Divine Violence and the Christus Victor Atonement Model: God’s Reluctant Use of Violence for Soteriological Ends

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In this book Martyn Smith addresses the issue of God’s violence and refuses to shy away from difficult and controversial conclusions. Through his wide-ranging and measured study he reflects upon God and violence in both biblical and theological contexts, assessing the implications of divine violence for understanding and engaging with God’s nature and character. Jesus too, through his dramatic actions in the temple, is presented as one capable of exhibiting a surprising degree of violent behavior in the furtherance of God’s purposes. Through a reappropriation of the ancient Christus Victor model of atonement, with its dramatic representation of God’s war with the Satan, Smith proposes that Christian understanding of both God and salvation has to return to its long-neglected past in order to move forward, both biblically and dynamically, into the future.