Al Owski’s Reviews > The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For and Believe > Status Update

“As long as we employ any retributive notion of God's offended justice (required punishment for wrongdoing), we trade our distinctive Christian message for the cold, hard justice that has prevailed in most cultures throughout history.”

“At best, the theory of substitutionary atonement has inoculated us against the true effects of the Gospel, causing us to largely "thank" Jesus instead of honestly imitating him. At worst, it led us to see God as a cold, brutal figure, who demands acts of violence before God can love God's own creation.”

“I know the theory of substitutionary atonement is central to the faith of many. But the questions of why Jesus died and what is the meaning and message of his death have dominated the recent Christian narrative, often much more than his life and teaching. As some have said, if this theory is true, all we needed was the last three days or even three hours of Jesus's life.”

“I hope to address how our commonly accepted atonement theory—especially as accomplished through the life, suffering, and death of Jesus—led to some serious misunderstandings of Jesus's role and Christ's eternal purpose, reaffirmed our nar-row notion of retributive justice, and legitimated a notion of "good and necessary violence" all the way down.”

“The early church never heard of this… Until we see this explanation of why Jesus had to die for what it is and what it isn't, we'll struggle to liberate our notions of both Christ and Jesus and to see them as a revelation of the infinite love of the Trinity, not some bloody transaction "required" by God's offended justice in order to rectify the problem of human sin. ”

“This theory of atonement ultimately relies on another commonly accepted notion-the "original sin" of Adam and Eve, which we were told taints all human beings. But much like original sin, which we considered earlier, most Christians have never been told how recent and regional this explanation is, and that it fully relies upon a retributive notion of justice.”

“Christians say, "Jesus died for our sins," but in recent centuries one theory did take over. … referred to as the "penal substitutionary atonement theory," especially once it was developed after the Reformation. Substitutionary atonement is the theory that Christ, by his own sacrificial choice, was punished in the place of us sinners, thus satisfying the "demands of justice" so that God could forgive our sins.”

“Scholars say that ceremonies normally confirm and celebrate the status quo and deny the shadow side of things… whereas true ritual offers an alternative universe, where the shadow is named…. In the church, I am afraid we mostly have ceremonies. Most masses I have ever attended are about affirming the status quo, which seldom reveals and often even de-nies the shadow side of church, state, or culture.”

“Feminine power is deeply relational and symbolic—and thus transformative—in ways that men cannot control or even understand. I suspect that is why we fear it. ”

“In Mary; humanity has said our eternal yes to God. A yes that cannot be undone. A corporate yes that overrides our many noes.”