Teresa Morgan’s Trust in Atonement: God, Creation, and Reconciliation is a well-written and well-documented treatise on what she proposes. It is a much-needed model for atonement (at-one-ment) involving God, human beings, and the whole of creation in all its “subjectivity.” With special focus given to the theme of trust (and correlating subjects) Morgan discusses in a deeply penetrating, interdisciplinary, and interconnected way:

a) human and non-human subjects of all kinds, including most fundamentally the Divine Subject; 
b) the trust, entrustment, and trustworthiness of all beings (including God, Divine Being) in a network of relations; 
c) wrongdoing and the suffering caused by it, be it intentional, accidental, or otherwise, whether experienced as personally or communally offensive, traumatizing, or not; and 
d) forgiveness as “therapeutic trust” in the hope of at-one-ment, with or without repentance. 

Trust in Creation opens with an introduction that touches upon many of the themes Morgan will explore in the book. She entitles chapter 1 “Wrongdoing and Suffering, Trust and Mistrust”; chapter 2 “Trust after Trauma, Conflict and Offending”; chapter 3, “The Trust and Trustworthiness of Jesus Christ”; chapter 4 “Trust in Creation”; and chapter 5, “As We Forgive.” The reader should note that Morgan does not restrict her discussion of any one aspect of trust to a particular chapter but in insightful ways weaves in and out and circles around aspects related to chapters whose titles might not be indicative of such inclusion. She does the same in her short conclusion where she offers last thoughts on her model of at-one-ment. 

What is striking in the layout of the book is that at the heart of the book’s “architecture,” there is “The Trust and Trustworthiness of Jesus Christ” (chapter 3). As the divine-human person, Christ’s mediation is essential in Morgan’s model of at-one-ment, not only for the salvation and at-one-ment of humans, one to another and to God, but also with all non-human created beings, which Morgan discusses in more depth in her fourth chapter entitled “Trust in Creation,” to which I now turn.

When discussing trust in creation, Morgan does so in unexpected ways, unpacking for the reader material worthy of consideration as contributing to a fundamentally theological model of atonement. She explores the “hows,” “whys,” and “wherefores” of Christ’s mediating role for non-human inhabitants, even the possibility of some degree of moral responsibility on the part of non-human created beings and the need for the “revelation” of God’s trust in them, etc. Such a notion has not been in the mainstream of theological thought and tradition, though there have been signs of hope in Christ’s redemptive work for the whole of creation and an appreciation for the interconnectedness of life’s beings expressed in diverse ways in the tradition.

Morgan builds upon a growing appreciation in the theological, philosophical, and scientific realms for this interconnected reality and embraces what she believes to be a call for deeper theological reflection on at-one-ment. Drawing on more recent studies in philosophy, religion, and the social and physical sciences, and proposing telltale Biblical signs to help make her point, Morgan suggests that the notion of the moral responsibility of non-human created beings and their need for “revelation” is deserving of greater consideration in any theological work on atonement. She does not suggest that these non-human inhabitants are moral subjects in the same way as human moral agents but does propose for consideration the possibility that some of them are able to trust, to be entrusted, and to be trustworthy; moreover, that some show signs of a certain culpability when they act “spitefully” and others seem to behave in altruistic ways that benefit others but not themselves. 

Morgan acknowledges that her proposal suggesting Christ acts as a mediator for the salvation of all creation’s inhabitants in this way needs further reflection, but she believes it is not outside the realm of possibilities and argues that further revelations of the Christ event are a reality in the Christian story. On this point, she reminds her readers that Christ in his divinity and humanity continues to mediate revelation through the Spirit, unfolding and revealing new insights of God’s revelation as he journeys through time in his at-one-ment with God, humanity, and creation. Insofar as humanity responds in the ways it can with obedience and trust, that is, proves itself both trusting and receptive to the trust, by being trustworthy (worthy of entrustment) and by extending the same to others, it cooperates with God’s “Christ event” in the salvation and inhabitability of the world. Because Morgan believes humanity has the reflective and moral capacity to help mediate the reconciliation of all, she hopes to inspire people to accept the cross and follow Christ in the reconciliation of the world’s inhabitants with one another and with God.

Altogether, this is a work worth reading and studying. Not only does Morgan further in her own right the awareness of the interconnectedness of all created beings and their relations with the Divine Being in her work and proposal of an even greater “subjectivity” of created, non-human beings, but her footnotes are extensive. This makes it even more appropriate for study, especially theological study, not only in and of itself, but as it concerns the advancement of an interdisciplinary pursuit of the meaning of life as at-one-meant with trust, trustworthiness, and entrustment as fundamentals of life.