God's Just Vengeance
Crime, Violence and the Rhetoric of Salvation

This 1996 book examines the relationship between the theologies of atonement and penal strategies.

Timothy Gorringe (Author)

9780521553018, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 March 1996

296 pages
22.2 x 14 x 2.4 cm, 0.453 kg

"...this is an ambitious and thought-provoking book." Rachel Fulton, Law and History Review

This 1996 book examines the relationship between the theologies of atonement and penal strategies. Christian theology was potent in Western society until the nineteenth century, and the so-called 'satisfaction theory' of atonement interacted and reacted with penal practice. Drawing on the work of Norbert Elias and David Garland, the author argues that atonement theology created a structure of affect which favoured retributive policies. He ranges freely between Old Testament texts, St Anselm, and eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British social history, to show the integral connection between sin and crime, the legal and the moral. The question arises if the preaching of the cross not only desensitised us to judicial violence but even lent it sanction. The last two chapters review theory and practice in the twentieth century, and Timothy Gorringe makes concrete proposals for both theology and criminal and societal violence.

1. Religion and retribution
Part I. The Cultural Formation of Atonement: Biblical Sources: 2. Blood which makes atonement
3. Accounting for the cross
Part II. Making Satisfaction: Atonement and Penalty 1090–1890: 4. The ladder of all high designs
5. The wounds of Christ
6. Three angry letters in a book
7. The moral government of the universe
8. The age of atonement
Part III. Contemporary Directions in Atonement and Penal Theory: 9. The gospel and retribution
10. Forgiveness, crime and community.

Subject Areas: Christian theology [HRCM]