Abstract
Winter rightly begins by insisting that atonement or redemption cannot be understood without reflecting on the sinful evils from which we need to be delivered. He argues, for instance, that divine redemption through Christ is necessary to deliver humanity from the scourge of warfare and economic exploitation. As for climate change, ‘even a superficial over-view of humanity’s history shows that we are utterly incapable of the kind of collective generosity which will be required if justice is to prevail in the human race, so that we can avert the catastrophic threat posed by climate change’ (p. 12). Winter writes powerful pages on original sin, ‘a propensity to evil in all of us which can be put right only by inner strength coming from God’ (p. 22). If sin and evil are the problem, how should we describe in detail the solution: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus (with his new, glorified causality at work)?
I wonder whether speaking of Jesus making ‘compensation’ for us (pp. 26, 31) is appropriate language for explaining, even in part, the early Christian language about his acting ‘on behalf of us,’ ‘for our benefit,’ and, in some sense, ‘in our place.’ Winter takes a certain distance from the transactional language of ‘compensation,’ yet grants it a place alongside ‘real reconciliation’ (p. 80). Winter has no problems about maintaining the language of ‘sacrifice,’ happily recalls a rich account of sacrifice language proposed by Roland de Vaux (pp. 28–29), and sets his face against sacrificial terminology implying an angry God needing to be propitiated through the brutal death of his Son. Winter does not back away from facing such difficult passages as 2 Corinthians 5:21 (p. 31), but could have been helped here by the important article of Jean-Noël Aletti on the Pauline paradox, ‘God Made Christ to be Sin,’ found in S.T. Davis, D. Kendall, and G. O’Collins (eds), The Redemption: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Christ as Redeemer, a book that never surfaces in Winter’s study.
When accounting for the causal power underlying redemption, Winter properly includes the operations of the glorified Christ. Through his sacrificial death and resurrection, the risen Mediator is enabled to intercede in a new way for all human beings. While delighted to find Winter highlighting the intercession of the eternal High Priest, I would have valued some interaction with the transformed causality of love proposed by my Jesus Our Redeemer: A Christian Approach to Salvation. With the resurrection, Christ’s powerful and loving intercession is finally and fully deployed.
This study emerges from extensive research in the areas of biblical theology and historical theology. Occasionally such names as D.C. Allison, H. Denzinger, T.S. Eliot, Sebastian Moore, Donald Nicholl, and John Reumann suffer. The book is to be welcomed—not least, because it encourages readers to think long and hard about the efficacy of redemption in a world that desperately needs the saving grace lovingly at work through the crucified and risen Jesus.