Atonement,Liturgy and Metaphor: Finding Meaning in Duality

Abstract

Although human understanding is generally characterized as a process which seeks to unify diverse components into a synthesis, it may equally find satisfying closure in duality and paradox. This entails that our knowledge of reality has a primordially dual aspect, and this in turn has implications for theology. It will be suggested that duality, pairing, paradox and metaphor are in various ways keys to understanding the work of Christ: thus the inner dynamic of the work of the Cross is structured like a metaphor, and our personal experience of salvation also resembles a metaphor because of its underlying dynamic of communion or koinonia with Christ. There is, in short, a general twofoldness of things, which has an outcome both in the nature of the atonement and the way Scripture presents it. Understanding of the atonement is enriched by the insight that ‘two’ is as important as ‘one.’