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atonement

  • March 29, 2013

    Christians need to re-envision the meaning of the Cross in history and in our culture, such that we are equipped to go and do the Gospel that shapes us in a confused, broken, unjust and often violent world, says Simon Barrow. This will help us see that it is not true that the only ‘weapons’ at the Church's disposal are not the coercive ones wielded by our opponents. Rather, God’s cross points to the resources of suffering love that only the God of life can offer, because they are ‘beyond our means’ humanly, but not beyond divine gifting.

  • March 29, 2013

    Much has been written about the meaning of the cross, a subject on which Christians hold varying views, says Savitri Hensman. In Christ’s sacrifice, the true horror is exposed and the hope of a different way of life revealed. This can be difficult to comprehend, but it cannot be ignored or sidelined.

  • December 1, 2011

    What are the different accounts of salvation given in Christian and Muslim thinking? What is involved in forgiveness? What do Christians mean when they speak of atonement through Christ?

  • October 28, 2011

    The cross "is not for crusades but a sign of God’s love embracing everybody", the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches says.

  • April 23, 2011

    How, we may ask on Good Friday, can wholeness, deliverance and healing possibly flow from a state execution resulting in the unjust violent death of a good person - one in whom his friends and followers felt they had met divine love at its most tangible and engaging? Simon Barrow explores the troubling mystery at the core of Christian belief, and looks at ways theology can address it intellectually, humanly and practically.

  • April 4, 2010

    Conflicting views of the meaning of the crucifixion have led to strikingly different patterns of behaviour among Christian believers, says Jonathan Bartley. Damaging understandings of atonement have tragic consequences for healthy Christian witness and performance.

  • April 2, 2010

    The seventh and final installment in a series of 2010 Lent and Holy Week blogs from Willard Roth focusing on places of particular spiritual intensity and interest across Britain and Ireland.

  • April 12, 2009

    The Cross of Christ is God's identification with the victim, says Giles Fraser. It abolishes the order of sin and death by abolishing sacrifice, not sanctifying it.

  • April 10, 2009

    The crucifixion reminds us that God is well acquainted with places like Abu Ghraib, says Jennifer Halteman Schrock. May the suffering that Christ endured while on trial as a “terrorist” fill us with compassion.

  • June 27, 2008

    Much religion is dripping in sacrificial language, says Keith Walton. The appeasement of the gods is a common theme in many traditions. But in the biblical tradition, love that does justice becomes the core of a new perspective, based on a different understanding of who God is.