Atonement, Justice & Peace

[DisposableSoul]

"Does—or should—atonement theology have practical implications for the church’s mission in the world today? Is penal substitution the only, or even the best, biblical understanding of the cross?

Scot has invited me (Darrin W. Snyder Belousek) to introduce my book, Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church (Eerdmans 2012). This book challenges the church to rethink the cross—to reexamine the standard evangelical theology of penal substitution atonement and to reorient our thinking about justice and peace from the perspective of the cross.

My first intuition that something was not quite right with the penal substitution theory—the idea that God has dealt with our sins by having reckoned our sins against Jesus and punished him with death in our place on the cross—came about twelve years ago, while questioning the death penalty."

For the rest, click patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed … atonement/

–Nick

[SLJ]

Looks like an interesting book. I love this from the article:

It then occurred to me: Because the cross of Christ reveals the justice of God, rather than allow a human assumption about justice to interpret the cross, we should let the divine revelation of the cross reshape our understanding of justice.

Reminds me of what Paul wrote: we need to be 'transformed by the renewing of our minds…"

Sonia

[AllanS]

Jesus doesn’t change God. He reveals God. God before the cross is no different to God after. What has radically changed is our knowledge of God. And as Sonia pointed out, we need to be 'transformed by the renewing of our minds…"

If Jesus suffered at the hands of sinful men, God also is suffering at our hands. If Jesus was silent before his accusers, God also is silent. If Jesus was willingly bound by evil men, God also is willingly bound by universal evil. If Jesus forgave his enemies, God also has forgiven his enemies. If the thief on the cross brought joy to Christ, we also can bring joy to the suffering God. If Jesus descended into hell for us and with us, God also is with us and for us in our deepest darkness. And just as Christ rose from the dead, healed of all the ravages of evil (though still bearing the scars), God also will rise from deepest darkness, with us and for us. All things will be healed, though the scars will remain.

[Melchizedek]

This looks very interesting. Thanks, Nick.

[Caleb_Fogg]

Wanted to update this thread as I am intensely interested in the Atonement doctrine. I am currently reading the very good book, “Problems with Atonement”, by Stephen Finlan. He is more liberal than my current comfort level (for example, believes Paul did not write 1 + 2 Tim, Titus and Ephesians, among others), but he offers an excellent over view of the topic

Snyder Belousek’s book is newer and more comprehensive, and is on my reading list, but I wanted to recommend not only the post linked to above, but also the comment section, in which the author dialogs a fair bit with other commentators and fleshes out some of his ideas a bit more. For the comments, (which I only read Belousek’s) start with the bottom up for correct chronology.