Boersma on Violence, Hospitality and the Cross
Boersma, Hans. Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004). This is the second book I have read by a Regent College theologian lately with which I find myself in great agreement. This is refreshing, being that this was not the case while I was there. Packer was stuck in the age of the Puritans and Grenz was still quite baptistic while I was there. And they were just both quite boring and non-constructive in their theology. Boersma is quite different though. While not opting for being theologically novel, he is generative and creative. In some ways, in his advocating of all the three historic metaphors of the atonement, he wants to have his cake and eat it too. He synthesizes them around a larger metaphor of the hospitality of God. But this is no the open, unlimited hospitality of the pacifists (Yoder, Hauerwas) or of post-modern thought (Derrida, Levinas). Nor is the "limited hospitality" of the Ca...