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Calvin's views on the atonement are regularly taken to be Anselmian. This chapter explores this assumption by examining Anselm's view, which probably is that the atonement is conditionally necessary, conditional upon God's plan to provide salvation to mankind. His view is compared with those of Augustine and Aquinas, who argue that the atonement is not necessary, or at least that it would be overconfident, given the infinite power of God, to argue that it must be necessary. Calvin's own views are more complex. There are a number of places where he argues that God ‘could have saved us by a word’. But the main exposition in the Institutes is quite Anselmian. Can these two strands be reconciled? It is argued that for Calvin, while salvation might be willed by the simple power and authority of God, it has maximal value for us by means of the propitiation of Christ, for then all the blessings of being ‘in Christ’ are available. So Calvin's views have an Anselmian character to them after all.

Four major theories of Atonement in the Christian tradition are summarized: the Orthodox ransom theory, Anselm's satisfaction theory, Calvin's penal substitution theory, and Abelard's subjective theory. Perspectives on Atonement found in Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, Rene Girard, and Robert Jenson are also presented. It is argued that a medical metaphor (Christ as the Healer who submits to the violence of his patients) is more helpful than a legal metaphor. The incarnation is God the Father's action in sending the Son on a medical mission for the healing of humanity, and the crucifixion and resurrection complete the mission. We can always hope that human beings will use their freedom to accept divine healing rather than to reject it, thus growing toward a more peaceful future.

Continues the argument advanced in the first chapter on the anxiety of the Pentateuch's priestly editors about the solidarity between Judah and the descendants of Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh. It addresses the concept of the Day of Atonement, which in the post‐exilic period was associated with Joseph, and is found in the Book of Jubilees, where the ceremony is described as a sin‐offering of a goat. The different sections of the chapter look at the conflicting meanings attached to the ceremony of the scapegoat (or goats) offering – fraternal reconciliation versus unbrotherly rejection. They discuss: the meaning of the ‘scapegoat’; Greek and Hebrew manifestations of the ceremony; scapegoat rituals around the world, the levitical purification ceremony – including the interpretation of the word Azazal (here viewed as the goat that is chosen to be presented to God alive and is then sent away, in contrast to that chosen as the sacrificial sin‐offering); Aaron's sacrifices of atonement; the need for transfer of the sins of Israel to an animal; the bearing of sin by an animal, the punishment of the sin‐bearing animal by exile; the parallels of the goat rites with the rites of two birds in Leviticus and with the stories of two brothers with uneven destinies (Isaac and Ishmael, and Jacob and Esau) in Genesis; and parallels between the assigning of the scapegoat and the commissioning of the Levites or the commissioning of Joshua by Moses in Numbers. The author argues that not much is left of the idea levitical scapegoating ceremony, and suggests that the priestly editors covered up their deep interest in politics and morals by writing in parables but dramatizing their teaching in vivid rituals.

Taboos are effective for guarding thought, and this chapter is about the equivalent role of performance in protecting what is known: it suggests that taboos should be seen as performative acts that stop the confusion of categories of purity/impurity. The author advances her thinking on the dietary rules of Leviticus from her earlier intellectualist approach that considered the rules as isolated categories of infringement, to a consideration that they are a codification of the law of impurity, in which food impurity is related to the defilement of the temple or body: Leviticus, then, is not just a ritual handbook, but much more. The first part of the chapter discusses approaches to taboos in relation to impurity, the politics of purity, forensic problems – as illustrated by the development of the extensive classificatory taboo systems for hunting by the Huaulu of the Celebes Islands, and taboos as building blocks for world‐making. The last part of the chapter turns to Leviticus itself, looking at silence about forensic impurity in Leviticus 1–17, at Jacob Milgrom's view of impurity in Leviticus as a defilement of the tabernacle and the divine power to purify it in a grand ceremony every year on the Day of Atonement, at clean and unclean animals, at the defiling of bodies listed in Leviticus 12–15, and the tabernacle as a microcosm in the context of the final editing of the priestly books during the Babylonian exile (when the temple had been profaned and destroyed, and there was no place to sacrifice or purify). Within the frame of reference for everything is the relation of the people of Israel to their God, and the dietary laws are here viewed as analogies: what cannot be offered to God at the altar may not be consumed as food, and there is no way to understand the law of impurity without considering the whole priestly project.

This chapter examines Anselm's argument for the claim that the death of a God-man was the only possible remedy for human injustice and that God had to offer such a remedy. The first section shows how Anselm sets up his argument by posing, on behalf of the unbeliever, the objection that the Christian account of redemption portrays God as acting in an irrational or unjustified way. The second section offers an account of the role of such considerations of “fitness” in Cur Deus Homo. The third section turns to the argument that Anselm regarded as a suitable answer to the unbeliever's objection: the argument that the death of a God-man is necessary to effect reconciliation between God and human beings. The fourth section considers Anselm's discussion of the metaphysical issues raised by Chalcedonian Christology.

Chapter twenty-three explores Charles Hodge’s Commentary on Romans, which established him as both a national and international biblical scholar of repute. Hodge sought to create a scholarly commentary which could also be of use to lay readers, and he wished to respond to the doctrinal errors he saw in the Romans commentaries recently published by Moses Stuart and Albert Barnes. Hodge’s work showed him to be strictly Confessional in his outlook and his method of biblical exegesis.

Chapter thirty-eight treats the threat of German Idealist thought as it came to influence the thinking of those who considered themselves part of the Reformed tradition. Particularly important in this regard stand: John Williamson Nevin, Charles Finney, and Horace Bushnell. Hodge considered each of these men as dangerous threats to traditional Reformed orthodoxy as they spread their own versions of the redemptive power of human moral intuition.

Theism can be a theory or existential hypothesis to be confirmed by empirical evidence only if it has some predictive power. Theists should (and do) prefer a purely logical definition of predictive power, according to which a hypothesis h has predictive power with regard to evidence e iff the relevance condition P ( e | h & k ) 〉 P ( e | k ) is met. But theism can have predictive power in this sense with regard to existing evidence only if one can non-arbitrarily attribute creative intentions to God. The auxiliary hypotheses attributing these intentions should be independently justified. It is argued that Richard Swinburne’s solution to this problem of theism’s predictive power on the basis of his moral objectivism (or moral realism) fails, and that his attributions of creative intentions to God are anthropomorphic projections.

This chapter focuses on the descriptions of a single festival—Yom Kippur. Out of all the possible holidays, Yom Kippur has been chosen for several reasons. To begin with, it comes up more often than any other festival in the ethnographic accounts, so that there is more material on the Day of Atonement than any other topic. Moreover, Yom Kippur constitutes one of the most important festivals on the Jewish calendar, which helps explain why it attracted so much attention from Christian authors. As a result, it also stands to reason that writing about Yom Kippur is more comprehensive than any of the other holidays.

Natural theologians who aim at confirming the theistic hypothesis by adducing empirical evidence are confronted by the dilemma of God-of-the-gaps. Either theism predicts no specific phenomena at all, or these phenomena may be accounted for in the future by superior scientific explanations, so that theism will be disconfirmed. A pessimistic induction concerning the history of science and natural theology will convince sophisticated natural theologians that they should avoid this risk of God-of-the-gaps. Richard Swinburne uses the following immunizing strategy: theism should purport to explain only phenomena that are either ‘too big’ or ‘too odd’ for science to explain. But this strategy fails with regard to miracles (too odd), as is argued by a detailed examination of the case of Christ’s bodily resurrection, and it is problematic with regard to instances of ‘too big’, such as fine-tuning, or the explanation of the universe as a whole.

An “easy keeper” is a life-sentenced prisoner who develops steady routines and works to improve the communities of which they are part, largely through providing mentoring to younger inmates. This chapter reviews the processes through which lifers mature into their role as an easy keeper. These prisoners undergo a steady maturation. They come to terms with their crime, and thereby feel compelled to pursue projects of redemption and atonement. These efforts at redemption deserve greater consideration in discussions of punishment policy.

Paul of Tarsus has become a key figure in post-modern philosophical debates. Whilst an object of scorn for Nietzsche in the death of God debate, Paul has re-emerged as a locus of inquiry within the religious turn in continental philosophy and the ‘death of the death of God discourse.’ This chapter, in examining some potential relationships between philosophy, theology and criminology, addresses the question of what Paul’s own experience of grace offers in addressing the aftermath of crime. Further, it is argued that an analysis of Pauline theology and its context challenges dominant and punitive narratives and is an essential resource for critical criminology to speak at a collective level.

In expounding on wrongdoing, both criminological theory and theological reflection have been controlled by the language of guilt and punishment. Both have largely failed to factor in the role of entrenched shame in understanding and responding to human transgression, and both often display an impoverished understanding of what is involved in atoning for sin and defeating its ongoing thrall in the lives of individuals. This chapter maps out the complex ways shame functions in human experience, then considers the place of shame and honour in the biblical world. It proposes that the unique saving power ascribed to the life, death and resurrection of Christ in the New Testament, known in theological shorthand as the Atonement, includes its capacity to expose, absorb and disrupt the tyranny of shame in human experience. It suggests the gospel’s offer of spiritual regeneration provides both a paradigm for and a challenge to secular attempts to secure rehabilitation and relational renewal through the criminal justice system.

Focusing on pro-fundamentalist and antimodernist rhetoric coming from black pulpits, this chapter examines sermons and speeches from such figures as Congregationalist minister Edward Franklin Williams, Methodist pastors John Albert Johnson and Isaac Reed Berry, and National Baptist leader Lacey Kirk Williams. While these black fundamentalists regularly expressed their theological positions in ways that aligned with their white counterparts, they also presented starkly different applications of fundamentalism, which grew out of their specific racial context. Isaac Berry’s discourse on Christ’s atonement, for example, led him to denounce legal bans on interracial marriage as contrary to the unifying identity established by Christ’s blood. So while fundamentalism has traditionally been associated with politically conservative activism (such as anti-evolution crusades), the inclusion of these black voices offers a new perspective. Fundamentalist doctrine, theology, and even identity may have crossed the color line, but social and racial context played a significant role in the ways that these convictions were applied and expressed.

This Chapter argues that Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight ‘makes strange’ the traditional readings of the superhero genre discussed in Chapter 1, providing a critique of their underlying visions of legality. In particular, the film encompasses a reflection on the nature of law in what Giorgio Agamben refers to as the ‘state of exception’. It works through the different visions of legality and justice presented by each of the villains—the Joker’s conservative vision of law as founded on violence; Harvey ‘Two-Face’ Dent’s taking of a procedural form of justice in the toss of the coin—before making a particular claim: that Batman is a typology of Christ. This is not in the mode of sacrifice that the traditional saviour mode of the superhero encounters but is because of a specific refusal of the heroic framework and the hero-myth. That is, Batman’s concluding actions in The Dark Knight, ‘saving’ Dent, encompass a form of atonement and a Christological foregrounding of community based on trust and forgiveness. In this way, Batman’s actions are grounded in a form of compassion that does not seek a retributive justice but enact a form of preventative violence founded in love.