Publisher's Synopsis
This book deals with subjects that most people generally ignore, that is "sin," what it is, and the vital and very difficult subject of why Jesus had to die concerning mankind's sin to bring about salvation. Before we can form our thoughts on why a death should occur as God's arrangement for dealing with sin, we must first acknowledge that His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts-they are higher than ours (Isa. 55:8) and that God is perfect in His thinking so that how He planned to reconcile mankind to Himself was perfect (Deut. 32:4). This means that there could be no plan any better than the one He put in place and which would involve His own human Son-Jesus. It is evident that the subject of Jesus' death on the cross is a major part of what is central to the good news message along with all that Jesus taught concerning the Kingdom of God (Acts 12:8). This is because of the disproportionate amount of space which the gospel writers give over to the events of the last few days leading to Jesus' death and resurrection. At the deeper level the resurrection of Jesus was the catalyst for interpreting Jesus' death theologically. At this level we find the defeat of "Sin," the inauguration of the New Covenant, and the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. Certainly, Jesus himself was a volunteer in this scenario rather than simply a martyr or helpless victim. This leads us to the fact that, during the last two thousand years, many models have been proposed regarding the theological purpose of Christ's execution, commonly called 'the atonement.' In other words, what was the meaning of Christ's crucifixion? In early times teachings such as Christus Victor and Jesus as a ransom were taught. Then in medieval times Anselm of Canterbury set out a model of the atonement based on the trinity doctrine and which is called the legal or satisfaction theory of the atonement. Although challenged at times, this became the orthodox doctrine of Christianity for a long time and along with the false doctrine of the trinity it took centre stage in orthodox thinking. In fact, it turns out that this model, along with certain others simply denigrates God and proves to be false to the biblical picture. Yet, we must ask the question: if Jesus is not "God the Son" how can a human person's sacrifice be sufficient to deal with the sin of all mankind? Nevertheless, there are other models that are helpful but not necessarily complete in themselves. This leaves us to ask if there is any one theory which answers all of the relevant questions. Indeed, traditional views on this subject are being questioned by modern-day theologians in recognition that those of the past have often "got it wrong" or had provided models that were insufficient as explanations. Nevertheless, we note that the Scriptures make it clear that Jesus' voluntary willingness to die made him a sacrifice in some sense to deal with sin and so to provide the basis for salvation. The Scriptures also make it clear that, in some form the concept of substitution is part of God's arrangement involving Jesus. It has become evident to many that the biblical picture of the Atonement is multifaceted, so this book looks at how this has been put together by a number of theologians and primarily by N.T. Wright.
