This week we take a look at the primary way the New Testament and the earliest church understood the atonement: recapitulation.

The word recapitulation sounds archaic, but we often use the shortened version: “recap.” The entirety of Jesus’ life “recaps” the whole story of humanity. In solidarity with us, Jesus takes on our human nature, with all its corruptibility (sin and death), and heals it from the inside. The life of Jesus is like a healing medicine administered directly to the core of our very being. He takes our story and lives it truthfully, and so brings wholeness where there is brokenness.

While the focus of penal substitutionary models of the atonement focus primarily on the death of Jesus—often to the exclusion of the birth, life, and resurrection of Jesus—recapitulation focuses our attention on the incarnation. The whole life of Jesus, from his conception in Mary’s womb to his resurrection, is atoning, precisely because he is truly God and truly human.

As Paul puts it in Ephesians 1:9-10 “For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite [recapitulate] all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”

He takes what is ours (sin, death) and makes it his own and extends to us what is his (the very life of God). As Athanasius (4th century) put it: “God became human so that humans might become God.”

Recapitulation emphasizes the mysterious union we have with Christ, much like a fetus has with her mother. The life of Christ becomes my own life. What happens to me is happening to him, and what has happened to him is happening in me.

Hans Urs von Balthasar summarizes it well:

The stupendous exchange takes place: God becomes ‘nothing’, so that the ‘nothings’ might become God, Irenaeus [2nd century] calls this wonderful thing recapitulation. What he means is this: the second Adam is the repetition, in divine truth, of the first Adam, the Adam who turned away from God. The second Adam repeats the whole natural development of man at the higher level of divine reality. Sinful, lost, and wandering man is not just put back on course by the companionship of love; more profoundly, he is taken into that love.

Here is the handout from the class:

Recapitulation: The Early Church Fathers’ Atonement Model

(Adapted from Ben Myers “Atonement and the Image of God”)

* Humanity, created in the image of God, is loved by God.

* But human nature has succumbed to the power of death.

* To rescue humanity from its plight, God would need to retrieve human beings from death.

* But God is unable to enter a state of death.

* What is God to do?

* In Christ, God becomes incarnate: the divine nature is united with human nature.

* In this union, each nature retains its own distinctiveness while participating in the properties of the other. Christ’s human nature (without compromising its humanness) is filled with divine life; and the divine nature (without compromising its divinity) is able to enter death.

* When Christ dies, the fullness of divine life enters the state of death. As a result, death itself is filled with His life (or canceled out). In the death of Christ, death dies (the resurrection).

* What happens to Jesus’ human nature happens to humanity as a whole.

* Human nature is now freed from the power of death and is restored to its created position. This is a Good Thing. (The Solution)

* Human nature is now united to God and receives benefits far surpassing its created position. This is a Very Good Thing. (The Surplus)

Further resources:

* Ben Myers: “Atonement and the Image of God”

* You can read the paper here and listen to the lecture here. It’s phenomenal work that I return to often.

* If you want to get your toes wet in atonement theology I recommend starting with Scot McKnight’s good introduction on the topic called A Community Called Atonement.

* If you want to go deeper I would recommend Fleming Rutledge’s magnificent treatment on the atonement in her book The Crucifixion.

* If you still aren’t satisfied—what’s wrong with you?—I recommend Hans Boersma’s wonderful book Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross.

* For more on the subject of “union with Christ” see Michael Gorman’s Cruciformity or Inhabiting the Cruciform God.

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