Justice Crucified

South Braintree, Massachusetts, 1920. Two men accost a paymaster and his bodyguard on the lot of a shoe factory. They speak to them, rob and shoot them, then disappear. A local official feels sure it was the work of anarchists. His search turns up two--Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. They also happen to be poor and Italian immigrants. That the evidence to prove them guilty was scanty, corrupt, or missing entirely is an appalling story in itself. The trial and appeals went on for seven years. The case became a cause, a landmark in American legal history. But the significance of the Sacco-Vanzetti case resonated far beyond the courtroom. With relentless logic, author Feuerlicht pursues the social forces surrounding their arrest and trial back to the first Puritan settlers of New England, whose determination to set a righteous example for the new nation bred suspicion and intolerance for every immigrant that followed them. On August 22, 1927, when Sacco and Vanzetti were electrocuted, immigrants of every race and nationality wept at the newsstands. "None of my enemies will be mourned as I am," Vanzetti said in his last letter to his family, and he was right. Feuerlicht's exhaustive research for this book uncovered new information about some of the lingering mysteries of the case and about the two men's personalities. In Italy she interviewed Vanzetti's sister and acquired more than 100 letters from Vanzetti to his family that have never been published in English. Her tight, dramatic narrative is punctuated with interviews with other surviving principals of the case, among them Nicola Sacco's grandson. "l believe," Feuerlicht writes in the foreword, "that the invidious ideas, emotions and attitudes that killed Sacco and Vanzetti were neither born with the case nor died with it but are with us still, and that for this reason Sacco and Vanzetti should never be forgotten."--From dust jacket.

“Theology has two eyes. One looks back toward the past, where salvation broke in; the other looks toward the present, where salvation becomes reality here and now. “This Way of the Cross seeks to use both eyes of theology. It is a Way of the Cross, with one eye focusing on the historical Jesus: his life, condemnation, death, and resurrection. It is also a Way of Justice, its other eye focusing on the Christ of faith who continues his passion today in his brothers and sisters who are being condemned, tortured, and killed for the cause of justice. “In the light of the perspectives and convictions acquired over the course of seven years of christological studies, I now present this Way of the Cross, which is meant to be a prayerful theology or a theological prayer.” Leonardo Boff, from the Introduction

The British theologian and New Testament scholar Austin Farrer was a member of " the Oxford Christians," conversing frequently with C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, and T. S. Eliot. A. N. Wilson has called Farrer "the one true genius of the Church of England in the 20th century." Farrer's theory about the Synoptic Problem remains one the most debated theories of Synoptic relationships in contemporary New Testament scholarship. The editors have put together a book that makes the practical, spiritual meaning of Farrer's thought available to those who desire to integrate serious thinking with faithful life. Contributors to the volume include Ann Loades (University of Durham), Diogenes Allen (Princeton Theological Seminary), Julian N. Hartt (University of Virginia), Charles Hefling (Boston College), and O.C. Edwards (Seabury-Western Theological Seminary). David Hein is Professor and Chair of Religion and Philosophy at Hood College and the author of Noble Powell and the Episcopal Establishment in the Twentieth Century. Edward Hugh Henderson is Professor of Philosophy at Louisiana State University and co-editor with Brian Hebblethwaite of Divine Action: Studies Inspired by the Philosophical Theology of Austin Farrer.

The kingdom of God and the atonement are two of the most important themes in all of Scripture. Tragically, theologians have often either set the two at odds or focused on one to the complete neglect of the other. In The Crucified King, Jeremy Treat demonstrates that Scripture presents a mutually enriching relationship between the kingdom and atonement that draws significantly from the story of Israel and culminates in the crucifixion of Christ the king. As Israel’s messiah, he holds together the kingdom and the cross by bringing God’s reign on earth through his atoning death. The kingdom is the ultimate goal of the cross, and the cross is the means by which the kingdom comes. Jesus’ death is not the failure of his messianic ministry, nor simply the prelude to his royal glory, but is the apex of his kingdom mission. The cross is the throne from which he rules and establishes his kingdom. Using a holistic approach that brings together the insights of biblical and systematic theology, this book demonstrates not only that the kingdom and the cross are inseparable, but how they are integrated in Scripture and theology.

Few treatments of the death of Jesus Christ have made a point of accounting for the gruesome, degrading, public manner of his death by crucifixion, a mode of execution so loathsome that the ancient Romans never spoke of it in polite society. Rutledge probes all the various themes and motifs used by the New Testament evangelists and apostolic writers to explain the meaning of the cross of Christ. She shows how each of the biblical themes contributes to the whole, with the Christus Victor motif and the concept of substitution sharing pride of place along with Irenaeus's recapitulation model.

A landmark in the conversation about race and religion in America. "They put him to death by hanging him on a tree." Acts 10:39 The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful new work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk. Both the cross and the lynching tree represent the worst in human beings and at the same time a thirst for life that refuses to let the worst determine our final meaning. While the lynching tree symbolized white power and "black death," the cross symbolizes divine power and "black life" God overcoming the power of sin and death. For African Americans, the image of Jesus, hung on a tree to die, powerfully grounded their faith that God was with them, even in the suffering of the lynching era. In a work that spans social history, theology, and cultural studies, Cone explores the message of the spirituals and the power of the blues; the passion and of Emmet Till and the engaged vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.; he invokes the spirits of Billie Holliday and Langston Hughes, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ida B. Well, and the witness of black artists, writers, preachers, and fighters for justice. And he remembers the victims, especially the 5,000 who perished during the lynching period. Through their witness he contemplates the greatest challenge of any Christian theology to explain how life can be made meaningful in the face of death and injustice.

It was the atheist, Jean Paul Sartre, who once said that, "Hell is other people." Rowland Stenrud's Yeshua, the Crucified Serpent is about how mankind's savior, Jesus of Nazareth, has saved men and women from this hell by making it possible, and indeed inevitable, for human beings to love one another and their Creator-Father, Yahweh God. This book is about the concept and practice of human and divine love. The words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, the Bible as a whole, and the reader's life experience will help in defining this. The author reviews what he knows about the concept and its related precepts and brings them to bear in this book. God himself is love, which should tell us how mysterious a thing love is. To acquire this ability to love, one must suffer in union with the suffering Christ. Salvation, pure and simple, is God delivering each one from the inability to love other human beings and the Creator Himself. The obstacle to this perfect love is the serpent of human wisdom and pride that existed even in Jesus. In his loving obedience to the Father, Jesus nailed this serpent to the cross. Yeshua, the Crucified Serpent attempts to show that the question of evil and suffering in the world is answered by Yahweh's eventual success in saving all of mankind. The majority of Christians believe in a number of key doctrines that the biblical authors do not unequivocally teach. A few verses may support these unbiblical doctrines but a greater number of verses, whose meaning is clearer, contradict the standard interpretation of these few verses. Other doctrines that Christians mistakenly believe in find support in this or that section of the Bible but are denied by the general thrust of the Bible as a whole. These unbiblical doctrines followed by the correct biblical teaching are: 1. Sometime in the distant past a large number of God's angels rebelled against Him becoming what are called devils or demons whose leader is known as Satan or Lucifer. The Bible teaches that the only agent of evil in the universe is man's heart. 2. Adam and Eve possessed the perfection of Jesus Christ before they sinned. If they had not sinned they would not have needed to be healed of any weakness. The Bible teaches that Adam and Eve could not have had eternal life even before they sinned without the work of Jesus of Nazareth. 3. Faith is an act of the free will of man. The Bible teaches that faith does involve man putting his trust in God's promises and revelation, but it is primarily a power given to man by God in order to enable him to see spiritual truth the natural man cannot see. Without this gift of the Holy Spirit, no human being can know God and be saved. 4. Ultimately speaking, we are saved by our faith. On the contrary, it is through Jesus's faith in and love for the Father that is the instrument of our salvation. 5. Jesus saved us by paying the penalty due our sins and therefore saving us from the just wrath of God. This is false. No one had to pay any penalty for God to forgive the sins of the human race. God relates to sinners on the basis of mercy and mercy is not mercy if the penalty for sin is paid. By going to the cross, Jesus healed our brokenness which forgiveness alone could not accomplish. 6. Satan and the sins of men are ultimately responsible for human suffering. False. God is ultimately responsible for human suffering as it is a necessary part of God's work of saving human beings. God Himself shares in all of our suffering: physical, emotional and spiritual even though He does not have a body or nervous system. 7. Salvation is about our eternal destiny. This is not correct. Salvation is about being saved from the idolatries, addictions, corruption, hatreds, evil deeds that afflict the unsav

In this substantial study Darrin W. Snyder Belousek offers a comprehensive and critical examination of penal substitution, the most widely accepted evangelical Protestant theory of atonement, and presents a biblically grounded, theologically orthodox alternative. Attending to all of the relevant biblical texts and engaging with the full spectrum of scholarship, Belousek systematically develops a biblical theory of atonement that centers on restorative -- rather than retributive -- justice. He also shows how Christian thinking on atonement correlates with major global concerns such as economic justice, capital punishment, "the war on terror," and ethnic and religious conflicts. Thorough and clearly structured, this book demonstrates how a return to biblical cruciformity can radically transform Christian mission, social justice, and peacemaking.

Christ crucified, or the marrow of the gospel evidently holden forth in seventy two sermons on the whole fifty third chapter of Isaiah