Initial thoughts...

Last semester, my adviser, Ted Grimsrud, and I were planning my schedule for the coming fall semester.  After realizing that certain course offerings were overlapping, I inquired into the possibility of putting together my independent study.  After discussing exactly what such an endeavor would look like, I immediately knew what subject area I wanted to tackle: Theologies of the cross and the atonement.  This first post is the "before" image I hope to look back on once this semester is finished (so I can see all the unnecessary theological weight I have lost).  For the course I'm going to blog once a week reflecting on what I have been reading and I hope to think "out loud" here.  I am writing this post before the first week of classes has started, so hopefully this represents my perspective of origin before numerous readings clutter my mind.  

The reason I knew so quickly why I wanted to delve into theologies of the cross and atonement is because I see this as a constantly progressing theme in my spiritual and theological life.  My earliest memories of thinking through these issues come from my middle school years at an evangelical Anglican Church youth group.  I should preface my further remarks by saying that I would not be who I am today without these past experiences and none of these recollections/commentaries should be read as disparaging.  The ministry of this particular youth group could be closely likened to that model of Young Life.  As I best understood what was being communicated to me in this context, all persons were sinful and thus deserving death (spiritual death), Christ bore the punishment for all the world’s sin by dying on a cross, and people could confess their sin and accept Christ’s gift of eternal life.  I in no way want to trivialize this message and even more so want to emphasize the fact that this was the foundation of how I understood Christianity for a significant amount of time.

Through high school and into my first foray into university this message was with me.  I even, in turn, did ministry with high school students where I—week after week—stood before teenagers and told them this very same message.  During the time I attended Arizona State University, I became a member at a fast growing nondenominational neo-Calvinist church.   It was during my time there that I became interested in theology, particularly in systematic theology.  While there, I felt I was receiving biblical teaching in an astute package, and my eyes were consistently being opened to a specific theological tradition.  This was greatly beneficial for me as my early experience in church was influenced by some sort of evangelical, charismatic, conservative Anglican, and para-church style theology that—I as look back on it now—was oftentimes incoherent. Not so with my new Reformed brethren.  Doctrine, I was told, was back in.  You were supposed to believe the right things as well as having a personal relationship with God. 

This new church was greatly influenced by Wayne Grudem’s tome, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine.  I would venture it was probably thought by some in the congregation that if one could simply read, understand, and believe everything in this book, one would receive the keys to the kingdom or something along those lines.   All that is to say, there were certain things you needed to believe and it was to your peril to believe differently about certain things. 

It was in this church that I first encountered the idea of propitiation as Jesus taking God’s wrath for sin upon himself on the cross.  In some sermon I can only vaguely remember now, it was explained to me that the old trope, “Love the sinner, hate the sin,” was nonsense.  In fact, God hates sinners and Jesus took the hatred-in-action (wrath) upon himself when he was crucified.  I can easily recall arguing with roommates about this fact as I slowly convinced myself that this was indeed the case.  However, what I forced myself to believe was theologically sound subsequently left me with an uneasiness that has plagued me up to the present.

There are all sorts of reasons I could list as to why I need to study this subject and they range from recently newfound pacifist convictions to my seeing the psychological effects atonement theology has had on some of my friends who have left the church.  My goal in this research is not to discover a new theological formula hitherto unheard of, but to open my heart and mind to a variety of perspectives.  In doing so I would hope and pray that I would be better equipped to offer a theology that is good news to the world which God so loves. 

This semester I will be reading:

Boersma, Hans. Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross.  Grand Rapids: Baker

Academic, 2004.

Cone, James H. The Cross and the Lynching Tree.  Maryknoll: Orbis Books,

2011.

Finlan, Stephen. Options on Atonement in Christian Thought. Collegeville:

Liturgical Press, 2007.

Grimsrud, Ted. Instead of Atonement: The Bible’s Salvation Story and Our Hope for Wholeness. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013.

Jersak, Brad and Michael Hardin, eds. Stricken By God? Grand Rapids: William

B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007.

Tanner, Kathryn. “Death and sacrifice.”  In Christ the Key, 247-273. New York:

Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Trelstad, Marit, ed. Cross Examinations. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006.