Quotes from Fleming Rutledge

The imagery of rescue and victory places the themes of reconciliation and forgiveness into another context altogether, where they are brought in under the heading of God acting to make right what has been wrong (rectification). Then, and only then, can the whole complex of ideas and images be located where it belongs, on the battlefield of Christ against the Powers. This is the overarching panorama against which to place the imagery of the Great Assize, or Last Judgment.

It is the living significance of the death of Jesus, not the factual details concerning it as a historical event, that matters.

Marilynne Robinson has written that "fear is not a Christian habit of mind.

New Testament presents us with not two but three agencies: God, the human being, and an Enemy

Wonders occur in groups that study the Bible together, because the Word has power to create a community of discovery that is much more than the mere sum of its individual parts.

The well-known passage in Micah 6:8 ('does the Lord require of you . . . ?') declares that justice and mercy are two foundational aspects of God's character. . . . forgiveness is by no means as simple or expeditious as is often suggested; it is a complex and demanding matter. The question of forgiveness and compensation really should not be discussed apart from the question of justice.

the word translated "justice" and "righteousness" is the same word in Hebrew and in Greek. The root of the word becomes, in both Testaments, both a noun and a verb, so that "justice" or "judgment" is the same thing as "righteousness" or "rectification" (making right).

All the references to judgment in the Bible should be understood in the context of God's righteousness—not just his being righteous (noun) but his "making right" (verb) all that has been wrong.

The preaching of the cross is an announcement of a living reality that continues to transform human existence and human destiny more than two thousand years after it originally occurred.

one foundational truth that I have learned from apocalyptic theology, it is this: God is the subject of the verb. God doesn't need us to help him make his "dream" come true; God is on the march far ahead of us, bringing his purposes to pass

In the cross of Christ, we see something revolutionary, something that undercuts not just conventional morality but also religious distinctions across the board. Christ has died for the ungodly, the unrighteous

there has never been a satisfactory account of the origin of evil, and there will be none on this side of the consummation of the kingdom of God. Evil is a vast excrescence, a monstrous contradiction that cannot be explained but can only be denounced and resisted wherever it appears.64

In other words, God's righteousness involves not only a great reversal ("the first will be last") but also an actual transformation and re-creation.

begin to see that when we say God will "justify" rather than merely "acquit," the action has a reconstituting force — hence the insufficiency of the courtroom metaphor "to acquit." God's righteousness is the same thing as his justice, and his justice is powerfully at work justifying, which does not mean excusing, passing over, or even "forgiving and forgetting," but actively making right that which is wrong.

There is a fundamental syntactical distinction between saying "we question the Bible" and "the Bible questions us.

the epistle to the Hebrews, in the New Testament, warns us about worshiping angels. An angel is only an angel if he reveals something of the presence and power of Jesus Christ.

it should now be generally agreed that any concept of hilasterion in the sense of placating, appeasing, deflecting the anger of, or satisfying the wrath of, is inadmissible. The more important, and truly radical, reason for firmly rejecting this understanding of propitiation is that it envisions God as the object, whereas in the Scriptures, God is the acting subject.99 This is especially noticeable in Romans 3

In other words, the new understanding imparted by the Bible comes from a source lying beyond our ability to frame questions.

101 God's justification of sinners is not a forgetting, nor is it simply forgiveness. It is a definitive, wholesale, final assault upon and defeat of Sin, understood as a Power, and the creation of a new humanity.

What child is this? "The Infinite has become a finite fact." Everything depends on this, or the nativity story is just a child's fable that no thinking adult can believe.

Thus, in Colossians 1:5-6, the Word is described not as the content of the apostles' preaching and mission, but as the active agent, the subject of the verbs: "the word of the truth, the gospel which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing.

The Eternal has done a temporal act, the Infinite has become a finite fact. "For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven.

The truest way to receive the gospel of Christ crucified is to cultivate a deep appreciation of the way the biblical motifs interact with each other and enlarge one another.

To summarize, then: the crucifixion is the touchstone of Christian authenticity, the unique feature by which everything else, including the resurrection, is given its true significance.