In the opening pages of the book, Rutledge calls The Crucifixion ‘the work of a lifetime’. And as readers survey the over-600-page defence of a theology of the cross for twenty-first-century Christians, it becomes clear that Rutledge, a sought-after preacher and skilled exegete, is single-mindedly focused on repositioning the cross at the centre of Christian preaching, worship and most importantly, Christian life. Her approach is unapologetically confessional and saturated with a sense of urgency. Not since John Stott's 1986 volume The Cross of Christ has there been a major study for pastors on the meaning of the cross, and Rutledge's Crucifixion fills that gap – and then some.
While she laments what she believes is strong bias in preaching and worship toward themes of creation, incarnation and the kingdom over against a substantive theology of the cross, Rutledge also reminds readers that the church's reluctance to insist on a singular meaning of the cross encourages multifaceted understandings of the event that go far beyond the narrow readings of substitutionary atonement theories often rejected by contemporary mainline Christians. Rather than focus on theories, Rutledge offers multilayered readings of the biblical witness of crucifixion through a ‘postmodern, literary, and canonical framework’ (p. 23) that will equip Christians to embrace the centrality of the crucifixion in faith and life.
After a nearly 40-page introduction, Part I focuses first on the degrading practice of crucifixion, comparing it to modern brutalities like lynching and the electric chair. Comprehending the theological meaning of the cross is not possible, Rutledge insists, without deep appreciation for the fact that crucifixion is perhaps the most tortuous, most humiliating way to die. To understand that makes it more possible to more fully consider what the ‘godforsakenness’ of Christ's death. ‘It had to be crucifixion,’ Rutledge writes, ‘because no other mode would have been commensurate with sin’ (p. 102). Rutledge draws on everything from Pauline texts to the horrific killing of Matthew Shepard to flesh out the depth and the breadth of human sinfulness that finds adequate representation only within the worst form of human death. The cross, then, speaks volumes about human injustice, and tells a story (that runs through the entire Old Testament as well as the New) of a God whose work is providing justice for the defenceless.
Most compelling in this section is Rutledge's insistence that Christians are mistaken when they think forgiveness can be detached from justice. With heart-rending invocations of Columbine shootings and massacre in Rwanda, Rutledge demonstrates that forgiveness alone is not the essence of Christianity. Contemporary preoccupations with the biblical concept of agape need to be stretched to include dikaiosyne in order to understand that God's love cannot be separated from God's justice and righteousness. This view of God leads back to the cross.
How, then, should Christians interpret the meaning of the cross? Rutledge's answer comes in the over 300-page Part II: ‘The Biblical Motifs’. The section is preoccupied with the question, ‘Will it preach?’ Here Rutledge examines eight major motifs from ‘The Passover and Exodus’ to ‘Substitution’, and eschews conventional threefold classifications of atonement (the ‘objective’, ‘subjective’ and ‘classic’ views). Embracing Barth's view that the entire life of Christ's is atonement, Rutledge places the crucifixion within an apocalyptic battle between God and Satan that culminates in the movement from crucifixion to descent into the hell to resurrection. Anchored by an avalanche of biblical references, rereadings of Anselm in light of Athanasius’ substitutionary views, and a persistent linking of scholarly and biblical insights to contemporary horrors, Rutledge moves towards her conclusion that the God of the cross, who descended into hell, is bent on dikaiosis, which she translates as ‘rectification’. In that light, the radicality of Paul's preaching of Christ the Victor becomes clear: that the world is loved by God means it must be made right, and that rectification costs God dearly.
While Rutledge's contributions to Christian thinking and preaching about the cross are many, her approach can at times be off-putting. Her enthusiastic commitment to the absolute uniqueness of Christianity and the irreligiosity of the cross takes her perilously close to supersessionism when comparing Christianity to other religions. In addition, her mission to reassert the life-giving meaning of Christ's crucifixion leads at times to collapsing diverse viewpoints from feminists and others who critique interpretations and applications of cross-centred theologies. And Rutledge's portrayal of churchgoers as addicted to uplift and allergic to serious engagement with suffering, death and that which conquers death seems to disparage the very lay readers she hopes will pick up her book. Even with these liabilities, Rutledge's The Crucifixion will endure as a major contribution to Christian proclamation of Christ crucified.
