Affections of Pentecost: atonement, redemption, and the sexually violated body

Van Horne, Faith ORCID: 0009-0001-7928-8232 (2025). Affections of Pentecost: atonement, redemption, and the sexually violated body. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This study constructs a doctrinal articulation of atonement using a Pentecostal feminist methodology, applying a critical and constructive theology of the body. This somatology responds to the question of how those who have suffered traumatic sexual violation experience bodily redemption—particularly redeemed sexual relationality. It engages feminist critiques that reject Christ’s atonement as salvific and locate redemption elsewhere. These feminists assume atonement upholds ethical ideals of passivity, in which abused persons are expected to surrender their right to bodily autonomy as Jesus surrendered himself to the Father’s will on the cross. Other theologians have offered alternative views of atonement in response to this critique. This study responds by drawing from Pentecostal resources, for which embodied spiritual praxis and theological reflection and construction are co-informing. These resources show how feminist rejections of atonement share an underlying assumption of bodily autonomy that limits their ability to cast a vision of redemption after traumatic violation.

Despite using rhetoric of embodiment and interdependence, feminist theologies that assert the right to autonomy over the body envision the body as property controlled by human will. While upholding the right to protection against harm, this view of autonomy cannot envision bodily redemption in terms of mutual, communal agency in the remaking of the self following sexual abuse. Theologically, applying this understanding of bodily autonomy to Christ’s role in atonement fails to offer a hopeful, relational view of bodily redemption. The study traces the developments of these feminist theologies on bodily autonomy, showing their effects on trauma-informed views of atonement and redemption. Finally, the thesis develops a Pentecostal feminist heuristic tool, ‘affections of Pentecost.’ Applied to atonement, this heuristic derives from an understanding of agency in which human selves operates in trusting relationality with Christ’s transformative work through the Holy Spirit via affective embodied religious practices. ‘Affections of Pentecost’ offers a lens for doctrinal engagement that reflects findings from trauma literature about how those who have suffered sexual bodily trauma can live well in its aftermath, as well as presenting a theological vision of atonement that speaks to the hope of embodied redemption.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):