Rutledge's "The Crucifixion" - quotations

  I've been reading Fleming Rutledge's The Crucifixion for a while now, and I continue to benefit. Her earlier section on the irreligious and godless nature of the crucifixion as seen in its original cultural context was really helpful. Following that, her insights on forgiveness and the fact that real forgiveness cannot be easy or automatic is really valuable. Now, her discussion on Anselm has been insightful. I hadn't realized how controversial Anselm is though it makes sense as I read about it. She shows how in many ways Anselm is not understood well across the centuries, for reasons both understandable and not. So I'm including a series of quotations below. They are in three groupings, on three tracks. Each a peak into her thought. I highly recommend the book!

"'Honor' in Anselm's thought stands not for some imagined hypersensitivity by the Creator to his own dignity, but is a metaphor for the deep logic of reality, in which the balance of a universe is disrupted by the fact of death and by human alienation from others and from God, a situation which could only be rectifies by divine action."  ~ Eamon Duffy, as cited in Rutledge

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In an important sense, the Bible is art rather than science or philosophy, and theology is a sort of art too, since it is largely based upon the narrative form of the Scriptures. (pp. 146-147).  

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The wrath of God falls upon God himself, by God’s own choice, out of God’s own love. The “justice connection” may not be clear to those who are accustomed to privilege, but to oppressed and suffering Christians in the troubled places of the earth, there is no need to spell it out. God in Christ on the cross has become one with those who are despised and outcast in the world. (p. 143).

God’s righteousness leads him to all lengths to oppose what will destroy what he loves, and that means declaring enmity against everything that resists his redemptive purpose. This is the aggressive principle in God’s justice.  (p. 136).

The pervasive and monstrous nature of injustice around the world forces us to acknowledge that forgiveness alone does not give a true picture of God’s purpose. (p. 142).

If, when we see an injustice, our blood does not boil at some point, we have not yet understood the depths of God. It depends, though, on what outrages us. To be outraged on behalf of oneself or one’s own group alone is to be human, but it is not to participate in Christ. To be outraged and to take action on behalf of the voiceless and oppressed, however, is to do the work of God. (p. 143).

  From the standpoint of the gospel, however, every single one of us, rich or poor, is a complex mixture; we are all capable of injustice and we are all living on the edge of neediness at any time. (p. 150).

It is in the very nature of God, “the Holy One in your midst,” to step down from the bench and pour himself out in unquenchable compassion. (p. 136).