DavidMoffitt, Rethinking the Atonement: New Perspectives on Jesus's Death, Resurrection and Ascension. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022, 320pp. $35.00

Judging by N.T. Wright's foreword and the endorsements by an impressive list of New Testament scholars and theologians, this book is a significant advance in Hebrews scholarship and our theological understanding of the atonement. A compilation of essays that builds on his previous work, it intends to reinforce Moffitt's earlier proposals by including engagement with patristic theology. The book accomplishes this by and large and is a fine model of what it means to bring together the details of exegesis with the wider theological corpus of Christian thought. New Testament studies and theology cannot be conducted in silos – they are iterative. Rather than give a detailed review, I have chosen to engage one theological issue that arises in this work – how the term ‘atonement’ is interpreted in light of Hebrews and, specifically, when atonement is understood to be completed. On the one hand, Moffitt helpfully challenges the fixation of some theologians with the atonement being accomplished only in the crucifixion of Jesus. The use of the term ‘atonement’ merely to describe what happened on the cross flies in the face of the tradition from Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus onwards. For these fathers, the incarnation all the way to the resurrection is atoning, and this has influenced theologians like Erskine, McLeod-Campbell, Barth, Bonhoeffer and T.F. Torrance, who dubs the separating of the person and work of Christ in the atonement as the Latin heresy.1 In other words, the atonement occurs in the person of Christ. In support of Moffitt, the resurrection as part of the death event is a given for many theologians.2 Wording is relevant in this discussion. When in chapter 9 Moffitt declares ‘It is Not Finished’ this can sound jarring to the cherished tradition that when Christ expired on the cross his triumphant cry, ‘It is finished’ meant exactly that: the atonement was completed in his dying. Through death, he destroyed as a fait accompli, the one who has the power of death (Heb. 2: 14), for example. Based on his studies in Leviticus, where sacrifices are only accepted by God after they are killed and offered on the altar, Moffitt believes that the atonement of Jesus was not (mainly) accomplished until he ascended and offered himself up to God at his session. One could say he believes the atonement was inaugurated at the cross when Jesus died, but that it was fulfilled when he ascended and offered himself to the Father at his session. This de-escalating of the work of atonement on the cross may indeed jar the orthodox, who may wonder how it was that Jesus in his risenness already possessed a deified or glorified body. It may be unfair to say Moffitt believes that the ascension is the atoning moment, given how he stresses that atonement is a process, but it is difficult to know what the death of Christ accomplishes on this view. Furthermore, to reference the Pauline concept of sanctification, this happens as believers live in union with Christ in his death and in resurrection or ascension. The reality that Christ, in death, cleansed our humanity, putting sin to death, seems obviated by Moffitt's take. It is also hard to make sense of the temporal gap between the cross/resurrection, if the atonement is not effected until the ascension. One major challenge in pressing the Levitical pattern of sacrifice too far, as I believe Moffitt does, is that it does not quite correlate. Jesus offers himself up at the ascension as a living person, not a dead one. In appreciation of the Levitical pattern Moffitt has discovered, could we not rather assume that on the cross, Jesus, in the presence of the triune God, as Judge and Judged, offers himself up to God, even as Hebrews 9:14 envisages? This is not a disembodied or Docetic reality for the Son. All is sacred space (Marie Isaacs) in Hebrews, and I struggle to understand why an offering up of Jesus on the cross, in the presence of the whole Trinity, is not central to his reconciling work. This would equally well fulfil the Levitical pattern. Thus it seems to me that the definition of ‘atonement’ in Hebrews is understood by Moffitt to be a broader concept than the theological understanding of atonement as used in contemporary and even older theological contexts. For Moffitt, atonement is a longer process than is traditionally conceived, and seems better described as ‘salvation’. His contention that the ongoing priestly work of Jesus, even beyond the ascension, is necessary for the completion of our atonement would make more sense if salvation rather than atonement is in mind. Hebrews 7 (and 9:28) makes it abundantly clear that there is a future aspect to our salvation which is dependent on the ongoing intercessory high priesthood of Jesus: ‘… he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them’ (7:25). But does this ongoing high priestly ministry of Jesus mean that there is no finality to the work of atonement accomplished in Christ's person? This finality is, for me, signalled and celebrated by his ascension and his accession to the kingly and intercessory priestly role that this passage describes. Instead of being a moment of atonement, the ascension and session seems to be a moment of celebration and affirmation of the atoning work of the Son, as has been expressed typically in the tradition through the words of Psalm 24. Take the finality implied in the very opening text of the epistle: ‘After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven’ (1:3). The session of Jesus seems to be a sign of a completed purgation of sin. The role that the sacrificial system of the Levitical order, in general, plays in Hebrews is important. Whereas Paul does hint at that order in his references to the atonement, this is front and centre for the writer of the Hebrews. I am not certain Moffitt pays sufficient attention to the non-atoning aspects of this, however. What do Levitical priests do? They do not just offer sacrifices. The nature of that sacrificial function is described in Leviticus 1–7 and 16, on the Day of Atonement. But they also mediate confession, give moral judgements, enter the holy place daily to trim lamps and replace the shewbread. With respect to confession and forgiveness, as Calvin noted, Christ's intercession for us is not a clash of wills with the Father, but rather a praying for us on the basis of the power of his atonement.3 Forgiveness for sins confessed after conversion does not imply he is still a sacrifice. Relational absolution is granted on the basis of the finished work of atonement; not a repetition of the bathing of the whole person but a washing of the feet (John 13). All importantly for the anti-typical fulfilment in Jesus of the Great High Priest described in Hebrews, the Aaronic priests pray for and on behalf of the people at the golden altar of incense. In other words, there is a punctiliar action of sacrifice and there is the ongoing daily intercessory ministry of the priests. This finds its fulfilment in the new covenant in a Priest who yes, offers sacrifice, which in this case it is not merely punctiliar: it is complete and its effects are forever (an emphatic theme in Hebrews). But this Priest also continues after his session at the right hand of the Father to intercede for his people, until their salvation is complete. What Moffitt is stressing is that salvation is incomplete when he ‘sits down’ but he ought, I think, to stress that the atonement is complete when he sits down. For instance, Hebrews makes the point that ‘by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy’ (10:10–14). The notion of an incomplete ‘salvation’, a sanctifying work, is evident from the phrase ‘being made holy’. But a completed work precedes this: ‘we have been made holy … he has made perfect forever’ (10:14). So, to say that our salvation is incomplete, a notion Peter reflects also (1 Pet. 1:9), is canonical and good; to say that atonement is incomplete is a different matter and seems to minimise the nature of the work of Christ accomplished in his earthly incarnation, life, death and resurrection. The ongoing work of Jesus is a majestic theme in Hebrews. Recalling the non-sacrificial work of the Levitical priests, Jesus as our representative in the Godhead offers up our worship and our prayers as his prayers, he hears our confession and grants absolution on the grounds of what has been accomplished in the sacrificial atonement of Jesus. As Hebrews 8:2 indicates he ‘serves’ (a priestly word) so that the people of God in their priestly function … ‘may serve (priestly word) the living God’ (9:14). He ratified the covenant by the finished work, and he upholds the covenant by his presence and his prayers, his unfinished work. Perhaps one might say, he has made objective atonement once for all, but the application of the benefits of that atonement subjectively are eternal for humanity and the cosmos. If Moffitt had written, ‘It is finished and it is not finished’, one theme of his book might have been more palatable. One can certainly see how Moffitt's reading fits with the postponed sense of justification by faith in the New Perspective. Much mystery remains in pursuing the wonder of the atonement/salvation of Christ. In this epistle ‘all is sacred space’, and divine time intersects human time. Moffitt does inspire our pressing into the mystery.

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