Review of - Death of Death in the Death of Christ - by John Owen (original) (raw)
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Pacific Journal of Baptist Research, 2015
The Morling Conference in May 2014 comprised four lectures by me encompassing a range of topics and texts, based on my book Atonement, Justice, and Peace: The Message of the Cross and the Mission of the Church (Eerdmans 2012), followed by responses to each lecture: “Jesus’ Death and Christian Tradition: Ancient Creeds and Trinitarian Theology” (Graeme Chatfield responding); “Jesus’ Death and the Old Testament: Atoning Sacrifice and the Suffering Servant” (Anthony Petterson responding); “Jesus’ Death and the Synoptic Gospels: New Exodus and New Covenant” (Matthew Anslow responding); and “Jesus’ Death and the Pauline Epistles: “Mercy Seat” and Place-Taking” (David Starling responding). I thank each of my interlocutors for their respective contributions to the conversation. As readers will have discovered, two of the respondents were more favorable, and two were more skeptical, toward the Anabaptist perspective and particular arguments presented in my book. I will present my rejoinder in that order.
For the past two millennia, the death and resurrection of Jesus have dominated the thought of Christian theologians and exegetes, particularly when it comes to Paul’s perspectives on the matter. There have been theories and propositions to systematic theologies that have tried to make sense of what the New Testament (hereafter NT) writers were attempting to communicate regarding Jesus’ death, and what they envisioned it to have accomplished. This controversy raged on for centuries, each side having their set of texts that supposedly proved theirs to be the “correct” opinion. It is not the purpose of this essay to enter this controversy regarding atonement theories, but rather examine texts and cultural phenomena that antedate the epistemological presuppositions of the later arguments and compare these with familiar speech found in the NT. Rather than read these texts eisegetically through a systematized theological paradigm, I want to try and make sense of what those in the Second Temple period saw as having atoning or salvific qualities through the martyrdom of a righteous individual.
MACS Project, 2021
The Meaning of Christ’s Death: A Rapid Survey of the Multifaceted Significance of Christ’s Atonement Throughout Church History, along with an Overview of the Theory of Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) and Its Critiques in Contemporary Culture
Perspectives on the Atonement: seeking an agreed way forward
Search: A Church of Ireland Journal, 2018
Perspectives on the Atonement: seeking an agreed way forward KNOWLEDGE is furthered by disagreement; but how that disagreement is expressed is crucial. Both ordained for the province of Armagh in 2012, but with contrasting perspectives, two Church of Ireland clerics engage with one another below on one of the most hotly debated topics in the Church today: that regarding nonviolent and cross-centered theories of atonement. Andrew Campbell: WHEN we look across the spectrum of western theological discourse over the early years of this century we see that the nature of atonement is a dominant subject for debate. Behind much of this debate is rejection of violence (namely the cross) as a means by which atonement is won. Over the last years of the 20th century and the early 21st century thinkers such as Rebecca Ann Parker, Rita Brock, Rosemary Radford Ruether and J. Denney Weaver have highlighted their problems with cross-centred atonement theologies. (By 'cross-centred' I refer to any view of the atonement in which the death of Christ is divinely ordained.) These nonviolent theorists reject the idea that atonement was achieved through a violent act perpetrated against Christ, leading to the now infamous claim that " divine child-abuse is paraded as salvific. " 1 This has given rise to nonviolent atonement theologies that deny that the death of Christ was divinely ordained. This shift away from atonement thinking centred on the cross can be traced to an ethical concern for those vulnerable to violence, due to its use to support violent and oppressive behaviour. 2 In light of these ethical concerns many of the nonviolent theorists in question offer variations of an atonement theology that rejects the notion of
Research Paper on the Extent of the Atonement
Ed Burgess, 2020
The question for whom Christ died is a hotly debated topic within evangelicalism today and has been for at least the last three-hundred years. Was Christ's atonement limited, unlimited, or some sort of synthesis of the two? In this study, the author will bring the biblical student face-to-face with the full range of biblical passages that speak about the atoning work of Christ. Then, the author will evaluate the arguments on both ends of the spectrum. Lastly, the author will offer the reader a better paradigm for interpreting the full rage of biblical data concerning the extent of the atonement of Christ.