It is hard to imagine just how startling the Christian message must have sounded to those who first heard it.The story of a crucified messiah was absurd. The death of Jesus as a ransom, a punishment, or a sacrifice was an offense and an affront. Yet, by making the death of Jesus central to its preaching and worship, Christianity took a scandal, the cross, and called it a gospel. In Labor of God , author Tom Bennett revisits the church's speech about the cross. He recovers an equally shocking, but often overlooked, metaphor from Scripture and tradition: the cross as an act of divine labor, the travail through which God gives birth to the church. This ancient understanding of the cross enables a fresh theology of Christian atonement, one better able to answer questions of sin, suffering, and divine violence. As Bennett argues, this understanding of the cross can also reshape the classical systematic doctrines of creation, election, soteriology, and the church. Developed through close readings of biblical texts and interaction with voices from theology and the sciences, Labor of God shows how the Christian message of the cross can once again prick the ears and trouble the hearts of those who hear it. To a church immune to the radical character of its own message, Bennett resists the temptation to sanitize and relishes the offenseaan offense that gives birth to a scandalous gospel for a secular age.
Thomas Andrew Bennett is Affiliate Assistant Professor of Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary.
Chapter 1. Retrieving the Forgotten Root: The Scandal of the Cross as the Labor of God Chapter 2. Speaking the Labor of God: Metaphor and the Truth of Religious Language Chapter 3. Converting the Cross: How Torture Becomes Childbirth Chapter 4. Birthing the Church: How the Cross Addresses Sin Chapter 5. Transcending Exchange: How the Family of God Gives Up the Gift Chapter 6. Expanding the Agony of the Cross: How Labor Opens Fresh Theological Frontiers
In the end, Bennett proffers a provocative argument. Its focus on a maternal metaphor definitely has possibilities to reinvigorate the stale arguments of much of contemporary atonement theologies...I strongly recommend this book for upper-level undergraduate and graduate level theology courses. -- Mark S. Medley -- Reading Religion This is an extraordinarily well-crafted work of theology, biblically informed in conversation with historical theology with an eye toward pastoral and practical implication and helps us understand the work of the cross in a biblical but refreshing way. -- Aaron Kink -- Religious Studies Review This beautifully produced, learned, and readable book retrieves and develops a theme espoused by St Anselm of Canterbury, Julian of Norwich, and other medieval authors: the crucified Jesus, in his atoning death, gave birth to God's spiritual children. -- Gerald O'Collins, SJ -- The Journal of Theological Studies
