Why the Cross?
Divine Friendship and the Power of Justice

Explains the justice of the cross as a rightly ordered communication and diffusion of divine friendship.

Ligita Ryliškyt? (Author)

9781009202763, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 January 2023

350 pages
22.2 x 14.5 x 3.1 cm, 0.76 kg

In this book, Ligita Ryliskyte addresses what is arguably the most important and profound question in systematic theology: What does it mean for humankind to be saved by the cross? Offering a constructive account of the atonement that avoids pitting God's saving love against divine justice, she provides a biblically-grounded and philosophically disciplined theology of the cross that responds to the exigencies of postmodern secular culture. Ryliskyte draws on Bernard J. F. Lonergan's development of the Augustinian-Thomist tradition to argue that the justice of the cross concerns the orderly communication and diffusion of divine friendship. It  becomes efficacious in the dynamic order of the emergent universe through the transformation of evil into good out of love. Showing how inherited theological traditions can be transposed in new contexts, Ryliskyte's book reveals a Christology of fundamental significance for contemporary systematic theology, as well as the fields of theological ethics and Christian spirituality.

1. The exigencies of secular culture
2. 'But we preach Christ Crucified'
3. Augustine's 'Justice over Power': the humble love that restores order
4. 'Justice over Power' in light of Augustine's De Ciuitate Dei
5. The justice of the cross in St. Thomas: In Nobis, Sed Non Sine Nobis
6. St. Thomas on Christ's satisfaction: when justice meets charity
7. Lonergan's transposition: a turn to historically conscious interiority
8. The law of the cross: transformation of evil into Good
9. Historically-minded systematics: three explanatory elements
10. Cur Deus Cruciatus? New wine into new wineskins.

Subject Areas: Christian sacraments [HRCV1], Christian theology [HRCM], New Testaments [HRCF2]