Corporate Identity and the Atonement

I want to briefly point to something that we often miss in Bible study and theology in the western church–corporate identity. We are very individualistic, and that makes it hard to see when some form of corporate identity is in play.

This turns up in certain views of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Many view the baptism as a single event for the church on Pentecost, into which the individual believer is incorporated when he or she becomes a part of God’s people, normally through baptism. The separate baptism is a more individual idea. (I think there can be some accommodation between these views; I simply want to point out the corporate identity inherent in at least one of them.)

Paul says in Romans 6:3-4:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (NRSV, cf. 2 Corinthians 4:10-12)

Again, our baptism incorporates us into God’s people, and by this means we have a part in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Applied to atonement theory, I would suggest that this means that there is a sense in which we have each paid the penalty, and that this element is often lost in discussions of the atonement. In particular, placing the reality of the atonement in the courtroom makes it essential an individual act, and an individual attributing [imputation] of Christ’s merits to us.

I do not mean to suggest that this, by itself, is a theory of the atonement, but rather that we should take the corporate elements of scripture more seriously in forming our understanding of New Testament writing on the subject.