Introduction
Excerpt
Over the centuries, theologians have offered a number of accounts of the ways in which Jesus has atoning significance. Different theories, analogies and metaphors have been used in attempts to explain or to illuminate the essential experience and principal testimony of the church; that God has acted in and through Jesus Christ to deal with the fundamental flaw in human existence. Different understandings of atonement have stressed either the incarnation of God in Jesus, the death of Jesus on the cross, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, or some combination of these, as being the key atoning act or acts. Most theologians of the Western church have defined the flaw in the relationship between God and humanity in terms of sin and its consequences and have tended to offer accounts of atonement in which the crucifixion of Jesus is the central act and is understood as a sacrifice. One difficulty with many of these views is that they concentrate on the death of Jesus and pay relatively little attention to his life…
Finamore, Stephen. God, Order, and Chaos: René Girard and the Apocalypse. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009. Print.
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