Curtis A. Bronzan

I came across a passage in Scot McKnight’s book A Community Called Atonement this morning, which reminded me of a post a while back:

Before we look at atonement as the work of God that creates a pervasively just society, let me clarify the expression “social justice.” We make a serious mistake when writing with adjectives: “social” before justice limits justice and moves justice from the church into the government. I propose that we drop the word “social” in the term “social justice.” First, such an expression tends to imply an old-fashioned dualistic spirituality in which some things are spiritual and some things are social. In addition, the only way to define “justice” is reference to a standard. Social justice tends to be defined by its standard: the fundamental principles of the U.S. Constitution – or a watered-down version thereof. But justice for the Christian is not about freedom or liberty, rights, individualism, or the pursuit of happiness. When that is what justice means to the Christian, that Christian has adopted Western values as the standard by which justice is defined. Christians can’t let the U.S. Constitution (or John Stuart Mill or Karl Marx) define what “justice” means. We have to define justice in a way consistent with what Jesus meant by “kingdom.” Which raises a postmodern issue that cuts sharply into the deep caverns of what we mean by justice. (124)

Scot McKnight, in A Community Called Atonement, writes:

I suggest we see the achievement of the cross in three expressions: Jesus dies “with us” – entering into our evil and our sin and our suffering to subvert it and create a new way; Jesus dies “instead of us” – he enters into our sin, our wrath, and our death; and Jesus dies “for us” – his death forgives sin, “declares us right,” absorbs the wrath of God against us, and creates new life where there was once only death.

Not only is this death saving, this same death becomes the paradigm for an entirely new existence that is shaped, as Luther said of theology and life, by the cross. A life shaped by the cross is a life bent on dying daily to self in order to love God, self, others, and the world. And a life shaped by the cross sees in the cross God becoming the victim, identifying with the victim, suffering injustice, and shaping a cruciform pattern of life for all who would follow Jesus. The cross reshapes all of life. (70)