Trust in Atonement: God, Creation, and Reconciliation, by Teresa Morgan (Eerdmans, 2024), 279 pages, $39.99.

In Trust in Atonement,[1] Teresa Morgan articulates a “trust model” of the atonement centered upon the restoration of trust between God and humanity. Building on her previous work, which contended that the New Testament’s language of πίστις (and its cognates) should be understood primarily in the relational sense of “trust” or “trustworthiness.”[2] Morgan argues that Jesus Christ shows himself to be trusting and trustworthy toward both God and humanity; and this double relationship of trust enables Jesus to mediate between humanity and God and bring humanity back to trust in God.

Morgan’s atonement theory is comprehensive and wide-ranging, and it lies far beyond the scope of this article to engage with all her proposals.[3] Instead, writing from a Reformed perspective, I shall focus on her implicit rejection of penal substitutionary atonement, and her alternative explanation for Jesus’s suffering and death on the cross. This article is in two parts. First, I outline the two main planks of Morgan’s “trust model” of atonement: that (a) the Scriptures present a complex picture of wrongdoing and suffering, which (b) requires the restoration of trust between God and man. Thereafter, I offer a critical appraisal from a Reformed perspective.

Morgan’s “Trust Model” of Atonement

A Complex Picture of Wrongdoing and Suffering

Morgan’s starting point is that the Scriptures present a complex picture of wrongdoing and suffering, which existing atonement theories do not account for in a satisfactory manner. For Morgan, wrongdoing[4] is not simply “wilful sin,” but includes “collective and inherited sin, different kinds of foolishness, and even bad moral luck.”[5] Wrongdoing is also “closely entwined” with suffering, in that one can lead to the other, and both wrongdoing and suffering can alienate people from God. In her view, existing models of atonement are unable to account for this complex picture of wrongdoing and suffering—traditional models of atonement (including penal substitution) focus on the restoration of sinners, while liberation theology tends to focus on the liberation of the suffering and oppressed, but none of the existing models account for how Jesus Christ saves from both suffering and wrongdoing.[6]

Instead, according to Morgan, this complex picture can be traced ultimately to failures of trust: “trusting in the wrong people or places, or not at all.”[7] So, beginning with the Old Testament, Morgan recasts the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the garden as a breach of trust. When God commands Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he “seems to trust . . . the man and woman to do as God tells them, perhaps as part of their stewardship.”[8] The serpent then undermines the woman’s trust and encourages her to trust him instead (Gen. 3:5). “In this light, the actions of the woman and man look less like wilful disobedience than a naïve or foolish response to the undermining of their trust.”[9] A further failure of trust ensues when the man blames the woman for his actions (Gen. 3:12). “What follows is not only disobedience to God and punishment but further trust, failures of trust, and renewals of trust between God and humanity that characterize the whole of human history.”[10]

Morgan argues that the NT also presents a similarly complex picture.[11] Turning to the gospels, she contends that although the evangelists were “focused on the importance of repentance,” they have “little to say explicitly about whether wrongdoing is universal, collective, or inherited, or whether or not it is wilful.”[12] Indeed, the “most important aspect” of Jesus’s ministry was not about the relief of suffering or wrongdoing, “but the (re)new(ed) relationship with God that it makes possible.”[13] Because she develops her atonement theory primarily from Romans, Morgan devotes some attention to wrongdoing and suffering in this letter.[14] According to her exegesis of Romans 1, Gentiles are “wrongdoers by inheritance, who do not actively do wrong themselves,” or “are stuck in their wrongdoing despite themselves.”[15] The language of being “given over” (παραδίδωμι, 1:24, 26, 28) suggests that wrongdoing can be unintentional or accidental or even imposed as a penalty.[16] She conjectures in light of Genesis 3–4 “the possibility that the gentiles turned from God because they felt rejected by God, though Paul does not say so.”[17] As for the Jews, they are guilty of apistia, a “lack of trust or faithfulness toward God,”[18] which, according to Morgan’s reading of Romans 9–11, is less about wilful sin than about being misguided, since they have a genuine “zeal for God” (10:2) and seek to strive for the law of righteousness (9:31).[19] Morgan also muses as to whether the Jews’ failure to trust God stems from a “loss of confidence in God at a time of political upheavals and increasing oppression.” [20] Ultimately, for Morgan, the notion of “sin” as rebellion or disobedience against God is too simplistic; the point is that human beings, both Jew and Gentile, fall out of trust with God and put trust in the wrong places through wrongdoing or suffering, which are both complex and everywhere interlinked.[21]

The Restoration of Trust Between God and Humanity through a “Double Bond” of Trust

For Morgan, since all suffering and wrongdoing can be traced to failures of trust, the atonement is about the restoration of trust between God and humanity. Specifically, this restoration of trust is affected through a “double bond” of trust—the trust between God and Jesus Christ, together with the trust which God and Christ seek to establish between Christ and human beings.

Morgan’s argument depends on her exegesis of a few key texts, chief of which is Romans 3:21–26.[22] Morgan reads 3:21–22 as Paul’s proclamation that the gracious righteousness of God has been revealed apart from the law διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, which she renders as “the faithfulness and trustworthiness of Jesus Christ both to God, as God’s Son, and toward humanity, as its saviour.”[23] In 3:25, God puts forward Christ to die, but Christ’s voluntary obedience to God is the expression of his faithfulness toward a God who is trustworthy, and his trust in God’s new initiative for humanity. In Morgan’s words, then:

The righteousness of God, says Paul (3:21–26), has been revealed through Christ’s trust and faithfulness toward God as trustworthy and toward humanity as capable of responding to him with trust for all who trust . . . God put Jesus Christ forward as a supplicatory offering—probably a term inherited by Paul—to reveal God’s righteousness so that the person who puts their trust in Christ may be righteoused. The relationship of trust between God and Christ allows Jesus to let himself be put forward, and the trust both God and Christ—implicitly but necessarily—put in humanity to respond is justified when human beings do put their trust in Christ and are righteoused.[24]

Morgan thus speaks of a “double bond of trust” between (i) God and Christ on the one hand, and (ii) between Christ and humanity on the other. The trust between God and Christ enables Christ to be faithful even to death and offers a vehicle for divine grace; the trust between Christ and human beings enables the latter to trust Christ, and for Christ to trust them to respond to him and through him to God’s grace. For Morgan, understanding pistis as doubly reciprocal fits with Paul’s understanding of the role of Christ in reconciliation as a mediator.[25]

Why do human beings trust Christ? Because he is a model of what it means to live in trust with God—even when he is betrayed and crucified, “he refuses to be drawn into the vicious circle of failed trust, where loss of trust leads to suffering and harm, and suffering all too often leads to harming others and further suffering.”[26] But more than a model, he creates a “firebreak” to the spread of evil and pain, breaking the cycle of failed trust and showing humanity what is attainable in terms of relationships of trust with God and fellow humans.[27] Jesus’s actions as a model and a firebreak further demonstrate the “therapeutic trust” that God places in human beings. Morgan adopts this concept from moral philosophy, and it refers to the trust that one places in another in a relationship where there may be no extant trust, but which initiates a trust relationship that may develop through time.[28] So God places “therapeutic trust” in humanity when he entrusts Jesus Christ to the world, trusting them to respond to Christ, knowing that some will fail, and that probably everyone will fail up to a point, but knowing that humanity is capable of responding eventually.

A Reformed Critique

Writing from a Reformed perspective, I appreciated two aspects of Morgan’s “trust model” of atonement. First, in emphasizing the restoration of trust between God and man, the “trust model” rightly appreciates the importance of reconciliation in atonement.[29] Historically, the Reformed tradition has understood reconciliation to be an important category in which to understand the nature of Christ’s atoning work, in reliance on texts where the language of reconciliation appears (καταλλάσσω, καταλλαγή, e.g. Rom. 5:8–11; 2 Cor. 5:18–21).[30] Second, the “trust model” emphasises the role of Christ as mediator in reconciling God and humanity, which the Reformed have also historically emphasised,[31] especially against the Roman Catholic doctrine of the saints and Mary. This said, Morgan’s “trust model” of atonement is problematic on biblical and theological grounds. Even assuming her exegesis is right, her model (a) does not provide a satisfactory explanation for Christ’s suffering and death, and (b) leads to a distorted view of God’s agency. Ultimately, though, I contend that (c) it relies on shaky exegetical foundations. Each of these three points are elaborated upon in turn.

Why Did Jesus Have to Die?

First, the “trust model” fails to adequately account for Christ’s suffering and death. Although Morgan acknowledges the centrality of the cross to Christian understandings of the atonement,[32] her model—ironically—struggles to explain the cross. Indeed, Morgan candidly concedes that it is not normally necessary for mediators or conciliators to die to do their work.[33] Nevertheless, she tries to explain Jesus’s suffering and death in three ways. (1) First, Jesus had to die in order to show God’s unbreakable commitment to humanity, and his death reveals “humanity to itself as infinitely precious to God and capable for responding to God.”[34] (2) Second, Jesus had to suffer and die “because he cannot be other than he is,” viz., “the person who has always been trusting and trustworthy toward God and toward humanity and whose work is to restore trust between humanity and God.”[35] (3) Third, Jesus’s death has an exemplary aspect, to show his followers how to die “metaphorically” to “the power of wrongdoing, suffering, the flesh, and death and to enter new life under the authority of Christ.”[36]

None of these explanations are satisfactory. Numbers (1) and (3) fail to account for Jesus’s death in the same way that, respectively, contemporary “moral influence” and “exemplary” theories of the atonement have failed.[37] Could Jesus not have performed a heroic and sacrificial act less than the cruel and humiliating death of crucifixion, if all that was intended was to display God’s “commitment to humanity” or to be a “metaphorical” example? And if crucifixion was unnecessary, if it was gratuitous, then God was displaying his cruelty rather than his love. As for (2), this is a tautologous argument—according to Morgan, Jesus had to die by definition, assuming her “trust model” is correct, which is by no means the case (see below).

Morgan’s failure to explain Jesus’s suffering and death stems in large part from her downplaying of the concept of “sin,” preferring instead to speak of a complex picture of suffering and wrongdoing predicated upon failures of trust between God and humanity (as discussed above).[38] If there is no sin that requires the expiation of guilt or the propitiation of wrath, then there is no requirement for a “sacrificial” death.[39] It is “of first importance . . . that Christ died for our sins in accordance the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3, emphasis added; on which see further below).

Divine and Human Agency

Second, Morgan’s “trust model” distorts the biblical view of God’s agency. Central to Morgan’s model is the notion of “therapeutic trust,” whereby God takes a risk on humanity by entrusting Jesus Christ to the world, inviting humanity to respond to him with trust, “with all the overtones of risk-taking and hope which that implies.”[40] So, either God does not know how humanity will respond (which undermines his knowledge and power), or he knows exactly how humanity will respond (which undermines “therapeutic trust”). Amongst other things, this leads to a competitive view of divine and human agency, whereby one is committed either to a libertarian free will or a thoroughgoing determinism in a sort of zero-sum game. This fails to do justice to how the Scriptures generally, and Paul specifically, speak of divine and human agency as compatible.[41]

Exegetical Issues

Finally, there are exegetical issues with Morgan’s “trust model.” As noted above, Morgan depends heavily on her exegesis of Romans 3:21–26, and particularly διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ in 3:22, which she renders as “the faithfulness and trustworthiness of Jesus Christ both to God, as God’s Son, and toward humanity, as its saviour.” Morgan’s suggestion is novel,[42] and rests upon her earlier work on πίστις as “trust” (noted above in the introduction). While the Reformed have long held “trust” to be an important component of “faith,”[43] that πίστις language only ever means “trust” (as opposed to “believe”) in every case is doubtful.[44] Moreover, Morgan’s rendering of διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ is overly complicated—could Paul’s readers have been expected to understand from this prepositional phrase the four-dimensional relationship of (i) God’s trust in Christ, (ii) Christ’s trust in God, (iii) God and Christ’s trust in humanity, and (iv) humanity’s (and Paul’s) trust in God and Christ?[45] This seems implausible.

Morgan’s “trust model” also fails to account for all the New Testament data. The gospels feature little in her analysis.[46] One would have expected at least a treatment of the cry of dereliction (Matt. 27:46; Mk. 15:34), which cuts to the heart of Christ’s trust in God.[47] Even if one were to grant that her model is derived from Paul, Morgan gives no detailed consideration to 1 Corinthians 15:3–4, which is crucial for Paul’s understanding of the atonement;[48] indeed, it is of “first importance” to Paul that “Christ died for our sins in accordance to the Scriptures,” (emphasis added). Another surprising omission is 2 Corinthians 5:18–21, a text which speaks directly of God reconciling us to himself through Christ (5:18). Significantly, this text does not use πίστις to speak of this reconciling work, and further it speaks of this reconciliation as being effected by God not counting humanity’s transgressions against them (μὴ λογιζόμενος αὐτοῖς τὰ παραπτώματα αὐτῶν, 5:19), which suggests that something more than Christ’s “trust” and “trustworthiness” is at play in the atonement.[49] That these two texts are neglected is perhaps unsurprising, given that her model downplays the concept of sin.

Conclusion

Through her earlier work, Teresa Morgan has helped many to see the importance of “trust” to the meaning of πίστις in the New Testament. However, her “trust model” of atonement, while commendable in some respects, is problematic on biblical and theological grounds, as I have sought to show in this (limited) article. Amongst other things, it seems implausible for πίστις to freight all that she intends in her “trust model”; and one wonders if the tail of her theological conclusions is wagging the dog of her exegesis. Perhaps this should also lead to a reassessment of her earlier conclusions that πίστις must mean relational “trust” to the exclusion of propositional “belief” in every instance.

Bibliography

Endnotes

[1] Teresa Morgan, Trust in Atonement: God, Creation, and Reconciliation, 1st ed. (Eerdmans, 2024). Morgan is the McDonald Agape Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Yale Divinity School.

[2] As opposed to “faith” or “belief.” For Morgan, πίστις is relational and community-shaping, and less concerned with propositional beliefs: Teresa Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (Oxford University Press, 2017); Teresa Morgan, The New Testament and the Theology of Trust: ‘This Rich Trust’, 1st ed (Oxford University Press, 2022), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192859587.001.0001. I engage briefly with these works below.

[3] For example, I will not be able to address Morgan’s reliance on insights from the fields of psychology, philosophy, conflict-resolution, and the rehabilitation of offenders (especially ch. 2), or the implications of her atonement theory for the restoration of trust between God and the non-human parts of creation, and between humans and other humans (chs. 4 and 5, respectively).

[4] Throughout this work, Morgan seems to prefer the term “wrongdoing” to “sin”. This perhaps serves to downplay the notion or concept of “sin”.

[5] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 29.

[6] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 2–7, 29, 82.

[7] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 29.

[8] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 39.

[9] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 40.

[10] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 40. At pages 40–43, Morgan considers several other Old Testament texts, including the Cain and Abel narrative (Gen 4), the flood (Gen 6-9), Jephthah (Judges 11:29–39), and the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. She further suggests that human actions that appear to be wilful wrongdoings and betrayals of trust “from one perspective” are, “from another, reactions to the perception that God has not trusted those involved. This perception brings suffering in the form of doubt, and suffering leads the sufferers to do as much damage to the relationship as wilful wrongdoing might have done” (41).

[11] Prior to her discussion of the New Testament, Morgan considers the variety of Messianic traditions inherited by Christians in the New Testament, which she summarizes as follows: “Christians inherit broadly four models of what a savior may do. He may save his people from suffering caused by others, from their own wrongdoings, from the painful consequences of their wrongdoing, or some mixture of all three” (45).

[12] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 50.

[13] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 59 (parentheses in original).

[14] Morgan argues that the same complex picture of wrongdoing and suffering seen in the gospels is also present in the New Testament epistles. She considers a few epistles besides Romans in Trust in Atonement, 59–63.

[15] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 72.

[16] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 73.

[17] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 72 (fn. 89).

[18] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 73.

[19] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 74.

[20] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 74 (fn. 92).

[21] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 39, 81.

[22] Morgan relies secondarily on Gal. 2:15–20 (διὰ πίστεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, 2:16) and Phil. 3:7–11 (διὰ πίστεως Χριστοῦ, 3:9): Trust in Atonement, 123–24. Limitations of space preclude the consideration of those texts, but it suffices to say that her exegesis of those texts is dependent on her conclusions reached on Rom 3:21–26.

[23] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 120. In support of this reading, she cites her earlier work in Roman Faith, 31, 53, 263 fn. 7, 273.

[24] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 122 (footnotes omitted).

[25] Morgan acknowledges that Paul does not use the language of mediation, but that some of his followers did, including the author of Hebrews: Trust in Atonement, 125–26.

[26] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 127.

[27] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 127–28.

[28] Morgan gives the example developed by the philosopher Karen Jones, in which parents go away for the weekend, trusting their teenaged children not to hold a party and make a mess of the house. While the parents may suspect that they will do just that, they hope that by trusting their children, they will demonstrate that trust is an important aspect of adult life and something their children should take seriously. Even if they do not prove trustworthy on this occasion, the hope is that next time they may respond a bit better, until, eventually, they become trustworthy adults. See further, Trust in Atonement, 15, 128.

[29] See also her discussion of “at-one-ment”, with which she opens the book: Trust in Atonement, 1–2.

[30] E.g. John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied (Eerdmans, 2015), 29–39. Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) 8.5 puts it this way: “The Lord Jesus, by his perfect obedience, and sacrifice of himself . . . purchased, not only reconciliation, but an everlasting inheritance in the kingdom of heaven . . .” (emphasis added).

[31] E.g. Belgic Confession 26, WCF 8 (Of Christ the Mediator), John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John Thomas McNeill, The Library of Christian Classics (Westminster John Knox, 1960), 2.12.1–2. cf 1 Tim 2:5.

[32] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 223.

[33] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 135. In my view, this proves fatal for her theory.

[34] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 134. “The cross opens up a space of trust in which humanity can meet God even in the extreme of human political, social, and religious chaos as well as cruelty, injustice, and suffering.”

[35] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 135.

[36] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 137. Morgan is vague on this point, but she acknowledges the powerful “imagistic” language of dying with Christ, being buried with him, and living a new life with him, as central to people’s response to Christ and what must follow for their relationship with God to be restored: 138-9.

[37] See e.g., Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, rev. ed. (Eerdmans, 1996), 386–88; Michael S. Horton, Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology, 1st ed. (Westminster John Knox, 2005), 178–207.

[38] Therefore, although Morgan suggests that her “trust model” is compatible with penal substitutionary atonement (Trust in Atonement, 143), this must severely be doubted. See also her series of rhetorical questions in Trust in Atonement, 3.

[39] Morgan considers that Jesus’s sacrifice “bears multiple possible meanings,” which need not have connotations of guilt: Trust in Atonement, 48–50. Cf. Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied, 20–29.

[40] Morgan, Trust in Atonement, 127 (cf. 22). She acknowledges that she is using anthropomorphic language, and that her trust model has implications for one’s understanding of God but considers this beyond the scope of her book: Trust in Atonement, 28n91.

[41] This point was made independently by Susan Eastman and Simon Gathercole at a panel discussing Trust in Atonement during the meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in November 2024. Cf WCF 3.1.

[42] Nijay K. Gupta, Erin M. Heim, and Scot McKnight, eds., The State of Pauline Studies: A Survey of Recent Research, 1st ed. (Baker Academic, 2024), 146–47. Commentators are divided over whether the expression is to be taken as a subjective or objective genitive, e.g., Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, 2nd ed., Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2018), 189–94.

[43] See e.g., Francis Turrettin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison, trans. George Musgrave Giger (P&R Publishing, 1992), vol 2, 561.

[44] See Francis Watson, “Roman Faith and Christian Faith,” New Testament Studies 64, no. 2 (April 2018): 243–47, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0028688517000388; Bradley J. Bitner, “The Shape of Πίστις in 1 Corinthians: How Faith Receives, Boasts, and Discerns,” Reformed Theological Review 82, no. 3 (1 December 2023), https://doi.org/10.53521/a369.

[45] This is a point made by Simon Gathercole at a panel discussing Trust in Atonement during the meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in November 2024.

[46] As N.T. Wright has previously said, “It is astonishing to see the extent to which the four Gospels have been marginalized in discussions of atonement.” Simon J. Gathercole, Robert B. Stewart, and N. T. Wright, What Did the Cross Accomplish? A Conversation about the Atonement (Westminster John Knox, 2021), 23.

[47] On the point of Christ’s faith see Turretin’s careful treatment: Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol. 2, (P&R, 1994), 348.

[48] Simon J. Gathercole, Defending Substitution: An Essay on Atonement in Paul, Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology (Baker Academic, 2015), ch. 2.

[49] I would further argue that these sins are imputed to Christ on the basis of 2 Corinthians 5:21, but this is not necessary for present purposes.

Daniel Y. M. Tan is a member of Harvest Orthodox Presbyterian Church in San Marcos, California, and a student at Westminster Seminary California. Ordained Servant Online, August–September, 2025.