Book Review – The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

reviewed by Mark Knight

The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ
Fleming Rutledge
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015
Paperback, 669 pages

The atonement is the cornerstone of Christian theological understanding. The rest of theology rises and falls on Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. What took place in those fateful hours reverberates throughout history and encompasses everything about who we are as Christians. And yet we need to ask ourselves if it is ever properly and fully understood? Can it ever be?

This last year, I walked through the ordination process, and so I can say this with confidence: the toughest question to answer on the paper and in the interviews is to give an explanation of the atonement. How can I explain such a thing with only a couple of paragraphs? It’s a doctrine that’s far too deep and yet immeasurably wide to simply define with a flip of the wrist or a turn of a phrase. As there is no single historically agreed-upon position, Christians typically find agreement in the reality that we know it happened, in Christ, and it is vitally important. However, that’s not nearly good enough if we are building our entire theology around “Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). There’s good news for all of us as we seek and desire to mine the depths of the atonement, we have some guides along the path for our journey. For many of us P. P. Waldenström’s explanation still serves as a guide, and as we mark the 150th year of his historic sermon on the atonement, we can, like he did, also engage with other thinkers and guides in the atonement.

One such cicerone is Fleming Rutledge, who has written an expansive volume of 669 pages titled, The Crucifixion. The size of such a work would turn away many who happen upon it, assuming it is another publication for the ivory towers and hardcore theologians and not for the pews. This thinking would be misguided, as Rutledge seeks to write towards the pastor as a means to help the pastor once again anchor herself and her congregation in the atonement. Similarly, laypeople could also read this book and be enriched in their faith as it seeps from the pulpit into the pews.

Rutledge’s work does not have to be read from start to finish — though I did and found it very enjoyable — and it can also be used as a reference work. The structure for her book is very organized, and there are two indexes in the back of the book, subject and scripture, that can serve pastors and congregants alike in their own sermons and studies.

It would be a feat to discuss this work chapter by chapter, and instead I will suggest ways that Pietist readers can engage and enjoy this book, namely through the author’s focus on the primacy of the atonement and the resulting freedom in Christ. To close we can also consider any overlap between Waldenström and Rutledge.

The explanation of the atonement is an ancient as well as a modern problem. Rutledge has identified the source of the church’s divisions in this, that “We still ‘hide our faces’ from the cross and ‘esteem it not.’ It has always been difficult for the church to hold on to the cross at its center” (82). She goes on to compare the church through every era with the Corinthian church, desiring the flashy and “razzle-dazzle” of the Spirit without the audacity and scandalous idea of the cross. “Preachers and teachers who are courageous and faithful in expounding the cross of Christ but lack the flashy, ostentatious style so much favored in this age of the soundbite find it difficult to gain a hearing. They are likely to be advised to improve their image and cultivate a more popular, even commercial, appeal…[Paul’s] letter addresses the problem of aggressive, self-promoting ‘spirituality’ in the congregation. As in today’s environment, religion and spirituality are ‘in’; the cross, however, remains forever ‘out.’” She continues, “Wherever there is emphasis on spiritual virtuosity with a corresponding de-emphasis on atonement for sin and self-sacrificing service, there we meet the Corinthians once again” (88).

This is an important corrective, as you can imagine, for any of the popular movements we see in the church today. From aligning to a political party, taking up the cause of justice but throwing out the justice of God, celebrity Chrisitanity, or any other flashy or trendy movement that is not of the Spirit of God. If we put Jesus and atonement at the center we all come equally to the foot of the cross as sinners in need of grace and we see Jesus who forgives, guides, equips, justifies, empowers, and sanctifies. This then gives us the freedom we so desperately desire but can only find in the atonement.

One of the central affirmations of the Evangelical Covenant Church is the idea of freedom in Christ. Another part of freedom in Christ we find in scripture is the freedom from the powers and principalities that Christ has defeated on the cross and through the empty tomb. Rutledge unpacks the liberating power of the atonement in such a way that enriched my own understanding of freedom in Christ. “The ‘freedom we have in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians) is not like the freedom to cross cultural boundaries and grab at whatever we want; such ‘freedoms’ are simply exchanges of one type of bondage for another. We are still driven by our desires. Freedom in Christ is to be released from perpetual inner conflict into ‘the glorious liberty of the child of God’ (Rom 8:21) where we are enabled to live, not by our own tyrannical wishes, but for the love of others” (548).

Freedom in Christ is liberating because we no longer are running from captivity to captivity, chasing fleeting desires, or caught up in something that is slowly destroying us from the inside out. We have been set free. For Christ has come, has been crucified, was buried, rose again, and ascended into heaven, finally sending us the Spirit so he will be with us always. The freedom in Christ comes not from some sort of achievement but instead through the beauty and harmony of Christ in us. This is the hope of glory (Col 1:27). Rutledge wants her readers to understand that Jesus “has rewritten the story, we are no longer prisoners of our worst selves, nor of the evil powers that would destroy us” (570).

I’m not convinced Waldenström would agree with Rutledge at every turn throughout this volume, but I do think he would enjoy the dialogue. Rutledge situates herself firmly in scripture and, though she never deals with Waldenström directly, she asks similar questions in places. Who is being reconciled? Is it God or is it us? Who is the subject and who is the object in the reconciliation process? As Rutledge writes, “God is not divided against himself. When we see Jesus, we see the Father (Jn 14:7). The Father did not look at Jesus on the cross and suddenly have a change of heart. The purpose of the atonement was not to bring about a change in God’s attitude toward his rebellious creatures. God’s attitude toward us has always and ever been the same. Judgement against sin is preceded, accompanied, and followed by God’s mercy. There was never a time when God was against us” (282).

Rutledge spends a lot of time working out the nature of God’s wrath. There are times in her writing I can imagine Waldenström and Rutledge debating the nuances of the concept. However, I think they arrive at a similar place. Waldenström understands that it was not God’s attitude towards humans that was changed but instead, humans changed when they moved away from God. Their attitude became autonomous and negative towards God as they surrendered more unto the enemies of God (evil, flesh, and death). Rutledge says, “It is not his opposition to us but our opposition to him that had to be overcome, and the only way it could be overcome was from God’s side, by God’s initiative, from inside human flesh—the human flesh of the Son” (323).

Waldenström might resonate with the primacy of the atonement and Rutledge’s irenic spirit. I would encourage anyone to pick up a copy and continue to mine the depths of the atonement as we all encounter Jesus together and continue to search the scriptures as God’s Spirit further illuminates our understanding of the atonement.