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God with Us: The Meaning of the Cross and Resurrection - Then and Now
From the pen of one of our greatest living theologians, here is a fresh and compelling introduction to the foundation story of the Christian faith.
Full of illuminating theological insights, and with questions for discussion or personal reflection at the end of each chapter, this is the perfect book for all those who want to deepen their understanding and appreciation of the heart of the gospel.
Full of illuminating theological insights, and with questions for discussion or personal reflection at the end of each chapter, this is the perfect book for all those who want to deepen their understanding and appreciation of the heart of the gospel.
106 pages, Paperback
Published January 19, 2017
24 people are currently reading
158 people want to read
About the author
Rowan Williams
260 books338 followersRowan Douglas Williams, Baron Williams of Oystermouth, is an Anglican bishop, poet, and theologian. He was Archbishop of Canterbury from December 2002-2012, and is now Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge and Chancellor of the University of South Wales.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
April 14, 2020
‘It’s not that the risen Christ appears saying, “By magic I will take away your history and I will smooth out your faces”; but that the risen Christ says, “in the depth of this reality I will speak, I will be present and I will transform.” ‘
I could’ve found so many wonderful quotes from this book but this neatly summarises its message. As I have slowly made my way through, it has brought to life again the most simple and raw message of Christianity, stripping it back to the crux of the good news. I have no doubt that this will be a book I frequently return to, finding more and more each time I read it.
I really appreciate William’s use of insights from different Christian traditions. It is so refreshing to read of insights from eastern Christianity alongside western - we have much to learn from one another. This is generally something that I deeply appreciate in much of William’s writing.
I could’ve found so many wonderful quotes from this book but this neatly summarises its message. As I have slowly made my way through, it has brought to life again the most simple and raw message of Christianity, stripping it back to the crux of the good news. I have no doubt that this will be a book I frequently return to, finding more and more each time I read it.
I really appreciate William’s use of insights from different Christian traditions. It is so refreshing to read of insights from eastern Christianity alongside western - we have much to learn from one another. This is generally something that I deeply appreciate in much of William’s writing.
April 20, 2025
God with Us is a collection of sermons and lectures from the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, one of the foremost Christian thinkers of our time. While Williams is a renowned scholar, he is also an excellent preacher, and the sermons and lectures in this short book testify to how well Williams can communicate complex orthodox ideas in lucid and evocative prose. The book itself is divided into two sections, the first on the atonement and the cross, the second on the resurrection. In the first section, Williams shows how the atonement has both subjective and objective elements: on our end, the symbol of the cross transforms our subjective relationship to God, while on God’s end, God, too, acts to transform our relationship with him. Put another way, our subjective relation with the cross acts in concert with the objective action of God that God takes whether or not we subjectively respond to Christ’s sacrifice.
In consideration of this subjective element, Williams explains why the cross is symbol of God’s love and freedom. In the cross, God “demonstrates” or “proves” his love for the world. “The execution of Jesus is a proof that God loves us,” Williams writes. “Here is a divine love that cannot be defeated by violence: we do our worst, and we still fail to put God off. We reject, exclude and murder the one who bears the love of God in his words and work, and that love continues to do exactly what it always did.” Yet however evocative and powerful the symbol of the cross may be, however profound its lesson that “we should be non-violent and non-retaliatory,” even however much this lesson shapes the way we live our lives, Christ’s death makes possible “a deeply radically altered relationship with God,” and this transformative act “doesn’t depend on us.” Consequently, this first, subjective element of the atonement cannot account for its full metaphysical import.
This leads Williams to consider the notion of sacrifice, since we are told that “Christ died for our sins.” What can this mean? While Williams eschews full blown metaphysical analysis, his discussion of the objective element of atonement—God’s action on his end—is rich, albeit impressionistic. Williams is careful to steer clear of particularly stilted theories of the atonement that focus on punishment, which effectively state: “we deserve to be punished, Christ takes our punishment, and so we walk free out of the court.” Instead, he contextualizes what Christ’s “sacrifice” probably meant for a first-century Jew familiar with the importance of sacrifice in ritual and in the Hebrew Scriptures. While the Hebrew Scriptures hardly offer a systematic account of sacrifice, Williams underscores how sacrifice “propitiates” God, how it invites God back into an active relationship with the world, and how it “establishes—or re-establishes, confirms—the covenant, God’s alliance with God’s people.” New Testament writers pick up on this sense of propitiation—the Book of Revelation speaks of “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world”—yet complicate the idea of Christ’s sacrifice. First, New Testament writers “speak of the death of Jesus as a sacrifice because it’s a rescue operation. . . . It breaks the chain between evil actions and evil consequences.” Second, these writers affirm the notion that Christ not only rescues individuals, he saves the life of the whole community. And third, Christ’s sacrifice, in accordance with the covenantal structure of sacrifice in the Hebrew Scriptures, “seals the alliance, the peace treaty, between God and humanity.” In addition to these complications, Williams speaks of sacrifice as “obedience”: Jesus obeys God’s command to suffer and die on behalf of humanity—and in perfect obedience to God, Jesus sacrifices himself in a way that can cover over the sins of others. In sacrifice, Christ surrenders himself fully, to such an extent that God can work in him on behalf of humanity “with no interruption, with no diversion.” Likewise, Williams also introduces the notion of sacrifice as Gift, such that Christ offers himself to God as the most perfect Gift—i.e., God’s own selfless love reflected in his Incarnate son. Via our relationship with the Incarnate Christ, we, too, enter into new relation to God, and thus share in the Gift shared by two persons of the Trinity.
In the second half of the book, Williams reaffirms his rather orthodox interpretation of the resurrection. He is quick to reject a non-literal interpretation of resurrection—wherein, for example, in view of the dubious conclusion that the earliest Christians had no sense of resurrection, later Christians ultimately came to believe that, perhaps metaphorically, Christ was still “alive.” “No faith in the New Testament,” Williams writes, “seems to be definable or identifiable independently of the resurrection,” and a true resurrection of Christ back to earth at that. To affirm Christianity is not to affirm the view “that Jesus was a very nice person” who embodies quintessential selflessness. Contrary to non-literal interpretations of the resurrection, Williams reasserts that it was “an event,” an event to which people could point as transformative yet not completely understand.
Attuned to how real this event was to the earliest Christians, Williams therefore explains what the resurrection meant “for people in the first century to say they believed Jesus had risen from the dead,” and then, in the final section, what the resurrection means for us moderns two thousand years later. Perceptively, he focuses on why the resurrection accounts in the Gospels are so different, even contradictory. “What we have is a series of resurrection stories that are abrupt, confused, vivid and unpolished. I don’t think that one can overemphasize that oddity about the resurrection stories.” Yet this oddity, he claims, attests to the resurrection’s historical veracity; early Christians who had witnessed this event did not expect it, and were thus unsure how to interpret it. There is “a quality of ‘rawness’ about these stories,” Williams observes, “a quality of mysteriousness.” The resurrection was a shock to Jesus’s followers; they had no idea how to respond, and their own uncertainty anticipates our own inability to “speak completely adequately about Jesus as risen—we are in this sense out of our depth.” What we do know, however—or at least what Williams wants to assert—is that the resurrection is the first part “of the last phase of God’s action in the world’s history.” The resurrection of Christ happened once and will never happen a second time, as it fundamentally, metaphysically transformed the world. It is “an all-important, decisive, central moment around which the whole history of the world pivots and turns in a new direction,” and “it cannot be undone.”
This last point, in fact, comes in the final section of God with Us, wherein Williams sketches what the resurrection means for us now. Thus to believe that God can turn history on its pivot is also to believe that “all sorts of human situations” can be different. In effect, to believe in the resurrection is to believe in the transformative power of God’s love to upend systems of oppression and domination and to enact beloved community. Moreover, to believe that humanity is not fated to endure perpetual injustice is to affirm another theme applicable to our times: that death cannot defeat us. Death may be real, Williams says, yet it is conquerable. By this, he means that death cannot put an end to a relationship with God, which “is . . . not exhausted by the set of horizons we’re used to here and now. Such a relationship is what is meant by eternal life—not just life after death and not just some sort of survival of death.” Here, Williams corrects a common assumption of Christians with respect to eternal life: to transcend death does not mean that “some little bit of us” persists in immortal life “rather half-heartedly for some indefinite period, but that God remakes us.” Consequently, to affirm eternal life and resurrection life with God in heaven does not wed one to some view of the human soul—or, for that matter, to any view at all about humans. Rather, to affirm eternal life is to commit oneself to a particular view of God, “that God is the God who raised Jesus from the dead, the God who raises the dead,” the God who conquers death qua God. “Our horizons, bounded by death, are not God’s horizons,” Williams writes, and this is a profound comfort to our anxious, finite, and imperfect selves weary with fear—especially with fear of death.
As is clear by now, I hope, this little book is not as mealy as perhaps it initially may seem. To interpret Williams’s impressionistic lyricism as superficiality is profoundly mistaken. For each and every claim in these lectures and sermons, Williams can wield rich—and sometimes quite complex—spiritual defenses. This sort of text, however, is not the medium by which to do this; readers who expect a systematic treatment of the atonement should thus look elsewhere for satisfaction. For others, like me, who have only started to reflect on what the atonement can and should mean in one’s life, God with Us is an excellent introduction. Williams is a warm conversational partner with whom to share one’s most intimate skepticism and anxieties, for which his candid orthodoxy is a remedial, if not entirely curative, tonic. With Williams, one can take up one’s Christian faith anew.
In consideration of this subjective element, Williams explains why the cross is symbol of God’s love and freedom. In the cross, God “demonstrates” or “proves” his love for the world. “The execution of Jesus is a proof that God loves us,” Williams writes. “Here is a divine love that cannot be defeated by violence: we do our worst, and we still fail to put God off. We reject, exclude and murder the one who bears the love of God in his words and work, and that love continues to do exactly what it always did.” Yet however evocative and powerful the symbol of the cross may be, however profound its lesson that “we should be non-violent and non-retaliatory,” even however much this lesson shapes the way we live our lives, Christ’s death makes possible “a deeply radically altered relationship with God,” and this transformative act “doesn’t depend on us.” Consequently, this first, subjective element of the atonement cannot account for its full metaphysical import.
This leads Williams to consider the notion of sacrifice, since we are told that “Christ died for our sins.” What can this mean? While Williams eschews full blown metaphysical analysis, his discussion of the objective element of atonement—God’s action on his end—is rich, albeit impressionistic. Williams is careful to steer clear of particularly stilted theories of the atonement that focus on punishment, which effectively state: “we deserve to be punished, Christ takes our punishment, and so we walk free out of the court.” Instead, he contextualizes what Christ’s “sacrifice” probably meant for a first-century Jew familiar with the importance of sacrifice in ritual and in the Hebrew Scriptures. While the Hebrew Scriptures hardly offer a systematic account of sacrifice, Williams underscores how sacrifice “propitiates” God, how it invites God back into an active relationship with the world, and how it “establishes—or re-establishes, confirms—the covenant, God’s alliance with God’s people.” New Testament writers pick up on this sense of propitiation—the Book of Revelation speaks of “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world”—yet complicate the idea of Christ’s sacrifice. First, New Testament writers “speak of the death of Jesus as a sacrifice because it’s a rescue operation. . . . It breaks the chain between evil actions and evil consequences.” Second, these writers affirm the notion that Christ not only rescues individuals, he saves the life of the whole community. And third, Christ’s sacrifice, in accordance with the covenantal structure of sacrifice in the Hebrew Scriptures, “seals the alliance, the peace treaty, between God and humanity.” In addition to these complications, Williams speaks of sacrifice as “obedience”: Jesus obeys God’s command to suffer and die on behalf of humanity—and in perfect obedience to God, Jesus sacrifices himself in a way that can cover over the sins of others. In sacrifice, Christ surrenders himself fully, to such an extent that God can work in him on behalf of humanity “with no interruption, with no diversion.” Likewise, Williams also introduces the notion of sacrifice as Gift, such that Christ offers himself to God as the most perfect Gift—i.e., God’s own selfless love reflected in his Incarnate son. Via our relationship with the Incarnate Christ, we, too, enter into new relation to God, and thus share in the Gift shared by two persons of the Trinity.
In the second half of the book, Williams reaffirms his rather orthodox interpretation of the resurrection. He is quick to reject a non-literal interpretation of resurrection—wherein, for example, in view of the dubious conclusion that the earliest Christians had no sense of resurrection, later Christians ultimately came to believe that, perhaps metaphorically, Christ was still “alive.” “No faith in the New Testament,” Williams writes, “seems to be definable or identifiable independently of the resurrection,” and a true resurrection of Christ back to earth at that. To affirm Christianity is not to affirm the view “that Jesus was a very nice person” who embodies quintessential selflessness. Contrary to non-literal interpretations of the resurrection, Williams reasserts that it was “an event,” an event to which people could point as transformative yet not completely understand.
Attuned to how real this event was to the earliest Christians, Williams therefore explains what the resurrection meant “for people in the first century to say they believed Jesus had risen from the dead,” and then, in the final section, what the resurrection means for us moderns two thousand years later. Perceptively, he focuses on why the resurrection accounts in the Gospels are so different, even contradictory. “What we have is a series of resurrection stories that are abrupt, confused, vivid and unpolished. I don’t think that one can overemphasize that oddity about the resurrection stories.” Yet this oddity, he claims, attests to the resurrection’s historical veracity; early Christians who had witnessed this event did not expect it, and were thus unsure how to interpret it. There is “a quality of ‘rawness’ about these stories,” Williams observes, “a quality of mysteriousness.” The resurrection was a shock to Jesus’s followers; they had no idea how to respond, and their own uncertainty anticipates our own inability to “speak completely adequately about Jesus as risen—we are in this sense out of our depth.” What we do know, however—or at least what Williams wants to assert—is that the resurrection is the first part “of the last phase of God’s action in the world’s history.” The resurrection of Christ happened once and will never happen a second time, as it fundamentally, metaphysically transformed the world. It is “an all-important, decisive, central moment around which the whole history of the world pivots and turns in a new direction,” and “it cannot be undone.”
This last point, in fact, comes in the final section of God with Us, wherein Williams sketches what the resurrection means for us now. Thus to believe that God can turn history on its pivot is also to believe that “all sorts of human situations” can be different. In effect, to believe in the resurrection is to believe in the transformative power of God’s love to upend systems of oppression and domination and to enact beloved community. Moreover, to believe that humanity is not fated to endure perpetual injustice is to affirm another theme applicable to our times: that death cannot defeat us. Death may be real, Williams says, yet it is conquerable. By this, he means that death cannot put an end to a relationship with God, which “is . . . not exhausted by the set of horizons we’re used to here and now. Such a relationship is what is meant by eternal life—not just life after death and not just some sort of survival of death.” Here, Williams corrects a common assumption of Christians with respect to eternal life: to transcend death does not mean that “some little bit of us” persists in immortal life “rather half-heartedly for some indefinite period, but that God remakes us.” Consequently, to affirm eternal life and resurrection life with God in heaven does not wed one to some view of the human soul—or, for that matter, to any view at all about humans. Rather, to affirm eternal life is to commit oneself to a particular view of God, “that God is the God who raised Jesus from the dead, the God who raises the dead,” the God who conquers death qua God. “Our horizons, bounded by death, are not God’s horizons,” Williams writes, and this is a profound comfort to our anxious, finite, and imperfect selves weary with fear—especially with fear of death.
As is clear by now, I hope, this little book is not as mealy as perhaps it initially may seem. To interpret Williams’s impressionistic lyricism as superficiality is profoundly mistaken. For each and every claim in these lectures and sermons, Williams can wield rich—and sometimes quite complex—spiritual defenses. This sort of text, however, is not the medium by which to do this; readers who expect a systematic treatment of the atonement should thus look elsewhere for satisfaction. For others, like me, who have only started to reflect on what the atonement can and should mean in one’s life, God with Us is an excellent introduction. Williams is a warm conversational partner with whom to share one’s most intimate skepticism and anxieties, for which his candid orthodoxy is a remedial, if not entirely curative, tonic. With Williams, one can take up one’s Christian faith anew.
November 17, 2023
Although Rowan Williams is an excellent scholar in his own right, it is his pastor's heart that shines through in this short book. God with us is divided into two parts: the cross and the resurrection. The three chapters are titled The Sign, The Sacrifice, and The Victory. Each of these chapters reads like a short sermon. The two resurrection chapters deal with its historicity and its contemporary relevance. While there is nothing new or unique in this book, it is a great reminder of the importance and impact of the cross and resurrection.
March 13, 2025
The main events of the Christian story are difficult and challenging. Grappling with them is an essential part of any believer's trajectory. This profound and multi-layered book covers a lot of territory in just over 100 pages. Rowan Williams provides ways to think about the cross and resurrection that deepen understanding and faith.
There is much language used about the cross that can be off-putting and problematic, particularly in a world where those who tend toward more bombastic fundamentalist theological rhetoric are often the most vocal. Some often have seemed to me to be almost delighting in the suffering and torture that the cross represents. Financial metaphors for the cross, for example, are something I have always found particularly off-putting and a bit crass. Though the word 'ransom' comes up here, overall, this book is refreshingly nuanced and I found it necessary to take time after each chapter to reflect and allow the thoughts presented to sink in.
The concept of the cross as a natural consequence of a life lived with total and utter integrity in a violent and power-hungry world is one example of an idea that requires some reflection. There is likely no other individual in history who, though innocent, could forgive those who perpetrated such torture on them. Williams also offers insightful thoughts on the true meaning of sacrifice in the biblical sense.
The book ends with a beautifully reflective chapter on the resurrection, how the disciples would have viewed this event, and what it means for humanity as a whole.
This is a book that I will likely go back to again, as it contains many enriching layers of theology, written in mostly jargon-free language.
There is much language used about the cross that can be off-putting and problematic, particularly in a world where those who tend toward more bombastic fundamentalist theological rhetoric are often the most vocal. Some often have seemed to me to be almost delighting in the suffering and torture that the cross represents. Financial metaphors for the cross, for example, are something I have always found particularly off-putting and a bit crass. Though the word 'ransom' comes up here, overall, this book is refreshingly nuanced and I found it necessary to take time after each chapter to reflect and allow the thoughts presented to sink in.
The concept of the cross as a natural consequence of a life lived with total and utter integrity in a violent and power-hungry world is one example of an idea that requires some reflection. There is likely no other individual in history who, though innocent, could forgive those who perpetrated such torture on them. Williams also offers insightful thoughts on the true meaning of sacrifice in the biblical sense.
The book ends with a beautifully reflective chapter on the resurrection, how the disciples would have viewed this event, and what it means for humanity as a whole.
This is a book that I will likely go back to again, as it contains many enriching layers of theology, written in mostly jargon-free language.
July 2, 2019
It is very impressive how Williams manages to find a middle way between subjective and objective views of atonement in this book. Williams does not shy away from language of sacrifice and he explains well (although not comprehensively of course) different understandings of sacrifice in the Old testament and how that might affect the understanding of the cross in the new. At the same time, the atonement certainly affects the heart of the believer in a way that it should turn towards the loving God who was prepared to pour out God's love in that fashion. It is on the short side of things and it would be very intersting to read a much more extended book that would team up very well with Christ the Heart of Creation. What a pair that would be!
September 5, 2023
An excellent, short book of meditations on the cross and on the resurrection. I’ve been wanting to read former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for a while now, and I was not disappointed. He writes in a nuanced, yet accessible way, bringing the reader past the ordinary views of both the cross and the resurrection. A short example which gave me joy and wonder at God: in Christ’s obedience on the cross, we see so much more than a man from Galilee obeying his God. We see the Son imitating his Father. Playing back God’s love to God. We are able to see and understand this only because the Holy Spirit enlivens and shows us this love. So I’m Christ’s obedience on the Cross we get a picture of the Trinity, and are invited into the very life of God’s Triune nature. Please read this book.
March 19, 2025
The perfect Lenten reads, both giving valuable insight into humanity. Cohen draws conclusions about how leaders attain, keep, and lose power, as illustrated in Shakespeare, a canny observer of human behaviour. Most interesting in Cohen’s book is what is not stated: Trump as Henry V. Williams writes about a different kind of king and different kind of power altogether. But both give me hope in humanity. And that’s good news indeed.
June 10, 2018
Another gem of a text by Williams. He provides us with a powerful examination of what the cross and the resurrection meant in their historical contexts and also what they mean for humanity in the present day.
October 15, 2022
I pretty much give Williams 5 stars for everything. I cannot fault his work. He is simply brilliant. God with Us is a concise classic. What was accomplished at Calvary? God suffered alongside us. And through God's suffering, we have hope.
March 20, 2020
I don’t have anything to add except PLEASE, irrespective of your religion, read this book.
February 13, 2024
Excellent
This book is a great and easy read. I recommend it as a clear and up to date meaning of Easter.
This book is a great and easy read. I recommend it as a clear and up to date meaning of Easter.
Read
May 16, 2025Solid book. Would be really good for church book clubs, but it's lacking the depth I want. Nothing all that new for me to consider.
March 15, 2017
A difficult but r rewarding read
This is not the easiest book to read, although short it is not a quick read, requiring contemplation and some rereading of tricky passages. The overall message is well argued and stimulates further study.
This is not the easiest book to read, although short it is not a quick read, requiring contemplation and some rereading of tricky passages. The overall message is well argued and stimulates further study.
January 18, 2026
Some good illustrations on the meaning of the incarnation, cross, and resurrection.
March 13, 2018
I found this to be a fantastic read for lent
March 1, 2024
There was nothing in this book that was objectionable, and some lines that really made some difficult concepts far more clear to me. However, this is the second book of Williams' that I've read, and I had the same issues with his writing style with this one as I did the last - it's not wrong or bad, just not for me, and I had a hard time really getting into it.
August 21, 2019
very precious book, deep truths being told in accessible and comprehensible language.
August 16, 2021
Meer theologisch werk. Veel om te overdenken. Williams legt de basis van het christendom bij de opstanding van Jezus en heeft overtuigende argumenten.
July 16, 2024
Wie God is, op basis van het sterven en de opstanding van Jezus. Goed geschreven boek!
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews