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21 " The early church did not understand the death of Christ as paying a penalty in some transactional sense that only God’s son could pay. The crucifixion is not, in that sense, cosmically necessary to reconcile God and humanity. Instead, Christ’s death is God’s victory over sin and death. God conquers death by fully entering into it. God conquers Satan by using the very means employed by the Evil One. Thus, the crucifixion is not a necessary transaction to appease a wrathful and justice-demanding deity, but an act of divine love. "
― Tony Jones , A Better Atonement: Beyond the Depraved Doctrine of Original Sin
22 " If we are supposed to learn about love from God, then the idea that God predestined us to sin, which results in our eternal damnation and requires God’s Son to die on the cross, teaches us very little about love. "
― Tony Jones , Did God Kill Jesus?: Searching for Love in History’s Most Famous Execution
23 " The problems with this concentration on God’s wrath are pluriform. First and foremost, it contradicts the experience that most of us have with God, and that a lot of us have with the Bible. Our experience of God is not of wrath, but of love. Indeed, that’s how most people experience God even before they accept the idea that Christ stands between us and God. So it seems odd to first have to convince people that God’s wrath burns against them, then to convince them that Jesus lovingly took on that wrath. "
24 " I, too, want to advocate for a theological stance that takes a pastiche approach. Each of the theories above, and the one below, come from a certain context. Each was developed in order to solve a contemporary problem with the atonement. Each did that, albeit imperfectly. So I’d like us to embrace them all, realizing their shortcomings. "
25 " God cannot be bound by a law, a moral code, a universal sense of justice, or a “deep magic from the dawn of time.” God could have forgiven us of our sin however God wanted too—with or without the execution of his son. "
26 " But the hope within our faith is that we can draw meaning out of what is meaningless, through the theopraxis of learning to love one another better–and that, in the global scheme of things, means living for the good of everyone, whether they be Foxconn workers or Syrian asylum seekers–or friends who are suffering. "
― Tony Jones , Cancer & Theology
27 " Jesus, uniquely at one with God, taught that the ultimate rule is love and that any other religious rule that did not extend God’s reign of love needed to be reconsidered. Jesus hinted that this rule of love was even to be extended to non-Jews, and this became a major theme of Paul’s ministry and writing a couple of decades later. "
28 " Bad theology begets ugly Christianity. Good theology begets beautiful Christianity. "
29 " ago, Augustine argued that if God knows something’s "
30 " The New Testament varies widely as well, with the Gospel writers understanding Jesus’ death as a Passover sacrifice and the author of Hebrews considering it a Yom Kippur sacrifice. Mixing those two is a bit like putting a Christmas tree up on Easter, which is basically what Paul does in his various letters. "
31 " So when Jesus defended his disciples for picking grain on the Sabbath, he was essentially telling his interrogators that they misunderstood God’s relationship with human beings. He was saying, in effect, Yes, there are rules, but don’t let the rules get in the way of loving God and others. And when Jesus healed a leper, he was giving an object lesson in the same: by the power of God’s Spirit, the people who have been excluded are now included. "
32 " Yes, it is hard to conceive of orthodox Christian faith without the idea of original sin. That’s a sign of just how successful Augustine’s ideas have been in the Western church. But that does not make the idea biblical or right. One can acknowledge the universality of the human proclivity toward sin without affirming either Calvin’s total depravity or Augustine’s original sin. One merely has to accept simple human fallibility. We’re neither immortal nor perfect. We’re fallible. We make mistakes. And we die. "
33 " Writing a book and not publishing it, is like building a boat and never sailing it - UNTHINKABLE! "
― Tony Jones
34 " Possibly the most famous quote in all of Orthodox theology comes from Athanasius (c. 293–373), who in his book, On the Incarnation, wrote of Christ, “For he was made man so that we might become God. "
35 " Maybe you’ve heard someone say, “Sure, God is loving, but his love is balanced with his justice” or “Without justice, love is not possible.” These statements speak of God’s love as an attribute of God. But, for the Divinity model, God’s very nature is love. Love is not an aspect of God’s being; love is God’s very being. "