Sitaatteja
Sovitusoppi
nykyteologiassa
Syksy 11
#1
 Admittedly, in the past the Christian doctrine of
salvation was often applied solely to the eternal
situation of human beings in God’s sight, in order
that eternal salvation might be related to the
fundamental existential situation of men and
women: their separation from God, their transience,
finitude and mortality. This meant that often enough
this doctrine ignored the actual, practical human
situation, in its real misery. Moltmann, Way of Jesus
Christ, p. 45.
#2
 “The Spirit, therefore, descending
under the predestined dispensation,
and the Son of God, the Only-begotten,
who is also the Word of the Father,
coming in the fulness of time, having
become incarnate in man for the sake
of man, and fulfilling all the conditions
of human nature.” Irenaeus, Against
Heresies 3.17.4
#3
 “Luther’s teaching can only be rightly understood as
a revival of the old classic theme of the Atonement
as taught by the Fathers, but with a greater depth of
treatment.” Aulen, Christus Victor, p. 102.
 This combining of the two traditions is well illustrated
in the two rubrics under which Althaus looks at the
topic of atonement in the Reformer: “Christ’s Work
as Satisfaction to God” and “Christ’s Work as a
Battle with the Demonic Powers.” Althaus, Theology
of Martin Luther, pp. 201-17
#4
 Atonement theology starts with violence, namely the
killing of Jesus. The commonplace assumption is
that something good happened, namely the
salvation of sinners, when or because Jesus was
killed. It follows that the doctrine of atonement then
explains how and why Christians believe that the
death of Jesus—the killing of Jesus—resulted in the
salvation of sinful humankind. Weaver, Nonviolent
Atonement, p.2.
#5
 “The trial and punishment of Jesus itself condemns,
in some measure, all other trials and punishment,
and all forms of alien discipline. . . . The only finally
tolerable, and non-sinful punishment, for Christians,
must be the self-punishment inherent in sin.” J.
Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: p. 421
# 6a
 “The drama of salvation starts and
ends with violence, and without
violence its central act is unthinkable.”
Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, pp. 29091.
#6b
 “The end of the world is not violence,
but a nonviolent embrace without
end..The world to come is ruled by the
one who on the cross took violence
upon himself in order to conquer the
enmity and embrace the enemy. The
Lamb’s rule is legitimized not by the
‘sword’ but by its ‘wounds’.
#7
 “Metaphors have to be weighed as to
their importance and relevance. Their
frequency and usage in the biblical
canon, alignment with Christian
tradition, and theological coherence
serve as appropriate criteria. To put it
other way, there needs to be some
kind of ‘systematic’ relating of
metaphors with others” VMK, Christ
and Reconciliation
#8
 “[W]hether Christ rectifies erroneous views
concerning an unchangeable fact, namely the love
of God… or whether Christ is the author of a
changed situation.” [In the latter case,] “the death of
Christ must be seen as a real overcoming of the
misery that consists of our having fallen into sin and
death and the related estrangement from God…
[This means that] in interpreting the death of Jesus,
we must make the nature of the event normative for
the evaluation, selection, and use of the interpretive
models available.” Pannenberg, ST 2:410,
#9
 Baptized by John the Baptist,
filled with the Holy Spirit:
to preach the kingdom of God to the poor,
to heal the sick,
to receive those who have been cast out,
to revive Israel for the salvation of the nations, and
to have mercy upon all people. Moltmann, The Way
of Jesus Christ, p. 150.
# 10
 [Jesus] fought dehumanization by placing human
need above even the most sacred traditions such as
Sabbath purity (Mark 2:23–3:6). Therefore the
oppressed were conscientized in his presence. Blind
Bartimaeus, whom the crowds silenced, was given
voice and healed by Jesus (Mark 10:46-52). An
unnamed woman with a flow of blood and no
financial resources touched Jesus and subsequently
“told him the whole truth” (Mark 5:25-34). Jesus
fought sin by denouncing everything—whether
religious, political, economic, or social—that
alienated people from God and from their neighbor.
Pope-Levison and Levison, Jesus in Global Contexts, p. 35.
# 11a
 Heb. 5:8-9 “should not be seen as
contrasting filial closeness to the Father” but
rather as an expression of the “tension
between learning obedience in time and
pretemporal sonship.” Jesus’s obedience to
the Father then “is not alien obedience of the
slave . . . [but rather] an expression of his
free agreement with the Father.”
Pannenberg, ST 2:316.
11b
 “In patristic tradition, freedom and obedience are
seen as inseparable. The Trinity itself is a perfect
communion of love, and not only of love but, we can
dare to say, also of obedience. . . . Obedience is
part of the mystery of love and humility. Those who
live in mutual obedience and love, as do the
persons of the Trinity, share a single nature and
therefore a single will in perfect harmony.” Simeon
Rodger, “The Soteriology of Anselm of Canterbury, an Orthodox
Perspective,”
#11c
 “To suffer and to be rejected are not
identical. Suffering can be celebrated
and admired. It can arouse
compassion. But to be rejected takes
away the dignity from suffering and
makes it dishonourable suffering. To
suffer and be rejected signify the
cross.” Moltmann, Crucified God, p. 55
# 12
 At the centre of Christian faith is the history of Christ. At the
centre of the history of Christ is his passion and his death on
the cross. We have to take the word ‘passion’ seriously in both
its senses here, if we are to understand the mystery of Christ.
For the history of Christ is the history of a great passion, a
passionate surrender to God and his kingdom. And at the
same time and for that very reason it became the history of an
unprecedented suffering, a deadly agony. At the centre of
Christian faith is the passion of the passionate Christ. The
history of his life and the history of his suffering belong
together. They show the active and the passive side of his
passion. Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, p. 151
# 13
 Basically, every Christian theology is consciously or
unconsciously answering the question, ‘Why hast
thou forsaken me’, when their doctrines of salvation
say ‘for this reason’ or ‘for that reason’. In the face
of Jesus’ death-cry to God, theology either becomes
impossible or becomes possible only as specifically
Christian theology. Christian theology cannot come
to terms with the cry of its own age and at the same
time always be on the side of the rulers of this world.
But it must come to terms with the cry of the
wretched for God and for freedom out off the depths
of the sufferings of this age…
# 13 cont.
 …Sharing in the sufferings of this time, Christian
theology is truly contemporary theology. Whether or
not it can be so depends less upon the openness of
theologians and their theories to the world and more
upon whether they have honestly and without
reserve come to terms with the death-cry of Jesus
for God. Moltmann, Crucified God, p. 153.
# 14
 “What happened on the cross was an event
between God and God. It was a deep division in
God himself, in so far as God abandoned God and
contradicted himself, and at the same time a unity in
God, in so far as God was at one with God and
corresponded to himself.” Moltmann, Crucified God,
p. 244.
 “God’s being is in suffering and suffering in God’s
being itself,” because God is love. Ibid., p. 227.
# 15
 “As mothers’ hearts rend with their children’s
suffering more readily than with their own, so God’s
unsurpassed love for humans is narrated scripturally
as a love both that is and that gives up the beloved
one who dies in compassion for us.” Lisa Sowle Cahill,
“The Atonement Paradigm: Does It Still Have Explanatory Value?” 429-30
#16
 “The passion of Jesus Christ is not an
event which concerned only the human
nature that the divine Logos assumed,
as though it did not affect in any way
the eternal placidity of the trinitarian life
of God. In the death of Jesus the deity
of his God and Father was at issue.”
Pannenberg, ST 2:314.
# 17
 “God does not love us because Christ
died for us, but that Christ died for us
because God loves us, and his
sacrifice is an expression of this love.
The cross of Christ was not given by
man to change God, but given by God
to change man.” Culpepper,
Interpreting the Atonement, p. 131…
# 17 cont.
 … “Far from effecting any change in
the attitude of God toward man in the
sense of turning hostility into love or
making a friend of an enemy, the cross
of Christ gave expression to the love of
God for man which was in God’s heart
from all eternity, working out in history
God’s eternal purposes in Christ.” ibid.
# 18a
 “Sin becomes an excuse for
persecution, righteousness becomes
defined as submission to
scapegoating, and judgment uses
violence against violence. The
historical task of the Holy Spirit . . . is to
prove this wrong, by testimony to
Christ” Heim, Saved from Sacrifice, pp. 154.
# 18b
 [In terms of its salvific effects, the glorifying
work of the Spirit serves the consummation
of redemption and atonement since it brings
about the] “overcoming of mortality and
consummation by participation in the eternal
life that by the Spirit unites the Son to the
Father and that has already come as the
future of creation in his resurrection from the
dead.” Pannenberg, ST, 2:396.
# 19a
 “The Lord has risen” (Luke 24:34). What in Greek is a single
word joyfully proclaims the climax of the drama of redemption.
“The Lord has risen” contains in nuce the resolution of the
dramatic tension built up over centuries: How would God make
good on his promise? How could God keep covenant with
covenant breakers? How would God bless all the nations
through the seed of Abraham? “The Lord has risen.” There is a
density in this statement that calls for thought and “thick
description.” While the explicit subject of this sentence is Jesus
Christ, the implied subject is God the Father who raised him.
And while the explicit predicate is resurrection, the implicit
predicate is Jesus’ crucifixion. Vanhoozer, Drama of
Doctrine, p. 41.
#19b
 The Spirit proceeds “from this event [of the cross]
between the Father and the Son” and thus is the
“boundless love which proceeds from the grief of the
Father and the dying of the Son” and reaches out to
humanity. [As the bond of love, the Spirit represents
divine unity in the midst of deepest separation.]
“What proceeds from this event between Father and
Son is the Spirit which justifies the godless, fills the
forsaken with love and even brings the dead alive.”
 Moltmann, Crucified God, p. 244-5
#20
 In the preaching and theology of the
early church, the linking of the cross
with the resurrection (and ascension)
becomes a key theme: Acts 2:23-24;
3:14-15; 4:10; 5:30; 10:39-40; Romans
6:3-11; 8:34; 1 Peter 1:19-21; 3:18, 2122
# 21
 [On the basis of the hypostatic union
principle, Christian theology affirms
that] “in the risen Christ . . . there is
involved an hypostatic union between
eternity and time, eternity and
redeemed and sanctified time, and
therefore between eternity and new
time.” Torrance, Space, Time and Resurrection, p. 98.
# 22
 If we wished to confine ourselves to the
endorsement, ‘resurrection’ would be no more than
an interpretative theological category for his death;
and all that would remain would be a theology of the
cross. If we were to concentrate solely on the
fulfillment, the Easter Christ would replace and push
out the crucified Jesus. But if, . . . the earthly Jesus is
‘the messiah on the way’, and the Son of God in the
process of his learning, then Easter endorses and
fulfils this life history of Jesus which is open for the
future. At the same time, however, resurrection,
understood as an eschatological event in Jesus, is
the beginning of the new creation of all things.
Moltmann, Way of Jesus Christ, p. 171.
#23
 “Jesus, as the human face of God, was
not simply a temporary and fleeting
vision on this earth. He was the divine
attempt to bridge the primordial
alienation between God and humanity.
All people everywhere, regardless of
their respective location in space and
time, had through him the opportunity to
be confronted with the gospel, God’s
word of salvation.” Schwarz,
Christology, p. 294.
# 23
He showed Himself quite unequivocally to be the creature, the
man, who in provisional distinction from all other men lives on
the God-ward side of the universe, sharing His throne, existing
and acting in the mode of God, and therefore to be remembered
as such, to be known once for all as this exalted creature, this
exalted man, and henceforth to be accepted as the One who
exists in this form to all eternity. The most important verse in the
ascension story is the one which runs: “A cloud received him out
of their sight” (Ac. 19). In biblical language, the cloud does not
signify merely the hiddenness of God, but His hidden presence,
and the coming revelation which penetrates this hiddenness. It
does not signify merely the heaven which is closed for us, but
the heaven which from within, on God’s side, will not always be
closed. Barth, CD III/2, p. 454
