...A Community Called Atonement is not just a bridge-building book. It is also an expand-your-vision book. To parody J. B. Phillips's famous title, this book could have been called Your Atonement Is Too Small.
McKnight's gaze follows the way Paul focuses his wide-angle lens. McKnight reviews the various metaphors, pictures, and theories of Atonement implicit in Scripture and looks for the big picture. Taking themes expounded by the earliest church fathers—victory, ransom, recapitulation—he wraps them together into one package called 'identification for incorporation.'
Showing posts with label Cross. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cross. Show all posts
Friday, May 23, 2008
Your Atonement is Too Small
From an article on Christianity Today, reviewing 'A Community Called Atonement' by Scot McKnight. Looks interesting!
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
How fixed is the script?
I was interested to read Ben Witherington's view on God's 'script' and the significance of human decisions.
"Let your kingdom come, your will be done..."
Another interesting link I came across on Ben's blog is a 'blogalogue' between Bart Ehrman and N. T. Wright on the problem of suffering. Ehrman has just published a book called 'God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer'. NT Wright is as eloquent and graceful in his replies as ever. I always find him refreshing on this subject as he takes the existence of evil seriously and isn't content to attribute all suffering in the world to human choices.
"Whilst, God could have done otherwise, he has chosen to allow us to be viable partners with God in ministry and the working out of his will and Kingdom on earth, beings capable of making un-predetermined choices that have incredible consequences. The issue is not the sovereignty of God - the issue is how God has chosen to exercise his power and will. And what the Bible says about this is that he has not pre-determined all things from before the foundations of the world.I absolutely agree. Saying that God always gets his way makes no sense of Jesus' instructions on prayer, in particular the Lord's prayer:
Human history is not merely a preordained play, played out perfectly to a pre-ordained script. On the contrary while there is a blue-print, or a general script, God has allowed, indeed invited us to make the drama like a night at the Improv, improvising our roles as we go, and making viable choices of moment and consequence along the way. Are we supposed to follow the general instructions in the script? Well yes, as they provide the boundaries beyond which we ought not to go and show us what character and kind of roles we should play. But of course we may fail to play our parts well, or indeed at all."
"Let your kingdom come, your will be done..."
Another interesting link I came across on Ben's blog is a 'blogalogue' between Bart Ehrman and N. T. Wright on the problem of suffering. Ehrman has just published a book called 'God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question – Why We Suffer'. NT Wright is as eloquent and graceful in his replies as ever. I always find him refreshing on this subject as he takes the existence of evil seriously and isn't content to attribute all suffering in the world to human choices.
"...the Gospels constituted, and still constitute, a challenge to all expectations, particularly in that they link – as readers for hundreds have years have found it difficult to do – the story of Jesus’ kingdom-inauguration with the story of his crucifixion and resurrection. Somehow, they are saying, this is what it looks like when the good, all-powerful and all-loving God is in charge of the world. You may say that if this is what they’re saying then the God of whom they speak is not ‘all-powerful’ in the way we might have imagined, and I suspect that is in a sense correct. Near the heart of Jesus’ proclamation lies a striking redefinition of power itself, which looks as though it’s pointing in the direction of God’s ‘running of the world’ (if that’s the right phrase) in what you might call a deliberately, almost studiedly, self-abnegating way, running the world through an obedient, and ultimately suffering, human being, with that obedience, and especially that suffering, somehow instrumental in the whole process. What ‘we would want God to do’ – to have God measure up to our standards of ‘how a proper, good and powerful God would be running the world’! – seems to be the very thing that Jesus was calling into question.
The mystery of Jesus himself, then, is for me near the heart of – not ‘the answer’, because I don’t think there is such a thing as ‘the answer’, but – the matrix of thought and life within which God’s people are called to continue to grapple with the problem. This is where, in Evil and the Justice of God, I try to draw together traditional discussions of ‘the atonement’ and traditional discussions of ‘the problem of evil’ and suggest that it’s odd that they should ever have been separated, since they seem to go together so closely in the Bible itself. (And can’t be reduced, I suggest, to the ‘God punishes sin’ logic; I have tended to include some elements of that within the Christus Victor motif, which, yes, involves suprahuman cosmic powers and all that. Hard though they are to describe adequately, they are even harder, in my view, to ignore.)"
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Death into Life
I've been reflecting recently on symbols, particularly symbols of death and the way that God likes to subvert them. The NT is littered with symbols of death that mean life for us: sacrifice, blood, the cross. God has literally, and symbolically, turned death into life. Our life is in death: Jesus' death on the cross brought us life, we're cleansed by his blood, we die with him in baptism, we die to ourselves, we die to live. Jesus triumphed over death, for it had no hold on him. God raised him from death, as he will raise us all. Blood, sacrifice, the cross no longer mean death to us, but life!
"We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body." 2 Corinthians 4.10-11
I've heard people compare wearing a cross to wearing a little electric chair around the neck. A useful analogy perhaps, expressing some of the absurdity of wearing an execution device as a fashion statement, but I suggest it doesn't go half-way far enough. The electric chair doesn't have a fraction of the symbolic power wielded by the cross two thousand years ago.
Crucifixion was the Roman's preferred method of execution: gruesome, public, efficient. It was an excruciatingly painful way to die, deliberately lengthy and public. Part of its usefulness for the Romans was the way it allowed them to humiliate their enemies in defeat, and display publicly the consequences of disobedience and rebellion. Famously, in 71BC, Emperor Crassus ordered 6600 rebellious slaves crucified, one every 1000 paces, on the Appian Way between Capua and Rome, the defeated followers of Spartacus, who led the slaves in an uprising against Rome from 73-71BC. Crassus never ordered the crosses taken down, so this gruesome reminder of the consequences of rebellion remained to warn travellers on his highway for many years, perhaps decades.
To the first century Roman world the cross signified Roman domination, the power of the Roman state to subdue its enemies. To the nations controlled by Rome the cross was a symbol of occupation and oppression, slavery and fear. I cannot think of a modern equivalent that comes close.
The electric chair, if anything, symbolises the kind of bloodless, clinical death favoured by the American judicial system, in which most states now favour lethal injection (the electric chair is seen as too barbaric). Executions, as carried out in the modern Western world, are tightly controlled, relatively private and carefully designed not to offend the sensibilities of law-abiding citizens. These methods of execution have no power as symbols, hardly even summoning up the reality of death, from which we all live happily sheltered. Most of us have never even seen a dead person, let alone watched them die in agony.
It is hardly possible for us to grasp the magnitude of the change in fortunes of the cross as a symbol. Jesus' death and resurrection turned the most disgusting and oppressive symbol of death and bondage the world had ever seen into the most powerful symbol of love and freedom in the earth and heavens. Talk about a victory! This is subversion of the highest order. God took the worst the enemy could offer and made it his most potent symbol of love and grace.
"..having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross." Colossians 2.15
You need the resurrection to complete the story, the victory over death, but that doesn't diminish the eternal significance of the cross. Jesus isn't only the risen King, he's our crucified Lord. At God's right hand, but still displaying the wounds of death, in his hands and side. Jesus' death is forever part of who God is; the Lamb who was slain,"chosen before the creation of the world" (1 Peter 1.20), now stands "in the centre of the throne" (Rev 5.6).
"Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise!" Revelation 5.12
Amen!
"We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body." 2 Corinthians 4.10-11
I've heard people compare wearing a cross to wearing a little electric chair around the neck. A useful analogy perhaps, expressing some of the absurdity of wearing an execution device as a fashion statement, but I suggest it doesn't go half-way far enough. The electric chair doesn't have a fraction of the symbolic power wielded by the cross two thousand years ago.
Crucifixion was the Roman's preferred method of execution: gruesome, public, efficient. It was an excruciatingly painful way to die, deliberately lengthy and public. Part of its usefulness for the Romans was the way it allowed them to humiliate their enemies in defeat, and display publicly the consequences of disobedience and rebellion. Famously, in 71BC, Emperor Crassus ordered 6600 rebellious slaves crucified, one every 1000 paces, on the Appian Way between Capua and Rome, the defeated followers of Spartacus, who led the slaves in an uprising against Rome from 73-71BC. Crassus never ordered the crosses taken down, so this gruesome reminder of the consequences of rebellion remained to warn travellers on his highway for many years, perhaps decades.
To the first century Roman world the cross signified Roman domination, the power of the Roman state to subdue its enemies. To the nations controlled by Rome the cross was a symbol of occupation and oppression, slavery and fear. I cannot think of a modern equivalent that comes close.
The electric chair, if anything, symbolises the kind of bloodless, clinical death favoured by the American judicial system, in which most states now favour lethal injection (the electric chair is seen as too barbaric). Executions, as carried out in the modern Western world, are tightly controlled, relatively private and carefully designed not to offend the sensibilities of law-abiding citizens. These methods of execution have no power as symbols, hardly even summoning up the reality of death, from which we all live happily sheltered. Most of us have never even seen a dead person, let alone watched them die in agony.
It is hardly possible for us to grasp the magnitude of the change in fortunes of the cross as a symbol. Jesus' death and resurrection turned the most disgusting and oppressive symbol of death and bondage the world had ever seen into the most powerful symbol of love and freedom in the earth and heavens. Talk about a victory! This is subversion of the highest order. God took the worst the enemy could offer and made it his most potent symbol of love and grace.
"..having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross." Colossians 2.15
You need the resurrection to complete the story, the victory over death, but that doesn't diminish the eternal significance of the cross. Jesus isn't only the risen King, he's our crucified Lord. At God's right hand, but still displaying the wounds of death, in his hands and side. Jesus' death is forever part of who God is; the Lamb who was slain,"chosen before the creation of the world" (1 Peter 1.20), now stands "in the centre of the throne" (Rev 5.6).
"Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise!" Revelation 5.12
Amen!
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
November Passion
I was excited to see that my mum's been writing more nature-inspired poetry, this time a November Passion. A vivid and affecting picture of Christ's death...all the more poignant because we know that spring will come!
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