Luke

González writes with pastoral warmth, brings voices from the global church into conversation with Luke, and his treatment of themes like table fellowship and the "great reversal" contains real insight. His handling of atonement, however, is the commentary's most persistent weakness. As early as Luke 4:31–44, he sets up a contrast between Jesus as conqueror of evil and Jesus as substitute for sinners, declaring that "the truth is that in the New Testament there is a different prevailing view of the work of Jesus: he is the one who conquers the powers of evil." At the Last Supper (22:14–20), where Jesus says "this is my body, which is given for you" and "this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you," he discusses the liturgy and Passover but passes over the substitutionary force of these words, and claims elsewhere that Luke "does not even include the explanation that Jesus was to 'give his life a ransom for many'" — as though 22:19–20 were not there. In his excursus on the crucifixion (23:32–49), he associates substitutionary atonement with fundamentalism, calls it an "innovation" not "fully formulated until the eleventh century," and claims "not one ancient Christian writer takes this to be the only, or even the main, way to understand Christ's saving work." While Anselm's Cur Deus Homo (1098) is indeed the classic systematic treatment, the concept of substitutionary sacrifice pervades the New Testament itself (Mark 10:45; 2 Cor 5:21; 1 Pet 2:24; Heb 9:28), and conflating Anselm's specific satisfaction theory with this broader and much older concept gives a skewed picture of the history of doctrine. The contrast with peer commentators is instructive. Fitzmyer (AYB) reads 22:19 as adding "a vicarious dimension of meaning to his 'body,' and probably also a sacrificial nuance," insists "the Lucan form of the reinterpretative words is no less 'sacrificial' than the Marcan," and concludes that "Luke does insinuate the vicarious and salvific aspects of the death of Jesus." Bock (BECNT) rebuts the claim that Luke lacks substitutionary theology, listing "Luke 22:19–20; 24:21; Acts 7:35; esp. 20:28." Garland (ZECNT) writes that "it is at Golgotha, not at the temple, that the ultimate sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins will occur." Particularly telling are Carroll (NTL), Green (NICNT), and Bovon (Hermeneia), all of whom share some of González's inclination to de-emphasise atonement in Luke yet still reckon carefully with the text's sacrificial language. Carroll takes the minority text-critical position that Luke 22:19b–20 may be "an early expansion" under Pauline influence, yet he still acknowledges the cup-word's "blood poured out" implies "a sacrificial offering that is vicariously beneficial" and describes the longer text as carrying "the interpretation of the soteriological import of Jesus' sacrificial death." Green, who elsewhere writes that Luke's theology of the cross is rooted "not so much in a theory of the atonement, but in a narrative portrayal of the life of faithful discipleship," nonetheless concludes on 22:19–20 that "Jesus' death is said to atone for the sins of the people and thus to enable their participation in the renewed, eschatological covenant with God." Bovon acknowledges that "Luke is reserved about the expiatory nature of Jesus' death" but adds: "Yet he does not hesitate to acknowledge the biblical tradition of the expiatory suffering of the righteous person," and regarding Luke's omission of Mark 10:45 writes simply: "He has nothing against atonement." That even the commentators most sympathetic to González's reading still engage carefully with the substitutionary dimensions of these Lukan texts — and none resorts to associating them with fundamentalism or dismissing them as a medieval invention — suggests this is a significant gap in the commentary.