A thoughtful presentation of atonement that opens the biblical narrative with fresh insight; Jesus came to live!

“Salvation is to begin to be free from those evil forces, and to be transformed by the reign of God and to take on a life shaped—marked—by the story of Jesus, whose mission was to make visible the reign of God in our history."
"In carrying out that mission, Jesus was killed by the earthly structures in bondage to the power of evil. His death was not a payment owed to God’s honor, nor was it divine punishment that he suffered as a substitute for sinners. Jesus’ death was the rejection of the rule of God by forces opposed to that rule.” –p.44

Narrative Christus Victor makes plain that salvation is costly, both to the giver and the receiver:

“But being accepted in God’s embrace under the rule of God, experiencing God’s grace, receiving God’s forgiveness is also costly for us. We must “pay a price” in order to experience forgiveness. Genuine repentance manifests itself in a transformed life. Repentance means giving up one life and beginning a new one. The new life may mean suffering, loss of earthly treasure, and even loss of physical life on earth. We have to leave the rule of evil and join the reign of God in resisting evil and making the rule of God visible. That change in allegiance and activity is dear; it costs us our lives, which we give to God for the rest of our time on earth."-p. 216

"The empire became identified with the cause of Christianity and the success ( or failure) of the empire corresponded to the success (or failure) of Christianity....the church no longer confronted empire and society; instead, the church supported and was supported--established--by the empire....Once Christianity became the religion of the empire and of the social order, the continuation of Christianity was linked to the success of the empire, preservation of the empire or the institution of the social order became the decisive criterion for ethical behavior, and the emperor or ruler became the norm against which the rightness of a behavior such as killing or truth-telling was judged..."-p.83

Potentially life changing insights; Weaver's book merits 5 stars.

A dissection of several atonement theories, making a comprehensive and compelling case for a nonviolent theory. If/when I wanted to revisit it, I will probably go for Weaver's God Without Violence for a lighter read. This one is quite dense and often feels repetitive, but, on the upside, such a detailed work incorporates many theologians and voices.

Weaver has an atonement bias, narrative Christus Victor, and he declares it up front. Herein lies the power of this book, because Weaver then, with admirable patience and fair-mindedness, takes up all other arguments and interpretations.

The second part of the book is most interesting. It contains a treetops exploration of atonement from the minds of black, feminist and womanish commentators. Plenty here to rattle one’s taken-for-granted approaches.

Challenges traditional "satisfaction"-based views of the Atonement on the grounds that they portray God as violent. Weaver argues that God--as revealed in Jesus--is nonviolent and Atonement theory should reflect this. Weaver interacts with black, feminist, and womanist theology, showing that they share his concerns about violent portrayals of God. He proposes a "narrative Christus Victor" understanding of Atonement that emphasizes Jesus' confrontation of and victory over powers of hatred and violence.

The content of the book was excellent, but the organization made it difficult to read. I felt like the author used different terms to explain the same things which made it difficult for a non-academic like myself to follow along. It also felt repetitive. It was a very good introduction to black theology, feminist theology, and womanist theology.

The main point of this book, creating a view of atonement that avoids making God the author of violence and supports a nonviolent ethic, is a great concept, and the narrative Christus Victor view that Warner presents is a very interesting perspective. At the same time, most of Warner’s writing presumes that the reader completely agrees with Warner, especially on the issues of punishment and nonviolence. This is especially true when just war and punishment are mentioned. Do I generally agree that war and retributive violence are not the Christian way? Sure. But are there times in history when there really is no better solution? I can name a few. It seems like Warner was so focused on the strengths and benefits of his view of atonement that he is entirely incapable of accepting that we might need multiple views of atonement, and that the other views will accomplish something that his will not. This book was good, in that it provided a different atonement image. But it was not an easy read.

Quarantine-Book #28:

I just finished "The Nonviolent Atonement," (2nd edition) by J Denny Weaver.

(More detailed than normal by request.)

Man emulates the God they serve--
God fixed man's biggest problem with violence--
Man will fix, and is justified fixing further problems with violence--

Because of this--along with the possibility that two of the above three lines may be wrong--Weaver has reworked Aulen's Christus Victor into "Narrative Christus Victor" into a form that removes God-ward violence from the Atonement.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the good news one proclaims is precisely the model of Atonement one holds. Be willing to adapt to the person who may listen to you, form a relationship with them; blood and guts may not sound like good news to someone abused as a child.

Weaver first lays out the current families of models, the first of which he calls Anselmian (a shout-out to Anselm): satisfaction, substitution, moral governmental, and penal; this family of "objective" views he defines as

"[T]hat the death of Jesus involved a divinely orchestrated planthrough which Jesus' death could satisfy divine justice or divine law in order to save sinful humankind," p 18.

As an alternative to Anselm a generation later Peter Abelard offered Moral Influence theory as a "subjective" view of the Atonement. Abelard's hangup with Anselm was over the concept that God's attitude toward sinners changed because, to him, God doesn't change.

"Thus for Abelard, Jesus died as a demonstration of God's love. And the change that results from that loving death is not in God but in the subjective consciousness of the sinner, who repent and cease their rebellion against God and turn towards God," p 19.

As an alternative to the above objective and subjective views Weaver offers the aforementioned narrative Christus Victor. The "Narrative" part comes via using the Revelation as a framework; this also emphasizes that Christs' victory is historical and cosmic (metanormal/supernatural) . This lays down a cosmic Christodrama narrative showing the victorious Lion because of the selfsame slain lamb (read it without your left behind glasses). What I appreciate is that the Revelation begins with the birth not the death of Jesus (the dragon chasing the pregnant woman) . People who try to truncate the good news to just three nails miss out on the totality of the Christ-event, the incarnation to the ascension, but reading with the Revelation as a framework permits this. Interestingly, as Weaver footnotes, if we see the Revelation as being futuristic with Armageddon to come as per dispensationalism then that lessens the resurrection: Christ needs to win something in the future which the resurrection wasn't good enough for.

"[T]he resurrection of Jesus Christ is the ultimate and definitive cosmic victory of the reign of God over the rule of Satan and the multiple evils he produces, including war and devastation, famine, pestilence, and natural disasters. This is the victorious Christ, Christus Victor. [...] With the resurrection of Jesus, the reign of God has already begun in human history. While the culmination still awaits, a piece of the future exists now, " p 22.

Weaver now moves on from the cosmic view in the Revelation to the historical view in the gospels. Here we see Jesus and Satan in the wilderness; Satan doesn't get it but what was overcome here is the kingdoms of this world, the antithesis of the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom of God blows people's minds: Jesus comes in laughing at their purity laws--talking to women and non-Jews, healing on the Sabbath (his first miracle is the embodiment of this; Jesus brings new wine). And when the Kingdom people live a sermon on the mount/plane lifestyle we are professing Christus Victor in history as Christ did comically in the Revelation. When we seek relationship over purity law, understanding that the ethic is a fruit of the relationship, we profess Jesus the Victorious is King and this is His Kingdom.

Jesus lived, taught and died by the principal of nonviolence which doesn't respond in kind but in love. This ultimately results in Peter sheathing his sword; we are all Peter.

"The resurrection of Jesus, God's act in history to overcome the ultimate enemy--death--puts God's stamp of approval on Jesus. Resurrection is God's testimony that in Jesus, the reign of God has entered into the world. The resurrection of Jesus is an advanced sample of the reign of God that will become visible in its fullness when Jesus returns. To see the life and teaching of Jesus is to see how things are under the rule of God. [... ] Refusing to return evil for evil unmasks the violence of the evil acts, and demonstrates that the evil which killed Jesus originated with humankind and not with God, " p 42.

I read that last part as according to the volcano-god motif that is parasitic with "propitiation."

Weaver goes on to show how Narrative Christus Victor corresponds well with Giradian mimetic theory, which summarized: people always mime each other, hence the name. This makes rivals and rivals make enemies (I believe this is because we hate seeing ourselves reflected back to us) . Tension and chaos builds in a community until the weakest becomes the scapegoat and is killed. After which there is peace for a season. This continues until the resurrection where Jesus "exposes the violence of those who oppose the reign of God. His death unmask the powers of evil and renders empty their claim that peace and order are founded on violence," p 51.

Interestingly, when working through apocalyptical Pauline thought Weaver says that the Anselmian family of objective atonement--satisfaction, substitution--has no need for a risen Savior, only a penalty-paying dead one. Where in Paul the resurrection is foundational. The resurrection points to Jesus is King and ruling already and will come again. The Anselmian family as strictly objective has the Atonement as outside of history. The result is one views oneself as saved but that is the only difference. God checked the box by their name but nothing else is seen as impacted. There is no proclamation of a Kingdom rule over and against the current kingdom... But you got your box checked.

Further in the Pauline corpus a statement like "God made Jesus to become sin" (2 Cor. 5:21) is saying "God was not the direct actor, but He sent His Son into the world ruled by sin, and thus, through the excess of sin making use of the law, He became sin and a curse," p 59, quoting Schwager in "Jesus in the Drama," p 167.

There is a chapter dealing with the patristics and the church, Constantine and the state, and how that whole bunch of nonsense and nope impacted the development of doctrine. Absolutely priceless.

The above is the meat of Narrative Christus Victor. It's 85 of 325 pp. This was a very good read.


#NonviolentAtonement #JDennyWeaver #Anabaptist #Mennonite #Atonement #AtonementTheology #Christology #WorkOfChrist #NarrativeChristusVictor #Constantine #Anselm #Satisfaction #Abelard #MoralInfluence #Aulen #ChristusVictor #RadicalReformation

This tremendous book offers a new way to imagine atonement. It is a powerful and well-researched augmention of the well-known Christus Victor model. Not straying far from that classical model, J. Denny Weaver provides a wonderful defense of his new theory. He intersects it with both feminists, black theologians, and womanists. Responding to critics, rehabilitators of Anselm, and tradition, Weaver's book is thorough and will edify anyone who reads it.

Atonement is a word that theologians use to describe how humans can be "at one with" God. For the Christian religion it includes tying it to the death of Jesus and explaining how it can provide spiritual salvation. The various theories of atonement that have been developed over the past two thousand years have been human endeavors at providing a rationalization as to why the execution of Jesus as a criminal has significance for Christian believers.

In this book the author, J Denny Weaver, proposes an atonement theory to which he gives the name “narrative Christus Victor”. It is an approach more consistent with the narrative descriptions of the teachings of Jesus contained in the New Testament than is the theory that has prevailed since the year 1100 when Anselm’s satisfaction theory of atonement was published in his Cur Deus Homo.

Anselm developed his satisfaction atonement in order to replace the then prevailing view that Christ's death was a ransom payment that God owed to the devil. This ransom theory is the classic Christus Victor and most theologians didn't like the emphasis on the power of the devil to interact with God as an equal.

The problem with Anselm’s satisfaction theory of atonement is that it is based on the idea of retributive violence. Christians are not supposed to practice retributive violence so why must God? Isn’t it strange that a God who sent his Son to teach “love your enemies” is incapable (as described by Anselm) of simply forgiving sins without the use of retributive violence? However, the satisfaction theory of atonement was widely accepted by the Christian church during the medieval era because it was compatible with a state church that was part of the government that needed to use "the sword" to maintain social order.

Abelard came along a few years after Anselm with his moral influence theory of atonement in an effort to avoid the retributive aspects of the satisfaction theory. But the death of Jesus still has aspects of divine child abuse in the exercise of moral influence in Abelard's theory. With the devil missing from the equation it's hard to explain why the death of Jesus was needed. Also, narrative Christus Victor differs from the moral influence atonement by envisioning changes other than an impact on the mind of the sinner by envisioning a change in the spiritual universe symbolized by Christ's resurrection.

Narrative Christus Victor puts a devil of sorts back into the equation again as was the case for classic Christus Victor. But the devil in narrative Christus Victor is in the form of the very tangible and real principalities and powers of this world that are opposed to God's kingdom. The post-Constantine state church of the Medieval era could not recognize this definition of the devil because they themselves were the principalities and powers.

In Weaver’s narrative Christus Victor there is no need to explain why God required that Jesus die:

“In narrative Christus Victor, the cause of Jesus’ death is obviously not God. ... Rather, in narrative Christus Victor the Son is carrying out the father’s will by making the reign of God visible in the world — and that mission is so threatening to the world that sinful human beings and the accumulation of evil they represent conspire to kill Jesus. Jesus came not to die but to live, to witness to the reign of god in human history. While he may have known that carrying out that mission would provoke inevitably fatal opposition his purpose was not to get himself killed. ... Jesus depicted in narrative Christus Victor is no passive victim. He is an active participant in confronting evil. Salvation happens when or because Jesus carried out his mission to make the reign of God visible. His saving life shows how the reign of god confronts evil, and is thus our model for confronting injustice. While we do not save, we participate in salvation and in Jesus’ saving work when we join in the reign of God and live the way Jesus lived. ... It means actively confronting injustice, and in that confrontation we continue with Jesus to make the rule of God visible in a world where evil still has sway. “ (p.211-212)

Weaver deliberately builds his narrative Christus Victor model by careful examination of scriptures and history -- Revelation, the Gospels, letters of the apostle Paul, Old Testament sacrifice traditions, the book of Hebrews, and Israel's history. In summary Weaver says:

"Seeing narrative Christus Victor in this long historical context underscores how completely outside of history satisfaction atonement is. In fact, satisfaction atonement appears to reduce the life of Jesus to an elaborate scheme whose purpose was to produce his death. Narrative Christus Victor is a way of reading the entire history of God's people, with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus as the culminating revelation of the reign of God in history, whereas the various versions of satisfaction atonement concern a legal construct or an abstract formula that functions outside of and apart from history. Seeing the long historical context of narrative Christus Victor underscores the extent to which satisfaction atonement is separated from ethical involvements and allows oppression to continue without challenge." (p.69)

Narrative Christus Victor is compatible with much of René Girard's theory about mimetic violence and its implications for understanding the death of Jesus and atonement theology. Narrative Christus Victor also stands in continuity with, but differs significantly from, the classic view of Christus Victor described by Gustaf Aulén, and it bears little resemblance to the Christus Victor rejected by Feminist Theology.

Weaver includes chapters in his book explaining how narrative Christus Victor addresses the concerns of and is compatible with "Black Theology on atonement", "Feminist Theology on Atonement", and "Womanist Theology of Atonement." Much of Christian theology, classic atonement images, and christological terminology have accommodated violence of the sword, slavery, racism, and violence against women. Even though Weaver originally developed narrative Christus Victor model to reflect a nonviolent ethic for Christian living, he demonstrates that it fits well with the concerns of oppressed people.

This book has a chapter near its end titled,"Conversation with Anselm and His Defenders." A number of theologians have tried to respond to the criticisms of satisfaction atonement that have been expressed by feminist and womanist writers. The defenders have generally responded in one of three ways: (1) Rehabilitate the ideas of punishment and vicarious suffering, (2) Shift emphasis away from punishment by recovering additional themes and emphases within satisfaction that have been covered over by too much stress on punishment, and (3) Acknowledge the validity of the critique of punishment by blaming the excesses on Protestant reformers such as John Calvin. Weaver concludes that none of the defenses are adequate or convincing.

J. Denny Weaver also wrote another book titled, n  The Nonviolent Godn. It is sort of a sequel to this book by broadening the scope of discussion about the nature of God.

It is interesting to note that the word “atonement“ is not in the King James version of the New Testament (however it is in the Old Testament, Leviticus 17:11).

A book has been published recently by Ted Grimsrud titled, “Instead of Atonement: The Bible’s Salvation Story and Our Hope for Wholeness”. I’m under the impression that it may have some similarities to Weaver's book. But the title sounds more anti-atonement, whereas Weaver's book is more rehab-atonement. Frankly, I'm not all that excited about atonement theory, so anti-atonement sounds pretty good to me.

In The Nonviolent Atonement, Weaver basically makes two fundamental assertions about the problem of modern theological, Western thought, and one fundamental argument about the solution to the problem.

The problem we face in Western thought is this twofold assertion- in the shift from the once dominant Christus Victor model towards satisfaction atonement theories predominant in the West, assumptions of a necessary violence essentially became so common place that to challenge it is to challenge salvation itself. And yet, as Weaver does such a wonderful job outlining, satisfaction itself grew not out of scripture but out of the violence of a Church that eventually became synonymous with the political powers. The setting and context that influenced Anselm and the subsequent theories that would follow, were drenched not only in violent rhetoric, but an assumption of violence. In later years, as this became married to particular ideas of the justice system itself, and even more particularly the American justice system, the development of a systematic allegiance to violence, the language of violence, the necessity of violence, became so common place that it has been able to hide behind attempts of different pr0ponanets and adherents to satisfaction atonement to necessarily smooth out its rough edges to make it more palpable to modern ears.

And yet it is the still the same language born from an older age of feudal systems, political powers, honor-shame systems, and glorified violence.

Which leads to the second assertion which is that in this shift from Christus Victor to satisfaction atonement theories, the richness and wealth of the Christian message, Christian mission, Kingdom participation, and the resurrection became lost in the shuffle. While proponents of satisfaction theories will never admit this, these now dominant theories in the West essentially funneled the notion of salvation away from a more holistic picture and into a narrow view of the Cross and individualism. Salvation became all about the death as a necessary payment for our sin as the fundamental means of salvation, while everything else essentially became a footnote. A separate theological statement and interest.

The solution, Weaver argues, is also two fold- a necessary return to the ancient Tradition of the faith and its emphasis on Christus Victor as the dominant motif for the audience and writers of scripture, the early Church, and early Tradition. And secondly, what he proposes is actually a reformatting of Christus Victor itself to more accurately express and capture the ancient context in our modern setting. He terms this Narrative Christus Victor, a theory that essentially sets us in line with the ancients in terms of being immersed in a larger story that continues to play out in a larger and ongoing context.

Narrative Christus Victor, if nothing else, and to be sure it has a good deal of interest beyond this, is interested in bringing the Resurrection back into the language of the Cross as a way of emphasizing salvation and the Gospel as an ethically concerned movement from God to us and us to God in relationship.

The structure is fairly simple. The early going sets up and diagnoses the problem, which shockingly includes a necessary treaties on why the notion of violence in the discussion of salvation is and should be an issue, and then begins to establish the fundamental positions and concerns of Narrative Christus Victor.

Given it's ethical concern, the book then begins to set that in the light of the black voice, the woman's voice, and the voice of the oppressed. This does not do the book justice, but if I could simply what Weaver is suggesting, much of he writes is born out of this very basic assumption that if you apply the narrow vision of satisfaction atonement to the places where Sin actually affects, those who are oppressed, you end up not only with a Gospel that makes no sense, but a Gospel that does far more harm than good. One of the things that satisfaction atonement did was remove salvation from its liberating context, the once dominant context of the Exodus story. This relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor, simply does not have representation in satisfaction atonement, and in fact satisfaction atonement has been used throughout history to effectively marginalize the oppressed. It's original context was born out of this very idea of a Church having power over the weak.

In essence, what satisfaction atonement did was erase the third agency (the Powers, Satan, the evil one, the principalities), so dominant in the pages of scripture and the early community, from the picture. It turned the transaction entirely over to the God-human equation where God can only redeem through necessary violence and humanity can only be forgiven through a necessary payment of satisfaction. What we lose in the process is most of the Christian story. And what further complicates this is that when proponents of this theory end up finding their way back into the richness of the Christian story, it is with this violent picture in tow. This reformats entire readings of the narrative into something that they never were in their original context, Westernizing the scriptural message over against the entities that Western society has held power over for centuries.

In the latter sections of the book, after dealing with the relationship of scripture to this oppressed-oppressor language, Weaver then spends a good deal of time setting Narrative Christus Victor and the dominant arguments for and against Satisfaction Theories. In doing this Weaver narrows in on the main ideas by bringing the main voices of ST to the forefront, including a healthy cross section of it's diverse expressions. He does a good deal of work to set everything on the table and to give everything a fair representation, and does so without demonizing the writers but rather teasing out where this intersection of violence and non-violence meets. And then lastly he spends time bringing a selection of modern voices to the table who have been engaged in similar work as his own, attempting to reclaim Christus Victor but in a way that also makes sense for scriptures contextualizing voice in our modern context. It all ends up creating a beautiful tapestry.

If there is one essential difference between Christus Victor and Narrative Christus Victor that is worth isolating and noting, it would be the idea that Weaver presents of the death of Jesus not being God's directive, God's plan. Rather, Weaver argues, using scripture, Tradition, philosophy and experience, that God's plan was establishing the Kingdom. The death comes at the hands of the Powers, which is not solely a spiritualized idea of the principalities but an actualized idea in scripture of empire. The obedience of Jesus to death becomes the necessary way to fulfill God's faithful plan of establishing the heavenly Kingdom on earth. The death then was not God's necessary payment and appeasement to satisfy a need for punishment.

On this train of thought, one of the most fundamental problems of satisfactions ambiguous treatment of sin and punishment, which assumes a transactional premise that simply does not and cannot apply universally, especially when you try to pair it with the dominant metaphors and pictures of scripture itself, is the idea that we are saved by a single event but caught up in a three tier reality. One, we are born into a world under bondage. Two, we are held responsible and given a payment of death based on individual sin, regardless of how that sin expresses itself. This is true whether we are speaking of murder or the lust of the heart. Different adherents to satisfaction atonement respond to this in different ways, from total depravity to moral theories. But it still remains a problem when applying this theory from its individualized context to a collective one.

And then we have the component which says that not only is the penalty physical death, but also the inevitable sentence to hell on earth. In the language of violence, we are all responsible for individual sin, all oppressed by collective sin, and all ultimately judged to death by the divine hand as just payment/punishment while also being punished in the here and now as the natural or divinely given consequence, depending on how you see that, in the here and now.

And even then still. The only way for satisfaction theory to work is for justice to ultimately be payed in a second death The raising up of the already dead to be killed again or sentenced to eternal punishment, depending on your view, as just punishment.

In all these capacities, be it theologies of creation, of our life in the here and now, of the ministry of Jesus, of resurrection, of the new heavens and the new earth, it all is forced to be read through the language of consistent and perpetuated violence in order to be upheld and to work, and usually at the ignorance of social justice and oppression that exists around us. The only way the message works when brought into a context of oppression is for it to say that person already suffering at the hands of oppression that this oppression is God's directive, that the solution is for them to recognize their own sinfulness and their own judgment that must be death, and their belief in a Cross that satisfied that need as a necessary payment on their behalf. Thus liberating them. To what? Well, often that liberation has nothing to do with the oppression, but rather eternal life with God.

In Narrative Christus Victor, by seeing the death on the Cross not as God's doing but as the response of the Powers, the empire, we are able to reformat discussions of sin and salvation and the ministry and obedience of Christ into a broader context. We are able to see it not simply as a spiritualized idea, but a real and actualized idea being made known in the world that we occupy, that we believe the Spirit occupies with us and is redeeming. The work of God becomes not one of necessary and just violence, but of a resistance to the violence that holds us bondage. A reclaiming of the truth of God's Kingdom and the way of this Kingdom building. And in Christ's response to the Cross, His faithful obedience, we then find the measure and means of knowing how to respond to this violence ourselves, particularly in the broader lens of Jesus' whole ministry.

This is probably the most radical idea in the book. But once you start to recognize and hear the notes of this idea written into the larger arguments and discussions of the book, it actually begins to transform scripture and Tradition and experience into something beautiful and life giving.

So much to think about here. Lots of highlights and notes. And this is a book that I will undoubtedly be returning to many times in the future.

And for what it's worth, given the amount of pages this gives to the Black voice and experience, this book has made a perfect three parter along with Thomas Oden's "How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind" and Esau McCaulley's "Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope". All with similar concern and focus for this discussion of salvation, contextualization, and understanding the relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor.

The good:

* Weaver exhaustively highlights shortcomings in the traditional theories of atonement.

* Rather than sitting on his own critique, Weaver brings in a host of other critiques of traditional atonement theory, and honestly analyzes the degree to which they address both the issues that he has raised and other issues that he had missed.

* Weaver lets the defenders of the traditional theories have quite a good bit of space, and engages their arguments.


The bad:

* I had to read the first few chapters several times, trying to figure out exactly what Weaver's own "narrative Christus Victor" theory of atonement really was. I felt that he either failed to state it concisely, or failed to highlight when he was stating it. Perhaps his feeling was that such a narrative theory of atonement can't be stated concisely...but if so, I think that Weaver should have at least devoted a chapter solely to describing what "narrative Christus Victor" IS, rather than spending so much time describing what it's not or spelling out exactly how he came up with it.

* I don't feel like Weaver subjects his own theory to the same standards of criticism that he subjects other theories to. For instance, at one point he criticizes a theory as just being derivative of an older theory and not a new theory in and of itself...when it would be quite difficult for him to claim that "narrative Christus Victor" is really an entirely new theory and not a derivative of the ancient Christus Victor theory. Most significantly, he repeatedly takes the stance that if Jesus had to die for the theory of atonement to be fulfilled, then it is lacking something, because God would never have his hand absolutely forced to include Jesus's death. Yet Weaver doesn't see that his own theory could be described as requiring Jesus's death (because in narrative Christus Victor Jesus's death is the ultimate example of sacrifice, non-violence, and love) to a similar degree that some of the theories that he criticizes require it. It felt too often that Weaver was trying to draw a clear line, "My theory fulfills all criteria, no one else's does", when no clear line really exists.



Overall, I feel like this is a worthwhile book to read to think through what you really believe about the meaning of Jesus's death and how it actually changed the world. Weaver just gets a bit to polemic in how he portrays the options.

A thought provoking read which radically changed my thinking about ATONEMENT. All students of theology should read this book. You may disagree with the arguments in the book but at least you will be much better informed.