To suppose that God has a providential plan based on a special covenant with Israel and realised in the atonement presents us with a moral problem. In Ruin and Restoration David Martin sketches a radical naturalistic account of the atonement based on the innocent paying for the sins of the guilty through ordinary social processes. An exercise in socio-theology, the book reflects on the contrast between the world governed by the dynamic of violence as analysed by the social sciences, including international relations, and the emergence in Christianity (and Buddhism) of a non-violent...