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The Nonviolent Atonement
By J. Denny Weaver
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2001. 246 pp. $22.00.
A century ago, soteriological battles mainly pitted Anselmians against Abelardians. Gustav Aulen's Christus Victor (ET, 1931) changed all that, returning an overlooked cadre to the fray. A newer dynamic has been the problem of divine violence. All these developments come together in Denny Weaver's The Nonviolent Atonement.
Weaver's principal theological allies are peace-church, black, feminist, and womanist theologians who object to any sanctification of "divine violence." His principal theological opponent is the theory of satisfaction according to Anselm, Luther, and Calvin, because that tradition implicates God in acts of violence, abets further violence in God's name, and subdues its victims. Weaver's "narrative Christus victor" approach to atonement exonerates God from the violence of the cross. This vision refines and intensifies the themes of classical christus victor theory by attending not merely to Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection but also to his entire career as a nonviolent confrontation and conquest of the powers of sin and death. Weaver develops his "narrative Christus victor" in terms of the theologies of Revelation, the Gospels, Paul, and Hebrews. He brings his proposal into conversation with...