Includes bibliographical references (pages 222-227) and indexes. Reprint. Originally published: Downers Grove, Ill. : InterVarsity Press, 2000.
Summary:
The cross is the defining symbol of the Christian faith. Yet two thousand years of Western art and architecture and culture have blinded us to what was most obvious to first-century eyes-- the utter scandal of the cross. The Roman cross was first and foremost an instrument of cruel, shameful and violent execution. Yet early Christians quickly recognized the atoning significance of the cross of Christ, and it resonated deeply with their experience of salvation. But the cross remained a blessing framed by scandal, an epochal and yet mysterious event, irreducible to a single formulation. As Green and Baker demonstrate, the New Testament displays a rich array of interpretations of the cross. But for many Christians today, not only has the true scandal of the cross been obscured, the variety of its New Testament interpretations have been reduced to subpoints in a single, controlling view of the atonement. Tragically, the way in which the atonement is frequently and popularly expressed now poses a new scandal, one that is foreign to the New Testament and poses needless obstacles to twenty-first-century people and cultures. The authors explore how the atonement has been understood within a variety of contemporary contexts-- both Western and non-Western-- and show how we can enter into the thoroughly Christian mission of restating the saving scandal of the cross in our multicultural world of the twenty-first-century.
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