Review: JP Holding's The Atonement Contextualized

But since this is an apologetics blog, I won’t avoid the difficult questions. Instead, I want to tell you about a book I think does an excellent job of explaining and defending Atonement, JP Holding’s The Atonement Contextualized. 

Holding’s strength as an apologist is that he’s good at putting his subject in its proper historical and cultural context, and in such a way that his audience can understand. That’s vitally important, because the New Testament was originally intended for an audience who lived in a very different social setting. And when we understand Atonement the way those early Christians did, defending the doctrine becomes far easier.

 

They key to understanding Atonement, Holding argues, is recognizing that the biblical world was a collectivist society. In such a social setting, people thought of themselves more as belonging to a group than as individuals, and their social relations were governed by a concept known as “Patronage.” As Holding describes it, Patronage dictated that formal relationships between wealthy, powerful people (patrons) and inferior individuals (clients) were managed by brokers (p 17). Scholars maintain that this is also how the New Testament describes our relationship with God, and Holding argues that the Atonement should be viewed in this context as well. God is the patron, Christians are the client, and Jesus served as the broker by dying on the cross. Holding has dubbed this the Patronage Transference Model (PTM).

Under this arrangement, one might say that Jesus performs a ‘currency exchange’ in which our pledge of loyalty to the Father is transacted into something the Father can accept as a cleansing of sin…if we share Jesus’ virtual and corporate identity (see the point above about collectivism, and the New Testament’s references to the Body of Christ), and Jesus is sinless, then by corporate association, we too become sinless…” (pg 148)

Keeping things in proper historical context is all well and good, a skeptic may respond, but how does any of this information justify Jesus taking responsibility for our sin? He died and we aren’t held accountable for our actions? Not exactly. As Holding points out, “…if someone paid restitution for you…then you would be indebted to that person. The very notion of Christian ethical behavior is one of an obligation of the believer indebted to Christ.” (pg 535) This is very important from an apologist perspective, because it means that a seemingly valid objection to Atonement is just a misunderstanding generated by an anachronistic reading of the New Testament.

What follows this overview of the PTM is a solid refutation of many other common objections to Atonement. Holding demonstrates, for example, that Jesus’ crucifixion wasn’t a case of human sacrifice, thus undercutting the atheist charge that God is a barbaric jerk who killed his own son. Holding also explains why God  couldn’t just forgive sin, and why Jesus’ death was necessary.

If the book gets a wide enough audience, which I hope it does, it should generate some interesting discussions. I am curious to see how the skeptics will respond to the arguments, if they do at all. I’m even more curious to see how other Christians respond to the book, as other reviewers have already raised some legitimate questions about Holding’s thesis.

In any event, the book’s worth reading. It’s well researched and written for a general audience, and it’s really cheap. I paid three bucks for it and read it in one day on my phone. It’s the kind of book you could give to your pastor or your college-age child who’s been watching too many anti-Christian rants on YouTube.