Several years ago, as my family sat around a carry-out pizza, one of my children asked, “How do they fit all the pieces together into a circle?”
We can approach the many “pieces” of biblical studies and theology in much the same way. We wonder how to fit them all together, forgetting that we cut them up in the first place.
This was not always the case. While our confessional standards are deeply exegetical, they also profess a thoroughly classical theology. Yes, we must “read and search [the Scriptures],” and, yes, God is “immutable” (Westminster Confession of Faith 1.8, 2.1). Indeed, because of the first, we declare the second. And, yet, like the child staring only at the slices, we ask, “How do we fit these pieces of exegesis and theology into a whole?”
We forget that they share the very same source: the whole of the biblical canon. And so, this or that volume of Augustine and this or that biblical commentary do not stand at odds. Sharing the same scriptural foundation, there is no ultimate obstacle for their integration (or better: reintegration). True, bringing them back together is not always easy, but it is both essential and edifying. And, again, Presbyterian doctrine flows from this kind of exegetical theology and theological exegesis.
In “Enacting Atonement: The Narrative Logic of Sacrifice and Sonship in Leviticus” (InterVarsity, 2025), Roy McDaniel carries on the spirit of Westminster by refusing to divide that which should be kept together. McDaniel — a pastor at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama — demonstrates a deep kinship with the divines as he reunites biblical studies and classical theology. In an age when academic works lean toward a specialization that obsesses on the part and eschews the whole, McDaniel offers an integrative approach to reading the Bible rightly.
The Book’s Aim
As the title suggests, McDaniel focuses on the atonement, a timely topic. In recent months, scholarly and popular attacks have questioned the merits of penal substitutionary atonement. This doctrine holds that we are reconciled to God as Christ gives us his righteous standing and bears himself the judgment of our guilt. McDaniel deftly defends penal substitutionary atonement as part of a larger purpose.
McDaniel presents both the Christological fullness of the atonement and the Christological fullness of the biblical canon. His ultimate aim is to show us Christ.
(Full disclosure: McDaniel is a good friend, and I had the privilege of discussing many of the book’s ideas with him while studying together at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School).
McDaniel approaches the Bible as the church’s book, as Christian Scripture. The whole of the biblical canon proclaims Christ and leads us in a life centered upon him. Even more, the Old Testament declares Christ in ways that are distinct (yet never divided) from the New Testament. For his part, McDaniel sets his exegetical sights upon Leviticus. And though the New Testament certainly engages with this portion of the Pentateuch, its Christological significance is not limited to the New Testament’s interaction with it. Leviticus presents Christ to us, on its own canonical credentials and in its own canonical cadence.
The Book’s Argument
McDaniel focuses primarily on Leviticus’ opening verses and the prescription of the burnt offering therein. This may surprise readers. In examining the atonement, wouldn’t our attention be better paid to the sin offering? McDaniel certainly does not discount the importance of that sacrifice. However, drawing from several Old Testament scholars, he puts forward the burnt offering as the fullest promise and presentation of the coming Christ.
Indeed, this offering serves as the preeminent and paradigmatic Levitical sacrifice. Not only does it introduce the book of Leviticus, but the sacrificial altar itself takes its name from this offering. Likewise, in the overarching narrative of Scripture, the burnt offering assumes the prominent place. For instance, on two occasions, Saul exposes his unfaithfulness in his improper handling of this sacrifice (1 Samuel 13,15). In contrast, Abraham demonstrates his faithfulness in his willingness to offer as a burnt offering even his own son (Genesis 22). Noah, too, in post-flood petition and praise, honors God with a burnt offering (Genesis 8-9).
McDaniel examines this offering through Christological and narrative lenses that flow together. The narrative that the sacrifice tells is the story of Christ’s person and work. Consider, for instance, the plot of the burnt offering: a return through death. In this sacrifice, the offeror experienced “a personal identifying” with the slaughtered animal, “even a relationship of vicarious substitution” (58-59). In death, God’s judgment upon sin is enacted, but death is not the final word here. The sacrifice exists for the purpose of life and, specifically, life with God. Yes, the offering is through death, but, it is a return, a reunion with God. In this return, the Israelite gratefully offers back to God the gifts given by God (in this case, an exceptional animal from the herd). This “gift cycle” works to bind together God and his people, as a portion of God’s provision is offered back to him in praise and thanksgiving (53).
McDaniel points to Christ as the fulfillment of this plot. Christ is this very cycle made flesh. The incarnation of the Son is both the gift from the Father to us and the offering of the fully obedient human life back to the Father. This tells us something important about who and what we are. In the pattern of return exemplified in this sacrifice, we find the proper pattern of human life. All that we have flows from God, and we are called to offer all that we have back to God in praise. Christ alone enacts this perfect human obedience, and so, Christ alone is the hero of the plot narrated by the burnt offering.
This obedience offered to the Father by Christ takes a distinctly filial form. It is son-shaped. In fact, the Israelite offeror sacrificed as both “a son of God” and “a type of the Son of God” (76). Again, having received all that we have from God, we return ourselves (and all things) back to God. As age-old voices from the church have attested, this pattern of reception and return is properly human because it takes its form from the divine Son through whom we were made. In the burnt offering, we see this very pattern played out and performed in ritualized reverence.
In making this connection, McDaniel most fully bridges contemporary biblical exegesis with the resources of classical theology. It is here that we best see the scriptural whole in the disciplinary pieces.
McDaniel draws deeply here from classical formulations of the Trinity, paying special attention to the work of Thomas Aquinas. That is, the Son is God as he eternally receives the divine nature from the Father and turns back to the Father in their shared Love who is the Spirit. “Thus, the Son, in some sense, exists both from and to the Father” (97). The pattern of reception and return that characterizes both the burnt offering and the proper human life finds its eternal archetype in the Son. When the Son becomes human, he naturally lives the fully faithful human life because human life is patterned on the Son’s very personhood. In perfect son-shaped obedience, Christ offers all of himself to God, even to the point death.
However, as with Christ’s ministry, it is not death but ascension that brings the burnt offering to its full conclusion. Yes, the whole of the animal is burned on the altar in complete devotion to God, but this fire is one of transformation, not obliteration. The offering now assumes a new form, enabling it to rise as smoke to God. This process is a kind of final perfecting of the sacrifice. Now, as a pleasing aroma, the offering is received into the heavenly dwelling of the Lord. And, to be sure, this divine reception is the very aim of the offeror: to be graciously welcomed into communion with God.
Christ, too, is transformed (yet not destroyed) through his death and resurrection. Christ, too, ascends into the heavenly places. Christ’s sacrifice, too, reaches its culmination at just this point, as the Father receives him as both the great sacrifice and our great high priest.
By this work, Christ accomplishes atonement. That is, Christ “qualifies one for the presence and service of the Lord” (124).
In response, when we place our faith in Christ, he becomes our offering of atonement so that we, too, might be welcomed into communion with God. Christ bears the punishment of our guilt, and Christ gives us the righteousness of his obedient human life. In accordance with penal substitutionary atonement, our reconciliation with God requires the legal imputations involved here. These legal categories are essential to the atonement, but they do not exhaust its salvific scope. As McDaniel shows, Christ’s offering is both legal and teleological. It concerns both the righteous standing that God demands of us and the full humanity that God intends for us.
The fullness of Christ’s human life, and the perfect obedience therein, is the positive content (the “what”) that Christ offers to God, a devotion even unto death. Then, after his resurrection, Christ ascends to the Father, the culmination of Christ’s offering, and Christ is here installed as our great high priest in the heavenly places.
Now the ascended Christ exercises his priestly office in his teleological perfection for the sake of our teleological perfection. His resurrected perfected humanity is the human oak tree in comparison to the human acorn. Christ makes atonement so that we can serve God in God’s presence and become what God always intended us to be. Christ atones for the sake of our resurrected humanity, to transform us into the teleological equivalent of the human oak tree.
The Book’s Import
Throughout the course of the book’s argument, McDaniel deftly demonstrates the unity of the scriptural canon. Not only does he coordinate Leviticus with other biblical books, but he presents us with a uniquely Levitical picture of Christ’s person and work. He reminds us that all of Scripture is for the church. However, rightly seeing Christ in all its pages (including Leviticus) is best pursued with an exegesis that is theological and a theology that is exegetical. This approach is not new, and McDaniel retrieves the practices by which the church has long read the church’s book, the Westminster divines included.
McDaniel keeps his argument tightly focused by concentrating on one theme: Christological atonement in Leviticus. This specificity serves to make the book quite accessible to audiences that might be wary of an academic publication. It is a challenging read, but not an impossible one.
The book raises some questions it does not answer along the way. For instance, McDaniel does not address exactly how the Old Testament sacrifices were efficacious even as they proclaimed Christ. Did they perhaps operate with the logic of a sacrament, a covenantal sign and seal that conveys grace when performed by faith in the promise of Christ? Or is there some other dynamic at play?
The work might also benefit by a fuller treatment of Levitical “cleanness” as a qualification for offerings. McDaniel insightfully identifies cleanness as a deeply creational criterion. To be “clean,” both animals and humans must embody and enact the “right way of being the particular creature God has given one to be” (114). For animals, this means to be without physical blemish. For humans, this means conformity to God’s word. Yes, but what about animals that are deemed unclean by their very species? Is there a right way to be a pig or a shellfish? And how does all this relate to the uncleanness of diseases and discharges? To do justice to the whole of Levitical “cleanness,” such questions would need to be addressed.
All the same, McDaniel faithfully and fruitfully fits these many Levitical pieces back together into their proper Christological whole. We would do well to go and read likewise.
Will Bankston is the pastor of One Ancient Hope Presbyterian Church in Iowa City, Iowa.