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The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ
Though the apostle Paul boldly proclaimed “Christ crucified” as the heart of the gospel, Fleming Rutledge notes that preaching about the cross of Christ is remarkably neglected in most churches today. In this book Rutledge addresses the issues and controversies that have caused pastors to speak of the cross only in the most general, bland terms, precluding a full understanding and embrace of the gospel by their congregations.
Countering our contemporary tendency to bypass Jesus’ crucifixion, Rutledge in these pages examines in depth all the various themes and motifs used by the New Testament evangelists and apostolic writers to explain the meaning of the cross of Christ. She mines the classical writings of the Church Fathers, the medieval scholastics, and the Reformers as well as more recent scholarship, while bringing them all into contemporary context.
Widely known for her preaching, Rutledge seeks to encourage preachers, teachers, and anyone else interested in what Christians believe to be the central event of world history.
696 pages, Hardcover
First published November 13, 2015
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April 14, 2019
This is the book. Block out days or weeks in your reading plans, open your Bible and this volume, and endeavor to grasp the scope and the depths of God's gift in Christ.
Rutledge writes with the clarifying analysis of a scholar and the lyrical power of a lifelong preacher, and the headlines of history are never far from her hand. I found her style irresistible.
She openhandedly allows the many biblical and theological motifs of the meaning of the cross to interact and interpret one another: passover and exodus, sacrifice, ransom and redemption, final judgment, apocalyptic war, descent into hell, substitution, recapitulation, and more.
This interplay demonstrates how, not only the theologians and preachers of church history, but the New Testament authors themselves have plunged and strained to describe and understand the scandalously unique Christian claim that "glorifies as Son of God a man who was degraded and dehumanized by his fellow human beings," and the "radical newness of the Christian gospel" that "cuts against the grain of all religious and moral thinking" by speaking precisely to those who have not or cannot turn toward God or religion.
I will have to write further reflections piece by piece as I adapt this book for my own teaching and preaching.
One of this generation's gems.
Rutledge writes with the clarifying analysis of a scholar and the lyrical power of a lifelong preacher, and the headlines of history are never far from her hand. I found her style irresistible.
She openhandedly allows the many biblical and theological motifs of the meaning of the cross to interact and interpret one another: passover and exodus, sacrifice, ransom and redemption, final judgment, apocalyptic war, descent into hell, substitution, recapitulation, and more.
This interplay demonstrates how, not only the theologians and preachers of church history, but the New Testament authors themselves have plunged and strained to describe and understand the scandalously unique Christian claim that "glorifies as Son of God a man who was degraded and dehumanized by his fellow human beings," and the "radical newness of the Christian gospel" that "cuts against the grain of all religious and moral thinking" by speaking precisely to those who have not or cannot turn toward God or religion.
I will have to write further reflections piece by piece as I adapt this book for my own teaching and preaching.
One of this generation's gems.
April 5, 2019
Summary: A study of the meaning of the crucifixion of Jesus including the biblical motifs that have been used to express that meaning.
It is striking to consider how relatively few books in recent Christian publishing deeply explore the meaning of the death of Christ by crucifixion, particularly considering that the death and the resurrection are central to Christian proclamation. Fleming Rutledge's The Crucifixion goes a long way to remedying this deficit.
This is a large book, but I would encourage the prospective reader not to be daunted by the size. While rich in insight, it is also a model of clarity, among the very best theological books I have read, both worthy of the academy, and written for the people of God.
The book consists of two parts. The first considers the crucifixion, particularly the godless character of this brutal execution, and the critical importance of this horrible execution as primary to the Christian faith. Rutledge also deals in this part with the biblical understanding of justice as the setting right, or rectifying, of something that is radically wrong, and that this something is the radical power of Sin over humanity. She makes a case that Anselm's version of "satisfaction" is actually closer to her idea of rectification than he is credited for.
The second part of the book (about 400 pages) explores eight biblical motifs of the crucifixion that, together, help us understand the meaning of the crucifixion and what God accomplished in Christ on the cross. Rutledge prefers the language of motif to the more common language of theory because she believes all of these work together, rather than at odds with each other, to convey the glorious significance of the work of Christ. The motifs are:
The Passover and the Exodus
The Blood Sacrifice
Ransom and Redemption
The Great Assize
The Apocalyptic War: Christus Victor
The Descent into Hell
The Substitution
Recapitulation
She would contend that these show two basic things that happen in the cross:
1. God’s definitive action in making vicarious atonement for sin.
2. God’s decisive victory over the alien Powers of Sin and Death.
There are several things about her treatment of these motifs that are quite wonderful. One is that she reintroduces into theological conversation terms we are often averse to speak of: blood, ransom, judgment, hell, and substitution among others. Two is that she helps us see through these terms both the gravity of the human condition and how Christ truly has paid what we could not and triumphed over sin and evil, breaking their power and hold on humanity. These terms tell us essentially that we are worse off than we thought, and that is good news because God has done what we could not. Finally, she retrieves the language of substitution from the disparagement that it has become popular to pile upon it, while acknowledging the problems in some formulations. She beautifully unites the idea of Christ's substitutionary death for us and Christ's victory of the power of Sin, Evil, and Death (she capitalizes these terms reflecting the idea of these as powers). Instead of opposing these two ideas, she sees substitution as the basis of the victory of Jesus. I also found her treatment of Christus Victor as far more compelling than Aulen, in her linkage of this idea with the apocalyptic war.
The conclusion of the work returns to the beginning and amplifies these themes with the motifs she has developed. She emphasizes again the uniqueness of Christianity as the account of the Son of God who not only dies to redeem, but does so facing utter contempt and horrible suffering. And she emphasizes that this work makes right what was wrong. What she does in this conclusion is draw out the implications of these ideas. All the distinctions humans make are muted in the face of this work. All of us are in the same predicament, and this work of Christ addresses the wrongs in all of us, banal or horrid, and sets things right. This is not "God loves you just as you are" as we blithely love to say. The gruesomeness of the death of Christ reflected the cost to God necessary to set things to rights in breaking sin's curse and power, and the horror reflects the power of this act to address the condition of even those who have done the most horrid.
What she is saying is that it is all of grace, all of God. In summary, she writes:
"Forgiveness is not enough. Belief in redemption is not enough. Wishful thinking about the intrinsic goodness of every human being is not enough. Inclusion is not a sufficiently inclusive message, nor does it deliver real justice. There are some things--many things--that must be condemned and set right if we are to proclaim a God of both justice and mercy. Only a Power independent of this world order can overcome the grip of the Enemy of God's purposes for his creation" (p. 610).
This is what the crucifixion accomplished. Not only are individuals justified (or rectified) through this work, but all the injustices of the world are atoned for, and the process of setting these right has begun. Both the preaching of justification by grace, and the preaching of the restoration of justice find their warrant in the cross and are not at odds.
Rutledge does not come out and say this, but an implication of her "inclusiveness" is the possibility of the ultimate "rectification" even of those who have resisted the proclamation of rectification, as in her treatment of the Jews in Romans 9-11. Elsewhere she speaks of the final annihilation of Satan and those given over to him, but here she speaks of Christ's death as an outcast as redeeming even those on the outside. She admits (p. 459, note) to struggling with Matthew 25:46 and Jesus's own statement about eternal punishment. Perhaps this restrains her, as it does me, from asserting a final universal "rectification" of all people, but she comes very close. What is clear is that, for her, this arises from her expansive understanding both of the utter helplessness of all of us to save ourselves, without distinction, and the utter greatness of God to save through the cross of Christ. Perhaps in the end, this is a call to humility, of leaving these matters in God's hand, and never presuming upon but utterly trusting in the grace of this God.
Without question, this was perhaps the most profound theological work I've read in at least the last five years. It made me look again at the uniqueness of Christ and his work on the cross. It made me think deeply not only of why Jesus died, but why he did so in such a horrid way. It made me think, and question, the ways I've formulated my understanding of the work of the cross and particularly challenged me to think more about the victory of Christ on the cross over the power of Sin, as well as his atonement for the guilt of sin. This was a marvelous work to read in this season of Lent.
In addition to this review, I've written three reflections on portions of this work that may be accessed at:
https://bobonbooks.com/2019/03/22/rea...
https://bobonbooks.com/2019/03/27/rea...
https://bobonbooks.com/2019/04/04/rea...
It is striking to consider how relatively few books in recent Christian publishing deeply explore the meaning of the death of Christ by crucifixion, particularly considering that the death and the resurrection are central to Christian proclamation. Fleming Rutledge's The Crucifixion goes a long way to remedying this deficit.
This is a large book, but I would encourage the prospective reader not to be daunted by the size. While rich in insight, it is also a model of clarity, among the very best theological books I have read, both worthy of the academy, and written for the people of God.
The book consists of two parts. The first considers the crucifixion, particularly the godless character of this brutal execution, and the critical importance of this horrible execution as primary to the Christian faith. Rutledge also deals in this part with the biblical understanding of justice as the setting right, or rectifying, of something that is radically wrong, and that this something is the radical power of Sin over humanity. She makes a case that Anselm's version of "satisfaction" is actually closer to her idea of rectification than he is credited for.
The second part of the book (about 400 pages) explores eight biblical motifs of the crucifixion that, together, help us understand the meaning of the crucifixion and what God accomplished in Christ on the cross. Rutledge prefers the language of motif to the more common language of theory because she believes all of these work together, rather than at odds with each other, to convey the glorious significance of the work of Christ. The motifs are:
The Passover and the Exodus
The Blood Sacrifice
Ransom and Redemption
The Great Assize
The Apocalyptic War: Christus Victor
The Descent into Hell
The Substitution
Recapitulation
She would contend that these show two basic things that happen in the cross:
1. God’s definitive action in making vicarious atonement for sin.
2. God’s decisive victory over the alien Powers of Sin and Death.
There are several things about her treatment of these motifs that are quite wonderful. One is that she reintroduces into theological conversation terms we are often averse to speak of: blood, ransom, judgment, hell, and substitution among others. Two is that she helps us see through these terms both the gravity of the human condition and how Christ truly has paid what we could not and triumphed over sin and evil, breaking their power and hold on humanity. These terms tell us essentially that we are worse off than we thought, and that is good news because God has done what we could not. Finally, she retrieves the language of substitution from the disparagement that it has become popular to pile upon it, while acknowledging the problems in some formulations. She beautifully unites the idea of Christ's substitutionary death for us and Christ's victory of the power of Sin, Evil, and Death (she capitalizes these terms reflecting the idea of these as powers). Instead of opposing these two ideas, she sees substitution as the basis of the victory of Jesus. I also found her treatment of Christus Victor as far more compelling than Aulen, in her linkage of this idea with the apocalyptic war.
The conclusion of the work returns to the beginning and amplifies these themes with the motifs she has developed. She emphasizes again the uniqueness of Christianity as the account of the Son of God who not only dies to redeem, but does so facing utter contempt and horrible suffering. And she emphasizes that this work makes right what was wrong. What she does in this conclusion is draw out the implications of these ideas. All the distinctions humans make are muted in the face of this work. All of us are in the same predicament, and this work of Christ addresses the wrongs in all of us, banal or horrid, and sets things right. This is not "God loves you just as you are" as we blithely love to say. The gruesomeness of the death of Christ reflected the cost to God necessary to set things to rights in breaking sin's curse and power, and the horror reflects the power of this act to address the condition of even those who have done the most horrid.
What she is saying is that it is all of grace, all of God. In summary, she writes:
"Forgiveness is not enough. Belief in redemption is not enough. Wishful thinking about the intrinsic goodness of every human being is not enough. Inclusion is not a sufficiently inclusive message, nor does it deliver real justice. There are some things--many things--that must be condemned and set right if we are to proclaim a God of both justice and mercy. Only a Power independent of this world order can overcome the grip of the Enemy of God's purposes for his creation" (p. 610).
This is what the crucifixion accomplished. Not only are individuals justified (or rectified) through this work, but all the injustices of the world are atoned for, and the process of setting these right has begun. Both the preaching of justification by grace, and the preaching of the restoration of justice find their warrant in the cross and are not at odds.
Rutledge does not come out and say this, but an implication of her "inclusiveness" is the possibility of the ultimate "rectification" even of those who have resisted the proclamation of rectification, as in her treatment of the Jews in Romans 9-11. Elsewhere she speaks of the final annihilation of Satan and those given over to him, but here she speaks of Christ's death as an outcast as redeeming even those on the outside. She admits (p. 459, note) to struggling with Matthew 25:46 and Jesus's own statement about eternal punishment. Perhaps this restrains her, as it does me, from asserting a final universal "rectification" of all people, but she comes very close. What is clear is that, for her, this arises from her expansive understanding both of the utter helplessness of all of us to save ourselves, without distinction, and the utter greatness of God to save through the cross of Christ. Perhaps in the end, this is a call to humility, of leaving these matters in God's hand, and never presuming upon but utterly trusting in the grace of this God.
Without question, this was perhaps the most profound theological work I've read in at least the last five years. It made me look again at the uniqueness of Christ and his work on the cross. It made me think deeply not only of why Jesus died, but why he did so in such a horrid way. It made me think, and question, the ways I've formulated my understanding of the work of the cross and particularly challenged me to think more about the victory of Christ on the cross over the power of Sin, as well as his atonement for the guilt of sin. This was a marvelous work to read in this season of Lent.
In addition to this review, I've written three reflections on portions of this work that may be accessed at:
https://bobonbooks.com/2019/03/22/rea...
https://bobonbooks.com/2019/03/27/rea...
https://bobonbooks.com/2019/04/04/rea...
April 7, 2025
It's taken me two Lents to read The Crucifixion (honestly, it would have been easier in three Lents) but I made it through. Rutledge presents a nearly exhaustive look at the crucifixion, focusing the majority of the text on biblical motifs. Her concern is always preaching; while erudite, she did not intend this book to be for the academy alone, but for the preacher and the church. Over the past year I have found the crucifixion more present in my mind, especially when encountering human suffering in any form. Rutledge rehabilitates Anselm and the concepts of substitution and satisfaction. Her work is synthesis and her footnotes are a thing of beauty and a joy forever. She never settles for easy answers, is honest about the limits of logic for humans understanding the divine project. Even when appreciatively engaging a theologian or biblical scholar or preacher, she avoids adulation and nearly always has a little moment of constructive critique. When I say that she made the crucifixion more present to me, I do not mean that she ground my nose in the horrors of it (she actually does less explaining of crucifixion in ancient Rome than many sermons I've heard; she follows the Gospel writers' lead in not giving minute details) but that she blew away the cobwebs from the stained glass that the light might shine more brightly through it.
-----
"God did not change his mind about us on account of the cross or on any other account. He was never opposed to us. It is not his opposition to us but our opposition to him that had to be overcome, and the only way it could be overcome was from God's side, by God's initiative, from inside human flesh--the human flesh of the Son." (323; emphasis original)
"The whole enterprise of theodicy is misbegotten. Philosophical 'defenses' founder. Attempts at explanation distract us from the real-life predicament of sufferers and perpetrators alike. Evil is in no way part of God's good purpose, and cannot be, since it does not have existence as a created good. Evil is neither rationally nor morally intelligible and must simply be loathed and resisted. The beginning of resistance is not to explain, but to see. Seeing is itself a form of action--seeing evil for what it is, not a part of God's plan, but a colossal x factor in creation, a monstrous contradiction, a prodigious negation that must be identified, denounced, and opposed wherever it occurs." (434; emphasis original. Fear not, she thoroughly handles privation theory in this chapter, "The Descent into Hell.")
-----
"God did not change his mind about us on account of the cross or on any other account. He was never opposed to us. It is not his opposition to us but our opposition to him that had to be overcome, and the only way it could be overcome was from God's side, by God's initiative, from inside human flesh--the human flesh of the Son." (323; emphasis original)
"The whole enterprise of theodicy is misbegotten. Philosophical 'defenses' founder. Attempts at explanation distract us from the real-life predicament of sufferers and perpetrators alike. Evil is in no way part of God's good purpose, and cannot be, since it does not have existence as a created good. Evil is neither rationally nor morally intelligible and must simply be loathed and resisted. The beginning of resistance is not to explain, but to see. Seeing is itself a form of action--seeing evil for what it is, not a part of God's plan, but a colossal x factor in creation, a monstrous contradiction, a prodigious negation that must be identified, denounced, and opposed wherever it occurs." (434; emphasis original. Fear not, she thoroughly handles privation theory in this chapter, "The Descent into Hell.")
March 28, 2019
This is the second theology book that pushed me to tears this year (the first being David Bentley Hart's The Hidden and the Manifest). Why tears? The picture Rutledge paints of who God is and what God has done in Jesus is simply beautiful and amazing. I've been a Christian my whole life and nearing age 40, I feel like I am just beginning to understand how beautiful and amazing the love is.
First though, a negative. In the beginning of the book, Rutledge discusses the awfulness of the crucifixion. We cannot understand what the crucifixion means, without reckoning with how evil and shameful the actual event was. She mostly does a great job arguing that nothing in history is quite like the shame of the crucifixion. Yet, her total ignorance of lynching during the Jim Crow era in American history stands out starkly. Admittedly, if I hadn't just read James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree about a year ago, and if I wasn't rereading his God of the Oppressed with some friends right now, I probably wouldn't have noticed it. But with Cone's work in mind, all i could think about was the absence of even a mention of lynching. It doesn't take away from her overall point, other than to make me wonder if her book could have been enriched by quoting a few less white theologians and preachers, and perhaps adding in more people of color. For instance, later on when she referred to a few preachers from the 1800s and their powerful words about the crucifixion, I couldn't help but wonder if they merely had good theology or if it flowed into how they treated oppressed people around them?
Second then, the meat of the book is dedicated to analyzing 8 different motifs in scripture. Often when the atonement is spoken of, we hear about a few theories of atonement. She breaks these out into eight, and prefers motif rather than theory. There is a lot here. What most stuck out to me was how she tied these motifs together. She notes that penal substitution is attacked nowadays and a good many writers question the morality of substitution. In its place, they prefer Christus Victor. Rutledge agrees that Christus Victor provides an over-arching schema and she agrees that some make penal substitution too all-encompassing or explain it poorly. But she warns against tossing it out.
I agree wholeheartedly. Christus Victor is basically the idea that Jesus defeats Satan on the cross, freeing humanity from bondage. Was this a battle we could win? Was not Jesus fighting for us, as our substitute? I think the brilliance of Rutledge's work is that she breaks out these eight motifs, but then shows how they all work together.
I do wonder if the problem people have is not with substitution itself, but with the idea of a God who tortures people in hell for all eternity. The idea of hell - what it is, how long it lasts - comes up throughout the book. Rutledge essentially says our options with hell are either that it (and any who are in it) cease to exist or all who are in it are redeemed. In other words, either annihilation or universalism:
"At stake in this chapter is a concept of hell tha tis adequate to the horrors of the twentieth century and the looming terrors of the twenty-first. The argument here is that it is necessary to posit the existence of a metaphorical hell in order to acknowledge the reality and power of radical evil - evil that does not yield to education, reason, or good intentions. Evil has an existence independent of the total of human misdeeds. The concept of hell takes seriously the nature and scale of evil. Without a concept of hell, Christian faith is sentimental and evasive, unable to stand up to reality in this world. Without an unflinching grasp of the radical nature of evil, Christian faith would be little more than wishful thinking.
Hell is a dominion. It is the dominion of evil, of Death, the sphere where wickedness rules...What then is the final destination of this realm?
J. Christiaan Beker provocatively writes: 'The final apocalyptic triumph of God does not permit a permanent pocket of evil or resistance to God in his creation.' If Beker is right about this, then neither the devil nor hell can be allowed to continue indefinitely as a parallel (or even subordinate) domain. The reign of Satan will not be permitted to keep its territory as a permanent realm alongside the kingdom of God. It must be finally and completely obliterated, and will pass out of memory. It is toward this conclusion that our study has been pointing all along. Whether this means the redemption of the Hitlers and the Pol Pots or their annihilation we cannot say. What we can say for sure, proleptically, in faith, is that 'the kingdom of the world has become to the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever."
I agree 100% Growing up, the idea of an eternal unending hell was taken for granted, and I've spent much of my adult life wrestling with the negative side of the afterlife. For me, and any questions about substitution, it was not a problem with God punishing evil. Clearly, for God to be good requires God to name evil for what it is and expel it from creation. Punishment, even wrath, seems necessary. Or as Rutledge says, God's justice is righteousness; love and wrath are two sides of the same coin. The problem is when this justice becomes injustice, when people are tortured, suffering in pain, that never ends, for finite sin. Rutledge, in that quote above, says we need hell but we also need either annihilation or universal redemption.
This is what brought me to tears. What if any after-life punishment is not just vindictive and unending, but for the purpose of something better? Any decent parent doesn't punish their kids just because. The punishment always has a purpose. The purpose is to restore the child, to help them become better. What if God's love is so great that somehow, someway, all people experience the love (and perhaps punishment) they need to enable them to eventually be redeemed?
Rutledge does not come out and endorse universalism (as DB Hart does). But she implies it. Its this possibility that God's love never ends that moves me. What if God pursues the lost sheep not just for a while, before closing the door and burning those on the outside? What if God pursues the lost sheep forever?
I hear the objections now. Yet Rutledge emphasizes that we're all sinners. Who are we to judge? In this she pokes at her progressive mainline friends who claim to be inclusive. She points out no church is as inclusive as it claims. We all exclude someone. Its human nature.
Human nature.
But the God revealed in Jesus is so much better.
There's certainly more I could say. Overall, this book is highly readable - she writes as a pastor and not a theologian. Its both intellectually challenging and emotionally moving. Its so Good!
First though, a negative. In the beginning of the book, Rutledge discusses the awfulness of the crucifixion. We cannot understand what the crucifixion means, without reckoning with how evil and shameful the actual event was. She mostly does a great job arguing that nothing in history is quite like the shame of the crucifixion. Yet, her total ignorance of lynching during the Jim Crow era in American history stands out starkly. Admittedly, if I hadn't just read James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree about a year ago, and if I wasn't rereading his God of the Oppressed with some friends right now, I probably wouldn't have noticed it. But with Cone's work in mind, all i could think about was the absence of even a mention of lynching. It doesn't take away from her overall point, other than to make me wonder if her book could have been enriched by quoting a few less white theologians and preachers, and perhaps adding in more people of color. For instance, later on when she referred to a few preachers from the 1800s and their powerful words about the crucifixion, I couldn't help but wonder if they merely had good theology or if it flowed into how they treated oppressed people around them?
Second then, the meat of the book is dedicated to analyzing 8 different motifs in scripture. Often when the atonement is spoken of, we hear about a few theories of atonement. She breaks these out into eight, and prefers motif rather than theory. There is a lot here. What most stuck out to me was how she tied these motifs together. She notes that penal substitution is attacked nowadays and a good many writers question the morality of substitution. In its place, they prefer Christus Victor. Rutledge agrees that Christus Victor provides an over-arching schema and she agrees that some make penal substitution too all-encompassing or explain it poorly. But she warns against tossing it out.
I agree wholeheartedly. Christus Victor is basically the idea that Jesus defeats Satan on the cross, freeing humanity from bondage. Was this a battle we could win? Was not Jesus fighting for us, as our substitute? I think the brilliance of Rutledge's work is that she breaks out these eight motifs, but then shows how they all work together.
I do wonder if the problem people have is not with substitution itself, but with the idea of a God who tortures people in hell for all eternity. The idea of hell - what it is, how long it lasts - comes up throughout the book. Rutledge essentially says our options with hell are either that it (and any who are in it) cease to exist or all who are in it are redeemed. In other words, either annihilation or universalism:
"At stake in this chapter is a concept of hell tha tis adequate to the horrors of the twentieth century and the looming terrors of the twenty-first. The argument here is that it is necessary to posit the existence of a metaphorical hell in order to acknowledge the reality and power of radical evil - evil that does not yield to education, reason, or good intentions. Evil has an existence independent of the total of human misdeeds. The concept of hell takes seriously the nature and scale of evil. Without a concept of hell, Christian faith is sentimental and evasive, unable to stand up to reality in this world. Without an unflinching grasp of the radical nature of evil, Christian faith would be little more than wishful thinking.
Hell is a dominion. It is the dominion of evil, of Death, the sphere where wickedness rules...What then is the final destination of this realm?
J. Christiaan Beker provocatively writes: 'The final apocalyptic triumph of God does not permit a permanent pocket of evil or resistance to God in his creation.' If Beker is right about this, then neither the devil nor hell can be allowed to continue indefinitely as a parallel (or even subordinate) domain. The reign of Satan will not be permitted to keep its territory as a permanent realm alongside the kingdom of God. It must be finally and completely obliterated, and will pass out of memory. It is toward this conclusion that our study has been pointing all along. Whether this means the redemption of the Hitlers and the Pol Pots or their annihilation we cannot say. What we can say for sure, proleptically, in faith, is that 'the kingdom of the world has become to the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever."
I agree 100% Growing up, the idea of an eternal unending hell was taken for granted, and I've spent much of my adult life wrestling with the negative side of the afterlife. For me, and any questions about substitution, it was not a problem with God punishing evil. Clearly, for God to be good requires God to name evil for what it is and expel it from creation. Punishment, even wrath, seems necessary. Or as Rutledge says, God's justice is righteousness; love and wrath are two sides of the same coin. The problem is when this justice becomes injustice, when people are tortured, suffering in pain, that never ends, for finite sin. Rutledge, in that quote above, says we need hell but we also need either annihilation or universal redemption.
This is what brought me to tears. What if any after-life punishment is not just vindictive and unending, but for the purpose of something better? Any decent parent doesn't punish their kids just because. The punishment always has a purpose. The purpose is to restore the child, to help them become better. What if God's love is so great that somehow, someway, all people experience the love (and perhaps punishment) they need to enable them to eventually be redeemed?
Rutledge does not come out and endorse universalism (as DB Hart does). But she implies it. Its this possibility that God's love never ends that moves me. What if God pursues the lost sheep not just for a while, before closing the door and burning those on the outside? What if God pursues the lost sheep forever?
I hear the objections now. Yet Rutledge emphasizes that we're all sinners. Who are we to judge? In this she pokes at her progressive mainline friends who claim to be inclusive. She points out no church is as inclusive as it claims. We all exclude someone. Its human nature.
Human nature.
But the God revealed in Jesus is so much better.
There's certainly more I could say. Overall, this book is highly readable - she writes as a pastor and not a theologian. Its both intellectually challenging and emotionally moving. Its so Good!
April 20, 2017
I want to write a thoughtful review, but I fear I am incapable. The truth is I'm confused and don't know what to think.
As I read the book I found myself at various points weeping and literally shouting out with joy while at other points I found myself incredibly frustrated. The weeping and joy was the result of the extreme-close up that the author gives us of the crucifixion in beautiful language. The frustration resulted from my feeling that the author often spend dozens of pages claiming to address a theme or answer a question that, in my mind, is never addressed thoroughly or answered clearly. In many places the book relies heavily on the testimony of church fathers and key thinkers throughout history. I would have preferred more interaction with the Scriptures and better defended conclusions.
Despite the frustration, I am glad I read it. I understand Christ and his crucifixion now better than I did before this book. I only wish the book would have reached its full potential.
As I read the book I found myself at various points weeping and literally shouting out with joy while at other points I found myself incredibly frustrated. The weeping and joy was the result of the extreme-close up that the author gives us of the crucifixion in beautiful language. The frustration resulted from my feeling that the author often spend dozens of pages claiming to address a theme or answer a question that, in my mind, is never addressed thoroughly or answered clearly. In many places the book relies heavily on the testimony of church fathers and key thinkers throughout history. I would have preferred more interaction with the Scriptures and better defended conclusions.
Despite the frustration, I am glad I read it. I understand Christ and his crucifixion now better than I did before this book. I only wish the book would have reached its full potential.
January 7, 2022
I will review longer later but this is the best book I read this semester. Rutledge is my new hero, and this book will be changing my life for a while.
EDIT: This book was, as the Psalmist says, "a new song" for this girl who grew up in church, apocalyptic in the way that it made me see the horror and glory of the cross anew. I've realized the past few years that although I've been a Christian for so long I'm still not entirely sure how the atonement works. This is the book to go to if you have questions like that, perhaps most of all because she argues so persuasively that how Jesus's death "works," in some mathematical or mechanical sense, is not exactly the right question at all. I could say a lot more but I’ll just leave you with quotes:
The cross, incomparably vindicated by the resurrection, is the novum, the new factor in human experience, the definitive and world-changing act of God that makes the New Testament proclamation unique in all the world. The claim of the early church was that the historical death of Jesus “under Pontius Pilate,” followed by the metahistorical event of the resurrection, had changed everything for all time.
~
Much of today's literal-mindedness is doubtless owing to the fact that fewer and fewer people read novels and poetry. [she emphasizes this a lot, which I LOVE] Much of the complaining that we hear about atonement language, for example, is owing to a misunderstanding about the way that language works. Sallie McFague is very good on this point: “the poet mounts many metaphors, many ways of seeing ‘this’ as ‘that,’ many attempts to ‘say’ that cannot be said directly. The poet sets one metaphor against another, and hopes that the sparks set off by the juxtaposition will ignite something in the mind as well.”
~
Jesus is preparing to enter the lists not only as the utterly undefended commander of the Lord's hosts but also as the one who will stand alone on the front line in our place, absorbing the full onslaught of Sin, Death, and the devil.
~
Douglas John Hall, for example, cautions against the tendency in liberation theology to place all the blame on evil and outside tendencies, while “attributing too much innocence and goodness” to the group that sees itself in need of liberation. this is a wise and necessary inside. If all the motifs are allowed to work their particular emphases over the apocalyptic art of Romans 4:5 and 5:6—the justification of the ungodly—there is a built-in biblical corrective for this error. [emphasis hers; she is so. good. on the need for all the motifs to be held together and speak to one another]
~
[this one is long but too good not to share:]
So Abraham received his son back from the dead. He received him at the outermost limit of human experience, and because of this we perceive that the gifts of God come from a realm far beyond our manipulation, our imagining, our expectation, our deserving. to have faith in God, to “fear” God as Abraham did, means to trust God totally and to put oneself and one’s life into God's hands totally, even when the fulfillment of the promises seems to have receded into impossibility.
…When Jesus came to the cross to bear the sin of the world in fathomless darkness, there was no substitute for him. He himself was the Lamb. God did not withhold his son, his only son. The Son himself became the substitute— for us. But the crucial difference between the Akedah and the cross, finally, is that the Father is not sacrificing the Son. God the Father and God the Son together, with a single will, enacted the eternal purpose of God that the second person of the blessed Trinity would become “once for all” the perfect burnt offering, for us human beings and for our salvation.
Praise be to God for his indescribable gift.
EDIT: This book was, as the Psalmist says, "a new song" for this girl who grew up in church, apocalyptic in the way that it made me see the horror and glory of the cross anew. I've realized the past few years that although I've been a Christian for so long I'm still not entirely sure how the atonement works. This is the book to go to if you have questions like that, perhaps most of all because she argues so persuasively that how Jesus's death "works," in some mathematical or mechanical sense, is not exactly the right question at all. I could say a lot more but I’ll just leave you with quotes:
The cross, incomparably vindicated by the resurrection, is the novum, the new factor in human experience, the definitive and world-changing act of God that makes the New Testament proclamation unique in all the world. The claim of the early church was that the historical death of Jesus “under Pontius Pilate,” followed by the metahistorical event of the resurrection, had changed everything for all time.
~
Much of today's literal-mindedness is doubtless owing to the fact that fewer and fewer people read novels and poetry. [she emphasizes this a lot, which I LOVE] Much of the complaining that we hear about atonement language, for example, is owing to a misunderstanding about the way that language works. Sallie McFague is very good on this point: “the poet mounts many metaphors, many ways of seeing ‘this’ as ‘that,’ many attempts to ‘say’ that cannot be said directly. The poet sets one metaphor against another, and hopes that the sparks set off by the juxtaposition will ignite something in the mind as well.”
~
Jesus is preparing to enter the lists not only as the utterly undefended commander of the Lord's hosts but also as the one who will stand alone on the front line in our place, absorbing the full onslaught of Sin, Death, and the devil.
~
Douglas John Hall, for example, cautions against the tendency in liberation theology to place all the blame on evil and outside tendencies, while “attributing too much innocence and goodness” to the group that sees itself in need of liberation. this is a wise and necessary inside. If all the motifs are allowed to work their particular emphases over the apocalyptic art of Romans 4:5 and 5:6—the justification of the ungodly—there is a built-in biblical corrective for this error. [emphasis hers; she is so. good. on the need for all the motifs to be held together and speak to one another]
~
[this one is long but too good not to share:]
So Abraham received his son back from the dead. He received him at the outermost limit of human experience, and because of this we perceive that the gifts of God come from a realm far beyond our manipulation, our imagining, our expectation, our deserving. to have faith in God, to “fear” God as Abraham did, means to trust God totally and to put oneself and one’s life into God's hands totally, even when the fulfillment of the promises seems to have receded into impossibility.
…When Jesus came to the cross to bear the sin of the world in fathomless darkness, there was no substitute for him. He himself was the Lamb. God did not withhold his son, his only son. The Son himself became the substitute— for us. But the crucial difference between the Akedah and the cross, finally, is that the Father is not sacrificing the Son. God the Father and God the Son together, with a single will, enacted the eternal purpose of God that the second person of the blessed Trinity would become “once for all” the perfect burnt offering, for us human beings and for our salvation.
Praise be to God for his indescribable gift.
August 9, 2024
I think I’ve waited my whole life for this book. Fleming Rutledge is unlike anyone else in her trifold grasp of the Scriptures, theology, and world events; she is equally comfortable in conversation with the Old Testament, the church Fathers, and the New York Times. Here she weaves all three together to answer the most fundamental question of the Christian faith: what does Christ’s death mean?
“Christianity is unique. The world's religions have certain traits in common, but until the gospel of Jesus Christ burst upon the Mediterranean world, no one in the history of human imagination had conceived of such a thing as the worship of a crucified man. The early Christian preaching announced the entrance of God upon the stage of history in the person of an itinerant Jewish teacher who had been ingloriously pinned up alongside two of society's castoffs to die horribly, rejected and condemned by religious and secular authorities alike, discarded onto the garbage heap of humanity, scornfully forsaken by both elites and common folk, leaving behind only a discredited, demoralized handful of scruffy disciples who had no status whatsoever in the eyes of anyone. The peculiarity of this beginning for a world-transforming faith is not sufficiently acknowledged.” (Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p. 1)
That’s a taste for what Fleming can do in one paragraph, and she managed to hold my attention for all 600 pages. What Fleming has gone to great lengths to do is strike the spot between academic and popular Christian literature. But more than that, Fleming lived nearly 80 years as someone with an ear to the Spirit and an eye to humanity; only then, after preaching hundreds of sermons as an episcopal priest, was she able to release this labor of profound wisdom. Her work is so refreshing because she has lived it.
What I treasured most about this book is that it has unlocked several difficulties I’ve had in reading Scripture. How are we to go on reading when the Psalms seem to hold uneasy contradictions about one’s righteousness and unrighteousness? What does God’s wrath mean—and might it actually rightly understood be not only palatable but a motive for faith? Is justification the primary or even only way we should interpret the cross? What cosmic logic is at work in the bloody history of the Israelite altars, and how could that possibly matter for the death of God? Does God really want to save us all?
I read back the questions I’ve listed above and they fail to do justice to what’s going on in these pages. I’ll try to put it another way: if you’ve ever had a moment where some of the things everyone seems to take for granted about the Christian tradition began to cut your faith at the legs, this book goes a long way toward recovery.
Lastly… Come for the theology, stay for the most beautiful footnote roasts you’ll ever see.
“Christianity is unique. The world's religions have certain traits in common, but until the gospel of Jesus Christ burst upon the Mediterranean world, no one in the history of human imagination had conceived of such a thing as the worship of a crucified man. The early Christian preaching announced the entrance of God upon the stage of history in the person of an itinerant Jewish teacher who had been ingloriously pinned up alongside two of society's castoffs to die horribly, rejected and condemned by religious and secular authorities alike, discarded onto the garbage heap of humanity, scornfully forsaken by both elites and common folk, leaving behind only a discredited, demoralized handful of scruffy disciples who had no status whatsoever in the eyes of anyone. The peculiarity of this beginning for a world-transforming faith is not sufficiently acknowledged.” (Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, p. 1)
That’s a taste for what Fleming can do in one paragraph, and she managed to hold my attention for all 600 pages. What Fleming has gone to great lengths to do is strike the spot between academic and popular Christian literature. But more than that, Fleming lived nearly 80 years as someone with an ear to the Spirit and an eye to humanity; only then, after preaching hundreds of sermons as an episcopal priest, was she able to release this labor of profound wisdom. Her work is so refreshing because she has lived it.
What I treasured most about this book is that it has unlocked several difficulties I’ve had in reading Scripture. How are we to go on reading when the Psalms seem to hold uneasy contradictions about one’s righteousness and unrighteousness? What does God’s wrath mean—and might it actually rightly understood be not only palatable but a motive for faith? Is justification the primary or even only way we should interpret the cross? What cosmic logic is at work in the bloody history of the Israelite altars, and how could that possibly matter for the death of God? Does God really want to save us all?
I read back the questions I’ve listed above and they fail to do justice to what’s going on in these pages. I’ll try to put it another way: if you’ve ever had a moment where some of the things everyone seems to take for granted about the Christian tradition began to cut your faith at the legs, this book goes a long way toward recovery.
Lastly… Come for the theology, stay for the most beautiful footnote roasts you’ll ever see.
January 8, 2023
The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Christ by the Rev’d Fleming Rutledge is the guidebook on how to remain nominally conservative, clinging on to the last memory of an orthodox denomination now pervaded by theological extremists and academic terrorists. Gone is the Episcopal Church of Cranmer, Hooker, or Jewel, Ryle or Whitefield, Wesley or Donne. Less than a century after the death of William Meade, the austere defender of Calvinism within the Episcopal fold and reviver of the Episcopal Church, a prominent Episcopal book introducing her doctrines to a cold war America could confidently assert, “it is not to be thought that the Bible is accepted uncritically or literally…there are no ‘Fundamentalists’ in the Episcopal Church.’”
In case the situation is thought to have improved after the charismatic revivals and Jesus people movement of the 1970s, let the priestess Rutledge show otherwise. What confuses the reviewer most profoundly is how Christianity Today awarded this their Book of the Year! There is almost no interaction with any Evangelical scholars or thinkers, and her audience is certainly not Evangelical. If anything, it represents a mid-20th century leftward lurch that elite-adjacent Evangelicals desire to emulate by proximity. At least Tom Wright believes St. Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit, for the same cannot be meaningfully said of the author unless “inspiration” is redefined in the most unevangelical and Scriptural way possible.
There are shining moments for Rutledge, such as when she defends “rectification” as an alternative to “justification,” and tries to unify diverging theories of the atonement; but there is little to commend seriously to a lover of Scripture that might not elsewhere be found. I feel that she wants an eye cocked when she says that, yes, we should still use masculine pronouns for the Godhead, and that the atonement is, in fact, important!
Lest you think her neo-Lutheran Tübingen school theology give her the spine of an old German Reformer or her sometimes quoted and oft imitated Dean Dr. Paul Zahl, who flew the black flag against the consecration of Gene Robinson, Chapter 7 illustrates her lack of grounding and placement perfectly. Upon hearing a professor’s blasphemous words “we’re moving away from that (substitutionary) idea of atonement,” she recalls her mopey sentiment, “I was hurt; I did not understand who this ‘we’ was, and he did not seem to care ‘that idea of atonement’ had been a word of life to many.”
While merely a footnote in the text, it reveals her soul’s disposition throughout. The higher critics have won the linguistic battle, they have won the theological war, they deserve to control the seminaries, but just, by darn, be nice about it, and remember that the atonement helped a lot of people feel better.
Rutledge’s crucifixion is not theological dogma. It is therapeutic narrative that soothes the soul.
Lest I be accused a curmudgeon for finding a single objectionable page, she elsewhere handwaves away the historicity of Adam and Eve. Here she has more in common with some parts of Evangelicalism, but those parts which would have been anathema to the movement thirty years ago, and still are to the apostle Paul. Here again we see why this book won such high praise, even by the Gospel Coalition; it progresses Evangelicalism towards a slated goal, that goal being acceptability by the academy and the secular world, even at the cost of erudition and truth.
In another place, Rutledge acknowledges that Scripture is not an entire narrative, and that sin moves from individual guilt to collective power over the course of the Old Testament as the authors begin to “realize” the power of sin. Christianity is different than Judaism, she argues, because sin is collective, not individualistic. Not only does the plainly conflict with top Biblical Theologians like NT Wright’s understanding of how first century Judaism thought, it also again shows her inability to grasp with the hard realities of historic Christian doctrine. Claiming to make them more weighty, she expiates all guilt. In expiating guilt, she damns.
In trying to defend the gruesomeness of the crucifixion, a worthy goal that excited me for its relative novelty at the outset, I was left increasingly disappointed as each chapter elapsed. Like much of the existentialist school from Barth to Tillich to David Toole’s Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo, the insistence on suffering inadvertently only trivializes it. The heavy lifting of The Crucifixion is not a penetrating insight into the themes of Scripture, but a literary style that is supposed to sweep the reader away without reading into any of her points. She seriously points to Michael Jackson as a picture of the beatific vision, and then tries to compare it to Lewis’ idea of the dance of God in Perelandra, a disservice to all.
I hate to criticize a book like this, especially in so completely, but the outcome of the book is truly devastating for me. It is simply not truth. It avoids all the difficult doctrines, or makes them lay easy by saying that sin can only be noticed and repented of after we are safely saved. She does no justice by not defining justice in her entire chapter on the topic, and she pays us no reparation (a key theme for her) in the remainder.
I cannot recommend for any serious believer or someone who wants to know Jesus. Jesus died for our sins, and the bible shows many ways in which that is shown and pictured or us, but they are not adequately or sharply laid out here. It’s disappointing to think that the church which once boasted such erudite and scholarly men now brings forward this as their acclaimed book on the crucifixion. This is supposed to be a follow up to John Stott’s tome on the Crucifixion in the 80s. This is supposed to guide the twenty first century Christian. The book unfortunately fails.
Again, I am a normal guy, who reads theology and history for fun. I wanted to be edified and have this book do the same for my small group. I don’t think my church is the only way to heaven, and I don’t think that she’s going to hell. But that’s about as much as I can say positively for the book. I’m not a raging Calvinist, Trad Catholic, or J6 truther, and I don’t want more books on hellfire or subjugation of women. But I do want books that are faithful to the Scriptures about our God, and this just ain’t it.
In case the situation is thought to have improved after the charismatic revivals and Jesus people movement of the 1970s, let the priestess Rutledge show otherwise. What confuses the reviewer most profoundly is how Christianity Today awarded this their Book of the Year! There is almost no interaction with any Evangelical scholars or thinkers, and her audience is certainly not Evangelical. If anything, it represents a mid-20th century leftward lurch that elite-adjacent Evangelicals desire to emulate by proximity. At least Tom Wright believes St. Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit, for the same cannot be meaningfully said of the author unless “inspiration” is redefined in the most unevangelical and Scriptural way possible.
There are shining moments for Rutledge, such as when she defends “rectification” as an alternative to “justification,” and tries to unify diverging theories of the atonement; but there is little to commend seriously to a lover of Scripture that might not elsewhere be found. I feel that she wants an eye cocked when she says that, yes, we should still use masculine pronouns for the Godhead, and that the atonement is, in fact, important!
Lest you think her neo-Lutheran Tübingen school theology give her the spine of an old German Reformer or her sometimes quoted and oft imitated Dean Dr. Paul Zahl, who flew the black flag against the consecration of Gene Robinson, Chapter 7 illustrates her lack of grounding and placement perfectly. Upon hearing a professor’s blasphemous words “we’re moving away from that (substitutionary) idea of atonement,” she recalls her mopey sentiment, “I was hurt; I did not understand who this ‘we’ was, and he did not seem to care ‘that idea of atonement’ had been a word of life to many.”
While merely a footnote in the text, it reveals her soul’s disposition throughout. The higher critics have won the linguistic battle, they have won the theological war, they deserve to control the seminaries, but just, by darn, be nice about it, and remember that the atonement helped a lot of people feel better.
Rutledge’s crucifixion is not theological dogma. It is therapeutic narrative that soothes the soul.
Lest I be accused a curmudgeon for finding a single objectionable page, she elsewhere handwaves away the historicity of Adam and Eve. Here she has more in common with some parts of Evangelicalism, but those parts which would have been anathema to the movement thirty years ago, and still are to the apostle Paul. Here again we see why this book won such high praise, even by the Gospel Coalition; it progresses Evangelicalism towards a slated goal, that goal being acceptability by the academy and the secular world, even at the cost of erudition and truth.
In another place, Rutledge acknowledges that Scripture is not an entire narrative, and that sin moves from individual guilt to collective power over the course of the Old Testament as the authors begin to “realize” the power of sin. Christianity is different than Judaism, she argues, because sin is collective, not individualistic. Not only does the plainly conflict with top Biblical Theologians like NT Wright’s understanding of how first century Judaism thought, it also again shows her inability to grasp with the hard realities of historic Christian doctrine. Claiming to make them more weighty, she expiates all guilt. In expiating guilt, she damns.
In trying to defend the gruesomeness of the crucifixion, a worthy goal that excited me for its relative novelty at the outset, I was left increasingly disappointed as each chapter elapsed. Like much of the existentialist school from Barth to Tillich to David Toole’s Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo, the insistence on suffering inadvertently only trivializes it. The heavy lifting of The Crucifixion is not a penetrating insight into the themes of Scripture, but a literary style that is supposed to sweep the reader away without reading into any of her points. She seriously points to Michael Jackson as a picture of the beatific vision, and then tries to compare it to Lewis’ idea of the dance of God in Perelandra, a disservice to all.
I hate to criticize a book like this, especially in so completely, but the outcome of the book is truly devastating for me. It is simply not truth. It avoids all the difficult doctrines, or makes them lay easy by saying that sin can only be noticed and repented of after we are safely saved. She does no justice by not defining justice in her entire chapter on the topic, and she pays us no reparation (a key theme for her) in the remainder.
I cannot recommend for any serious believer or someone who wants to know Jesus. Jesus died for our sins, and the bible shows many ways in which that is shown and pictured or us, but they are not adequately or sharply laid out here. It’s disappointing to think that the church which once boasted such erudite and scholarly men now brings forward this as their acclaimed book on the crucifixion. This is supposed to be a follow up to John Stott’s tome on the Crucifixion in the 80s. This is supposed to guide the twenty first century Christian. The book unfortunately fails.
Again, I am a normal guy, who reads theology and history for fun. I wanted to be edified and have this book do the same for my small group. I don’t think my church is the only way to heaven, and I don’t think that she’s going to hell. But that’s about as much as I can say positively for the book. I’m not a raging Calvinist, Trad Catholic, or J6 truther, and I don’t want more books on hellfire or subjugation of women. But I do want books that are faithful to the Scriptures about our God, and this just ain’t it.
August 8, 2017
The Crucifixion by Fleming Rutledge
It may not often occur to those raised in the Christian faith how peculiar it is that an image of a tortured man hanging on a cross has become the world’s most ubiquitous symbol of religious piety. If one approaches religion as an anthropologist would—that is, if one views religion as a system of belief and practice designed to produce social cohesion and psychological comfort—it becomes baffling to consider that more than a billion followers of perhaps the most sophisticated and successful religious tradition in history worship a crucified man as God incarnate; and that some of them even wear the instrument of his execution as jewelry.
Though the Church Fathers focused less on the gruesome details of the crucifixion than on its theological import for God and the human destiny, subsequent artists have seemed to revel in portraying Jesus’s execution in all of its captivating brutality. Mel Gibson’s much-maligned film The Passion of the Christ comes readily to mind. Fleming Rutledge is drawn to Matthias Grunewald’s Isenheim Alterpiece from 1515, and it’s easy to see why. Jesus is crucified under a black sky; his skin has taken on the gray-green hue of a corpse; the fingers of his impaled hands claw at the air; his muscles are taut, his entire body wracked by pain; thick blood runs from his wounds; his flesh is punctured all over by wooden splinters.
John the Baptist stands beside him, pointing; an odd choice by the artist, since John had already met his end before the crucifixion. John recites one of his quotations from John 3:30: “illum oportet crescere me autem minui”: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” John seems to be rubbing our noses in what we’re seeing; admonishing us for looking away—looking anywhere else—for consolation.
The crucifixion of the Son of God seems like a cosmic train wreck. Why did it happen? What did it accomplish? Secular critics have panned the passion story as a celebration of “divine child abuse”. According to this understanding, Jesus was made to suffer to appease the wrath of an angry God; a cruel and vindictive God who needed the blood of an innocent man so that humanity as a whole might be spared. But this is a misunderstanding of the Christian God. If we understand God as Trinity, the notion that one Person of this Trinity would stand in opposition to another—blunting the force of His rage to shield the rest of us from it, like a soldier throwing himself on a grenade—becomes untenable.
If we are to understand the orthodox Christian understanding of the crucifixion, we have to imagine it as an inevitable action taken by the three Persons of the Trinity working in concert, in accordance with God’s unchanging nature and will. The rectifying death of the Son was an act of God; not humanity, and not Jesus as a man separated from the divine nature. God did not sacrifice his Son; God became incarnate in the Son, and it was God who died as a rebel and a blasphemer.
The story is shot through with paradox. God suffers a godless death. To die by crucifixion in Roman Palestine was to die as a nonentity. Condemned by the religious and secular authorities alike, left naked on a cross outside the city walls, crucifixion was more than just an execution; it was a collective casting out of the victim, a severing of all his ties with community and civilization. A crucified Jew was no longer a Jew; indeed, he was no longer anything. It was the death of a feral animal.
Yet for the incarnate God, this death was the decisive victory over what the Apostle Paul called the “Powers”; Sin and Death, the omnipresent captors of the human race. Somehow, by allowing Himself to be subjected to death, the final consequence of sin, God defeated and dethroned it, because nothing in creation can withstand His presence. Strikingly, Paul says that Jesus became sin, and in so doing, abolished its power over human life. In the Christian scriptures themselves, as well as throughout the Christian tradition, numerous motifs have been used to conceptualize God’s overcoming of death through death. Rutledge’s supreme accomplishment in this book lies in the skill and clarity with which she delineates these motifs and allows them to coexist. She demonstrates the explanatory power of each interpretation, while always remaining vigilant about how each interpretation can lead to misunderstandings if it is adhered to militantly, at the exclusion of the others, instead of allowing the perspectives to be mutually informative.
The underlying theme from which she does not stray is the agency of God. Too often the Christian story is portrayed as a sloppy divine clean-up operation following the botched experiment at the Garden of Eden. To be sure, humanity turned away from God after Adam’s fall, which is to be understood not as an historical event but as an immutable characteristic of human nature; the fundamental human striving for control over a life which was given to us without our choosing; a lack at the core of the human heart which may be analogized with the loss of childhood innocence. We are all children of Adam, inheritors of Adam’s curse; and yet, the Passion and Resurrection of Christ (and His resurrection was a vindication of His Passion) tells us that the curse has already been lifted; not by us, but by God.
Two of the most prominent interpretations of Christ’s redemptive death are the Christus Victor theme and the Penal Substitution theme. The former emphasizes the triumph of Christ over the forces of death, while the latter emphasizes the gravity of sin in the face of God’s justice. In our time, the Penal Substitution model has largely fallen out of favor. People find it disturbing—even barbaric; the notion that Christ died in our place, exchanging his life for ours. Many Christians are simply uncomfortable with talk of sin. They want a religion of uplift and perpetual forgiveness; not one of condemnation or an obsession with human folly. Yet if one accepts the notion of Original Sin, one cannot follow the news without seeing that the power of man’s fallenness is very much active in the world.
Even while she recognizes its faults, Rutledge defends the substitutionary view brilliantly. She devotes a chapter to rehabilitating Anselm of Canterbury, thought to be the father of Penal Substitution; and to a lesser extent, she even rehabilitates that rascal John Calvin, showing him to be perhaps not as Calvinistic as it would appear at first glance. I suppose if Marx wasn’t a Marxist, Calvin might not have been a Calvinist, either.
The two models reflect two understandings of Sin. Paul spoke of Sin as a Power keeping humanity in captivity, separated from the life of God, and as those actions people commit which do not align with the divine will. Sin is both a demonic force wielding the Law as a club, unimpeded by human resistance, and a human transgression. Under the Christus Victor theme, Christ dethrones the Power of Sin. Reconciling His human and divine wills at Gethsemane, He allows himself to be swallowed up by death in order to defeat the enemy on its own turf. Christ is the conqueror of Hell, winning the decisive battle of an apocalyptic war for the fate of humanity. It is a liberation from collective guilt and condemnation.
As Rutledge points out, it is interesting that many Christians today consider this image of the cross a less violent alternative to the image of Penal Substitution. Throughout Christian history, the image of Christ as a conquering hero defeating the forces of evil and binding them in chains has lent itself quite easily to a crusading mentality. The Anabaptists, generally the most pacifistic strand of the Christian tradition, have never shied from the tradition’s most violent language about the apocalyptic wrath of God against the powers of darkness.
Whereas Christus Victor takes a collectivist view by portraying the defeat of Sin as a power that controls everyone, Penal Substitution has a more individualist bent, focusing on the role of our flawed human agency in contributing to the fallenness of the world. While Christus Victor offers us mutual release, Penal Substitution reminds us of our personal culpability. The collective, apocalyptic view lends itself easily to our age of culture wars, hyperpartisan politics, and identitarian struggle. The individual, Substitutionary view offers an uncomfortable reminder that each of us has, in our own unique way, contributed to every problem we’ve ever complained about. I am in full agreement with Rutledge about the need for its revival.
In the chapter on Substitution, Rutledge offers an illuminating analysis of Karl Barth. Barth not only produced a compelling defense of the Substitutionary model; he also seems to have made a significant gesture towards painting a picture of how the two models can complement each other. According to Barth, Christ not only substituted Himself for man in bearing the consequence of sin; He also disempowered and replaced man as the judge of the world. In Adam, we judge the world in our own self-serving manner, making ourselves into innocent victims and others into evil offenders. When Christ substituted Himself for us, He became the judge, justifying us even as he relieves us from the folly of justifying ourselves.
I leave you with a poem by the great John Donne, quoted in the chapter on Recapitulation:
“We think that Paradise and Calvarie,
Christ’s Crosse and Adam’s tree, stood in one place.
Looke, Lord, and finde both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.”
It may not often occur to those raised in the Christian faith how peculiar it is that an image of a tortured man hanging on a cross has become the world’s most ubiquitous symbol of religious piety. If one approaches religion as an anthropologist would—that is, if one views religion as a system of belief and practice designed to produce social cohesion and psychological comfort—it becomes baffling to consider that more than a billion followers of perhaps the most sophisticated and successful religious tradition in history worship a crucified man as God incarnate; and that some of them even wear the instrument of his execution as jewelry.
Though the Church Fathers focused less on the gruesome details of the crucifixion than on its theological import for God and the human destiny, subsequent artists have seemed to revel in portraying Jesus’s execution in all of its captivating brutality. Mel Gibson’s much-maligned film The Passion of the Christ comes readily to mind. Fleming Rutledge is drawn to Matthias Grunewald’s Isenheim Alterpiece from 1515, and it’s easy to see why. Jesus is crucified under a black sky; his skin has taken on the gray-green hue of a corpse; the fingers of his impaled hands claw at the air; his muscles are taut, his entire body wracked by pain; thick blood runs from his wounds; his flesh is punctured all over by wooden splinters.
John the Baptist stands beside him, pointing; an odd choice by the artist, since John had already met his end before the crucifixion. John recites one of his quotations from John 3:30: “illum oportet crescere me autem minui”: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” John seems to be rubbing our noses in what we’re seeing; admonishing us for looking away—looking anywhere else—for consolation.
The crucifixion of the Son of God seems like a cosmic train wreck. Why did it happen? What did it accomplish? Secular critics have panned the passion story as a celebration of “divine child abuse”. According to this understanding, Jesus was made to suffer to appease the wrath of an angry God; a cruel and vindictive God who needed the blood of an innocent man so that humanity as a whole might be spared. But this is a misunderstanding of the Christian God. If we understand God as Trinity, the notion that one Person of this Trinity would stand in opposition to another—blunting the force of His rage to shield the rest of us from it, like a soldier throwing himself on a grenade—becomes untenable.
If we are to understand the orthodox Christian understanding of the crucifixion, we have to imagine it as an inevitable action taken by the three Persons of the Trinity working in concert, in accordance with God’s unchanging nature and will. The rectifying death of the Son was an act of God; not humanity, and not Jesus as a man separated from the divine nature. God did not sacrifice his Son; God became incarnate in the Son, and it was God who died as a rebel and a blasphemer.
The story is shot through with paradox. God suffers a godless death. To die by crucifixion in Roman Palestine was to die as a nonentity. Condemned by the religious and secular authorities alike, left naked on a cross outside the city walls, crucifixion was more than just an execution; it was a collective casting out of the victim, a severing of all his ties with community and civilization. A crucified Jew was no longer a Jew; indeed, he was no longer anything. It was the death of a feral animal.
Yet for the incarnate God, this death was the decisive victory over what the Apostle Paul called the “Powers”; Sin and Death, the omnipresent captors of the human race. Somehow, by allowing Himself to be subjected to death, the final consequence of sin, God defeated and dethroned it, because nothing in creation can withstand His presence. Strikingly, Paul says that Jesus became sin, and in so doing, abolished its power over human life. In the Christian scriptures themselves, as well as throughout the Christian tradition, numerous motifs have been used to conceptualize God’s overcoming of death through death. Rutledge’s supreme accomplishment in this book lies in the skill and clarity with which she delineates these motifs and allows them to coexist. She demonstrates the explanatory power of each interpretation, while always remaining vigilant about how each interpretation can lead to misunderstandings if it is adhered to militantly, at the exclusion of the others, instead of allowing the perspectives to be mutually informative.
The underlying theme from which she does not stray is the agency of God. Too often the Christian story is portrayed as a sloppy divine clean-up operation following the botched experiment at the Garden of Eden. To be sure, humanity turned away from God after Adam’s fall, which is to be understood not as an historical event but as an immutable characteristic of human nature; the fundamental human striving for control over a life which was given to us without our choosing; a lack at the core of the human heart which may be analogized with the loss of childhood innocence. We are all children of Adam, inheritors of Adam’s curse; and yet, the Passion and Resurrection of Christ (and His resurrection was a vindication of His Passion) tells us that the curse has already been lifted; not by us, but by God.
Two of the most prominent interpretations of Christ’s redemptive death are the Christus Victor theme and the Penal Substitution theme. The former emphasizes the triumph of Christ over the forces of death, while the latter emphasizes the gravity of sin in the face of God’s justice. In our time, the Penal Substitution model has largely fallen out of favor. People find it disturbing—even barbaric; the notion that Christ died in our place, exchanging his life for ours. Many Christians are simply uncomfortable with talk of sin. They want a religion of uplift and perpetual forgiveness; not one of condemnation or an obsession with human folly. Yet if one accepts the notion of Original Sin, one cannot follow the news without seeing that the power of man’s fallenness is very much active in the world.
Even while she recognizes its faults, Rutledge defends the substitutionary view brilliantly. She devotes a chapter to rehabilitating Anselm of Canterbury, thought to be the father of Penal Substitution; and to a lesser extent, she even rehabilitates that rascal John Calvin, showing him to be perhaps not as Calvinistic as it would appear at first glance. I suppose if Marx wasn’t a Marxist, Calvin might not have been a Calvinist, either.
The two models reflect two understandings of Sin. Paul spoke of Sin as a Power keeping humanity in captivity, separated from the life of God, and as those actions people commit which do not align with the divine will. Sin is both a demonic force wielding the Law as a club, unimpeded by human resistance, and a human transgression. Under the Christus Victor theme, Christ dethrones the Power of Sin. Reconciling His human and divine wills at Gethsemane, He allows himself to be swallowed up by death in order to defeat the enemy on its own turf. Christ is the conqueror of Hell, winning the decisive battle of an apocalyptic war for the fate of humanity. It is a liberation from collective guilt and condemnation.
As Rutledge points out, it is interesting that many Christians today consider this image of the cross a less violent alternative to the image of Penal Substitution. Throughout Christian history, the image of Christ as a conquering hero defeating the forces of evil and binding them in chains has lent itself quite easily to a crusading mentality. The Anabaptists, generally the most pacifistic strand of the Christian tradition, have never shied from the tradition’s most violent language about the apocalyptic wrath of God against the powers of darkness.
Whereas Christus Victor takes a collectivist view by portraying the defeat of Sin as a power that controls everyone, Penal Substitution has a more individualist bent, focusing on the role of our flawed human agency in contributing to the fallenness of the world. While Christus Victor offers us mutual release, Penal Substitution reminds us of our personal culpability. The collective, apocalyptic view lends itself easily to our age of culture wars, hyperpartisan politics, and identitarian struggle. The individual, Substitutionary view offers an uncomfortable reminder that each of us has, in our own unique way, contributed to every problem we’ve ever complained about. I am in full agreement with Rutledge about the need for its revival.
In the chapter on Substitution, Rutledge offers an illuminating analysis of Karl Barth. Barth not only produced a compelling defense of the Substitutionary model; he also seems to have made a significant gesture towards painting a picture of how the two models can complement each other. According to Barth, Christ not only substituted Himself for man in bearing the consequence of sin; He also disempowered and replaced man as the judge of the world. In Adam, we judge the world in our own self-serving manner, making ourselves into innocent victims and others into evil offenders. When Christ substituted Himself for us, He became the judge, justifying us even as he relieves us from the folly of justifying ourselves.
I leave you with a poem by the great John Donne, quoted in the chapter on Recapitulation:
“We think that Paradise and Calvarie,
Christ’s Crosse and Adam’s tree, stood in one place.
Looke, Lord, and finde both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.”
August 7, 2024
This book was an undertaking, but extremely worth it, and only took 6 months! It changed my view on a lot of things and reassured some doubts/confusions in a lot of places. Really grateful for book club friends- Laura, John, Lizzy, Max and Pastor Adrienne for going through the book with me.
“If God is truly in charge of his own plan of redemption, then any suggestion that human agency is determinative is theologically fatal to the entire enterprise.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion
“If God is truly in charge of his own plan of redemption, then any suggestion that human agency is determinative is theologically fatal to the entire enterprise.”
― Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion
June 26, 2024
An absolute masterpiece.
June 19, 2017
If you're my friend on Facebook, you know that I've been posting quotes and passages from Fleming Rutledge since early March, when I began this 600+ page tome in preparation for the Easter season. This theological text immerses the reader in a theology of the cross that contradicts a lot of easy, safe readings of the crucifixion in our churches and our culture. While it's theologically dense and rich (with fully engrossing footnotes on every page, I might add), Rutledge keeps it all very accessible and readable and her mainline liturgical tradition (she's Episcopal) offers insights that many in the evangelical churches would benefit from.
It's hard to do justice to the scope of her argument, but a few significant highlights would be what Rutledge refers to as the "godforsakenness" and "irregiousness" of the cross. As she quotes Bonhoeffer, "God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross." The first section of the text accordingly details the significance of the method by which Christ was executed--the death of a slave, an outcast, a nobody. It's critical to foreground the humiliation and the godlessness/accursedness of the form of execution itself to fully highlight the enormity of the Sin being punished.
Connected to this emphasis on the utter severity of the sin being atoned for on the cross, Rutledge regularly makes use of apocalyptic theology (revealed from a sphere outside the realm of human affairs), which she defines "on the simplest level as the thought-world that emerged among the Hebrew people after the exile, in which the human situation is seen as so tragic and insoluble that the only hope for deliverance is from outside this sphere altogether" (140). In other words, the "Powers" of Sin, Death, and Law enslave humanity to such a degree that God in his grace pushes his people to the point at which they realize that righteousness and salvation can not be achieved by individual efforts, even by God's people, and that divine agency is absolutely necessary. Rutledge defines this divine agency through use of the Greek word, "dikaiosyne" (righteousness/rectification) as the primary work which God accomplishes--he rectifies and has the power to make right that which is twisted, deformed, and dead. My Reformed sensibilities really resonated with this idea of God as primary actor in our salvation.
Yet this emphasis on rectification, which forms a thread throughout, will also likely make many conservative evangelical readers a bit nervous for a few reasons. First, it permits her to translate God's wrath (which has turned many away from desiring to follow God) into wrath against all that has disrupted his plans and the order of his creation, specifically those spiritually transcendent Powers of Sin and Death. As a result, "God's punitive actions are [always] in the service of his salvation" (602). It does seem as if Rutledge veers in the direction of universalism (as a reference to Barth in a footnote late in the volume seems to indicate) and/or annihilationism for those condemned to hell. She also makes use of Romans 11:32 to hint at the possibility that all may be eventually saved. Indeed, one whole chapter argues that Christ descended into hell to preach to and save those who had died "in sin" and not just those who lived by faith before he came to earth (i.e. the patriarchs).
Again, fair warning to any Christian readers from more literal faith traditions: Rutledge does not believe in a historical Adam (Adam is essentially just a metaphor for fallen humanity) and she's really antagonistic towards the notion of substitutionary atonement as a kind of penal satisfaction, which she feels has been too abused as an all-encompassing theory of the crucifixion throughout history, and has placed too much attention on God's wrath towards the individual. But I do appreciate how she answers the objections that many have regarding Christ's death as a form of "divine child abuse," always foregrounding the assent and mutual decision of the members of the Trinity, each of which cooperated and participated in bringing about our redemption.
So long as you read with discernment, there's a lot here to chew on for the building of your faith!
It's hard to do justice to the scope of her argument, but a few significant highlights would be what Rutledge refers to as the "godforsakenness" and "irregiousness" of the cross. As she quotes Bonhoeffer, "God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross." The first section of the text accordingly details the significance of the method by which Christ was executed--the death of a slave, an outcast, a nobody. It's critical to foreground the humiliation and the godlessness/accursedness of the form of execution itself to fully highlight the enormity of the Sin being punished.
Connected to this emphasis on the utter severity of the sin being atoned for on the cross, Rutledge regularly makes use of apocalyptic theology (revealed from a sphere outside the realm of human affairs), which she defines "on the simplest level as the thought-world that emerged among the Hebrew people after the exile, in which the human situation is seen as so tragic and insoluble that the only hope for deliverance is from outside this sphere altogether" (140). In other words, the "Powers" of Sin, Death, and Law enslave humanity to such a degree that God in his grace pushes his people to the point at which they realize that righteousness and salvation can not be achieved by individual efforts, even by God's people, and that divine agency is absolutely necessary. Rutledge defines this divine agency through use of the Greek word, "dikaiosyne" (righteousness/rectification) as the primary work which God accomplishes--he rectifies and has the power to make right that which is twisted, deformed, and dead. My Reformed sensibilities really resonated with this idea of God as primary actor in our salvation.
Yet this emphasis on rectification, which forms a thread throughout, will also likely make many conservative evangelical readers a bit nervous for a few reasons. First, it permits her to translate God's wrath (which has turned many away from desiring to follow God) into wrath against all that has disrupted his plans and the order of his creation, specifically those spiritually transcendent Powers of Sin and Death. As a result, "God's punitive actions are [always] in the service of his salvation" (602). It does seem as if Rutledge veers in the direction of universalism (as a reference to Barth in a footnote late in the volume seems to indicate) and/or annihilationism for those condemned to hell. She also makes use of Romans 11:32 to hint at the possibility that all may be eventually saved. Indeed, one whole chapter argues that Christ descended into hell to preach to and save those who had died "in sin" and not just those who lived by faith before he came to earth (i.e. the patriarchs).
Again, fair warning to any Christian readers from more literal faith traditions: Rutledge does not believe in a historical Adam (Adam is essentially just a metaphor for fallen humanity) and she's really antagonistic towards the notion of substitutionary atonement as a kind of penal satisfaction, which she feels has been too abused as an all-encompassing theory of the crucifixion throughout history, and has placed too much attention on God's wrath towards the individual. But I do appreciate how she answers the objections that many have regarding Christ's death as a form of "divine child abuse," always foregrounding the assent and mutual decision of the members of the Trinity, each of which cooperated and participated in bringing about our redemption.
So long as you read with discernment, there's a lot here to chew on for the building of your faith!
February 28, 2017
Well, this was a great book. It has been a while since I read anything that was at the same time so insightful and true in its distillation of what the gospel is all about and so infuriating in the things it missed.
Rutledge is a great author who writes with clarity and passion. I deeply appreciate one of her primary insights - that the cross of Jesus has a multifaceted meaning in the NT. Each element of the meaning of the cross should be appreciated and appropriated into our larger theological grid. I think this is the best book I have read on that topic, other than Calvin and Bavinck.
It was also good for me to read someone that is a good bit left of me theologically. She comes from a different world entirely (mainline Protestantism) and so just hearing the sources she quoted, etc. was fun. The overlap in her insights and the insights of some of the best biblical theologians in the evangelical camp was encouraging.
The most infuriating part of the book is her tendency towards universalism. Whereas she is typically quite clear, she was atypically fuzzy on this topic, but the last chapter seemed to me to be leading in a clear direction. I really appreciate her thoughts on the "great assize" and the wrath of God - they are worth deep reflection. But I cannot escape the simple fact that she chooses selectively which biblical texts to use for her argument, and ignores the ones that clearly oppose her prior held conclusions.
So, read this charitably and read it thoughtfully. But is is unquestionably worth reading.
5 stars.
Rutledge is a great author who writes with clarity and passion. I deeply appreciate one of her primary insights - that the cross of Jesus has a multifaceted meaning in the NT. Each element of the meaning of the cross should be appreciated and appropriated into our larger theological grid. I think this is the best book I have read on that topic, other than Calvin and Bavinck.
It was also good for me to read someone that is a good bit left of me theologically. She comes from a different world entirely (mainline Protestantism) and so just hearing the sources she quoted, etc. was fun. The overlap in her insights and the insights of some of the best biblical theologians in the evangelical camp was encouraging.
The most infuriating part of the book is her tendency towards universalism. Whereas she is typically quite clear, she was atypically fuzzy on this topic, but the last chapter seemed to me to be leading in a clear direction. I really appreciate her thoughts on the "great assize" and the wrath of God - they are worth deep reflection. But I cannot escape the simple fact that she chooses selectively which biblical texts to use for her argument, and ignores the ones that clearly oppose her prior held conclusions.
So, read this charitably and read it thoughtfully. But is is unquestionably worth reading.
5 stars.
January 8, 2024
Helped me understand the humanity of Jesus more clearly. Very powerful.
December 12, 2022
If I'd read this book a few years ago, it likely would have rocked my faith. But the last few years filled with reading the Patristics and a wider range of Christian authors prepared me for The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ. To my Reformed Baptist friends (and related acquaintances), this book will seem very challenging and (probably) liberal. But for her own mainline audiences, this book (I would guess) would feel conservative, even unbearably so. I found this book to be a serious, orthodox, Trinitarian call to rightly understand the crucifixion.
I've heard this book explained by the Rev. herself as trying to answer the question, "Why the crucifixion?," meaning: why such a horrendous, ignominious, grotesque death? To answer that question, Fleming Rutledge brings together the scriptures, church history, and some of theology's greatest thinkers. The answer: no other death would display such godforsaken-ness as the godlessness of the cross, in which Jesus stands on behalf of humanity to break the power of sin and death and victoriously create a new world. This book is at it's best when it's grappling with the motifs of the crucifixion straight from scripture, and directly dealing with some of hardest questions about views of the atonement (e.g., was the cross divine child abuse?).
On the other hand, this book can be frustrating or challenging when a) Rutledge presents a question but doesn't answer it directly and b) suggests without ever fully stating directly. I think this is most relevant with the last chapter, when she discusses the universal implications of Christ's work, which she never fully defines. Relatedly, what might make some of my own Baptist friends most uncomfortable is her opinion that the end is either annihilation or a universal salvation. Yet this perspective is present even in some early church Fathers, placing Rev. Fleming Rutledge pretty squarely in the realm of orthodoxy.
This book filled me with great wonder at the world-changing, death-destroying, powerful work of God in Jesus Christ, a power that can "give life to the dead and call into existence the things that do not exist" (Rom. 4:17). Are we of so little faith that we believe God cannot do what he sees fit? It also reminded me of the importance of theological, spiritual, and even academic humility. We cannot always conclusively answer every question of theological importance. But we can wrestle with these questions. And—as with Jacob—blessing follows wrestling.
P.S. My favorite atonement book is The Mosaic of Atonement: An Integrated Approach to Christ's Work if you are looking for a slightly less dense, more approachable book on the atonement!
I've heard this book explained by the Rev. herself as trying to answer the question, "Why the crucifixion?," meaning: why such a horrendous, ignominious, grotesque death? To answer that question, Fleming Rutledge brings together the scriptures, church history, and some of theology's greatest thinkers. The answer: no other death would display such godforsaken-ness as the godlessness of the cross, in which Jesus stands on behalf of humanity to break the power of sin and death and victoriously create a new world. This book is at it's best when it's grappling with the motifs of the crucifixion straight from scripture, and directly dealing with some of hardest questions about views of the atonement (e.g., was the cross divine child abuse?).
On the other hand, this book can be frustrating or challenging when a) Rutledge presents a question but doesn't answer it directly and b) suggests without ever fully stating directly. I think this is most relevant with the last chapter, when she discusses the universal implications of Christ's work, which she never fully defines. Relatedly, what might make some of my own Baptist friends most uncomfortable is her opinion that the end is either annihilation or a universal salvation. Yet this perspective is present even in some early church Fathers, placing Rev. Fleming Rutledge pretty squarely in the realm of orthodoxy.
This book filled me with great wonder at the world-changing, death-destroying, powerful work of God in Jesus Christ, a power that can "give life to the dead and call into existence the things that do not exist" (Rom. 4:17). Are we of so little faith that we believe God cannot do what he sees fit? It also reminded me of the importance of theological, spiritual, and even academic humility. We cannot always conclusively answer every question of theological importance. But we can wrestle with these questions. And—as with Jacob—blessing follows wrestling.
P.S. My favorite atonement book is The Mosaic of Atonement: An Integrated Approach to Christ's Work if you are looking for a slightly less dense, more approachable book on the atonement!
March 12, 2018
I thoroughly enjoyed this book - in fact more than I expected. Given that this is a scholarly book and I hadn't read anything by this Author (though I had heard a podcast of a couple of her talks), I was pleasantly surprised by how easy I found this to read, and how inspiring I found many of the Authors arguments.
Whilst I have many different understandings than the Author, these were normally in side issues - and didn't affect her passion for the Gospel. I found her argument for Justice to be quite refreshing, especially given that it wasn't at the expense of Grace and Mercy. I also appreciated her emphasis on the obscene and horrific nature of the Crucifixion - which I agree we should be reminded of.
This is not only a good coverage of the Crucifixion and what it means, but this is a good book to get you thinking about the Atonement - and the various aspects of it / approaches to it. Always good when a book gives you much to think about.
I am also appreciative that the Author has renewed in me an appreciation of Anslem of Canterbury. I was introduced to him almost 30 years ago - but now realised that I my admiration had slowly diminished over time, and that I had completely lost what Anslem had meant by "Satisfaction". The Author's handling of Anslem - and in using his arguments in a foundational way - was refreshing - and it was like getting an old friend back again :)
As noted, this book is quite scholarly and of decent length, so I would not recommend it to all. But if you want to get into a good discussion on the Crucifixion / Atonement that includes a travel throughout history, and are prepared to examine your own preconceptions then I think you would also enjoy this!
Whilst I have many different understandings than the Author, these were normally in side issues - and didn't affect her passion for the Gospel. I found her argument for Justice to be quite refreshing, especially given that it wasn't at the expense of Grace and Mercy. I also appreciated her emphasis on the obscene and horrific nature of the Crucifixion - which I agree we should be reminded of.
This is not only a good coverage of the Crucifixion and what it means, but this is a good book to get you thinking about the Atonement - and the various aspects of it / approaches to it. Always good when a book gives you much to think about.
I am also appreciative that the Author has renewed in me an appreciation of Anslem of Canterbury. I was introduced to him almost 30 years ago - but now realised that I my admiration had slowly diminished over time, and that I had completely lost what Anslem had meant by "Satisfaction". The Author's handling of Anslem - and in using his arguments in a foundational way - was refreshing - and it was like getting an old friend back again :)
As noted, this book is quite scholarly and of decent length, so I would not recommend it to all. But if you want to get into a good discussion on the Crucifixion / Atonement that includes a travel throughout history, and are prepared to examine your own preconceptions then I think you would also enjoy this!
July 17, 2019
If you are a theologically-inclined person AT ALL, then you must put this at the top of your reading list. Seriously. It's that good, and that important.
"Crucifixion" is almost a systematic theology in the guise of a book about a single historical event. Rutledge leaves no stone unturned in a brilliant and thorough effort to explore every implication of the idea that God was crucified on the cross of Christ. Her writing is powerful and deeply learned, but never difficult. Her perspective is generous and broad, incorporating cultural commentary, and the best of feminist/liberation/womanist/non-Western-male theologies, but remains uncompromising in her arguments. She also understands the important critiques that have been leveled at various interpretations of scripture (esp. penal substitution), and responds with pastoral care and scholarly rigor. She doesn't shy away from any topic - justice, mercy, forgiveness, sin, justification, apocalyptic interpretations of Paul, theodicy, suffering, substitution, sacrifice, cosmic war, to name a few. It's all there, explored from the starting point of calvary.
This book is a feast. Buy it, clear your calendar, and sit at the glorious table that Rutledge has prepared. She is a massive gift to the church, and this 600-page book is worth every minute it demands of you.
"Crucifixion" is almost a systematic theology in the guise of a book about a single historical event. Rutledge leaves no stone unturned in a brilliant and thorough effort to explore every implication of the idea that God was crucified on the cross of Christ. Her writing is powerful and deeply learned, but never difficult. Her perspective is generous and broad, incorporating cultural commentary, and the best of feminist/liberation/womanist/non-Western-male theologies, but remains uncompromising in her arguments. She also understands the important critiques that have been leveled at various interpretations of scripture (esp. penal substitution), and responds with pastoral care and scholarly rigor. She doesn't shy away from any topic - justice, mercy, forgiveness, sin, justification, apocalyptic interpretations of Paul, theodicy, suffering, substitution, sacrifice, cosmic war, to name a few. It's all there, explored from the starting point of calvary.
This book is a feast. Buy it, clear your calendar, and sit at the glorious table that Rutledge has prepared. She is a massive gift to the church, and this 600-page book is worth every minute it demands of you.
February 11, 2024
Never before have I read a book in which the death of Christ is discussed in such a profound way. Starting and ending with the biblical witnesses Rutledge tackles as many difficult questions as she can think of; especially those questions that seem to be forgotten in our therapeutic society where the question 'what does it mean to me?' too often crowds out everything else.
Ranging from the early church fathers to contemporary theologians Rutledge offers her own analysis on many difficult issues and doesn't shrink back from reading, using and even rehabilitating theologians who are receiving a lot of bad press these days, like Anselm and John Calvin.
Interspersed with many examples from literature, music and art, and constantly placing the significance of Jesus' death in relation to the things happening today, this book is highly recommended!!!
Ranging from the early church fathers to contemporary theologians Rutledge offers her own analysis on many difficult issues and doesn't shrink back from reading, using and even rehabilitating theologians who are receiving a lot of bad press these days, like Anselm and John Calvin.
Interspersed with many examples from literature, music and art, and constantly placing the significance of Jesus' death in relation to the things happening today, this book is highly recommended!!!
March 27, 2022
Goodness! All the times I have felt like I could see multiple sides to an argument, Rutledge gives me permission to continue doing so. Scholarly and thorough, so not a page turner. But the power of the cross echoes off every page.
June 26, 2018
I can't review this book better than Andrew Wilson does here: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/re...
August 19, 2019
“All for sin could not atone, thou must save, and thou alone.” This is what is happening on Golgotha. All the manifold biblical images with their richness, complexity, and depth come together as one to say: the righteousness of God is revealed in the cross of Christ. The ‘precious blood’ of the Son of God is the perfect sacrifice for sin; the ransom is paid to deliver the captives; the gates of hell are stormed; the Red Sea is crossed and the enemy drowned; God’s judgment has been executed upon Sin; the disobedience of Adam is recapitulated in the obedience of Christ; a new creation is coming into being; those who put their trust in Christ are incorporated into his life; the kingdoms of ‘the present evil age’ are passing away and the promised kingdom of God is manifest not in triumphalist crusades, but in the cruciform witness of the church.” – Fleming Rutledge
Perhaps more than anything in the her authoritative text on the crucifixion, nothing is more convincing to me than Rutledge’s passion and joy about her subject material. She speaks with personal conviction and that far exceeds the impact of her thorough researched and massive citations. She is a gifted writer, but a better pastor. And she pastors you through the biggest questions about the most important historical event of all time. Though I found myself in disagreement with her in many cases , I was moved in many areas. In particular, her argument in defense of the crucifixion itself as the center of Christianity. Her linguistic skills are remarkable, especially her use of “rectification” for dikaiosis. Her defense of Anselm is convincing (and convinced me).
She was generous with almost everyone she parted ways with, including N.T. Wright and Delores Williams, two of my favorite writers. She embraces all atonement views and writes about them with eloquence and detail, but parts ways with Gustav Aulen. She straddles the line between individual and corporate sin, and generally views the substitutionary model (though her defense of it is the weakest portion of the book, for my taste), but indirectly addresses her critics (whom she accuses of having too literalist of a reading). Her lack of contextual theology and contextual understanding of atonement, though it would weaken her thesis, was a notably missing element. But she was generous with Anabaptists like J. Denny Weaver and even John Howard Yoder.
She remains orthodox through, but generous with the universality of the Gospel, but never dismissive of doctrine. She never strays from orthodoxy, but is committed in her Reformed tradition, nearly called Arminians (though she never names them) Pelagianists. I can hardly hold her Reformed views against her merely because I come from a different vantage point, but read with a Reformed lens, this book is definitive. Apart from that though, it is a life’s work, that is well-worth reading.
Perhaps more than anything in the her authoritative text on the crucifixion, nothing is more convincing to me than Rutledge’s passion and joy about her subject material. She speaks with personal conviction and that far exceeds the impact of her thorough researched and massive citations. She is a gifted writer, but a better pastor. And she pastors you through the biggest questions about the most important historical event of all time. Though I found myself in disagreement with her in many cases , I was moved in many areas. In particular, her argument in defense of the crucifixion itself as the center of Christianity. Her linguistic skills are remarkable, especially her use of “rectification” for dikaiosis. Her defense of Anselm is convincing (and convinced me).
She was generous with almost everyone she parted ways with, including N.T. Wright and Delores Williams, two of my favorite writers. She embraces all atonement views and writes about them with eloquence and detail, but parts ways with Gustav Aulen. She straddles the line between individual and corporate sin, and generally views the substitutionary model (though her defense of it is the weakest portion of the book, for my taste), but indirectly addresses her critics (whom she accuses of having too literalist of a reading). Her lack of contextual theology and contextual understanding of atonement, though it would weaken her thesis, was a notably missing element. But she was generous with Anabaptists like J. Denny Weaver and even John Howard Yoder.
She remains orthodox through, but generous with the universality of the Gospel, but never dismissive of doctrine. She never strays from orthodoxy, but is committed in her Reformed tradition, nearly called Arminians (though she never names them) Pelagianists. I can hardly hold her Reformed views against her merely because I come from a different vantage point, but read with a Reformed lens, this book is definitive. Apart from that though, it is a life’s work, that is well-worth reading.
February 25, 2021
A top 3-5 theological book I have ever read, easily. Mrs. Rutledge is one of my favorite authors, as some of her other written works and her regular tweeting habits (even as an 83 year old woman) have truly blessed, enriched, and deepened my Christian faith. This 600+ page study of the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross is the apex of a lifetime of pastoral ministry and scholarship, and it's nearly perfect in my assessment. I read this alongside another 20-something CoC minister friend, and we were both so grateful for Mrs. Rutledge's ministry of study that is a gift to all ages of Christians in every stream of the Church.
"All the manifold biblical images with their richness, complexity, and depth come together as one to say this: the righteousness of God is revealed in the cross of Christ. The 'precious blood' of the Son of God is the perfect sacrifice for sin; the ransom is paid to deliver the captives; the gates of hell are stormed; the Red Sea is crossed and the enemy drowned; God's judgment has been executed upon Sin; the disobedience of Adam is recapitulated in the obedience of Christ; a new creation is coming into being; those who put their trust in Christ are incorporated into his life; the kingdoms of the 'present evil age' are passing away and the promised kingdom of God is manifest not in triumphalist crusades, but in the cruciform witness of the Church."
"All the manifold biblical images with their richness, complexity, and depth come together as one to say this: the righteousness of God is revealed in the cross of Christ. The 'precious blood' of the Son of God is the perfect sacrifice for sin; the ransom is paid to deliver the captives; the gates of hell are stormed; the Red Sea is crossed and the enemy drowned; God's judgment has been executed upon Sin; the disobedience of Adam is recapitulated in the obedience of Christ; a new creation is coming into being; those who put their trust in Christ are incorporated into his life; the kingdoms of the 'present evil age' are passing away and the promised kingdom of God is manifest not in triumphalist crusades, but in the cruciform witness of the Church."
May 28, 2023
A massive overview of the crucifixion which can only be digested slowly over a period of weeks. Rutledge writes from a mainline Protestant perspective but from a theologically conservative stance. In this regard, she had me thinking in way that I had not considered before and articulated aspects of the cross that I knew but I hadn't read expressed in that way before. It's not easy but it's well worth the investment of time and energy!
January 13, 2025
70% of the book: overwhelmingly beautiful expositions of the gospel and intricate weaving of atonement theories including some of the richest thoughts on evil and rectification I’ve read. 30% of the book: Flemming fighting academic boogeymen and playing insider baseball.
The footnotes are where it’s at.
The footnotes are where it’s at.
October 31, 2023
A wonderful and powerful read. Accessible to laity, pastor and academic. Rutledge does an exceptional job of unpacking several motifs surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus, and the implications of this rectifying work of the righteousness of God.
March 12, 2022
It took a while, but I finally finished this magisterial work on the meaning and power of the cross of Christ. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
February 21, 2025
Rutledge is, as always, challenging and frank. While this work is dense, she is easily readable for a non-theologian. I will put this on my “read it again” shelf.
April 5, 2023
Such a great book! It was a slow read because it was so rich and filled with good, thought-provoking theology. A very fitting read for Lent.
May 4, 2020
I’ll start with a caveat: I’m not giving this book five stars because I agree with every last word; there are a few implications that I’m still wrestling with. Rather, I give it five stars because it bears such beautiful, rich testimony to what Jesus has done, is doing, and will do. And, because it’s given me a million new ways to think about the Cross as both history and symbol. And, because it picks up on so much of the Bible’s poetry, tying together themes and motifs that illuminate the central story of the Bible: God’s love endures forever. I could draw special attention to Rutledge’s persuasive argument for Christian nonviolence; her portrayal of the fundamental godlessness of the crucifixion; her lovely take on God’s wrath as an instrument of his love. But if I go too deep, we’ll be here all day. Suffice to say: Highly enriching. Paradigm-shifting. Pretty accessible! Will help deepen your love of the Bible, and all the more so your love of Jesus.
July 26, 2021
Top 3 book of all-time. It is an absolute must read. This book has genuinely changed my life.
Fleming Rutledge is an incredible author and her book is an invaluable resource. This is a book I will continue to come back to for the rest of my life.
Her posture of grace and humility was a breath of fresh air and others, especially those writing on controversial subjects, should seek to emulate her.
Fleming Rutledge is an incredible author and her book is an invaluable resource. This is a book I will continue to come back to for the rest of my life.
Her posture of grace and humility was a breath of fresh air and others, especially those writing on controversial subjects, should seek to emulate her.
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