Atonement and Anthropology

Knight writes at the end of a couple of chapters exploring Israel’s calling and the role of her cult in that calling: “I have presented my atonement theory as a general anthopological theory. I have developed a Christology that serves as a general anthropology. I am not setting out first an argument about Christology, which I then have to argue for again in terms of its wider application to anthropology and humanity. Christ is the criterion of humanity. I have set out a theology that is already fully an address and challenge to the world, not a hermetic religious discourse. Diagnosis of modernity that is mission to and judgment of the world is intrinsic to theological statement, not subsequence or external to it. I am not trying to secure a religious conceptuality but to refute it.”

And he protests against the tendency to sequester exegesis from philosophy, political philosophy, and broader concerns of anthropology and ontology: “it is the task of theology to commandeer every modern concept in turn and bring it under the discipline of Scripture and the doctrine of the church.”

To which there is nothing to say but: Amen.