Delivered from the Elements of the World

<P>In <I>Delivered from the Elements of the World</I> Peter Leithart reframes Anselm's question Why the God Man? Instead he asks How can the death and resurrection of a Jewish rabbi of the first century . . . be <I>the</I> decisive event in the history of humanity the hinge and crux and crossroads for <I>everything</I>? With the question reframed for the wide screen Leithart pursues the cultural and public settings and consequences of the cross and resurrection. He writes I hope to show that atonement theology <I>must</I> be social theory if it is going to have any coherence relevance or comprehensibility at all.There are no small thoughts or cramped plot lines in this vision of the deep-down things of cross and culture. While much is recognizable as biblical theology projected along Pauline vectors Leithart marshals a stunning array of discourse to crack open one of the big questions of Christian theology. This is a book on the atonement that eludes conventional categories prods our theological imaginations and is sure to spark conversation and debate.</P>