The Politics of Redemption

This is a new theory of the atonement, showing that the Christian account of salvation can only fully make sense if approached from a social-political angle. Recent decades have witnessed an explosion of new perspectives on 'atonement theory', the traditional name for reflections on the meaning of Christ's work. These new theologies view Christ as a political figure and mobilize social theory to understand the contemporary context and Christ's meaning for that context. "Politics of Redemption" demonstrates that pre-modern theologians also understood Christ's role in a fundamentally social way. The argument proceeds by analysing the most important and original contributors to the tradition of atonement theory (Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, Anselm, and Abelard). The investigation reveals that they all work within a shared social-relational logic based on the solidarity of all human beings and the irreducible relatedness of humanity and the rest of creation. Having brought this social-relational logic to the surface, the work concludes by sketching out a fresh atonement theory as a way of showing that our understanding of Christ's work and of its relevance for our life together is enriched by foregrounding the question of how creation, and particularly the human social sphere, is structured.