The Problem with Christus Victor. About Brian Zahnd - Brian Zahnd. Brian Zahnd Brian Zahnd is the founder and lead pastor of Word of Life Church, a Christian congregation located in the heartland of America in Saint Joseph, Missouri. For 31 years, Brian and his wife Peri’s vision for the church has been to be an authentic expression of the Kingdom of Jesus in a modern world. Brian is known for his focus on embracing the deep and long history of the Church and wholeheartedly participating in God’s mission to redeem and restore His world. Brian and Peri founded Word of Life Church in the autumn of 1981 with a handful of other young people in an old Methodist church building. For years, the church struggled to draw members. Today, Word of Life Church is a thriving congregation seeking to heal and help the people of Saint Joseph, Missouri. Brian is the author of three books: Beauty Will Save The World, Unconditional: The Call of Jesus To Radical Forgiveness, and What To Do On The Worst Day Of Your Life.
My great passion is for the King and His Kingdom. Of Monsters and Mars: How Brian Zahnd Is Saving Evangelical Faith (A Review) | Zach J. Hoag. This post originally appeared on The Nuance at Patheos. It would be a mistake to call Brian Zahnd's new book, A Farewell to Mars, "a book about pacifism. " It would be an even bigger mistake to call it "a book about Christian pacifism. " Brian says as much when he clarifies that he doesn't claim the pacifist label at all.
He is not a pacifist but a Christian - a follower of Jesus, including Jesus's radical and very political ideas (Ch. 1). In other words, the gospel of peace shouldn't be thought of as some extraneous add-on to Christian identity, best left to the social justice-y liberals and dreadlocked new monastics. In other words, A Farewell to Mars has the potential to save evangelical faith. It has been instrumental in saving mine. Why Evangelical? Brian Zahnd is a charismatic. The subtitle of Brian's book tells us more than we might think: "An Evangelical Pastor's Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace.
" The Objections Evangelicalism and Empire Moved to Resist the Crowd. Jesus Died for Us...Not for God - Brian Zahnd. Jesus Died for Us…Not for GodBrian Zahnd “You killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead.” –The Apostle Peter, Acts 3:15 Golgotha is where the great crimes of humanity — pride, rivalry, blame, violence, domination, war, and empire — are dragged into the searing light of divine judgment. At Golgotha we see the system of human organization that we blithely call “civilization” for what it is: an axis of power enforced by violence so corrupt that it is capable of murdering God in the name of what we call truth, justice, and liberty. Golgotha is also the place where the love of God achieves its greatest expression.
The cross is both hideous and glorious, simultaneously ugly and beautiful. Jesus does not save us from God, Jesus reveals God as savior. Before the cross is anything else, it is a catastrophe. The death of Jesus was a sacrifice. Think of it this way: Where do we find God on Good Friday? The cross is not about payment, the cross is about forgiveness. One-story-1.pdf. Brian Zahnd on justice and atonement. A friend asked me to comment on this passage from a recent blog post of Brian Zahnd's, How Does "Dying For Our Sins" Work?
: The Bible is clear, God did not kill Jesus. Jesus was offered as a sacrifice in that the Father was willing to send his Son into our sinful system in order to expose it as utterly sinful and provide us with another way. The death of Jesus was a sacrifice in that sense. I have both agreements and disagreements with Zahnd here. I agree that the teaching of the Bible is not that God kills Jesus. Consider the analogy of a football player who arrives late to practice, and his coach commands him to run a mile as a sort of punishment. So also with the Father and the Son. I tend to disagree with his characterization of Christ as sacrifice. There is also an ontological element of atonement, as the Fathers appreciated and as Torrance describes in his Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church. THE RANSOM THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT. In the early church, the dominant theme is that of victory, Christus Victor, Christ the Victor.
Salvation is the deliverance of man from the evil powers which hold him in bondage by the victory over them that Christ accomplished through His death and resurrection. In the early church, this victory is usually treated as being accomplished through a ransom paid to the Devil, and that the theory of the atonement embodying this idea has been called "the ransom theory. " Since in one form or another this theory was held by most of the early church fathers, it has often been called "the patristic theory. " And because this theory was more widely held in the Eastern Church than in the Western Church, it has also been called the "Eastern" or "Greek" view to distinguish it from the "Western" or "Latin" view, which Anselm later more fully developed.
Gustav Aulen in his book Christus Victor puts forth a view of the atonement in the early church that he calls the "the classic idea" of the atonement. Experimental Theology: Christus Victor and Progressive Christianity. While at Streaming last week during one of the panel discussions I was asked about my use of Christus Victor atonement in my book The Slavery of Death. During that conversation I made an observation about a problem I'm noticing in how many progressive Christians (by progressive I mean post-evangelicals) have been increasingly attracted to Christus Victor atonement. Specifically, given their disillusionment with penal substitutionary atonement many progressive Christians have been attracted to Christus Victor atonement because it presents us with a non-violent vision of the atonement. In Christus Victor atonement Christ dies to liberate and free us from dark enslaving powers.
In this vision God's actions in allowing or sending Jesus to the cross are wholly benevolent and non-violent. There is no wrathful God being appeased by blood sacrifice in Christus Victor atonement. But here's the problem I noted at Streaming. Personally, I've noted this problem and have been trying to work on it. Governmental theory of atonement.
The Governmental theory of the atonement (also known as the moral government theory) maintains that Christ was not punished on behalf of the human race. Instead, God publicly demonstrated his displeasure with sin by punishing his own sinless and obedient Son as a propitiation. Because Christ's suffering and death served as a substitute for the punishment humans might have received, God is able to extend forgiveness while maintaining divine order, having demonstrated the seriousness of sin and thus appeasing his wrath. Background This view of the atonement was developed by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) in his writing against the Socininans expounded in "Defensio Fidei Catholicae de Satisfactione Christi adversus F. Socinum (1636). Grotius, a theological Arminian, utilized "governmental" semantics due to his training in law and his general view of God as moral governor (ruler) of the universe.
Additional details of the Governmental Theory \1. "God loves the human race. . \3. Objections Footnotes. Penal substitutionary atonement. Penal substitutionary atonement refers to the doctrine that Christ died on the cross as a substitute for sinners. God imputed the guilt of our sins to Christ, and he, in our place, bore the punishment that we deserve.
This was a full payment for sins, which satisfied both the wrath and the righteousness of God, so that He could forgive sinners without compromising His own holy standard. Background The Penal-Substitution Theory of the atonement was formulated by the 16th century Reformers as an extension of Anselm's Satisfaction theory. Anselm's theory was correct in introducing the satisfaction aspect of Christ's work and its necessity; however the Reformers saw it as insufficient because it was referenced to God's honor rather than his justice and holiness and was couched more in terms of a commercial transaction than a penal substitution. Relevant Scripture Isaiah 53:6 - "the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. " Propitiation language See main article on Propitiation. Criticisms. CrossPaper.pdf. Monster God or Monster Man - Debate - Resources - Preparing Forerunner Messengers and the Praying Church.
Is God a Monster?