Proclaiming the Crucifixion

The following is the conclusion to a lecture I recently gave, entitled “Parsing the Grammar of Atonement.”

All of the biblical metaphors for atonement are needed.  They serve as necessary imaginative windows into the utterly irreducible reality of the reconciliation accomplished in the person of Christ.  “The metaphors,” Colin Gunton observes, “are the means by which it is possible to speak of the meaning of the gospel narratives taken as a whole.”1 This quotation from Gunton is helpful as it gestures towards two significant aspects of how metaphors function, both of which are sometimes forgotten when the metaphors are pressed in an overly theorized direction. Continue reading Proclaiming the Crucifixion

  1. Colin E. Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement: A Study of Metaphor, Rationality and the Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 42.

On Feet and Forgiveness

“With the basin, God’s people are schooled in the humility necessary to serve in Christ’s upside-down kingdom.1 The practice of foot-washing challenges our deeply held goals and aspirations by replacing popular conceptions of success with a vision of radical downward mobility. Continue reading On Feet and Forgiveness

  1. Reflecting on the practice of foot-washing, Jean Vanier writes, “It is always very moving for me when someone with disabilities washes my feet or when I see a person wash the feet of their mother or father. It is the world turned upside down.” Jean Vanier, Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John (Ottawa: Novalis, 2004), 228.