GroshLink

Just finished N.T. Wright's new InterVarsity Press (IVP) materials on the road trip coming back from Thanksgiving at Bill and Harriet's in Virginia (great to be with all of you). Had to get this done before I picked up the development of material for the Questioning Evangelism Adult elective.

With regard to the material on Evil, best to read Evil and the Justice of God before viewing the Evil on DVD, but if you're short of time . . . The DVD's (Evil and Resurrection) would be helpful for leading a Lenten Adult Eduction or Small Group series. They come divided into 4 sections each, along with a discussion guide. Here's some quotes from Evil and the Justice of God with regard to the Christus Victor theme in his theology:

1."Once that [the Christus Victor theme] is in place, the other theories come in to play their respective parts. For Paul, Jesus' death clearly involves (for example in Romans 8:3, a judicial or penal element, being God's proper No to sin expressed on Jesus as Messiah, as Israel's and therefore the world's representative. This is the point at which the recognition that the line between good and evil runs right through the middle of me, and of every one of us, is met by the gospel proclamation that the death of Jesus is "for me," in my place and on my behalf. Because as Messiah he is Israel's and the world's representative, he can stand for all: for our sake, writes Paul, God made him who knew no sin to be sin, to be an offering for sin, on our behalf (2 Corinthians 5:21). Throughout the New Testament, this death is therefore seen as an act of love, both the love of Jesus himself (Galatians 2:20) and the love of the God who sent him and whose bodily self-expression he was (John 3:16; 13:1; Romans 5:-11; 9:31-39; I John 4:9-10). Within these, not as the foundation but as the outworking, we see that Jesus' suffering and death are an example of how we are summoned to love one another in turn.

In all this we, must remind ourselves that we are speaking and thinking within the realm of eschatology, of God's purposes working through history toward a moment of climax. That is to say, what is achieved on the cross is not a timeless, abstract accomplishment located, if anywhere, among Plato's forms, well away from the reality of space-time history. It is not enough to say that God will eventually make a new world in which there will be no more pain and crying; that does scant justice to all the evil that has gone before. We cannot get to the full solution to the problem of evil by mere progress, as though, provided the final generation was happy, the misery of all pervious generations could be overlooked or even justified,, as in the appalling line in a hymn: "Then shall they know, they that love him, how all their pain is good," a kind of shoulder-shrugging acquiescence in evil which the New Testament certainly does not authorize. No, all theories of atonement adequate to the task must include both a backward look (seeing the guilt, sin and shame of all previous generations heaped up on the cross) and forward dimension, the promise that what God accomplished on Calvary will be fully and finally implemented. Otherwise the cross becomes merely an empty gesture, ineffective unless anyone happens to notice it and be influenced by it to act in a particular way..

This is where the personal meaning of the cross becomes very clear. There will be a time when I -- even I sinner that I am! -- will be totally sinless, when God has completed the work of grace within me. But I already enjoy, in anticipation of that future fact, forgiveness ion the present and the new life of the Spirit that is made available precisely when Jesus has been "glorified" by being "lifted up" on the cross (John 7:39; 20:22) . . . The "problem of evil" is not simply or purely a "cosmic" thing; it is also a problem about me. And God has dealt with that problem on the cross of his Son, the Messiah. That is why some Christian traditions venerate the cross itself, just as we speak of worshiping the ground on which our beloved is walking. The cross is the place where, and the means by which, God loved us to the uttermost" (Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006, pp. 94-7).

2. "The good news, according to the whole New Testament, is that this negative force -- this quasi-personal, shadowy being or beings -- has been defeated on the cross of Jesus Christ. This is part of the full exploration and outworking of what I was talking about in the previous chapter. As I said there, I am inclined to see the theme of Christus Victor, the victory of Jesus Christ over all the powers of evil and darkness, as the central theme in atonement theology, around which all the other varied meanings of the cross find their particular niche" (Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006, p.114).

3. "It takes spiritual discipline to forgive others; it takes a different, though related, spiritual discipline to forgive myself, to echo within my own heart the glad and generous offer of forgiveness which God holds out to me and which, if I'm fortunate, my neighbor holds out to me as well. Here, too, my sense of self-worth comes not from examining myself and discovering that I'm not so bad after all but from gazing at God's love and discover that nothing can stand between it and me (What we are doing is drawing down from God's ultimate future, in which I will know myself to be completely loved and accepted because of the work of Jesus and the Spirit). This astonished and grateful acceptance of the free grace and love God is what some traditions have meant when they have echoed Paul's language about "justification by faith."

This is central to mental, emotional and spiritual health. Part of the discipline of receiving God's forgiveness, of training our forgiveness-receiving faculty to respond to the gospel, is that we open the same inner faculty as wide as it can go and thus learn the secret not only of accepting ourselves -- that's one thing, recognizing that I am the person I am and learning to be comfortable with that -- but also for forgiving ourselves, which is quite another thing. Forgiving myself means recognizing that I have indeed done sinful, hurtful and damaging things to other people, to myself and to the God in whose image I'm made, and that because God forgives me I must learn, under his direction, to forgive myself. Of course, as with all the other forgiving we've been thinking about, this does not mean pretending it wasn't so bad after all or that it didn't really happen or that it didn't matter that much. It was bad and it did happen and it did matter. But if God has dealt with and forgiven you (and if you have made amends as best you can with other people it may have involved!), then it is part of living an authentically Christian life that you learn to forgive yourself as well" (Wright, Evil and the Justice of God, Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006, pp.162-3).