Instead of Atonement: The Bible's Salvation Story and Our Hope for Wholeness

Do atonement theologies that focus on Jesus death underwrite human violence? If so we do well to rethink beliefs that this death is necessary to bring salvation. Focusing on the Bibles salvation story Instead of Atonement argues for a logic of mercy to replace Christianitys traditional logic of retribution. The book traces the Bibles main salvation story through Gods liberating acts the testimony of the prophets and Jesuss life and teaching. It then takes a closer look at Jesuss death and argues that his death gains its meaning when it exposes violence in the cultural religious and political Powers. Gods raising of Jesus completes the story and vindicates Jesuss life and teaching. The book also examines the understandings of salvation in Romans and Revelation that reinforce the message that salvation is a gift of God and that Jesuss work has to do with his faithful life his resistance to the Powers and Gods vindication of him through resurrection. The book concludes that the Bibles salvation story provides a different way instead of atonement to understand salvation. In turn this biblical understanding gives us today theological resources for a mercy-oriented approach to responding to wrongdoing one that follows Gods own model. Against the assumption that Torah and the Prophets display a God of retribution Grimsrud shows both picture God as merciful. Rather than dying because God demanded retribution for sin Jesus died because the powers that opposed him--law temple empire--demanded retribution for breaking their rules. Many such challenges to the presumed biblical view of retribution make Instead of Atonement a welcome addition to recent arguments rejecting the prevailing acceptance of divine violence. --J. Denny Weaver author of The Nonviolent Atonement In the last quarter century the theology and ethics of retributive justice have come under long-overdue critical scrutiny. Practical experiments in peacemaking and restorative justice are challenging conventional wisdom animating social imagination and inspiring radical revisions of traditional atonement soteriology. Ted Grimsrud--one of our most reliable first-world theologians--provides the most concise readable and compelling summary to date of the biblical case for the turn to restorative justice. This book will help empower a revolutionary reclamation of a healing Christian faith for our violent times. --Ched Myers author of Binding the Strong Man Ted Grimsrud is Professor of Theology and Peace Studies at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg Virginia. Among his books are Compassionate Eschatology: The Future as Friend (2011) Gods Healing Strategy: An Introduction to the Main Themes of the Bible (2011) Theology as if Jesus Matters (2009) and Embodying the Way of Jesus: Anabaptist Convictions for the Twenty-First Century (2007).