The Cross In Context

How can a doctrine about reconciliation with God create so much controversy among God's people? Theologian Brad Vaughn believes Christians can gain clarity and unity on the doctrine of the atonement through a renewed attention to the biblical evidence. While theological theories are necessary and useful, they can obscure reality as much as clarify it. And we're often ignorant of the role that cultural and historical context plays in shaping these views. Instead of beginning by comparing atonement theories, he argues, we need to delve deep into the Bible, where we find a handful of motifs that combine to form a richer, more robust theology of atonement. The Cross in Context presents a perspective on the atonement that seeks to reconcile theological camps and enable Christians to interpret the Bible more faithfully. It draws from the entire biblical canon and considers the New Testament in light of its Old Testament background, focusing on the internal logic of Israel's sacrificial system. Applying his intercultural ministry experience and expertise on honor and shame, Vaughn also considers how to effectively contextualize the multifaceted message of salvation in diverse cultural contexts. Combining missiology, theology, and biblical studies, The Cross in Context provides a refreshing and nuanced look at the atonement and what it means for the life and witness of the church.

In this small gem of theological reflection, North America's foremost "theologian of the cross" offers a profound and compelling contemplation on the relevance of the church's most fundamental confession. Hall ponders what confessing Jesus as crucified means in today's context, one that is postmodern, pluralistic, multicultural, and in some respects post-Christian. A digest of his monumental trilogy, this book lays out in brief compass the heart of Hall's theology of the cross, contrasting it sharply with the theology of established Christianity, showing how it reframes classical Christology and soteriology, and drawing the implications for what it means to be human, for Christian ethics, and for the church.

In today's theological landscape the significance of the cross has become strongly affirmed and radically questioned. This exciting volume gathers theologians and historians who have thought through these critical and constructive issues: Do traditional understandings of the cross valorize suffering or violence? Are the older soteriological models, which see redemption as a kind of ransom or debt satisfaction, fitting for the contemporary worldview? Do they produce a piety that acquiesces in needless suffering, or does the cross precisely meet the massive suffering and injustice of today's world?Following an expert introduction to the issues and options by editor Marit Trelstad, each author addresses the Christian symbol of the cross in the context of current theological, sociological, political, or environmental issues.

As Joel B. Green and Mark D. Baker demonstrate, the New Testament displays a rich array of interpretations of the cross. The church in mission shaped these as it rooted the story of a scandalous cross in the language of everyday realities and relationships.

Because many modern Christians can offer a reasonable explanation of the meaning of Jesus' death on the cross, they find it hard to understand the confusion displayed by the disciples after the events in the last pages of the Gospels. But if Paul were alive today, he would find it inexplicable that we modern believers are not scandalized by the cross. Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross introduces pastors, church leaders, students, and lay readers to the need for contextualized atonement theology, offering creative examples of how the cross can be proclaimed today in culturally relevant and transformative ways. It makes helpful suggestions on how this vision for a culturally relevant message might be developed. The impressive list of contributors includes writings from C. S. Lewis, Rowan Williams, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Brian McLaren, and many more who are actively working out just how to make this life-transforming proclamation.

A question has challenged the human conscience for two thousand years: "How are we to explain the presence of Jesus Christ in this world?" Or who, indeed, was Jesus Christ? A man like the rest of men? Or was he a divine Person? Why was it that well-practiced soldiers who failed to fulfill their commission to arrest him said: "Never man spoke like this man?" The early church confirmed the apostles' declaration that Jesus Christ was the eternal Son of God and that he came into the world to fulfill a messianic-redemptive assignment. "Christ Jesus," the apostle to the Gentiles explained, "came into the world to save sinners."In The Cross: Its Meaning and Message in a Postmodern World, Douglas Vickers sees the cross as the watershed of history. The divine objectives that the cross addressed bear vitally on the human condition, vitiated as that is by the entailment of sin. In an age in which postmodernist claims have rejected absolute criteria of truth and validity, the Christ of the cross provides the only refuge for those burdened by the search for meaning. The Cross explores the way of reconciliation between God and man. It affirms the apostolic claim that "In [Christ] are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

This book is all about the study of Paul's leadership principles in the context of Corinthian epistles. The primary focus is given to how Paul worked out his faith in Jesus Christ, whom he knows as the one who was crucified to save and bless us, in his daily life as a leader of a community. The book is basically presented in three major chapters in the body. Chapter one primarily discusses about how Paul views the cross of Jesus Christ (or his sacrificial death on the cross) and finds meaning in his life as a leader. Chapter two, then, mentions how Paul sees himself as a leader and treats others whom he ministered to from the Cross perspective. However, chapter three tries to derive several principles by which Paul skillfully dealt with several burning issues of the then Christian community in the Roman city of Corinth, that leaders of all time might also learn the way of the cross in their leadership practices and tread the same path.

This book reconsiders ways in which the cross of Christ was construed before "atonement theories" narrowed the categories. The "typology" of Passover is explored as probably the very first way in which Christians came to understand the passion. The use of sacrificial imagery is re-examined. The significance of identifying the cross with the Tree of Life is traced across the centuries into medieval times, along with other surprising links with the Eden narrative. The validity of seeking imaginative insights to grasp what the cross signifies is given theological consideration in a chapter that moves into literary and liturgical reflections and is punctuated with cruciform poems. The overall outcome is a quite paradoxical focus, not on death, but on life.