Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Author’s preface

Introduction

The big picture

The importance of the cross

A useful distinction

Some crucial questions

Assumptions

Approach

The plan of the book

How to read this book

A caution

1 The righteous God of holy love

The divine perfections: a righteous holy love

The theological conversion of P. T. Forsyth

The cross as revelatory of the character of God

Is divine love in conflict with divine wrath?

Conclusion

2 The glory and garbage of the universe

The glory of creation: imago Dei

The primeval rupture

The primeval sin

The dominical diagnosis

The Pauline elaboration

The C. E. M. Joad story

Conclusion

3 The great need: peace with God, with one another and for the cosmos

The problem of sin

The problem of wrath

The problem of judgment

The problem of the human other

The problem of the god of this world

The problem of the groaning creation

Conclusion

4 Foundations and foreshadowings

Foundations in the love of the triune God

The foundational promise: the protoevangelium

The Abrahamic framework

Foreshadowings: the backstory of God and Israel

Conclusion

5 The faithful Son

Irenaeus: a pioneering contribution

The faithful/faith-filled Son

The scorn at the cross

The witness of Hebrews

The witness of Revelation

The Pauline witness: Christ’s faithfulness or faith in Christ?

The faith/faithfulness of Christ or the obedience of Christ?

Jesus’ faithful life and atonement

Conclusion

6 The death and vindication of the faithful Son

Sacrifice

Divine victory through sacrifice

The idea of satisfaction

Satisfaction of divine holiness through sacrifice

Satisfaction of divine righteousness through sacrifice

Satisfaction of divine love through sacrifice

What kind of sacrifice?

Covenant-making through sacrifice

The vindication of the faithful Son

Conclusion

7 The ‘peace dividend’

Peace with God for the individual

Peace between Jew and Gentile: the one new man

Peace for the cosmos: reconciliation and pacification

Conclusion

8 Life between the cross and the coming

Eschatological location

Living by faith, not by sight

Faith appreciates the price

Faith lives for him

Faith walks worthy of the gospel

Faith suffers for the Name

Faith resists the devil

Faith offers a living sacrifice

An eschatological community: mercy-showing and shalom-making

Telling and defending the story of the project

The role of the Spirit

Conclusion

Excursus: the three commissions lifestyle

9 The grand purpose: glory

Scripture’s narrative unity

Little ‘Christs’

Glory the goal

Conclusion

10 Conclusion

Appendix: Questioning the cross: debates, considerations and suggestions

Debate about the centrality of penal substitution

Debate about the morality of penal substitution

Are moral influence and exemplarist theories atonement theories?

Healing in the atonement?

The Holy Saturday debate

Non-violent atonement theories

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From the Author’s Preface

There is nothing like having to write a book to concentrate the mind on a subject. And what a subject it is – the atonement! I soon found that the more I explored the subject the more I saw the need to place the story of the atonement (the work of Christ on the cross in traditional terms) within the larger context of the triune God’s grand purpose to restore a broken creation to his glory. And what a glorious purpose I have found that to be. …

Graham A. Cole

From the Introduction

We live in a troubled world. As I write, there are reports of a devastating cyclone in Myanmar, an earthquake in China, fighting in the Sudan and Iraq, shooting death after shooting death on the south side of Chicago. The list could go on and on. The waste of human life is enormous. Some of these troubles and calamities involve nature without any help from us. A volcanic eruption is an example. But other troubles are caused by human beings. Some of us behave appallingly. The holocaust comes to mind. Yet Christians believe in a good God who as the Creator has never lost interest in his world. The key evidence and the chief symbol of that divine commitment is the cross of Christ. This God, revealed in the canon of Scripture, has a project. Novelist Frederick Buechner sums up the project in these terms: ‘God creates the world, the world gets lost; God seeks to restore the world to the glory for which he created it.’ Central to the divine strategy is Christ, his coming and his cross. The troubles and calamities will end.

The cross is scandalous, however, and has been from the start. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that to the Jews of his day the crucified Christ was a stumbling block and to the Greeks (non-Jews) foolishness (1 Cor. 1:23). In fact, the earliest extant depiction of the cross in Christian art comes from the sixth century. By then Christianity was the religion of empire, at least in the East. However, there are earlier depictions, by pagan critics, that illustrate Paul’s point. The earliest is scratched on plaster and is dated circa AD 200.

It is found in the Paedagogium on the Palatine Hill and may have been scratched by a servant in the imperial household. A man with an ass’s head is on a cross and is being worshipped by one Alexamenos. The graffi to reads, ‘Alexamenos worships [his] God.’

How such a violent event can bring peace to creation is one of the questions this study will need to address.

A traditional theological code word to describe the core of the divine response to evil is ‘atonement’. The word has an interesting history in English-speaking theology and in fact is as James Beilby and Paul R. Eddy suggest ‘one of the few theological terms that is “wholly and indigenously English”’. William Tyndale (1494–1536) used it to translate Leviticus 23:28 (the Day of Atonement) and 2 Corinthians 5:18–19:

Neverthelesse all thinges are of god which hath reconciled vs vnto him sylfe by Iesus Christ and hath geven vnto vs the office to preach the atonement. For god was in Christ and made agrement bitwene the worlde and hymsylfe and imputed not their synnes vnto them: and hath committed to vs the preachynge of the atonment. (My emphases)

In 1611 the Authorized Version replaced ‘atonement’ with ‘reconciliation’. Christ and his cross bring peace.

Paul in a big-picture passage written to the Colossians shows how the concepts of the cross and peace are intimately connected. He wrote this of Christ in some of the highest Christology found in the New Testament:

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation – if you continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant. (Col. 1:19–23)

Clearly, Paul’s gospel is no narrow affair. His theological vision is cosmic in scope ‘to reconcile to himself all things’. The cross touches the individual, the church and the wider creation. The cross makes peace.

Peace in Scripture is not to be reduced to a mere absence of strife, nor to a psychological state of mind. According to S. E. Porter:

The concept of peace in the Bible is different in many ways from modern ideas of peace. Peace as the absence of strife, war or bloodshed, so often sought by humanity at any cost, is far removed from the focus of the biblical teaching. The biblical concept of peace is one in which God’s authority and power over his created order are seen to dominate his relations with his world, including both the material and the human spheres.

An Old Testament word that captures this idea is shalom. And the New Testament use of the term ‘peace’ (eirene) is an example of a Greek word used with rich Old Testament resonances. As T. J. Geddert notes, ‘The Greek term eirene in classical Greek literature means little more than absence of war. In the NT, however, it incorporates the breadth of meaning conveyed by the Hebrew šalôm.’

Nicholas Wolterstorff adds to the picture, ‘To dwell in shalom is to enjoy living before God, to enjoy living in one’s physical surroundings, to enjoy living with one’s fellows, to enjoy life with oneself’ (original emphases).11 As we shall see in subsequent chapters, the great enemy of shalom is sin (angelic and human).

The title of this book, ‘God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom’, attempts to capture this important biblical perspective on what God intends for his broken creation. …