The Nonviolent Atonement (Edition 2) (Paperback)

The good: * Weaver exhaustively highlights shortcomings in the traditional theories of atonement. * Rather than sitting on his own critique, Weaver brings in a host of other critiques of traditional atonement theory, and honestly analyzes the degree to which they address both the issues that he has raised and other issues that he had missed. * Weaver lets the defenders of the traditional theories have quite a good bit of space, and engages their arguments. The bad: * I had to read the first few chapters several times, trying to figure out exactly what Weaver's own "narrative Christus Victor" theory of atonement really was. I felt that he either failed to state it concisely, or failed to make clear when he was defining it. Perhaps his feeling was that such a narrative theory of atonement can't be stated concisely...but if so, I think that Weaver should have at least devoted a chapter solely to describing what "narrative Christus Victor" IS, rather than spending so much time describing what it's not or spelling out exactly how he came up with it. * I don't feel like Weaver subjects his own theory to the same standards of criticism that he subjects other theories to. For instance, at one point he criticizes a theory as just being derivative of an older theory and not a new theory in and of itself...when it would be quite difficult for him to claim that "narrative Christus Victor" is really an entirely new theory and not a derivative of the ancient Christus Victor theory. Most significantly, he repeatedly takes the stance that if Jesus had to die for the theory of atonement to be fulfilled, then it is lacking something, because God would never have his hand absolutely forced to include Jesus's death. Yet Weaver doesn't see that his own theory could be described as requiring Jesus's death (because in narrative Christus Victor Jesus's death is the ultimate example of sacrifice, non-violence, and love) to a similar degree that some of the theories that he criticizes require it. It felt too often that Weaver was trying to draw a clear line, "My theory fulfills all criteria, no one else's does", when no clear line really exists. Overall, I feel like this is a worthwhile book to read to think through what you really believe about the meaning of Jesus's death and how it actually changed the world. Weaver just gets a bit too polemic in how he portrays the options.