Love, Violence, and the Cross

Love, Violence, and the Cross
Author: Gregory Anderson Love
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2010-08-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1621890783

Does God use violence to redeem us? What is the relationship between divine love and violence in regard to the saving significance of the cross of Christ? In Love, Violence, and the Cross, Gregory Love dialogues with two responses to this question, while presenting a third alternative in which Jesus's death is simultaneously a crime and an element of God's saving actions. Through familiar stories in history, literature, and film, Love presents five constructive models that cumulatively affirm God's saving act in the person and work of Christ while letting go the myth of redemptive violence. They affirm redemption, but one with a different shape: Instead of exacting the absolute punishment, God redeems by "making good" God's promise to humanity to secure human life. Love argues that God is nonviolent, while retaining the core idea presented in the New Testament witnesses: that reconciliation occurs in the work of Christ, and that the cross plays a role in that divine work.

The Violence of Love

The Violence of Love
Author: Romero, Oscar
Publisher: Orbis Books
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-02-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1608338908

These selections from the sermons and writings of Archbishop Oscar Romero shared the message of a great holy prophet of modern times. Three short years transformed Romero, archbishop of San Salvador, from a conservative defender of the status quo into one of the church's most outspoken voices of the oppressed. Though silenced by an assassin's bullet, his spirit and the challenge of his life lives on.

Cross Vision

Cross Vision
Author: Gregory A. Boyd
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2017-08-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506420745

Renowned pastor-theologian Gregory A. Boyd tackles the BibleÕs biggest dilemma. Ê The Old Testament God of wrath and violence versus the New Testament God of love and peaceÑitÕs a difference that has troubled Christians since the first century. Now, with the sensitivity of a pastor and the intellect of a theologian, Gregory A. Boyd proposes the Òcruciform hermeneutic,Ó a way to read the Old Testament portraits of God through the lens of JesusÕ crucifixion. Ê In Cross Vision, Boyd follows up on his epic and groundbreaking study, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. He shows how the death and resurrection of Jesus reframes the troubling violence of the Old Testament, how all of Scripture reveals GodÕs self-sacrificial love, and, most importantly, how we can follow JesusÕ example of peace.

Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross

Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross
Author: Hans Boersma
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2006-04
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0801031338

Offers a new model for understanding the atonement, sensitive to both the Christian tradition and its postmodern critics.

The Cross and the Lynching Tree

The Cross and the Lynching Tree
Author: James H. Cone
Publisher: Orbis Books
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2011
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 160833001X

A landmark in the conversation about race and religion in America. "They put him to death by hanging him on a tree." Acts 10:39 The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful new work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk. Both the cross and the lynching tree represent the worst in human beings and at the same time a thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning. While the lynching tree symbolized white power and "black death," the cross symbolizes divine power and "black life" God overcoming the power of sin and death. For African Americans, the image of Jesus, hung on a tree to die, powerfully grounded their faith that God was with them, even in the suffering of the lynching era. In a work that spans social history, theology, and cultural studies, Cone explores the message of the spirituals and the power of the blues; the passion and of Emmet Till and the engaged vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.; he invokes the spirits of Billie Holliday and Langston Hughes, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ida B. Well, and the witness of black artists, writers, preachers, and fighters for justice. And he remembers the victims, especially the 5,000 who perished during the lynching period. Through their witness he contemplates the greatest challenge of any Christian theology to explain how life can be made meaningful in the face of death and injustice.

The Crucifixion of the Warrior God

The Crucifixion of the Warrior God
Author: Gregory A. Boyd
Publisher: Fortress Press
Total Pages: 1487
Release: 2017-04-17
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1506420761

A dramatic tension confronts every Christian believer and interpreter of Scripture: on the one hand, we encounter images of God commanding and engaging in horrendous violence: one the other hand, we encounter the non-violent teachings and example of Jesus, whose loving, self-sacrificial death and resurrection is held up as the supreme revelation of God’s character in the New Testament. How do we reconcile the tension between these seemingly disparate depictions? Are they even capable of reconciliation? Throughout Christian history, many different answers have been proposed, ranging from the long-rejected explanation that these contrasting depictions are of two entirely different ‘gods’ to recent social and cultural theories of metaphor and narrative representation. The Crucifixion of the Warrior God takes up this dramatic tension and the range of proposed answers in an epic constructive investigation. Over two volumes, renowned theologian and biblical scholar Gregory A. Boyd argues that we must take seriously the full range of Scripture as inspired, including its violent depictions of God. At the same time, we must take just as seriously the absolute centrality of the crucified and risen Christ as the supreme revelation of God. Developing a theological interpretation of Scripture that he labels a “cruciform hermeneutic,” Boyd demonstrates how Scripture’s violent images of God are completely reframed and their violence subverted when they are interpreted through the lens of the cross and resurrection. Indeed, when read through this lens, Boyd argues that these violent depictions can be shown to bear witness to the same self-sacrificial character of God that was supremely revealed on the cross.

How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian

How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian
Author: John Dominic Crossan
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 151
Release: 2015-03-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0062203622

The acclaimed Bible scholar and author of The Historical Jesus and God & Empire—“the greatest New Testament scholar of our generation” (John Shelby Spong) —grapples with Scripture’s two conflicting visions of Jesus and God, one of a loving God, and one of a vengeful God, and explains how Christians can better understand these passages in a way that enriches their faith. Many portions of the New Testament, introduce a compassionate Jesus who turns the other cheek, loves his enemies, and shows grace to all. But the Jesus we find in Revelation and some portions of the Gospels leads an army of angels bent on earthly destruction. Which is the true revelation of the Messiah—and how can both be in the same Bible? How to Read the Bible and Still be a Christian explores this question and offers guidance for the faithful conflicted over which version of the Lord to worship. John Dominic Crossan reconciles these contrasting views, revealing how different writers of the books of the Bible not only possessed different visions of God but also different purposes for writing. Often these books are explicitly competing against another, opposing vision of God from the Bible itself. Crossan explains how to navigate this debate and offers what he believes is the best central thread to what the Bible is all about. He challenges Christians to fully participate in this dialogue, thereby shaping their faith by reading deeply, reflectively, and in community with others who share their uncertainty. Only then, he advises, will Christians be able to read and understand the Bible without losing their faith.

The Cross and Gendercide

The Cross and Gendercide
Author: Elizabeth Gerhardt
Publisher: IVP Academic
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014-04-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780830840496

Violence against women and girls is a pressing global problem. In this groundbreaking study, Elizabeth Gerhardt proposes a holistic theology of the cross as the basis for a prophetic response by the church to a problem that is not only moral and ethical, but also confessional.

The Violence of the Biblical God

The Violence of the Biblical God
Author: L. Daniel Hawk
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2019-01-08
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1467452602

How can we make sense of violence in the Bible? Joshua commands the people of Israel to wipe out everyone in the promised land of Canaan, while Jesus commands God’s people to love their enemies. How are we to interpret biblical passages on violence when it is sanctioned at one point and condemned at another? The Violence of the Biblical God by L. Daniel Hawk presents a new framework, solidly rooted in the authority of Scripture, for understanding the paradox of God’s participation in violence. Hawk shows how the historical narrative of the Bible offers multiple canonical pictures for faithful Christian engagement with the violent systems of the world.

Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God

Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God
Author: Brian Zahnd
Publisher: WaterBrook
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2017-08-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1601429525

Pastor Brian Zahnd began "to question the theology of a wrathful God who delights in punishing sinners, and has started to explore the real nature of Jesus and His Father. The book isn’t only an interesting look at the context of some modern theological ideas; it’s also offers some profound insight into God’s love and eternal plan." —Relevant Magazine (Named one of the Top 10 Books of 2017) God is wrath? Or God is Love? In his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Puritan revivalist Jonathan Edwards shaped predominating American theology with a vision of God as angry, violent, and retributive. Three centuries later, Brian Zahnd was both mesmerized and terrified by Edwards’s wrathful God. Haunted by fear that crippled his relationship with God, Zahnd spent years praying for a divine experience of hell. What Zahnd experienced instead was the Father’s love—revealed perfectly through Jesus Christ—for all prodigal sons and daughters. In Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, Zahnd asks important questions like: Is seeing God primarily as wrathful towards sinners true or biblical? Is fearing God a normal expected behavior? And where might the natural implications of this theological framework lead us? Thoughtfully wrestling with subjects like Old Testament genocide, the crucifixion of Jesus, eternal punishment in hell, and the final judgment in Revelation, Zanhd maintains that the summit of divine revelation for sinners is not God is wrath, but God is love.