"The central Christian belief,” C. S. Lewis once wrote, “is that Christ’s death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. Theories as to how it did this are another matter.
Imagine someone who, because he is not driven by fear of death, is able to undergo an absolutely typical lynching at human hands and to do so deliberately—showing that death, rather than being definitive and powerful, is no more than a frightening mirage. Christ calls the bluff of the lynching, enabling humans to be less driven by fear and a desire for revenge.
Books
Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering and the Search for What Saves Us
Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker
The Nonviolent Atonement
by Denny J. Weaver
The Glory of the Atonement: Biblical, Historical and Practical Perspectives
Roger R. Nicole, Charles E. Hill and Frank A. James, eds.
Power in the Blood? The Cross in the African American Experience
JoAnne Marie Terrell
King, Priest and Prophet: A Trinitarian Theology of Atonement
Robert Sherman
Beyond the Passion: Rethinking the Death and Life of Jesus
Stephen J. Patterson
Violence, Hospitality and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition
