"Atonement: A Guide for the Perplexed" is a fascinating book (full review coming tomorrow). Here are some good quotations from it:
In short, because God is triune, God is free to take our sin up into his own life, and deal with it as God by means of the relationships proper to his own being and life. The bearing of and doing away with our sin is thus a thoroughly Trinitarian event. (pg. 82)
The goal is not merely to have faith, not merely to undo the effects of sin and death - the goal is the resurrection, being made alive in Christ that we might be imitators of him, and in this way live out the divine life to the fulfilment of our creaturely existence. In short, the atonement is a fundamentally creative and life-giving reality. This is because God atones for our sin by means of himself, by means of his creative and life-giving character, by means of the same person and character that created us in the first place. (pg. 106, emphasis mine)
...God is omnipresent. He is present to himself and to all that which he creates. His goal in creation is to share the divine life with the creature, that it too might have presence - a sphere of belonging and activity proper to the creature by means of which it can live, relate and extend itself through the activity. But what happens when we sin against the omnipresent God? We reject the reality of divine presence, hiding from God, and abusing our creaturely presence by exiling some and forcing others to be near us, turning presence into a matter of power and efficiency rather than a gift necessary for free relationship. (pg. 108)
...the events in the life of Jesus are all the more significant to humankind because he is the one in whose image we are made, his life is the life to which we conform, and it is our living from, in and for this image that constitutes our human flourishing within the purposes of God. (pg. 119)
...Christ ... is redeeming human history by being obedient where we fell short, creating the new and decisive history into which we are being brought or incorporated. (pg. 120)
...spiritual growth unfettered by sin naturally overflows into worship. (pg. 150)
Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell
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