Long Paper Outline

Another in a series of "peeking" into my school folders. This is an outline to the longest theological paper I have written at Divinity school.

Outline [Power, Atonement, and God’s Passibility]
 Introduction
o Thesis: Is the church’s theology of atonement adequate to grasp the power God displays on the cross? How does it affect the church’s interaction with its neighbors?
 Trying to speak in a way different from church’s language of atonement
• Entanglement of political, economic, social powers with Christianity thwarting a way to understand the atonement without violent or dominating language
• Dependence on political, economic language to describe God’s power is not sufficient and hinders the Christian commitment to interact with the “other”

Christianity and History of Power
 Powers of Christianity
o Sketch of church history from Constantine to present
 Major church councils (Constantine’s legacy), reformation, crusades, WWII, genocides and globalization
o major questions and issues from modern history: imbalance of power and suffering
 Perspective on God’s power
o Divine love, suffering, liberation
 Moltmann-suffering
 Pannenberg-love
 Gutierrez-liberation
o Divine choice and passibility
 God is relational to creation
• Emphasis on choice in the biblical narrative as evidence of a divine value in choice
 God is moved to give grace, to choose humanity’s redemption—the cross is not an answer to a violent, blood seeking God
• Jesus’ choice
• How does a God whose display of power is in the cross (in suffering, love, liberation) not be a God who is moved by creation’s plights

Atonement
 Popular political and economic theories of atonement
o satisfaction
 substitution/debt
o sacrifice
 supernatural politics/paschal lamb
 violence in metaphor and theories
o Valuable in understanding God or excuse to use violence against another?
 Falwell sermon critique
o Violence and suffering in God
 Brief conversation/connection between OT and NT
 Holy genocide and colonialism (Just War)
o Using alternate atonement theory
 Healing/medical model
 How has violent atonement theory defined relations between Christians and its neighbors?
 Conclusion