the punishment due to us. Justin is a very early example of a writer who explained the doctrine on the basis of the ‘curse’ vocabulary of Galatians 3:13 and Deuteronomy 21:23.13

But such a misinterpretation distorts Justin’s thought. In response to Trypho’s objection, Justin stated that Christ was not cursed for his own sins because Christ did not sin. Justin then says that all other human beings—Jews and Gentiles—are also cursed:

For the whole human race will be found to be under a curse. For it is written in the law of Moses, ‘Cursed is every one that continues not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.’ [Deuteronomy 27:26] And no one has accurately done all, nor will you venture to deny this; but some more and some less than others have observed the ordinances enjoined. But if those who are under this law appear to be under a curse for not having observed all the requirements, how much more shall all the nations appear to be under a curse who practise idolatry, who seduce youths, and commit other crimes?14

Elsewhere Justin states:

For [God] sets before every race of mankind that which is always and universally just, as well as all righteousness; and every race knows that adultery, and fornication, and homicide, and such like, are sinful; and though they all commit such practices, yet they do not escape from the knowledge that they act unrighteously whenever they so do, with the exception of those who are possessed with an unclean spirit, and who have been debased by education, by wicked customs, and by sinful institutions, and who have lost, or rather quenched and put under, their natural ideas. For we may see that such persons are unwilling to submit to the same things which they inflict upon others, and reproach each other with hostile consciences for the acts which they perpetrate.15

Further, Laughlin misconstrues how Justin uses “the curse” concept. He states:

For the statement in the law, 'Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree,' Deuteronomy 21:23 confirms our hope which depends on the crucified Christ, not because He who has been crucified is cursed by God, but because God foretold that which would be done by you all, and by those like to you, who do not know that this is He who existed before all, who is the eternal Priest of God, and King, and Christ. And you clearly see that this has come to pass. For you curse in your synagogues all those who are called from Him Christians; and other nations effectively carry out the curse, putting to death those who simply confess themselves to be Christians; to all of whom we say, You are our brethren; rather recognise the truth of God. And while neither they nor you are persuaded by us, but strive earnestly to cause us to deny the name of Christ, we choose rather and submit to death, in the full assurance that all the good which God has promised through Christ He will reward us with.16

The curse is not a legal-penal punishment imposed by God. The curse consists in spiritual separation from God and the corrupt conduct that results from such alienation.

Thus, in Justin’s thought, Jesus did not uniquely bear the curse for Israel or the world. Instead, he participated in the cursed condition with us though, unlike us, he did not deserve such cursing. Jesus defeated the curse on our behalf though his death and resurrection so that we could become like him just as he became like us. He therefore participated in the curse himself and participated in our condition with guilty humans. In other words, Justin understands the curse that Jesus bore as being separated from God, the same condition shared by all humans that for us results in sinful conduct. Justin says that the Jews curse Jesus and his followers in their synagogues, and that Gentiles “effectively carry out the curse [by] putting to death . . . Christians.”17 Such language demonstrates how Justin understood the Jews and Gentiles to also participate in the curse. But Justin does not suggest that Jesus took some unique punishment from God on our behalf. So, the essential elements of a penal theory are not a part of Justin’s thought, which Laughton and our three Evangelical authors simply ignore and misunderstand in their attempt to find support for penal substitution. If anything, both Justin Martyr and Tertullian support a Christus Victor view of atonement rather than a penal view.

Laughton’s discussion of Augustine’s and Thomas Aquinas’s views of atonement is a good introduction that is necessarily cursory. That probably explains why she completely fails to address the dimensions of original grace and the interplay with predestination in God’s decrees of reprobation and election of the elect. These theological ideas are not merely secondary to their thought regarding atonement, but primary and essential to understand their views of the Atonement.

At this point there is a major lacuna in LDS Perspectives—there is no discussion of the development of the models and theories of the Atonement during the Protestant Reformation. There is no discussion of John Calvin’s penal substitution theory in-depth, even though it is a focus or foil for almost every chapter in the book. There is no discussion of the development of Grotius’s governmental theory of atonement or even the Christus Victor theory.18 Such a hole in the discussion detracts from the notion that a thorough and fair overview of Christian views has been presented. This gaping hole also handicaps the attempt to give Latter-day Saint perspectives on atonement.

Atonement in the Book of Mormon

Nicholas J. Frederick discusses the atonement in the Book of Mormon (pp. 94–114). His project is to describe the use of the word “atonement” in the text without theological reflection. He wisely avoids addressing any specific theory of atonement or erroneously claiming that the Book of Mormon presents a single, unified view of atonement. He points out that Lehi and Jacob emphasize the resurrection in atonement and its role to bring persons back into the presence of God to be judged, thus overcoming physical death, spiritual death, and separation from God. This treatment screams out for the kind of discussion in recent philosophical theology regarding the Atonement consisting of far more than just the passion and death of Christ. But the chapter is completely self-contained, with no references whatsoever to works in philosophy and theology beyond cursory references to theological dictionaries and suggestions regarding the Book of Mormon borrowing penal substitution language.

Frederick points out that Abinadi and Amulek focus on two facets of the atonement: (1) it is accomplished by God himself, a fully divine being; and (2) they again emphasize that the resurrection overcomes death and separation from God. Frederick’s focus on the use of the word “atonement” in the text blurs into the background the broader context of how atonement is addressed. For example, the Israelite context of Abinadi’s speech is completely ignored even though it clearly underlies the discussion. This background is explicit in Abinadi’s references to the Law of Moses and the sacrificial lamb who is Christ (Mosiah 12:29-33; 13; 14:7; 15:6). Indeed, he goes so far as to claim that, “significantly, Abinadi does not link the ‘atonement’ with any images of the shedding of blood” (p. 103). But that is simply a myopic reading of the text without context. The slaughtering of the paschal lamb is anything but bloodless.

In contrast, Frederick points out that Amulek and numerous subsequent authors focus on the shedding of blood as an Israelite ultimate sacrifice that satisfies justice or the demands of the Law altogether. In addition, he notes that King Benjamin’s speech intensifies the focus on the bloodshed in atonement by not only the blood shed on the cross but also the mention of agony so great that blood is let from every pore (pp. 104–5). Yet Frederick does not give us anything like an assessment of why the blood is so important to the discussion.

While blood sacrifice is now seen with horror by many—and for that reason often ignored or rejected in discussion of atonement, as is evident in assessing the feminist focus later in LDS Perspectives—it is the ultimate symbol of overcoming alienation by sharing indwelling life. It is the exact opposite of what the feminist authors claim. The Old Testament’s central statement about the significance of blood sacrifice in the sacrificial system is found in Leviticus:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. (Leviticus 17:11)

The sprinkling of blood on the altar spreads the life inherent in the blood to the people of Israel. The blood atones because it imparts the divine life to indwell in the Israelite community. The blood of Christ that he shed for us in his atoning sacrifice is important because it signifies a sharing of Christ’s very life with us and to indwell in us.

Saving the House of Israel

Sharon J. Harris addresses the saving of the house of Israel in the Book of Mormon (pp. 115–30). Her chapter really deals with how the covenant with Israel is preserved among the Nephites. It has very little to do with the concept or application of the Atonement. In the final section she claims that the atonement is “communal”—by which she claims that salvation “looks like a family of God” (p. 129). She claims that fulfilling the covenant with Israel somehow is part of the Atonement. But unless one stretches the concept of atonement to cover anything that God does at all, the connection is tenuous at best. One wonders why this chapter was included in a book on the Atonement.

Agency, Law, Theosis, and Atonement

J. B. Haws addresses the atonement in the Doctrine and Covenants (pp. 131–60). Instead of just focusing on the word “atonement” in the text, he presents a much better-conceived approach that considers how Christ’s life, sacrifice, resurrection, and sharing of divine light accomplish reconciliation of our alienation from God and the process of sanctification leading ultimately to deification. This chapter is one of my favorites in LDS Perspectives because Haws is not afraid to engage in theological reflection. He suggests that the Doctrine and Covenants presents a new model of substitution for atonement. It is aimed at answering “the questions that drive every model of atonement that thinkers, for the past two millennia, have proposed . . . the how and why of the act” (p. 134, emphasis in original). Finally, an offering that addresses the theological issues that drive careful and thoughtful thinking about the Atonement!

What are these questions that need to be addressed? According to Haws, they are the “how” and the “why” questions of atonement: “From what peril does humanity need to be rescued? In other words, why is the atonement of Jesus Christ necessary for our salvation?” (p. 134, emphasis in original). But Haws misses the most important question: how does Christ rescue us from the peril?

Haws rejects the standard penal substitution model of atonement based on Dennis Potter’s 1999 article critiquing the notion that “the requisite amount of suffering must be borne by someone. But why?” (p. 137). Potter rejected the penal theory because it violates the “innocence principle”: It is manifestly unjust to impose punishment on a person who didn’t do anything wrong. It is also unjust to let those who do wrongs off without any consequences. In addition, the penal model does not adequately answer who or what has to be satisfied in a satisfactory way. It is God who must be appeased in the penal substitution model. But why would a loving God demand reparations or suffering of an innocent substitute? So, Haws sets out to answer two questions based on inspiration from the Doctrine and Covenants: “Why does the atonement pave the way for mercy? Why was suffering required?” (p. 137, emphasis in original).

Haws assesses the “empathy theory” proposed by Jacob Morgan.19 According to Morgan, the Atonement paves the way for Christ to infuse us with his exalting light. Haws correctly observes that this theory fails to explain why suffering was necessary to accomplish this infusion of light (p. 137). It simply doesn’t address or answer the key questions that any theory of atonement must address. Haws notes that Doctrine and Covenants 19:16–19 is emphatic that Christ must suffer what we would otherwise suffer if we do not repent. So suffering is an imperative based on the revelations to Joseph Smith. But why?

In a side note, I wonder why Haws did not mention, address, or assess the theory that I proposed: the compassion theory of atonement.20 The compassion theory directly addresses and answers what Christ rescues us from, why suffering is necessary to accomplish that rescue, and even how it is accomplished. Moreover, the compassion theory directly assesses the LDS scriptures and the teachings of Joseph Smith in so doing. The compassion theory addresses the questions that Haws so desperately seeks to answer in his essay. So why the silence or slight? Such a refusal or failure to address a work in the LDS tradition that directly responds to the questions Haws addresses seems inexcusable to me. But let’s give Haws the benefit of the doubt with a charitable view; perhaps he was merely adopting the axiom that if one doesn’t have anything nice to say, it is better to say nothing at all.

Haws adopts Terryl Givens’s approach, which he calls the “guarantor of agency” model (pp. 138–39). The answer to why there must be suffering is that humans must get what they choose. In addition, every person arrives at the station they deserve due to natural law or consequences. We enjoy a celestial glory if we live according to a celestial law. Such a view is closest to the governmental theory of atonement according to Haws and Givens.

So why is the suffering of a Savior necessary? According to the governmental theory, Christ died and suffered not to redeem a debt, but to preserve the dignity of the divine government. He promulgated a moral law. God could not permit its subversion without allowing destruction of moral order itself. When Christ died to vindicate the honor of the law, he made it possible for God to forgive sinful rebels without upsetting the moral order (p. 142).

So how does this theory avoid the charge that it is the grossest violation of some “moral order” to punish an innocent person and let those off who deserve the punishment? That seems to be a total subversion of any moral order worth considering. And just what is this “moral order?” Well, for some reason according to Givens and Haws: “What God can do—did do—instead of dispensing with consequences, is provided his Son, “‘in whose name alone salvation can be administered to the children of men’” (p. 144, citing Doctrine and Covenants 109:4). Haws adds:

Jesus—uniquely, miraculously—is able to assume these consequences . . . He alone is the means by which all consequences—which are simply there because of choice—really do obtain, such that agency can be held inviolate, and thus he alone is also the means by which repentance can still be possible for those who choose it. (p. 144, emphasis in original)

In other words, Christ must suffer not to preserve the moral order as much as to preserve the inviolate nature of human free will and consequences for choices. But isn’t that just another way of saying that the moral order demands consequences for our wrong actions freely done with knowledge that they are wrong?

Does Haws really answer the question? According to Haws, someone has to answer because some moral order demands it to protect the inviolate human choice. Really? Why cannot God just forgive in light of repentance and change of heart based on free choices without an innocent person crucified on our behalf? After all, we are able to forgive others without requiring that some other person must first suffer as a condition for our forgiveness. If we can forgive without first requiring a pound of flesh by requiring that someone else must first suffer, certainly God has such power. Further, simply forgiving based on sincere repentance would truly preserve both human agency and consequences for actions. Yet Haws gives no answer. Why doesn’t repentance fully satisfy this supposed moral order? No answer. How is the suffering of an innocent person to uphold the moral order based on free agency just and moral? No answer. Why does suffering of an innocent satisfy the demands of this impersonal moral order? No answer. How is the demand for consequences for our actions held inviolate if an innocent person takes those consequences from us? No answer.

Haws goes on to address what Jesus did to effectuate the Atonement. Here is the central claim of Haws’ theory:

Jesus was wounded with humanity’s stripes not because stripes are necessary to appease an indignant God. Jesus was wounded with our stripes because every choice we make has real consequences and some of those consequences are “stripes” that we could not bear and yet live, or at least live in God’s presence when sin disqualifies us from God’s presence (see D&C 1:31). In other words, all humans make choices that, absent the atonement of Jesus Christ, would result in condemnation. Jesus assumed the consequences of these damning choices. Humans’ choices still have consequences, but they are consequences that Jesus chose to bear in our place. (p. 146, emphasis in original)

It seems that matters have gone from non-answers to bad answers. His suggestion still violates the innocence principle—an innocent person is still suffering for the acts of the guilty. Moreover, it begs the question how and why Jesus’s suffering relieves us of the consequences of our choices. This answer also upsets any moral order worth considering because we do not suffer the consequences of our actions. Jesus does. Yet it is supposedly this moral order that demands that our agency remain inviolate so that we can suffer the consequences of our actions. But that can only occur if there are consequences for the one whose agency is involved in doing wrong.

Haws is up front about the fact that this “agency-consequences substitution” model does not answer all of the key questions:

Even as this model of the atonement is emphatic that no judge (and no God) is imposing these consequences on humans or on Jesus, Latter-day Saint proponents of this model still feel the difficulty of explaining this. Even as this model insists that these consequences are not waivable offenses—these are consequences that just happen—this still leaves believers at a loss to explain just how Jesus could step in and absorb them.” (p. 147, emphasis in original)

Indeed. But Haws, amazingly, suggests that this inability to answer questions created by the very theory he proposes is actually a virtue. Haws asserts: “This is how it should be.” Why not? Well, because, as Haws quotes Elder Dieter Uchtdorf, “the Savior’s Atonement cannot become commonplace in our teaching” (p. 147). And just what would be the harm if a theory answered the very questions it sets out to answer? Well, there is always more and proposing an answer would somehow suggest that there is nothing more to be understood according to Haws.

Is that really a satisfactory response? Is that really the best we can do? Haws’s theory not only fails to answer the very questions he sets out to address, but his theory also compounds the problems. Even so, the fact that Haws gets the questions right and attempts to addresses them is the best philosophical/theological work that is done in LDS Perspectives. It is well worth the read to witness Haws grapple with these questions and quandaries. Grappling with the issues related to atonement is like wrestling with an angel—one cannot win. But if one wrestles well, there just might be a blessing and a revelation at the end of the match.

Nineteenth-Century Women and the Atonement

In her chapter, Jennifer Reeder ostensibly addresses nineteenth-century Mormon women and the atonement (pp. 161–78). While she provides quotes from nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint women on topics of the Restoration, worship, and salvation, the quotes have little to do with atonement. Again, one wonders why this chapter is in a book on the Atonement.

Notes on Life, Grace, and Atonement

Adam Miller, in his chapter (pp. 179–93), begins the Theological Explorations section of LDS Perspectives with musings and a list of 118 propositions—a few of which are relevant to atonement. The presentation of the propositions defies any coherent description. They appear to be a stream of consciousness, loosely related thoughts and conclusions. They are Latter-day Saint musings only in the sense that they are being proposed by a Latter-day Saint. While the offering is original and creative, it is barely related to the Latter-day Saint scriptural teachings on the Atonement. It takes a good deal of longanimity to wade through these propositions. I suggest taking his musings as a form of poetry meant to spur and inspire thought and insight. It seems to me that Miller’s propositions are what Latter-day Saint thought would look like if Joseph Smith had been a Buddhist.

Atonement and Retributive Justice

The essay proffered by Fiona Givens (pp. 194–212) is an interesting argument that we ought to ignore those parts of scripture and tradition that do not deliver the correct political outcomes. She adopts a strategy common among feminist theologians to expressly call for rejecting and ignoring those scriptures that observe the violence of human existence and suggest any sense of retributive justice. The primary determiner of theological beliefs ought to be whether they align with a correct political view that rejects retributive justice in such practices as capital punishment and incarceration to punish a criminal. Rather, we should adopt a theology that fosters a carceral system based on rehabilitation.

According to Givens, the American system of justice is flawed because it accepts a sense in which criminals ought to be punished for what they did. That is why we need a new doctrine of the human condition viewing “trauma” as the cause of human wrongdoing and rejecting any sense of sin. Givens suggests that Latter-day Saints should adopt restorative justice in the place of retributive justice, but there is nothing uniquely or even characteristically LDS about such a move. Indeed, Givens doesn’t even connect her view of restorative justice with Alma’s view of the Law of Restoration as a basis of judgment (see Alma 40).

Givens admits that “teachings and scripture of the Latter-day Saint Church manifest the influence of the legalistic atonement culture” (p. 200). So what do we do with those scriptures that manifest a view that, according to Givens, espouse the wrong political outcomes? According to her, we simply reject and ignore them. She asks, “Why are American Latter-day Saints even more vulnerable to lingering modes of retributive thinking than their fellow non-evangelical Christians?” (p. 201). To Givens it is rather obvious: A full description for this malady “undoubtedly would include the unflagging devotion of the Latter-day Saint community to the Old Testament” (p. 201).

Givens moves on to suggest that “while the language of substitution is part of the Latter-day Saint canon,” there is another “conception of atonement [that] might, in turn, reshape much of Latter-day Saint religious language and, perhaps, some of its social and political commitments” (p. 201). So the problem is “language” about the doctrine of atonement found in scripture that misleads the American Latter-day Saint community, in particular, to get the wrong political outcomes.

Givens diagnoses the problem as a historical mistake that began with Tertullian and Justin Martyr to adopt Roman law regarding retributive justice. She just ignores the fact—and it is a fact—that retributive justice is clearly taught as part of the Law of Moses throughout the Old Testament. She ignores that retributive justice is also clearly taught in the New Testament. One only needs to recall that Ananias and Saphira were seemingly struck down because they withheld funds from the common property of the early Christian community (Acts 5:1–10). The narrative, whether historical or not, clearly adopts a view of retributive justice. The sense of retributive justice underlies Paul’s doctrine of justification and clearly undergirds the notion of judgment by works throughout the New Testament. Moreover, retributive justice is the norm in virtually every Near Eastern and Mediterranean culture prior to Christianity. We can hardly blame Roman law or Latin theologians for its presence in later Christian thought.

Moreover, Givens’s assertion that Tertullian and Justin Martyr are the commencement of the notion of retributive justice in the Christian tradition, making them the whipping boys of history, just gets them wrong. Earlier in this review I addressed the issue regarding the misinterpretation of their thought regarding a penal theory of atonement. It just isn’t true that they taught a penal view of atonement.

In addition, Givens adopts the now debunked view that Tertullian was a lawyer who had a thorough knowledge of Roman law (p. 197).21 In truth, it is doubtful that Tertullian was a lawyer. The view that he was a lawyer is based on the assumption that he had particular knowledge of Roman law that only a lawyer would have and a misidentification with a similarly named Roman lawyer. But he does not demonstrate any particular knowledge of Roman law that a general education would not have provided.22 In addition, his views are not so much informed by Roman law as by the Christian scriptures known at his time.

Givens relies upon the assertions of some neuroscientists to support her view that trauma, rather than sin, is the cause of human failings that need healing rather than punishment (pp. 202–5). She claims that neuroscience has begun to show that all criminal acts can be traced to some trauma, or mental illness, or brain defect. Givens concludes: “In short, the increasing advances being made in neuroscience threaten to undermine the bases for linking atonement to retributive justice, which undergird the U.S. penal system” (p. 204).

She seems not to have noticed that the assumptions made in neuroscientific studies—that all human conduct is reducible to brain activity over which a person has no control—also undermines all sense of moral agency and responsibility. What she is inveighing against is really any sense of accountability for which we could be justly punished. However, the neuroscientific methodology on which Givens relies has been often and widely critiqued and rejected.23 Givens ignores the limitations and critiques of this neuroscientific approach. She also fails to realize that teaching that all behavior is reducible to brain activity over which we have no control is essentially a denial of the most fundamental teachings of the restored gospel.

Givens proposes to provide an “alternative” theory of atonement. What she presents, though, is not a theory of atonement but an alternative view of the human condition (pp. 205–9). She does not discuss, let alone explain, how anything she proposes is related to what Christ did. She never even attempts to explain why the answer to trauma is not psychological counseling rather than something related to what Christ did. There is no discussion or assessment of Christ’s suffering, how he took upon himself the sins of the world, how his life and suffering remedy trauma, or why Jesus’s life, ministry and suffering are even related to healing trauma. The solution seems to be Zion, a society focused on universal healing and restorative justice as she sees it (pp. 208–9). What, one might reasonably ask, has any of that got to do with atonement?

Givens does not provide an alternative model of atonement that would adopt her view of restorative justice. Others, however, have attempted to do so by providing an “incarnation theory” or “participatory theory” of atonement.24 The Incarnational theory and participatory models both emphasize that salvation consists of ongoing participation in the life of God indwelling in Christ.25 I am, of course, sympathetic to such efforts because the compassion theory that I presented is a participatory model of atonement that adopts the Law of Restoration taught by Alma as the revealed view of justice. Givens, however, doesn’t consider the compassion theory.

Givens’s chapter raises questions for me. I wonder if her approach is sound. Isn’t the best way to approach the Atonement to adopt a view that best accounts for and explains the scriptural claims regarding how, why, and what Jesus did for us to restore us to God’s presence, overcome our alienation, and heal us—and provides forgiveness of sins? Is a mere alternative diagnosis of the human condition and the supposed failings the U.S. legal system a viable optic for viewing Christ’s Atonement? Is the assessment given by Givens really a Latter-day Saint approach, or more accurately described as a feminist project? Are the maladies she identifies really supported by the evidence and sound theory? How does she explain the presence and influence of notions of retributive justice found throughout the non-Christian world and cultures that existed long before the advent of Latin Christianity? Is her diagnosis of the problem accurate? Could we be justified in just rejecting and ignoring those scriptures that don’t fit our theory of the human condition? Should we reject a theory of atonement because it doesn’t fit with our desired political outcomes?

Relational Atonement

Benjamin Keogh provides a framing of a Relational Theory of atonement (pp. 213–34) based on the work of Terence Fretheim. This chapter is one of the best in LDS Perspectives and well worth contemplating and re-reading. Like others in the book, Keogh defines the human condition, but in terms more grounded in scripture. He does not pretend to provide a theory of atonement, but merely to lay the “groundwork for such an account” (p. 214). He lays this baseline understanding by focusing on the narrative of raising Lazarus in the gospel of John.

Fretheim provided commentary on Old Testament narratives from the perspective of process theology. God is only one power among many, though God is the greatest influence of all. God is also the most influenced of all. As Keogh sums up Fretheim: “The future is not all blocked out . . . the people of God are capable of shaping the future in various ways, [including] the future of God” (pp. 214, 216–17).

The human condition is viewed as God’s creation of relationships that entail a divine vulnerability. In creating, God gives up complete control and allows others to exercise power not only to shape the world and future, but to impact God’s own being entailed in the divine love:

The possibility of relationship entails the possibility of alienation, of opposition, and of conflict. This means the choice to create necessitates at least the ceding of some power, and the giving away some of the control. To take a relational stance is to accept the possibility of right and wrong relations, with their attendant consequences. (p. 222, emphasis in original)

Adam and Eve chose to trade “unity and relationship for domination and alienation” (p. 223). Further, our predicament is that “when relations are disordered, salvation is impossible” (p. 225).

Thus, Keogh’s prolegomena to a theory of atonement observes that we are incapable of right relationship (I would note in passing that this is the real meaning of Paul’s concept of “justification”) without a rebirth and reorientation. Christ brings about that rebirth and reorientation by his resurrection and ascension. He is found at the right hand of God exemplifying that humans too can have “the possibility of relational harmony” (p. 226). Christ did not just exemplify such a relationship; he embodied it. The prerequisites to resurrection and ascension are death and decent (p. 226). Thus, God must become fully human and mortal to overcome our alienation from him. Quoting William Lane, Keogh asserts that Christ’s cry from the cross that his Father has abandoned him is an “expression of the ‘unfathomable pain of real abandonment by the Father” (p. 226). Jesus is not only abandoned by his closest disciples, but he is also abandoned by the indwelling presence of the Father in him and left terribly alone—the most complete alienation a human could experience.

Yet Keogh observes that the fact that not all relations have already been righted by the Atonement requires that atonement be “a process that is ongoing and transformative in the present” and not merely an event fully accomplished in the past (p. 227). The Atonement must be “infinite” in the sense that it is not limited to a finite duration or the extent of those who can be transformed by it. Thus, Christ’s suffering brings about an end to bloodshed so that all relations can be healed (p. 228).

I acknowledge that it is likely that Keogh’s essay resonated with me because he adopts a process view of God, much like the view I have elucidated. Moreover, his ongoing relational atonement is exactly what I proposed in my compassion theory. Yet, curiously, Keogh does not mention the compassion theory. Nevertheless, as a foreground to a theory of atonement, Keogh’s chapter works well. I hazard to also suggest that the compassion theory is the natural outcome of Keogh’s preface to a theory of atonement.26

A Nonviolent Atonement

Joseph Spencer provides a close textual reading (pp. 235–50) of the sermons of King Benjamin and the prophet Abinadi. He compares and contrasts them to conclude that Abinadi provides a non-violent and non-monarchical view of Christ’s Atonement as opposed to Benjamin’s monarchical view based on the blood of Christ working the Atonement. Because the community of Alma lasted longer than King Benjamin’s community, he suggests that the Book of Mormon is giving us the very subtle hint that non-violent atonement is superior to bloody atonement and monarchical power. He concludes:

[It] turns out, where Christian atonement is wholly separated from the mechanisms of state power, the durability and transmissibility of Christian covenant are real and essentially unlimited. Those who bind themselves covenantally to Christ within Alma’s church rather than Benjamin’s kingdom become convinced—as a later Book of Mormon author writes—that “the preaching of the word had had a greater tendency to lead the people to that which was just . . . than the sword or anything else which had happened unto them” (Alma 31:5). There is good reason to believe that this is a key intentional message, discernable only at a broader level and across the several stories making up the book of Mosiah, for readers of the Book of Mormon. As laudable as Benjamin’s attempt may be to work within the machinery of power, and as beautiful as the words of the angel who visits him may be, the institution that lastingly endures in its Christian preaching in the Book of Mormon is the one that has its origins in the emphatically nonviolent atonement talk of the prophet Abinadi. (p. 245)

Joseph Spencer has done some very good works on the Book of Mormon, but this offering is not one of them. His argument is a logical non-sequitur: the mere fact that a community outlast another does not show that its teachings were morally superior. Quite apart from the fact that his argument is a non-sequitur, Spencer’s textual reading is forced and contrived. For example, the quote that Spencer proposes assesses the superiority of Abinadi’s preaching and Alma’s resulting community compared to that of King Benjamin is misrepresented. The quote is addressing the disparity between the way Alma’s community was treated by the Zoramites and his own preaching. It is not an assessment of the relative merits of monarchy and bloody atonement theory.

In addition, Spencer acknowledges that his reading of the text requires us to see the words of the angel who came to King Benjamin—who teaches him about the atoning blood of Christ—as just wrong and misleading. But we should not fret over that. Spencer gives us solace that an angel misled King Benjamin:

One might express nervousness over the possible implication, here, that the angel who comes to Benjamin somehow gets atonement theology wrong. The argument here need have no such implication, however. Through the Book of Mormon’s consistent emphasis on the humanness of its authors and contributors, one gains access to the possibility that Benjamin is supposed to have recast the angel’s words in terms he knew would speak to his own people. . . . God condescends to speak to human beings in terms they can understand, [so] it may be that Benjamin is supposed to have reported the angel’s words accurately, but the angel brought words that are tailored to the understanding and cultural assumptions of Benjamin’s people. (p. 250n33)

So, the angel didn’t so much get it wrong as mislead Benjamin because his people had cultural limits. This is a sword that cuts both ways, though. How do we know that it isn’t Abinadi who is parsing his words based on cultural limitations? Are we supposed to believe that the angel couldn’t convey a non-bloody atonement to Benjamin’s culture? That notion is shown to be false because, if we take Spencer’s analysis seriously, Abinadi was apparently able to do just that to a culture at least equally steeped in the Law of Moses and violence. What could be more violent in a supposedly non-violent narrative than burning Abinadi at the stake as a kind of alternative Mosaic sacrifice by Noah and his priests?

Further, Spencer’s eisegesis does not withstand scrutiny. He claims that Abinadi never mentions a violent suffering by Christ. However, Abinadi expressly notes that Christ shall be crucified and slain as the paschal lamb who is slaughtered (Mosiah 15:6–7). That is a violent and bloody affair if ever there was one. The focus of the narrative regarding Abinadi is anything but non-violent, ending in Abinadi’s being burned alive. In addition, Spencer claims that there is no mention of monarchical symbols in the narrative, but in a footnote he admits that: “Abinadi does not entirely avoid the language of royalty in speaking of Christ, although it seems significant that he only refers to him as king in passages where he speaks of the post-resurrection Christ: ‘the Son reigneth and hath power over the dead’ (Mos 17:10)” (p. 249n24). Just why does that seem significant to Spencer? It seems much more significant that it contradicts Spencer’s reading of the text.

The text of Mosiah gives no indication whatsoever that Benjamin’s teachings about the blood of Christ being the agent of atonement is somehow mistaken. It gives no hint that the community that lasted the longest is somehow superior or had better atonement teachings. Spencer’s reading is forced and contrived to the point that we should see him as the only person to date to get the real message of the text over against the express statements of the text. That is just a little too subtle.

Perhaps, though, it is unfair to rely on the express text to guide us to assess Spencer’s proposed reading. After all, he is urging an intertextual reading that compares texts. Neither King Benjamin nor Abinadi could assess or do the textual comparison required in what they said. In such a reading, we have to see the intent to compare a non-violent atonement with a blood-based atonement and monarchy as Mormon’s project (or perhaps Joseph Smith’s). Mormon was editing the text and the only one in a position to make such an intertextual comparison.

Yet, given the express penchant that Mormon has to explain the intertextual meaning of his narrative to us, it is not unfair to expect the text to actually state the view that Spencer urges if indeed that is what it intends to convey. After all, Mormon is not shy about telling us the conclusions that we should draw from his narrative in other places. For example, summing up the efforts of Moroni to defend his people, Mormon provides a clear indication of what we should conclude: “And thus we see how merciful and just are all the dealings of the Lord, to the fulfilling of all his words unto the children of men; yea, we can behold that his words are verified, even at this time, which he spake unto Lehi” (Alma 50:19). Summing up the experience of the Nephites after Christ came, Mormon concludes: “and surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God” (4 Nephi 1:16). Mormon consistently tells us what we should conclude from the narrative he provides, but he never suggests, intimates, or even hints that we should conclude that a bloodless atonement narrative is somehow superior to one that includes the shedding of Christ’s blood and his monarchy.

Is it tenable to see Mormon as intending to deliver the intertextual reading urged by Spencer? I suggest that it manifestly is not. Mormon edited the text to give us literally hundreds of years of later prophets delivering the same message as King Benjamin. If Mormon intended to give the intertextual message that Spencer ferrets out, then there is no room for continuing to deliver the same mistaken and misleading message repeatedly. One only need to look at the numerous teachings regarding the blood of Christ shed in atonement in Nicholas Frederick’s earlier chapter in LDS Perspectives for the literally dozens of prophetic statements regarding “the importance of the shedding of blood in later [Book of Mormon] authors” (pp. 107–11).

Indeed, when the resurrected Christ appears to the Nephites, he repeats a ritual that he began before his death. He takes wine and blesses it and says: “And this shall ye always do to those who repent and are baptized in my name; and ye shall do it in remembrance of my blood, which I have shed for you, that ye may witness unto the Father that ye do always remember me. And if ye do always remember me ye shall have my Spirit to be with you (3 Nephi 18:11). Moroni himself repeated that injunction to preserve Christianity and its proper practice (Moroni 5). Such a direction is central and essential to Christian belief and worship. It is reported in every gospel in the New Testament—drink the wine in remembrance of Christ’s blood that he would shed for us. Latter-day Saints do it every week to renew the covenant with Christ when taking the sacrament. That is why the remonstrance against and rejection of blood as essential to Christ’s atoning work is a distortion of not only the Book of Mormon text, but of his gospel. Not only is Spencer’s reading strongly counter-indicated by the entire Book of Mormon text, but it is also contrary to the central and essential rites established by Jesus. The focus on the blood of Christ in atonement is not a mistaken message—it is the message.

(For a response by Spencer to my review of his essay, see the Appendix.)

Enveloping Grace

Diedre Green’s essay (pp. 251–76) follows Joseph Spencer with another effort to avoid any sense of blood in Christ’s Atonement. She defines her project as follows:

In this essay, I offer a unique conceptualization of atonement in light of Latter-day Saint scripture and the particular needs of women as identified by feminist religious thinkers, including overcoming cultural demands to be inordinately self-giving, that neither endorses violence nor relies on the aforementioned [atonement] theories. I address the issue in terms of gender because when values and ideals are gendered, it becomes necessary to “center the experience of gender.” (p. 251)

Green states that she does not want to exclude persons of “any gender” and that she wants to avoid enforcing a “gender binary” view, even though she only addresses men and women. But Green does not do what she sets out to do—she does not develop or provide a theory or “conceptualization” of atonement. Rather, she provides her assessment of the cultural conditioning of women and how the Latter-day Saint tradition can provide theological resources to avoid being too self-giving in order to develop a robust sense of a woman’s self.

Green makes numerous, sweeping empirical claims about how women are conditioned in the present culture to be too giving and not sufficiently attentive to building a robust sense of self and boundaries to maintain distinct and independent integrity as a person. Yet she does not provide a shred of evidence to support her empirical claims. She assumes that, because she is a woman, she can speak with authority about the experience of all women. She claims that the problem is compounded in scripture because they are written by men:

Feminist theologians . . . seek to define sin in a way that is inclusive of women’s lives and that better speaks to the multiformity of sin. This is necessary because Christian scripture and its interpretation have been traditionally shaped by men and is therefore influenced by the male perspective on the world. As a result, pride, which may manifest as domination over others and selfishness, has been identified as the fundamental sin that must be remedied through self-giving love, which is exemplified and epitomized in Christ’s atonement, yet this reductive notion of sin fails to encompass all human experience. (p. 252)

But the problem isn’t just Christian scripture and viewing the Atonement as a premiere instance of Christ’s self-giving love. Green asserts that:

The means to such integrity, or wholeness, has been overshadowed within Christian theology since it has been primarily constructed to remedy the behavioral excesses of the stereotypical male. A view of sin that ignores the specific ways in which women (and any others who do not comport themselves as a stereotypical male) may stray from a life of integrity both undermines women’s selfhood and drives them deeper into sin. (p. 254, emphasis in original)

As Green sees it, the problem is that theology has focused on the sin of pride because men suffer from pride whereas women suffer from giving too much of themselves. She goes on to claim that “this consequence results from the fact that the tradition generally prescribes selflessness to overcome sin based on the assumption that pride is the underlying root of all sin” (p. 254).

It is important to note that Green does not provide a single instance in either scripture or Christian theology where pride is viewed as the only sin, despite her claims. Indeed, it would be easy to show that pride is not viewed as the only way that a person can sin in any of the scriptures, even if they are written by men. Nowhere does she provide evidence or argument that men suffer from pride while women suffer from being too selfless. She does cite a plethora of feminist theologians that express similar views, but none of them provide any empirical evidence to support their statements either. Nowhere does she provide evidence or argument that a view of self-giving atonement leads women to be too selfless. She takes it as so obvious that it needs neither evidence nor argument. But is it? It seems to me to be a far-fetched claim. These are empirical claims about the way things are; they need some support and basis other than mere assertion and anecdotal experience.

Green identifies a core problem that affects all women but not (so much) men: “The problem arises when love is reductively equated with self-negation, which in turn comes to be viewed as the remedy to all sin” (p. 255, emphasis in original). But there has been a subtle change in what is at issues that is not justified. She equates overcoming pride with self-negation. She doesn’t identify a single instance where any scripture or any writer identifies love, reductive or not, as self-negation. Is “self-negation” a synonym with meekness and humility or a condition to which they inevitably lead? How does she know that they lead to such a result? No evidence, no argument. Is “self-negation” what Jesus taught when he stated that to find ourselves, we must lose ourselves (Matthew 10:39)? Is that what he meant when he stated, “blessed are the meek” and “blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3, 5)? Instead of plumbing the profundity of these statements, Green equates the quest for such virtues with self-negation—and that is bad for women but not so much for men. Of course, we must remember that one of the males making statements that don’t fit women is Jesus, who addresses being meek and humble repeatedly.

One gets the sense that Green’s approach is best described as Aristotle’s ethic of the golden mean. Granted, it is unhealthy for women to be “too” giving, just as it is unhealthy for men (or any gender if we accept Green’s view that there are multiple genders) to be too meek or too humble. That should not, however, be taken as a sound argument that women don’t also generally exhibit pride or that there cannot be just the right amount of humility and meekness. Too much of anything is unwise, but is that really a sound way to approach the human condition for purposes of assessing Christ’s Atonement?

For Green, the remedy to such mis-valuation is to adopt a Friedrich Nietzche-like trans-valuation of values that applies to women. In his Der Wille zur Macht (The Will to Power), Nietzche left to us in brief his project to overcome the Christian virtues of meekness and humility as “life-negating” values. In their place, he urged, we should adopt a self-affirming, life-affirming virtue of the will to power, and replace meekness and humility as virtues with self-realization as the true morality. This work was an uncompleted part of a larger project that he called Der AntiChrist to signal that he is calling for an overhaul of the Judeo-Christian values that permeated his culture.

Green has a similar project in her essay. For women, it is harmful to focus on pride as a source of sinful conduct as Jacob, the brother of Nephi, does in his temple sermon:

And because some of you have obtained more abundantly than that of your brethren ye are lifted up in the pride of your hearts, and wear stiff necks and high heads because of the costliness of your apparel, and persecute your brethren because ye suppose that ye are better than they. . . . And, O that ye would listen unto the word of his commands, and let not this pride of your hearts destroy your souls!” (Jacob 2:13, 16)

Green contends that these words are directed only to the gathered brethren, not to women. She implicitly asserts that women are not often lifted up in pride over their wealth or fashions. Rather, for women the source of sin is giving too much of themselves. In contrast to a message of meekness and humility, women can achieve wholeness by striving for self-realization to become goddesses like the Heavenly Mother—even though Green avers that “the concept of Heavenly Mother remains vacuous within the twenty-first century church” (p. 260). What women suffer from is “a lack of selfhood” and self-realization (p. 262).

A few questions naturally occurred to me as I read Green’s essay: how are women supposedly helped to overcome giving of themselves by a vacuous idea? What is it that suggests that Heavenly Mother (about whom we know literally nothing) achieved godhood by not giving of herself? Is it really the case that giving of one’s self is a vice rather than a virtue? Are women generally immune to “being lifted up in pride” when they wear costly clothes and the latest fashions?

The central question to my review of Green’s essay, however, is this: How is any of this related to atonement? Green suggests that “the Reformation doctrine of grace should be reversed for women so that they are first built up and held together as independent subjects prior to judgment” (p. 262). How is that done? According to Green, “God’s grace is precisely what offers a woman a skin – a divinely gifted envelope – that holds and contains her in a cohesive whole. . . . [It] allows a woman the integrity to be a self and facilitates the fulfilment of her potential through the means of divine envelopment” (p. 263). That is the center of her view of atonement. I admit that I cannot grasp what she is saying in any coherent way; it seems an exercise in parisology.

Green acknowledges that her way of framing atonement as “divinely gifted skin or an ‘envelope of grace’ may sound foreign to Latter-day Saints” (p. 263), but she contends that the scriptures have language that may be somewhat similar when they state: “I will encircle thee in my arms of my love” (Doctrine and Covenants 6:20). The Book of Mormon also speaks repeatedly of “encircling in [God’s] arms of love” (2 Nephi 1:15; Alma 26:15). Green contends that the Atonement, for women, consists of being “given a skin” of selfhood by being “encircled” in God’s love. The result of such embrace by God is to be “a self.” Green concludes: “Christ’s atonement encircles, embraces, envelops, and clasps—it allows one to be protected from divine justice in the face of sin but also from social demands that keep a woman from fully becoming who she is divinely intended to be” (p. 265).

I have a hard time seeing what Green provides as remotely a theory or “conceptualization” of atonement as she claims. The metaphors of encircling love do not explain how it is that we overcome our alienation from God (a dimension that she virtually ignores), how we receive forgiveness for our heinous acts that harm others, or just how it could possibly be related to anything uniquely done by Christ. Indeed, her conceptualization views the Atonement as being accomplished by “God encircling us in His arms” rather than anything uniquely done by Christ. It does not explain how or why Christ takes our sins upon him—and it would be impossible to do so given her re-definition of the human condition and literally no sense of sin. There is no discussion of Christ’s suffering or how Christ’s blood was shed for us, as Jesus taught his disciples to remember his blood that he shed for us. Indeed, she views even noticing such suffering as part of the Atonement as detrimental to women.

This is not a Latter-day Saint theory of atonement. Indeed, it is not a theory of atonement at all.

Concluding Thoughts

One would hope for a proficuous collection of essays to provide greater insight to the Atonement in Latter-day Saint thought. The essays in LDS Perspectives are very uneven. As I have noted, some are quite competent while others are quite disappointing.

The greatest failure of LDS Perspectives is that the authors (apart from Keogh) have ignored some really great work on the Atonement in philosophical theology in the last sixty years. Indeed, there is no sign that the authors are even aware of these developments. There is no hint of knowing about the work of Richard Swinburne,27 Mark Murphy,28 or of the plethora of articles in Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology.29 There is no mention of the work of William Lane Craig30 or Marilyn McCord Adams.31 Most amazingly, none of the authors mention or cite Eleonore Stump’s wonderful book on the Atonement.32 The failure to at least acknowledge and interact with Stump’s theory of atonement is puzzling indeed. Her approach is based on Aquinas’s work but goes well beyond it to a theory that views indwelling union resulting in deification as the purpose of Christ’s passion. She includes numerous insights from feminist theologians along the way (something it is obvious that the editors of LDS Perspectives sought to emphasize).

One can only wonder why such works were ignored

Appendix

Shortly after writing my review, I reached out to Joseph Spencer to give him a chance to respond to my rather critical assessment of his chapter in LDS Perspectives. He responded to me via email. Rather than paraphrase or risk mischaracterizing his response, I feel it best to let him speak for himself. With his permission I include his response in this appendix.

Blake,

I can point out a couple of places where you’re finding in my arguments more than I meant to put into them (whether I succeeded in communicating my intentions or not). For whatever they’re worth, here they are:

1. I don’t assume as a general principle that any longer-lasting project must be based on a morally superior framework than a shorter-lasting one. I am, however, struck by the fact that Mormon’s book of Mosiah presents us with two covenant communities in parallel, and the one that becomes the way forward is the one that downplays royal and sacrificial imagery. It might be that that’s nothing of note, but it strikes me as interesting, and so I explore its possible significance.

2. I quote Alma 31:5 not as a direct and explicit comment on the two communities from the Book of Mosiah, but simply as relevant wording from elsewhere in the Book of Mormon. It may be that I gave the impression that Alma’s directly commenting on that, but I certainly didn’t mean to.

3. I certainly wouldn’t want to say that the angel’s words are “just wrong and misleading.” They’re the words of an angel! I’d want to say, as I think you go on to acknowledge, that they’re accommodating to Benjamin’s people. But that isn’t a way of dismissing them, in my view. In a context like that of Benjamin’s people, the angel’s words clearly do a great deal of good, presumably exactly the right kind of good! There was, in a sense, no call for a different framing for a people living under a good king and with the right relationship to the law. But that there may have been such a call for a different people living under different circumstances suggests that the Atonement doesn’t always have to be understood in violent terms—and it might suggest that, ideally, it wouldn’t be so thought of.

4. I don’t mean to suggest either that Christ’s death wasn’t violent or that Abinadi’s end wasn’t violent. I mean to suggest only that when Abinadi provides meaning-granting metaphors for the Atonement and for Christ, he seems quite deliberately to choose ones that remove Christ from royalty and his Atonement from bloody sacrifice. Of course the crucifixion was bloody, but Abinadi doesn’t emphasize that or make it the key to understanding how atonement works. And of course Abinadi dies a horrible death, but that’s not obviously relevant to how he understands the meaning of the Atonement.

5. I find significance in Abinadi’s talk of Christ’s reigning over the dead because it situates his being king outside the context of his atoning work during mortality. I should probably have made that clearer in that footnote, but that’s what I meant.

6. I don’t mean to suggest that later generations of Nephite teachers also drew a strong contrast between violent and non-violent images for atonement (like the book of Mosiah seems to). They manifestly didn’t, as you point out. But it’s a separate question, I think, to ask what later generations did with the sermons of Abinadi and Benjamin. After the disappearance of monarchy, did they feel that they could use the bloody imagery of the Atonement without the same dangerous implications it might have been granted in the context of Noah’s vicious regime? But again, the point of the paper is to say that one Book of Mormon figure may give us an alternative to violent imagery, and that’s enough: we don’t have to think about atonement in violent terms, it seems, and there are some hints that that’s to be preferred, at least in certain contexts. And maybe in our times, Abinadi’s way of thinking about the atonement might be a resource for speaking to wounded souls.

—Joseph Spencer

Blake T. Ostler is head partner in the law firm of The Ostler Legal Advocates. In 1981 he graduated from Brigham Young University with a BA in Philosophy (summa cum laude) and a BS in Psychobiology (magna cum laude). He then graduated in 1985 as a William Leary Scholar from the University of Utah Law School with a JD (cum laude). He did graduate work in neurophilosophy and also the philosophy of law. Blake has published widely on Mormon philosophy in professional academic journals such as Religious Studies (Oxford, England), International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion (Netherlands), and Element: The Journal of the Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology, as well as Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Sunstone, BYU Studies, and FARMS Review of Books. He is the author of the multi-volume and award-winning series Exploring Mormon Thought.

1 . Deidre Nicole Green and Eric D. Huntsman, eds., Latter-day Saint Perspectives on Atonement (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2024). Throughout this review I refer to this volume using the shortened title LDS Perspectives.

2 . Stephen Burnhope, Atonement and the New Perspective: The God of Israel, Covenant, and the Cross (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2018), library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/2474161/Details.

3 . David M. Moffitt, Rethinking the Atonement: New Perspectives on Jesus’s Death, Resurrection, and Ascension (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022).

4 . Noel B. Reynolds, “Atonement in the Book of Mormon and in the New Testament” (2018), Faculty Publications, 2324, scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/2324.

5 . Tertullian, De Paenitentia, 5.9, ewtn.com/catholicism/library/on-repentance -de-paenitentia-11375.

6 . Tertullian, De Paenitentia, 6.4.

7 . Tertullian, De Paenitentia, 9.2, 9.5.

8 . Tertullian, De Baptismo, 20.2, ewtn.com/catholicism/library/on-baptism-de -baptismo-11376.

9 . Tertullian, De Oratione, 7.1, ewtn.com/catholicism/library/on-prayer-de -oratione-11377.

10 . J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 5th ed. (London: A & C Black, 1968), 177, archive.org/details/earlychristiando0000kell_q8n9.

11 . Steve Jeffery, Mike Ovey, and Andrew Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution (Nottingham, UK: Inter-Varsity Press, 2007), archive.org/details/piercedforourtra0000jeff. See, particularly, chapter 5 (pp. 161–204) which examines writings of many early Christian writers.

12 . Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, chap. 95, newadvent.org/fathers/01287.htm.

13 . Jeffery, Ovey, and Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions, 166.

14 . Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, chap. 95.

15 . Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, chap. 93.

16 . Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, chap. 96.

17 . Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, chap. 96.

18 . See Gustav Aulen, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement, trans. by A. G. Herber (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003).

19 . Jacob Morgan, “The Divine Infusion Theory: Rethinking the Atonement,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 39, no. 1 (2006): 57–58, dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V39N01_65.pdf.

20 . Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: The Problems of Theism and the Love of God (Salt Lake City: Kofford Books, 2006), chap. 7.

21 . In her defense, Givens relies on the century-old study of Hastings Rashdall who adopted the view she presents. See Hastings Rashdall, The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology (London: MacMillan, 1925), 253-54.

22 . Ian L. S. Balfour, “Tertullian and Roman Law—What Do We (Not) Know?,” Studia Patristica XCIV: Papers presented at the Seventeenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2015, vol. 20 (2017): 11-21.

23 . To mention just a few of the numerous critical rejections of the supposed findings of neuroscience, see Joshua Shepherd, “Neuroscientific Threats to Free Will,” in The Routledge Companion to Free Will, eds. Kevin Timpe, Meghan Griffith, and Neil Levy (London: Routledge, 2017); William T. Newsome, “Neuroscience, Explanation, and the Problem of Free Will,” in Moral Psychology: Free Will and Moral Responsibility, Vol. 4, W. Sinnott-Armstrong (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014), 81–96; Alfred R. Mele, Effective Intentions: The Power of Conscious Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Peter Ulric Tse, The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2013).

24 . See, for example, Robin Collins, “Understanding Atonement: A New and Orthodox Theory,” (unpublished manuscript, 1995), static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/38692/208738/1263475937360/Understanding%20Atonement%20-%20A%20New%20and%20Orthodox%20Theory.pdf; Timothy J. Gorringe, “Atonement,” in The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, eds. Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 363–76.

25 . See Timothy Bayne and Greg Restall, “A Participatory Model of the Atonement,” in New Waves in Philosophy of Religion, eds. Yujin Nagasawa and Erik J. Wielenberg (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 150–66.

26 . See Ostler, Love of God and the Problems of Theism, chap. 7. See also the response to Diedre Green regarding the compassion theory in Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: God’s Plan to Heal Evil (Salt Lake City: Kofford Books, 2020), chap. 12.

27 . Richard Swinburne, Responsibility and Atonement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989).

28 . Mark Murphy, “Not Penal Substitution but Vicarious Punishment,” Faith and Philosophy 26, no. 3 (2009): 253–73.

29 . See, for example, Michael C. Rea, ed., Oxford Readings in Philosophical Theology, Vol. 1: Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

30 . William Lane Craig, Atonement and the Death of Christ: An Exegetical, Historical, and Philosophical Exploration (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2020).

31 . Marilyn McCord Adams, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).

32 . Eleonore Stump, Atonement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).