Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission

by Peter Leithart

Publisher:

IVP Academic

, 2016

Overview

In Delivered from the Elements of the World Peter Leithart reframes Anselm's question, "Why the God Man?" Instead he asks, "How can the death and resurrection of a Jewish rabbi of the first century . . . be the decisive event in the history of humanity, the hinge and crux and crossroads for everything?"

With the question reframed for the wide screen, Leithart pursues the cultural and public settings and consequences of the cross and resurrection. He writes, "I hope to show that atonement theology must be social theory if it is going to have any coherence, relevance or comprehensibility at all."

There are no small thoughts or cramped plot lines in this vision of the deep-down things of cross and culture. While much is recognizable as biblical theology projected along Pauline vectors, Leithart marshals a stunning array of discourse to crack open one of the big questions of Christian theology. This is a book on the atonement that eludes conventional categories, prods our theological imaginations and is sure to spark conversation and debate.

Key Features

• Formulates several criteria of a successful, comprehensible theory of the atonement
• Unravels the rationality of the central claims of the Christian gospel: Jesus died and rose again to save us from our sins
• Argues that the fundamental physics of every socioreligious, cultural-religious formation consists of practices concerning holiness, purity, and sacrifice

Contents

• Atonement as Social Theory

Part I: Under the Elements of the World

• The Physics of the Old Creation
• Among Gentiles: An Ancient Jewish Travelogue
• Flesh
• What Torah Does

Part II: Good News of God's Justice

• The Justice of God
• The Faith of Jesus Christ

Part III: Justification

• Justified by the Faith of Jesus
• Justified from the Elements

Part IV: Contributions to a Theology of Mission

• In Ranks with the Spirit
• Outside the Christian Era
• Galatian Church, Galatian Age
• Cur Deus Homo?

Survey of Literature

• The Septuagint and Contemporary Study – Jennifer Brown Jones

Top Highlights

“Conflicts are never between politics and religion. Conflicts are always between rivals that are both religious and both political.” (Page 11)

“Why could Jesus not be another Moses? Why could he not be a teacher and founder of a new cultus and a new sect? Why does he need to die in order to institute new signs and sacraments for the new society he forms? Why the cross if the task is simply to relocate the sacred and change the rules of purity and sacrifice?” (Page 14)

“I will argue in this book that the fundamental physics of every socioreligious, cultural-religious formation consists of practices concerning holiness, purity and sacrifice. Locate the sacred center of a group; its boundaries of tolerable and intolerable persons, objects and behavior; its rituals of sacrifice—discover all this and you have got down to the elementary particles that determine the group’s chemical composition. Relocate the sacred, rearrange the boundaries of purity and pollution, revise its sacrificial procedures, and you have changed the fundamental physics of the society. A revolution here is the most profound of social revolutions, and it is the revolution achieved by Jesus in his cross and resurrection.” (Page 12)

“Paul tries to convince everyone to stop: everything is pure; no more circumcision/uncircumcision; no holy space other than the human being and human community indwelt by the Spirit of Jesus. Paul told everyone that the physics of religion and society had been transformed, and that the end of the old elemental system was the great moment of maturation, when the human race grew up from slaves to sons. A world beyond stoicheic order—that is a saved world, a world fulfilled as new creation.” (Page 41)

Endorsements

Peter Leithart is one of our best and most creative theologians. In this wide-ranging book Leithart shows that doctrine is not some abstract entity disconnected from contemporary life but is in fact deeply relevant and pregnant with social and political insights. Leithart is biblically, theologically and culturally literate—a rare combination—and thus able to produce the sort of work we so badly need today. Attending to the doctrines of the atonement and justification, he writes in the best tradition of apologetics, namely that of creative, orthodox, contextual theology.

Craig Bartholomew, professor of philosophy and religion and theology, Redeemer University College

Among contemporary theologians, only Leithart has the biblical erudition, theological breadth and rhetorical power necessary for writing a book like this one. His Christian creativity and love for Jesus Christ jump off the page. As an account of atonement, this book is also an account of the entirety of Christian reality, and indeed of the reality of Israel as well, in light of pagan and secular cultures and in light of the church's own failures to live what Christ has given. At its heart is an urgent call for all Christians, living in the Spirit, to share the Eucharist together against every fleshly barrier and Spirit-less form of exclusion. Leithart's dazzling biblical and ecumenical manifesto merits the closest attention and engagement.

Matthew Levering, Perry Family Foundation Professor of Theology, Mundelein Seminary

When you read Peter Leithart, you suddenly realize how timid most Christian theologians are, tepidly offering us a few 'insights' to edify our comfort with the status quo. Leithart is like a lightning strike from a more ancient, more courageous Christian past, his flaming pen fueled by biblical acuity and scholarly rigor. In this book, he does it again—here is the City of God written afresh for our age, asking a question you didn't know to ask but now can't avoid: Why is the cross the center of human history? Couldn't God have found another way? Leithart's answer—this book—is a monumental achievement.

James K. A. Smith, professor of philosophy, Calvin College, editor, Comment magazine

Leithart’s book is a brilliant and comprehensive account of atonement, justification, and mission. I would highly recommend it to all students of theology.

Alexander N. Kirk, Themelios: Volume 42, No. 1, April 2017

Product Details

• Title: Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission
• Author: Peter Leithart
• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Print Publication Date: 2016
• Logos Release Date: 2016
• Pages: 368
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Atonement; Jesus Christ › Crucifixion; Justification (Christian theology); Mission of the church
• ISBNs: 9780830899715, 9780830851263, 0830899715, 0830851267
• Resource ID: LLS:9780830899715
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-06T20:46:54Z

About Peter Leithart

Peter Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute and serves as Teacher at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Birmingham. He is the author of many books, including a two-volume commentary on Revelation (T&T Clark, 2018), God of Hope (Athanasius, 2022), On Earth As In Heaven (Lexham, 2022), and a forthcoming book on God the Creator (IVP). He writes a fortnightly column at FirstThings.com, and has published articles in many periodicals, both popular and academic.

Leithart has served in two pastorates: He was pastor of Reformed Heritage Presbyterian Church (now Trinity Presbyterian Church), Birmingham, Alabama from 1989 to 1995, and was pastor of Trinity Reformed Church, Moscow, Idaho, from 2003-2013. From 1998 and 2013 he taught theology and literature fulltime at New St. Andrews College, Moscow, Idaho. He received an A.B. in English and History from Hillsdale College in 1981, and a Master of Arts in Religion and a Master of Theology from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1986 and 1987. In 1998 he received his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge in England.

He and his wife, Noel, have ten children and fifteen grandchildren.