The Violence of God? A Journey Through the Meaning of the Cross

Why Christians Fight About the Cross

This article is a review of the book on the atonement by Hojin Ahn called: “A Constructively Critical Conversation between Nonviolent and Substitutionary Perspectives on Atonement: Theological Motifs and Christological Implications.“

Ask any group of Christians what happened when Jesus died on the cross, and you’ll probably get the same answer: it was the most important moment in human history. God acted to save the world through Jesus’ death and resurrection. But here’s where things get complicated. Ask those same Christians how the cross actually saves us, and you might be shocked by how different their answers are.

For two thousand years, Christians have called this explanation the doctrine of the Atonement. The word gives us a beautiful clue about what it means – it’s about becoming “at-one” with God. Sin created a huge crack in the relationship between people and their Creator. The Atonement explains how Jesus, through his life, death, and resurrection, fixes that crack and brings us back into a loving relationship with God.

But explaining exactly how this happens has become one of the biggest fights in modern Christianity. The main argument comes down to a hard and very personal question: Did God, our loving Father, demand the violent, bloody death of His own Son to satisfy His perfect sense of justice? Was the cross basically a divine business deal – a penalty paid to an angry Judge?

This is the heart of what scholars call the “Substitutionary” view. It’s been the most popular explanation for much of church history. In this view, Jesus took our place and received the punishment we deserved.

Or was the cross actually a horrible, tragic act of human evil that God then used for good through the miracle of the resurrection? Was God suffering right alongside Jesus, not the one causing the suffering? This is the main idea behind the “Nonviolent” view, which has been gaining ground among many Christian thinkers today.

This isn’t just an academic debate that happens in seminary classrooms. How you answer this question shapes everything – your understanding of God’s character, what salvation really means, and how you’re supposed to live as a follower of Jesus. Is our God someone who uses violence to get what He wants? Is salvation like a legal transaction, or is it more like a healing process?

Trying to navigate this emotionally charged conversation can feel overwhelming. Thankfully, we have a helpful guide. Theologian Hojin Ahn wrote a book called “A Constructively Critical Conversation between Nonviolent and Substitutionary Perspectives on Atonement.” Instead of picking sides and throwing stones, Ahn invites us into what he calls a “constructively critical conversation.” This means listening carefully and fairly to both sides, understanding their strengths, and being honest about their weaknesses.

His goal is to help us reach a more complete view of the cross – one that stays faithful to the whole story of the Bible and speaks powerfully to the challenges we face in our world today. This review will follow Ahn’s journey, exploring the powerful arguments of those who criticize traditional views, re-examining the deep logic of the substitutionary view, and finally trying to build a bridge that helps us see the cross not as a problem to solve, but as a beautiful, terrible, and world-changing mystery to embrace.

Part 1: The Challenge to Tradition – Understanding the “Nonviolent” View

To really understand the heart of this debate about the cross, we first need to listen with empathy to the voices that have challenged the traditional way of thinking. The nonviolent view of the cross didn’t just appear out of nowhere. It came from a deep and sincere struggle with what many see as a serious ethical problem in Christian teaching: the idea of a violent God.

Many theologians today look at a world soaked in violence – domestic abuse, racism built into systems, war, and the way societies pick on certain groups – and the traditional idea that God required a violent death to save the world starts to sound less like good news and more like a divine excuse for the very systems of violence they feel called to fight against.

This perspective often uses what could be called a “theology from below.” Instead of starting with abstract ideas about God’s nature, it begins with the real, lived experience of human suffering. Theologians like Rita Nakashima Brock, Raymund Schwager, and J. Denny Weaver start with concrete human problems: the trauma of an abused child, the injustice of someone being blamed for things they didn’t do, the oppression of colonized people.

When they look at traditional atonement theories, they see disturbing similarities. Does the story of a Father punishing a Son for other people’s sins sound dangerously like the logic of an abusive home? Does the idea of a necessary sacrifice to calm down anger mirror primitive human rituals of scapegoating?

Their answer to these questions is a strong “yes.” Their solution is to propose a God who is fundamentally different from these violent human systems – a God who is, by His very nature, nonviolent. This represents a crucial shift in how they approach the question. Instead of asking “What does the Bible say God did on the cross?” they ask “What kind of God is truly good and worthy of worship, and how does the story of the cross reveal that God?”

This starting point – human ethics and the experience of suffering – is the key to understanding their powerful and challenging conclusions. They’re not simply trying to be modern or politically correct. They’re trying to rescue the character of God from what they see as a dangerous and violent distortion.

Chapter 1: “Cosmic Child Abuse”? Rita Nakashima Brock’s Feminist Challenge

Perhaps no challenge to the traditional view of the cross is more startling than the one from feminist theologian Rita Nakashima Brock. She argues that the doctrine of penal substitution – the idea that God the Father poured out His anger and punishment on His Son, Jesus, in our place – is basically “cosmic child abuse.”

This is a shocking claim, designed to make us stop and rethink the images we use to talk about the cross. Brock asks us to imagine the dynamics of an abusive family: a powerful, controlling father whose honor has been insulted, who then inflicts violence on a child to satisfy his own anger. She argues that the logic of penal substitution mirrors this tragic pattern on a cosmic scale.

The “punitive father,” she writes, “lurks in the corners” of this doctrine, and his “grace” depends on “the suffering of the one perfect child.” For Brock and other feminist critics, this theological model not only presents a monstrous image of God but also has devastating real-world consequences, especially for women. It makes suffering holy, especially when it comes from a father figure, and suggests it should be passively accepted.

To build a healthier model, Brock starts by completely reframing the main problem that the cross is supposed to solve. The problem isn’t a legal one – a crime against God’s law that requires a penalty. Instead, she identifies the basic human problem as “broken-heartedness.” This isn’t just sadness. It’s a deep, relationship wound caused by the destructive forces of patriarchal and systemic evil.

Sin, in this view, isn’t a crime to be punished but a wound to be healed. “Sin is a sign of our broken-heartedness,” Brock writes, “of how damaged we are, not of how evil, willfully disobedient, and guilty we are. Sin is not something to be punished, but something to be healed.” This shift from a legal framework to a healing one changes everything. If the problem is a wound, the solution can’t be punishment – it has to be healing.

So where does this healing come from? Brock proposes an alternative to divine power, which she connects with masculine control and dominance. The healing force in her theology is what she calls “erotic power.” This term isn’t primarily about sexuality, but about the deep, life-giving, creative force of connection, relationship, and community. It’s the power that “emerges from creative synthesis,” the energy we feel when we’re truly connected to ourselves, to others, and to the divine.

Salvation, then, is the process of being healed from broken-heartedness by participating in this relational power. This salvation doesn’t come from a distant, all-powerful male savior who acts upon us. Instead, it happens within what Brock calls the “Christa/Community.” This is the community of people who embody and generate this healing, erotic power. The focus shifts from the individual person of Jesus to the relational web of the community that lives out his vision.

This leads to a radically different understanding of Jesus himself. Brock’s view of Christ is “functional” – meaning Jesus’ importance lies not in who he is in some eternal sense (the Son of God), but in what he does and reveals for the community. In this view, Jesus was a human prophet who perfectly embodied and taught this way of erotic power. He was a healer who confronted the injustices of the patriarchal system of his day.

His death on the cross was not a divinely planned sacrifice to pay a debt. On the contrary, his death was a profound tragedy, the ultimate proof of “the power of patriarchy to crush life.” The cross reveals the depth of the world’s broken-heartedness. It’s not saving in itself, but it becomes the catalyst for the community to remember Jesus’ way, to re-engage their own erotic power, and to continue his work of healing and liberation.

The resurrection, similarly, isn’t a unique, objective event but a “visionary experience” within the community. It’s a powerful metaphor for their refusal to let death have the final word and their commitment to keeping Jesus’ spirit of connection alive.

Chapter 2: Exposing Our Own Violence – Raymund Schwager and the Scapegoat

Another powerful nonviolent critique of the cross comes from Catholic theologian Raymund Schwager, who built heavily on the groundbreaking theories of French philosopher René Girard. To understand Schwager, you first need to grasp Girard’s core ideas about human society.

Girard argued that much of human conflict comes from what he called “mimetic desire” – a fancy term for a simple reality: we learn to want things by copying the desires of others. This copying inevitably leads to rivalry and conflict, as we all start to want the same limited objects, status, or power.

When this tension threatens to tear a community apart, societies have, since the beginning of time, discovered a dark but effective solution: the “scapegoat mechanism.” The community unconsciously picks a single victim – a scapegoat – and projects all of its collective anger, frustration, and violence onto that individual. By uniting in the persecution or killing of the scapegoat, the community purges its internal tensions and restores a fragile peace.

The key, for Girard, is that this process only works if everyone believes the victim is truly guilty. Ancient myths, he argued, are almost always stories told from the perspective of the persecutors, justifying the violence and hiding the innocence of the victim.

Schwager takes this powerful theory about human behavior and applies it directly to the cross of Jesus. He argues that the Gospels are a unique and revolutionary text because, for the first time in human history, they tell the story of a scapegoating event from the perspective of the innocent victim.

The cross, therefore, is not a sacrifice demanded by God to calm His anger. Instead, it’s a revelation from God that exposes and unmasks this universal, hidden human mechanism of violence. When Jesus cries out from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), he’s speaking the literal truth.

The persecutors – the religious leaders, the crowds, the Roman authorities – are caught in the grip of the scapegoat mechanism, completely unaware of their own collective violence and the innocence of their victim. The cross rips the veil off this self-deception and shows us the ugly truth about ourselves.

This leads Schwager to propose what Ahn calls a “dramatically reoriented” theology. In this view, God isn’t a static, unchanging monarch or judge who operates according to a fixed legal code. Instead, God is a dynamic, relational character in the grand drama of salvation, one who lovingly responds to human freedom and enters into the messiness of our history.

This dramatic God is, by His very nature, nonviolent. He doesn’t will or cause Jesus’ death. Rather, He allows the tragic machinery of human scapegoating to run its course, not to satisfy some need within Himself, but to use the event to reveal two profound truths at the same time: the depth of human sinfulness and the even greater depth of His own unconditional, forgiving love.

What about concepts like God’s “wrath”? Schwager reinterprets them. God’s wrath isn’t an active punishment that God inflicts on us. It’s the name we give to the painful, self-destructive consequences of our own violence when we turn away from God, who is the source of life. When we engage in scapegoating, we are, in effect, judging and punishing ourselves.

God’s response in the cross and resurrection isn’t to add more violence to the system, but to break the cycle with a radical act of forgiveness, revealing a way of being that’s completely free from competitive rivalry and violence. For Schwager, the cross doesn’t change God’s mind about us – it’s meant to change our minds about God, and about ourselves.

Chapter 3: A Different Kind of Victory – J. Denny Weaver’s Nonviolent Conqueror

A third major stream of nonviolent atonement theology comes from the Anabaptist tradition, powerfully expressed by Mennonite theologian J. Denny Weaver. Weaver’s model is a creative re-imagining of one of the oldest atonement theories in the church: “Christus Victor,” or “Christ the Victor.”

The classic Christus Victor model, popular among the early church fathers, portrays the cross as a cosmic battle. Christ is a divine warrior who invades enemy territory, fights the powers of sin, death, and the devil, and emerges victorious, liberating humanity from their captivity. While powerful, this model often uses military and violent imagery.

Weaver’s genius is to keep the “Victor” but change the nature of the victory. He develops what he calls a “narrative Christus Victor,” where the triumph is achieved not through violent power, but through nonviolent suffering love. His key biblical text is the book of Revelation.

He points to the central vision in Revelation 5, where the one who is worthy to open the scroll and enact God’s plan is described first as the “Lion of the tribe of Judah” – a symbol of conquering, kingly power. But when John looks, he sees not a lion, but “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain.”

For Weaver, this is the key to the entire biblical story of salvation. Victory in God’s kingdom is redefined. It’s not the power to kill, but the power to absorb evil and overcome it through self-giving love and resurrection life. Jesus is the nonviolent conqueror.

This leads Weaver to a crucial distinction about God’s role in the crucifixion. He argues forcefully that God did not will the death of Jesus. To suggest that God intended or planned for His Son to be violently killed is to fall back into the trap of a violent God.

Instead, Weaver argues that Jesus’ death was the “inevitable” result of the ultimate clash between two opposing kingdoms. On one side was the kingdom of God, embodied in the life and teaching of Jesus – a kingdom of peace, forgiveness, and radical inclusion. On the other side were the kingdoms of the world, the “powers of evil” – the religious, political, and social structures that run on violence, exclusion, and self-preservation.

When Jesus faithfully lived out his mission to embody God’s kingdom, a collision with the world’s kingdoms was unavoidable. Weaver explains this with a helpful comparison: think of a civil rights activist or a martyr for the faith who is killed for their cause. Did the organization that sent them want them to die? No, their goal was to bring about justice or spread the truth. But they knew that in a violent and unjust world, faithfully carrying out that mission could lead to death.

The death was a tragic, inevitable consequence of the mission, not the goal of the mission itself. So it is with Jesus. God willed the mission, not the death. But God also willed that Jesus see the mission through to the end, even when it led to the cross.

This has a profound implication for what part of the story is actually “saving.” For Weaver, the crucifixion itself isn’t the primary saving event. It’s the ultimate demonstration of human evil and the tragic consequence of Jesus’ faithfulness. The truly saving act is the resurrection.

In the resurrection, God steps in decisively. He vindicates the way of the nonviolent Lamb, overturns the verdict of the violent powers, and demonstrates His ultimate victory over sin and death. Salvation, then, is being invited to live in the reality of this victory, to join the community that follows the way of the slaughtered but risen Lamb, and to participate in His nonviolent reign in the world.

Chapter 4: The God Who Doesn’t Use Force – Summary of the Nonviolent View

As we bring together the ideas from Brock, Schwager, and Weaver, a coherent and powerful picture of the nonviolent perspective emerges. Despite their different starting points – feminist therapy, social anthropology, and Anabaptist pacifism – they arrive at a remarkably similar set of core beliefs.

First and most importantly, God is defined by nonviolence. This is the non-negotiable starting point. Any interpretation of the cross that shows God as inflicting, demanding, or using violence to achieve salvation is rejected as a projection of fallen human ways onto the divine. The God revealed in Jesus is a God of persuasive love, healing connection, and dramatic forgiveness, not a God of payback justice.

Second, Jesus is primarily a human example whose life and death reveal a profound truth. For Brock, he reveals the healing power of relationship. For Schwager, he reveals the hidden violence of our own hearts. For Weaver, he reveals the nonviolent nature of God’s kingdom. In all these models, the focus is on the human Jesus – his teachings, his actions, his solidarity with the oppressed, his faithfulness unto death. His divinity is often understood in terms of his unique relationship with God, rather than in terms of his being the eternal Son of God in substance.

Third, the cross is fundamentally an act of human or systemic evil, not a divinely willed sacrifice for sin. It’s the place where the violence of patriarchy, the violence of the scapegoating mob, and the violence of the state come together to kill the one who embodied God’s peace. God doesn’t cause the cross, but is present in it, suffering with the victim and ultimately overcoming the evil through the resurrection.

Finally, salvation is primarily understood as ethical transformation, healing, and liberation. The cross saves us not by changing our legal status before a divine judge, but by changing us. It’s an event that works by changing our knowledge. It reveals the truth about our sin and God’s love, and this revelation is what liberates us from the cycles of violence and brokenness, empowering us to live in a new way, the way of Jesus. The goal isn’t just to get to heaven, but to bring the healing, just, and nonviolent kingdom of God to earth.

Part 2: The Tradition Responds – Re-examining “Substitution”

The nonviolent critique of the cross is powerful and raises questions that every thoughtful Christian must take seriously. It forces us to confront the images we use for God and to ask whether they’re truly compatible with the God of love revealed in Jesus. However, this is a conversation, not a one-sided argument.

The classical tradition of substitutionary atonement, which has nourished the church for centuries, has a profound and compelling response. As Ahn guides us through the works of its greatest thinkers – St. Anselm, John Calvin, and Karl Barth – we discover a tradition that’s far more nuanced, loving, and theologically solid than the violent caricature often attacked by its critics.

When read carefully, the substitutionary tradition isn’t primarily about a cruel, bloodthirsty, or emotionally fragile deity who needs to be appeased. At its heart, it’s about grappling with two profound biblical realities: the devastating, objective reality of sin and evil, and God’s sovereign, loving, and incredibly costly solution to that problem.

The “violence” that appears in these models isn’t arbitrary cruelty. It’s the theological picture of the terrible, necessary collision between God’s perfect holiness and the deeply corrosive, destructive reality of sin. And the central, stunning claim of this tradition is that God doesn’t inflict this violence on an unwilling third party, but, in the person of Jesus Christ, absorbs the full force of that collision into Himself.

The nonviolent perspective often begins with human experience and ethics. The substitutionary tradition, in contrast, begins with divine revelation – with the question, “Who has God revealed Himself to be, and what has He revealed that He has done in Christ?” As Ahn shows, Anselm’s starting point is the need for cosmic restoration. Calvin’s is the profound paradox of God’s holy love and righteous justice. Barth’s is the radical idea of God’s self-substitution.

In every case, the driving motivation isn’t divine anger but God’s unyielding love and His determination to rescue and restore His fallen creation. The tradition of substitution isn’t a story about appeasing an angry God – it’s the story of God’s radical, world-saving intervention. It reframes the cross from an act of divine revenge to an act of divine rescue, undertaken at infinite cost to God Himself.

Chapter 5: More Than a Payment – St. Anselm’s Vision of Cosmic Restoration

When critics of substitutionary atonement look for a historical starting point for what they see as a problematic legal model, they almost always point to the 11th-century theologian St. Anselm of Canterbury and his masterpiece, “Cur Deus Homo” (“Why God Became Man”). Anselm is famous for developing the “satisfaction theory” of the cross, and his language of sin as a “debt” owed to God’s “honor” can sound, to modern ears, like the talk of a feudal lord concerned with his own reputation.

However, as Ahn skillfully demonstrates, to understand Anselm this way is to miss the deeply restorative and beautiful heart of his argument. First, we must understand what Anselm means by “God’s honor.” This isn’t about a fragile divine ego or a king’s vanity. For Anselm, God’s honor is the perfect, beautiful, harmonious order of the entire universe that God created. It’s the state in which every created thing flourishes by living according to the purpose for which it was made.

Sin, therefore, isn’t just a personal mistake – it’s an act of cosmic vandalism. When humans, the pinnacle of creation, choose their own will over God’s, they “disturb the order and beauty of the universe.” They introduce chaos and ugliness into a world designed for harmony and beauty. The debt of sin, then, is the debt of having to restore this cosmic order.

Here we come to the crucial insight that Ahn lifts up from Anselm’s work, an insight that directly counters the caricature of a violent, vengeful God. For Anselm, punishment does not satisfy this debt or restore the original beauty. Punishing a sinner might balance a scale of justice, but it leaves the universe just as broken as before. It doesn’t achieve God’s original, positive purpose for creation.

Anselm writes that it’s necessary “either that the honor taken away be repaid, or else that punishment follow.” Satisfaction and punishment are presented as two different options. God’s ultimate goal isn’t revenge, but restoration. Therefore, what’s needed isn’t a punishment, but a loving and beautiful act of “satisfaction” – an act so good and so powerful that it not only repairs the damage done by sin but actually makes the universe even more beautiful than it was before.

This leads Anselm to his famous argument for why the savior had to be a God-man. The logic is elegant. Who ought to make this satisfaction? Humanity, because it was humanity that created the debt. But who can make this satisfaction? The debt is infinite, because it’s an offense against an infinite God. No mere human, who already owes God perfect obedience, could ever perform an act of “supererogation” – something so extra and so valuable that it could restore the entire cosmic order. Only God Himself possesses the infinite worth to make such a satisfaction.

Therefore, the one who saves us must be both fully human (to pay the debt on our behalf) and fully God (to make the payment of infinite value). This is Jesus. His willing death on the cross wasn’t a punishment He endured, but a beautiful gift He freely offered – the gift of a perfect life, which had infinite value because He was God. This gift was the “satisfaction” that restored the honor of God by restoring the beauty and order of His creation.

This establishes a core principle of the substitutionary tradition: who Jesus is in his very being is absolutely essential to understanding the cross. What Jesus did is inseparable from who Jesus is.

Chapter 6: Justice and Love United – John Calvin’s Fiery Compassion

If Anselm’s theory is often misunderstood, the theology of the great Protestant Reformer John Calvin is often vilified. It’s in Calvin’s work that we find the most influential and explicit formulation of penal substitutionary atonement – the view that Christ on the cross took the just punishment (penal) for our sins in our place (substitution).

For many nonviolent critics, this is the center of the problem, the clearest picture of a vengeful God inflicting violence on His Son. Yet, as Ahn guides us through Calvin’s own writings, a far more complex and paradoxical picture emerges, one rooted not in abstract legalism, but in the fiery passion of God’s holy love.

The key to understanding Calvin is to grasp a profound paradox: for him, God’s infinite love is the source of the cross, not its result. We often imagine the scene as if humanity stands guilty before an angry Judge, and Jesus steps in to persuade the Judge to change His mind and become loving. Calvin turns this completely upside down.

He insists that God has always loved His chosen people, from before the foundation of the world. The cross doesn’t cause God to love us – God’s love causes the cross. Why, then, is there a need for punishment? Because God’s love isn’t a sentimental, permissive affection. It’s a holy, righteous, and passionate love. He’s a loving Father who is so fiercely committed to the good of His children that He burns with a righteous anger – a “wrath” – against the sin that’s corrupting and destroying them.

His justice and His love aren’t two competing qualities that need to be balanced – His justice is the active, powerful expression of His love. As Ahn explains, Calvin holds that God is, from our perspective, at the same time “our enemy and our friend” – an enemy to our sin, but a friend to us, the sinners He’s determined to save.

To see how Calvin envisions this fiery compassion at work, Ahn wisely directs us away from a purely legal, courtroom setting and toward the imagery of the temple, particularly as found in Calvin’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. For Calvin, the mechanism of penal substitution is best understood through Christ’s role as our eternal High Priest.

In the Old Testament, the priest would enter the presence of God on behalf of the people, but only after offering a blood sacrifice to atone for sin. Calvin sees Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of this role. He’s the perfect High Priest, who, unlike the priests of old, doesn’t need to offer a sacrifice for his own sins. And what sacrifice does He offer? Not an animal, but Himself. He’s both the Priest making the offering and the Lamb being offered. His death is the ultimate, once-for-all sacrifice that “makes expiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17).

This rich, temple imagery of sacrifice and priesthood adds a layer of personal, relational depth to the seemingly harsh legalism of the penal model. It’s not a cold, abstract transaction. It’s the loving act of our representative Priest, who enters the ultimate danger zone – the collision between God’s holiness and our sin – and offers his own life to cleanse us and bring us back to God.

Chapter 7: The Judge Takes Our Place – Karl Barth’s Revolutionary Vision

In the 20th century, the Swiss theologian Karl Barth, arguably the most important theologian since the Reformation, offered a powerful and creative re-articulation of the substitutionary model that speaks directly to many of the modern critiques. Barth’s entire theology is centered on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and he insists that we must let this revelation reshape all our preconceived notions about God.

A central theme for Barth is that “God’s being is in His act.” This means we don’t start with a generic idea of God as a being who possesses a list of qualities like “love,” “justice,” “mercy,” and “wrath,” which then seem to conflict with each other. Instead, we look at what God has done in Jesus Christ, and we say, “That is who God is.” God’s being is His loving, self-giving, reconciling act in His Son. There’s no conflict between God’s love and justice because God’s justice is the form His love takes when it confronts the reality of sin.

This leads Barth to his most profound and radical formulation of the cross, a phrase that stands as the ultimate answer to the charge of “cosmic child abuse.” Barth declares that on the cross, God Himself, in the person of His Son, becomes the “judged Judge in our place.”

Let’s unpack this dense but crucial phrase. God is the righteous Judge of all the earth, the one who must say “No” to sin and evil. Humanity stands under this just judgment. But in the mystery of the cross, the Judge doesn’t remain distant, passing sentence from on high. The Judge steps down from the bench, takes the place of the guilty defendant, and takes the full force of the judgment upon Himself.

God isn’t inflicting punishment on someone else – He is, in an act of incomprehensible solidarity and self-giving love, absorbing the full, destructive consequence of sin and judgment into His own being. The substitution isn’t between Jesus and us, but more fundamentally, between God and us. God puts Himself in our place.

To explain this paradox, Barth uses the powerful biblical metaphor of God as a “consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). This fire represents God’s holy love. It’s pure, passionate, and life-giving. However, when this holy fire comes into contact with the “stubble” of sin and evil, its nature is to righteously consume and destroy it. But what about the sinner, who is entangled with the sin?

In the cross, God in Christ performs an act of divine surgery. The consuming fire of His holy love descends upon the person of Christ, who has taken our sin upon Himself. The fire utterly destroys the sin while simultaneously purifying and restoring the sinner who is united to Christ by faith. This is what Ahn calls Barth’s vision of “restorative judgment.” It’s a judgment that saves. It’s a “No” to our sin that’s contained within a more fundamental “Yes” to us.

The cross isn’t God turning against His Son – it’s the Triune God, in a unified act of love, turning against the sin that has held His creation captive, and doing so by taking the battle into Himself.

Chapter 8: God Takes Control – Summary of the Substitutionary View

When we step back and view the tradition of substitutionary atonement through the nuanced lenses of Anselm, Calvin, and Barth, a picture emerges that’s far richer and more compelling than the common caricature. Several core beliefs unite this perspective and set it in contrast to the nonviolent view.

First, God is the sovereign agent of salvation. The cross isn’t a human achievement, nor is it a tragic accident that God cleverly repurposes. It’s the unfolding of a divine plan, rooted in God’s eternal love and purpose to save. God isn’t a passive observer or a fellow victim – He’s the primary actor who starts, accomplishes, and completes our rescue.

Second, sin is an objective reality that creates a real barrier between God and humanity, a barrier that must be decisively overcome by a divine act. It’s not merely a subjective feeling of brokenness or a lack of knowledge. It’s a state of rebellion, a debt against cosmic order, a violation of divine justice that has real, deadly consequences. For God to simply overlook it would be to deny His own holy and just nature. Therefore, something must be done to deal with sin itself, not just its effects.

Third, Jesus is the unique God-man Mediator, and His identity is essential to His work. He’s not simply an enlightened teacher or a courageous martyr. He’s the eternal Son of God who became fully human. It’s only because He’s fully God that His sacrifice has infinite, world-saving value. It’s only because He’s fully human that He can act as our representative and substitute. His person and His work are inseparable.

Finally, the cross has an ontological effect – that is, it changes the actual state of reality. It doesn’t just teach us something new – it achieves something new. It objectively satisfies justice, removes guilt, defeats the powers of evil, and accomplishes reconciliation between God and the world. The good news of the substitutionary view isn’t just that we can learn from Jesus, but that in Jesus, God has acted decisively to save us, accomplishing for us what we could never accomplish for ourselves.

Part 3: Building a Bridge – Toward a Fuller Picture of the Cross

Having listened carefully to both the powerful ethical challenges of the nonviolent perspective and the profound theological logic of the substitutionary tradition, we arrive at the heart of Ahn’s project. His goal isn’t to declare a winner in the debate, but to show that a truly complete understanding of the cross requires the essential insights of both camps.

The ultimate solution isn’t to choose between a nonviolent God and a substitutionary cross, but to see how the Bible holds these seemingly contradictory truths together in a beautiful and powerful paradox. The key to building this bridge, Ahn suggests, is a robust and thoroughly biblical understanding of who Jesus is – what scholars call Christology.

The nonviolent view is correct to highlight the genuine humanity of Jesus, his solidarity with victims, and the horrific reality of his suffering as an act of human evil. It rightly identifies what Ahn calls the “negative epistemology” of the cross – it’s a devastating revelation of the depth of our sin and the violence of our world’s systems.

The substitutionary view, on the other hand, is correct to insist on the full deity of Jesus and the sovereign divine purpose behind his death. It rightly identifies the “positive ontology” of the cross – it’s God’s powerful, world-changing act of judging evil and reconciling all things to Himself.

A complete view, therefore, must be able to say both things at the same time. It must be able to look at the cross and say, “Yes, that was the worst, most unjust, and most violent thing that humanity has ever done,” AND, in the same breath, “Yes, that was the greatest, most just, and most loving thing that God has ever done.”

The only person who can stand at the center of that paradox, holding both truths together, is Jesus Christ, who is at the same time the fully human victim of our sin and the fully divine agent of our salvation. This concept of “simultaneity” is the central pillar of Ahn’s constructive proposal.

Chapter 9: Finding Common Ground – Sacrifice, Judgment, and Victory Reimagined

To build his complete model, Ahn finds common ground by re-examining the three great biblical themes of the cross: sacrifice, judgment, and victory. He shows how each can be understood in a way that brings together the core concerns of both the nonviolent and substitutionary perspectives.

First, he begins with sacrifice, the theme that both sides, in their own way, affirm. The nonviolent perspective sees Jesus’ death as the ultimate prophetic witness, a self-sacrificial act of nonviolent resistance against the evil powers of the world. The substitutionary tradition sees it as the ultimate priestly act, the once-for-all atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world.

Ahn’s complete view brings these together. Jesus is the sacrificial prophet-priest. His death is a worship act of atonement that simultaneously exposes the depths of human evil (the prophetic dimension) and objectively accomplishes reconciliation with God (the priestly dimension). It’s a sacrifice that reveals our sin and atones for it in the same act.

Second, he redefines judgment. The nonviolent view rightly recoils from the idea of a vengeful, violent judgment. But the substitutionary view rightly insists that a holy God can’t simply ignore sin. Ahn finds a path forward in Karl Barth’s theology. God’s judgment on the cross isn’t petty revenge or cosmic child abuse. It’s God’s “radically active resistance” against the sin and evil that are destroying His creation.

It’s a form of divine, sovereign “nonviolence” that doesn’t meet violence with more violence, but instead overcomes it by taking it into God’s own self, exhausting its power, and condemning it to death. This connects the substitutionary necessity of judgment with the nonviolent goal of overcoming violence. God judges sin not to get revenge, but to restore His world.

Finally, he integrates the Christus Victor motif. The nonviolent view, especially in Weaver’s model, emphasizes Christ’s nonviolent victory over the powers. The substitutionary view, particularly in Calvin and Barth, sees Christ’s victory as the result of His atoning work. Ahn shows that these aren’t mutually exclusive.

The victory over evil isn’t won in spite of the suffering and judgment of the cross, but precisely through it. By willingly entering into the heart of darkness – by taking the full force of human sin, divine judgment, and the power of death upon Himself – Christ disarms the powers. He defeats them not by overpowering them with external force, but by exhausting their power from within. His death is the judgment that leads to victory, and His resurrection is the public declaration that the victory has been won.

In this way, the three great motifs of sacrifice, judgment, and victory are woven together into a single, coherent, and powerful narrative of redemption.

Chapter 10: Victim and Victor, Human and Divine

We now arrive at the climax of Ahn’s argument and the heart of this review. The way to hold the insights of both the nonviolent and substitutionary perspectives together is to embrace the profound paradox of the cross. Ahn’s central thesis is that the crucifixion must be understood as the “simultaneous” event of “Jesus’ victimization by evil, and Christ’s reconciliation between God and humankind.” It’s not one or the other. It’s both, at the same time, in the same person.

From one angle – the horizontal, historical perspective – the cross is an unmitigated tragedy. It’s the story of an innocent man, a prophet of love and peace, being unjustly condemned and brutally executed by the corrupt religious and political systems of his day. In this, he’s the ultimate victim, standing in perfect solidarity with all who have ever suffered injustice and violence. This is the truth that the nonviolent perspective rightly and powerfully defends.

From another angle – the vertical, theological perspective – the cross is a divine triumph. It’s the story of the sovereign God, acting according to His eternal plan of love, dealing decisively with the problem of sin and evil. In this, Christ is the divine victor, the High Priest offering the perfect sacrifice, the substitute bearing our judgment to bring us back to God. This is the truth that the substitutionary tradition rightly and powerfully defends.

How can the cross be both a tragic human failure and a glorious divine success? How can Jesus be both the passive victim of our sin and the active agent of our salvation? Ahn argues that this paradox can only hold together if we maintain a robust, classical, “high” understanding of who Christ is, as articulated in the historic creeds of the church, such as the Chalcedonian Definition.

Jesus Christ must be fully human – truly one of us in every way, except for sin. It’s in His genuine humanity that He can be our representative, our fellow sufferer, the ultimate victim who exposes the evil of our world. A Jesus who was only pretending to be human, whose suffering wasn’t real, couldn’t truly stand in our place.

At the same time, Jesus Christ must be fully God – the eternal Son, of one substance with the Father. It’s in His full divinity that He can be the sovereign agent of reconciliation, the one whose sacrifice has infinite, world-saving value, the one who can truly defeat the cosmic powers of sin and death. A merely “functional” Jesus, a great human teacher who was just especially “in tune” with God, simply can’t bear the theological weight of saving the entire cosmos.

It’s the hypostatic union – the mystery of two natures, divine and human, in one person – that makes the “great simultaneity” of the cross possible. To clarify these two powerful but incomplete perspectives and Ahn’s proposed synthesis, let’s look at a comparison:

Chapter 11: The Implications – Why This Changes Everything

This might seem like an academic exercise – a debate for theologians in their studies. But as Ahn’s work makes clear, this conversation changes everything. How we understand the cross directly shapes our answers to the most fundamental questions of faith and life.

It shapes our view of God’s character. Is God a distant, demanding Judge whose primary characteristic is vengeful justice? Or is He a powerless, passive victim of the world’s evil? The complete view invites us to see a God who is both perfectly just and infinitely merciful, a sovereign Lord who expresses His power not through forcing people, but through self-giving, suffering love. He’s a God who hates sin so much that He must judge it, and who loves sinners so much that He takes that judgment upon Himself.

It shapes our response to suffering and injustice. Does the cross teach us to passively accept suffering as redemptive, as some critics of substitution fear? Or does it call us to actively resist evil in the world? The complete view empowers us to do both. We can enter into solidarity with the suffering, weeping with the victims of violence, because we follow a crucified Lord who was Himself a victim. But we don’t despair, because we also know that our crucified Lord is the risen Victor who has already defeated the powers of evil. Our work for justice isn’t a desperate struggle against impossible odds – it’s our participation in the victory that Christ has already won.

It shapes our understanding of Christian mission. Is our primary task to proclaim a message of personal, spiritual salvation that changes an individual’s legal standing before God? Or is it to work for social and political liberation from oppressive structures? The complete view insists that we can’t choose. The cross accomplishes a vertical reconciliation between God and humanity, and that vertical reconciliation is the foundation and fuel for our work of horizontal reconciliation in the world. Because God in Christ has acted to judge and defeat the systemic powers of sin and evil, we are called and empowered to be agents of His restorative justice, bringing the healing of the cross to bear on the brokenness of our world.

It transforms our understanding of salvation itself. In the complete view, salvation isn’t just about getting our sins forgiven so we can go to heaven when we die (though it includes that). It’s also not just about liberation from oppressive social structures (though it includes that too). Salvation is the comprehensive restoration of all things – individual hearts, broken relationships, unjust systems, and even the creation itself – through God’s decisive victory over sin, evil, and death in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Chapter 12: Living in the Paradox – Practical Implications for Faith

But how do we actually live out this paradoxical understanding of the cross? How does the “great simultaneity” translate into everyday Christian discipleship? Ahn’s complete model offers several practical implications that should shape how followers of Jesus approach their faith and engage with the world.

First, it calls us to a both/and spirituality rather than an either/or mentality. We don’t have to choose between contemplative prayer and social action, between personal holiness and systemic justice, between evangelism and social work. The cross reveals that God’s work of salvation encompasses all these dimensions simultaneously. Our spiritual lives should reflect this completeness.

This means we can engage in deep personal communion with God through prayer, Scripture, and worship while also working passionately for justice and reconciliation in our communities. We can preach the good news of forgiveness and new life in Christ while also challenging structures of oppression and violence. We can pursue our own spiritual growth while advocating for the poor and marginalized. The cross shows us that these aren’t competing priorities – they’re different aspects of the same divine mission of restoration.

Second, it shapes our approach to suffering and conflict. The complete view of the cross doesn’t romanticize suffering or suggest that all suffering is redemptive. Jesus’ suffering was unique and unrepeatable. But it does show us that God is present in our suffering, not as a distant observer but as a fellow sufferer who has entered into the depths of human pain and death.

This means when we encounter injustice, violence, or oppression – whether in our personal lives or in society – we can respond with both prophetic anger and redemptive love. Like Jesus, we can courageously name and resist evil while simultaneously offering healing and hope to those caught in evil’s grip. We can fight systems of injustice while loving the people trapped within those systems.

Third, it provides a framework for interfaith dialogue and social engagement. The complete view acknowledges that human beings are both victims and perpetrators, both wounded and wounding. This recognition can foster genuine humility in our interactions with people of other faiths or no faith at all. We approach others not from a position of moral superiority but from a shared recognition of our common humanity and our common need for healing and restoration.

At the same time, we don’t lose our confidence in the unique and decisive nature of God’s work in Christ. We can engage in respectful dialogue with others while maintaining our conviction that the cross represents God’s ultimate answer to the human predicament. We can work alongside people of different beliefs in pursuing justice and peace while bearing witness to the hope we have found in the crucified and risen Christ.

Fourth, it transforms our understanding of church community. If the cross is simultaneously an act of human evil and divine redemption, then the church is simultaneously a community of victims and victors, wounded healers and healed wounders. We gather not as perfect people but as broken people who have encountered the God who makes broken things beautiful.

This should create communities characterized by both honesty about sin and brokenness, and celebration of grace and restoration. We can create safe spaces for people to share their wounds and struggles while also proclaiming the good news of God’s victory over those very wounds and struggles. Our churches become hospitals for the wounded and training grounds for agents of healing.

Chapter 13: Addressing the Critics – Potential Objections and Responses

Ahn’s attempt to bridge the nonviolent and substitutionary perspectives is compelling, but it’s not without potential criticisms from both sides. Understanding these objections helps us appreciate both the strengths and limitations of his approach.

From the nonviolent side, critics might argue that Ahn hasn’t gone far enough in rejecting violence. They might contend that any model that retains language of divine judgment, even if reinterpreted through Barth’s lens of “restorative judgment,” still carries the dangerous implication that violence can be redemptive. They might worry that his “both/and” approach provides cover for those who want to maintain traditional substitutionary language while avoiding its ethical implications.

These critics might also question whether Ahn’s model truly addresses the pastoral concerns that drove their critique in the first place. If we’re still talking about God’s “wrath” and “judgment,” even in qualified ways, won’t victims of abuse still hear echoes of their abusers? Won’t marginalized communities still struggle with images of a God who requires suffering for salvation?

From the substitutionary side, critics might argue that Ahn has compromised essential truths in his attempt to accommodate nonviolent concerns. They might contend that his emphasis on simultaneity blurs important distinctions between divine and human action, potentially undermining the objective nature of Christ’s atoning work. They might worry that his model opens the door to a more subjective understanding of salvation that depends too heavily on human response and understanding.

These critics might also question whether Ahn’s approach adequately preserves the biblical emphasis on God’s holiness and justice. If God’s judgment becomes primarily about restoration rather than retribution, does this do justice to biblical passages that speak of God’s wrath against sin? Does it adequately account for the reality of final judgment and eternal consequences?

How might Ahn respond to these concerns? To the nonviolent critics, he might argue that his model doesn’t make violence redemptive – it shows how God overcomes violence through self-sacrificial love. The judgment language is retained not to justify human violence but to insist that evil must be taken seriously and decisively defeated. God’s victory over evil in the cross isn’t achieved through violence but through absorbing violence and exhausting its power.

To the substitutionary critics, Ahn might respond that his model doesn’t compromise the objective nature of salvation but locates it more fully in the person of Christ. The atonement isn’t less objective because it’s understood paradoxically – it’s more complete because it encompasses both the objective reality of God’s saving work and the subjective reality of human experience and response. The simultaneity doesn’t blur important distinctions – it holds them together in creative tension.

Perhaps most importantly, Ahn might argue that both sets of critics are asking his model to do something it’s not designed to do – provide a neat, systematic solution to the mystery of the cross. His goal isn’t to eliminate paradox but to show how biblical paradox can be embraced without sacrificing either ethical integrity or theological depth.

Chapter 14: Biblical Foundations – Does Scripture Support This View?

Any theological model must ultimately stand or fall on its faithfulness to Scripture. How well does Ahn’s “simultaneous” understanding of the cross align with the biblical witness? A careful examination reveals that his approach finds strong support in the diverse ways the New Testament authors themselves describe the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Consider the Gospel of John’s presentation of the cross. In John’s narrative, Jesus’ death is simultaneously the ultimate act of human evil and the decisive moment of divine glorification. The same event that represents the world’s rejection of the light is also the “hour” when the Son of Man is lifted up and draws all people to himself (John 12:32). The cross is both the darkest moment in human history and the moment when God’s love is most fully revealed (John 3:16).

John doesn’t resolve this paradox – he presents it as fundamental to understanding who Jesus is and what God has accomplished through him. The crucifixion is simultaneously an act of cosmic injustice (the innocent suffering for the guilty) and cosmic justice (God dealing decisively with sin). It’s both a human crime and a divine plan (Acts 2:23).

The apostle Paul similarly holds together seemingly contradictory truths about the cross. In his letters, the cross is foolishness to human wisdom but the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:18-25). It’s weakness that proves stronger than human strength. It’s the place where God condemned sin in the flesh (Romans 8:3) and also the place where God was reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). Paul can speak of Christ being “made sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21) and also of God being “in Christ” during this same event.

The letter to the Hebrews provides perhaps the clearest biblical foundation for Ahn’s approach. The author presents Jesus as simultaneously the perfect priest and the perfect sacrifice, the one who offers and the one who is offered. He’s the pioneer and perfecter of faith who “for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising its shame” (Hebrews 12:2). The cross is both shameful suffering and joyful anticipation, both endurance and victory.

Hebrews also presents Jesus as the one who “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8) – fully entering into human experience – while also being “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8) – remaining fully divine. This paradox of unchanging divinity and genuine human experience finds its ultimate expression in the cross, where the eternal Son fully experiences the consequences of human sin while remaining the holy Son of God.

The book of Revelation provides the image that perhaps best captures Ahn’s vision: the Lamb who was slain but is now standing (Revelation 5:6). This figure is simultaneously the victim of human violence (slain) and the victor over that violence (standing). The Lamb bears the marks of his wounds but reigns from the throne. He conquers not through violence but through sacrificial love, and his victory is both complete and ongoing.

What emerges from this brief biblical survey is that the New Testament authors themselves don’t provide a single, systematic explanation of how the cross “works.” Instead, they offer multiple, overlapping, sometimes paradoxical images and metaphors – sacrifice and victory, priest and offering, substitution and solidarity, divine plan and human crime, suffering and glory, death and life.

Ahn’s approach doesn’t resolve these biblical paradoxes – it embraces them. It suggests that the mystery of the cross is too rich and multifaceted to be captured by any single model or metaphor. The simultaneity he proposes isn’t a theological construct imposed on the biblical text but a faithful attempt to hold together the full range of biblical testimony about the cross.

Chapter 15: Historical Precedents – Learning from Church History

While Ahn’s specific formulation of “simultaneity” is contemporary, his basic insight about the paradoxical nature of the cross has deep roots in church history. Throughout the centuries, the church’s greatest theologians have often found themselves drawn to paradoxical language when attempting to explain the mystery of Christ’s person and work.

The early church councils, particularly Chalcedon (451 CE), established the precedent for embracing paradox rather than resolving it. The Chalcedonian Definition declares that Jesus Christ is “truly God and truly man,” “one person in two natures,” these natures being “without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.” This formula doesn’t explain how the divine and human natures relate – it simply insists that both must be maintained simultaneously.

This Christological paradox provides the foundation for understanding how the cross can be simultaneously divine and human, victory and suffering, judgment and mercy. If Jesus is both fully God and fully human, then his death can be both the ultimate human tragedy and the ultimate divine triumph. The same event that manifests human evil at its worst can manifest divine love at its best.

The church fathers often employed paradoxical language when describing the cross. Gregory of Nazianzus spoke of “God crucified” – a phrase that would seem like a contradiction in terms if taken literally, but which captures the profound mystery of the incarnation and crucifixion. John Chrysostom wrote about how Christ “conquered by being conquered” and “triumphed by dying.” These early theologians weren’t being deliberately obscure – they were struggling to find language adequate to express the inexhaustible mystery of God’s work in Christ.

Even Augustine, often cited as a key figure in developing substitutionary themes, held together paradoxical truths about the cross. He could speak of Christ paying a debt to the devil while also speaking of Christ as the great physician healing humanity’s wounds. He saw no contradiction between understanding the cross as a divine transaction and as a divine therapy. For Augustine, the cross was simultaneously payment, healing, victory, sacrifice, and revelation – not either/or but both/and.

Martin Luther, the great Reformer often associated with penal substitution, actually employed what he called “the theology of the cross” in ways that anticipate Ahn’s approach. Luther insisted that God is found precisely in suffering, weakness, and apparent defeat rather than in power, glory, and obvious victory. He spoke of God’s “hidden” work in the cross – how God accomplishes his purposes through what appears to be their opposite.

For Luther, the cross reveals God’s righteousness not despite its apparent injustice but precisely through it. God’s power is made perfect in weakness, his wisdom in apparent foolishness, his victory in apparent defeat. This “theology of the cross” holds together divine sovereignty and human suffering, cosmic victory and historical tragedy, in ways that parallel Ahn’s simultaneous approach.

Even John Calvin, despite his association with forensic models of the atonement, held together multiple metaphors and refused to reduce the cross to a single explanation. Calvin could speak of Christ as priest, king, and prophet, as sacrifice and victor, as substitute and example. His commentaries reveal a theologian who saw the cross as a multifaceted jewel that reflects different colors depending on the angle from which it’s viewed.

The point isn’t that these historical figures would necessarily endorse Ahn’s specific formulation, but that his commitment to holding paradoxical truths together places him firmly within the mainstream of Christian theological reflection. The tradition has always recognized that the cross exceeds our ability to fully comprehend or systematize. Ahn’s contribution is to show how this recognition can help bridge contemporary divides between nonviolent and substitutionary perspectives.

Conclusion: Embracing the Beautiful Paradox

We began this journey with a simple question: What actually happened on the cross? We’ve traveled through some of the most complex and contested territory in Christian theology, listening to the passionate voices of both the nonviolent critics of tradition and the defenders of the substitutionary view. We’ve followed Ahn’s careful guidance, not to find easy answers, but to seek a deeper, more complete understanding.

The path has led us from charges of “cosmic child abuse” to the profound mystery of the “judged Judge in our place,” and finally to the central paradox of the cross as the simultaneous act of human victimization and divine reconciliation. It’s tempting to see this as a purely academic exercise, a debate for theologians in ivory towers. But as Ahn’s work makes clear, this conversation changes everything.

How we understand the cross directly shapes our answers to the most fundamental questions of faith and life. It shapes our view of God’s character, our response to suffering and injustice, our understanding of salvation, and our approach to Christian mission. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

What Ahn offers us isn’t a neat and tidy formula that resolves all the tension and mystery of the cross. Instead, he invites us into a deeper and richer faith – one that’s big enough to hold paradox, to embrace mystery, and to worship a God who is both victim and victor, the slaughtered Lamb and the triumphant Lion.

This complete understanding of the cross calls us to a discipleship that can weep with the broken-hearted while simultaneously celebrating the sovereign God who has, in the cross of Jesus Christ, judged sin, defeated death, and reconciled the world to Himself once and for all. It refuses to let us choose between personal salvation and social justice, between contemplative spirituality and prophetic action, between the love of God and the justice of God.

In embracing this paradoxical understanding, we find ourselves standing in the mainstream of Christian theological reflection throughout history. The church’s greatest thinkers have always recognized that the cross exceeds our ability to fully comprehend or systematize. They’ve used paradoxical language not because they enjoyed being obscure, but because they were struggling to find words adequate to express the inexhaustible mystery of God’s work in Christ.

The cross remains what it has always been – not a problem to be solved, but a beautiful, terrible, and world-changing mystery to be embraced. It’s the place where all human categories break down, where our neat theological systems prove inadequate, where we’re confronted with a love so radical and a justice so complete that it can only be described in paradox.

In the end, Ahn’s greatest contribution may be showing us that the debate between nonviolent and substitutionary perspectives has been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking which view is correct, we should be asking how both can be true simultaneously in the mystery of the God-man who died and rose for the salvation of the world.

This doesn’t mean that all interpretations of the cross are equally valid or that theological precision doesn’t matter. It means that the mystery of Christ’s person makes possible a work of reconciliation so profound that it can only be captured through the careful holding together of truths that seem contradictory to our finite understanding.

As we live in light of this understanding, we’re called to embody the same kind of paradoxical existence that we see in the cross. We’re simultaneously sinners and saints, wounded and healing, victims and victors. We live between the “already” of Christ’s victory and the “not yet” of its full manifestation. We work for justice while resting in grace, fight against evil while loving our enemies, proclaim God’s judgment while extending God’s mercy.

The cross teaches us that these aren’t contradictions to be resolved but tensions to be maintained. In holding them together, we bear witness to the God who is both perfectly just and perfectly merciful, both transcendently holy and intimately present, both sovereign over all things and vulnerable to human violence.

This is the God revealed in Jesus Christ – the God who doesn’t stand aloof from human suffering but enters into it completely, who doesn’t defeat evil through superior violence but through self-sacrificial love, who doesn’t solve the problem of human sinfulness from a distance but takes it into Himself and transforms it from within.

In the face of such a God, our only appropriate response is worship – not the worship of easy answers or comfortable categories, but the worship of mystery that exceeds our understanding while never contradicting our deepest moral intuitions about justice and love. This is the worship that the cross both demands and makes possible, the worship of a God who is worthy of our complete trust precisely because He has proven His love in the most paradoxical and profound way imaginable.

As we conclude this exploration, we’re left not with a solved problem but with a deepened mystery, not with simple answers but with richer questions, not with reduced complexity but with expanded capacity to live faithfully in the tension between what we can understand and what we must simply trust. This, perhaps, is exactly where the cross is meant to leave us – not with intellectual satisfaction but with transformed hearts, not with systematic completeness but with lived discipleship.

The cross remains the center of Christian faith not because it’s easy to understand but because it’s impossible to ignore. It stands as God’s ultimate answer to human need, an answer so complete that it encompasses both the worst that humanity can do and the best that God can offer, both the depths of human depravity and the heights of divine love, both the tragedy of sin and the triumph of grace.

In embracing Ahn’s vision of simultaneity, we don’t resolve the mystery of the cross – we enter more deeply into it. And in doing so, we discover that the cross is not just an event that happened two thousand years ago but a reality that continues to shape and transform those who approach it with faith. It remains what it has always been: the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, the wisdom of God that makes foolish the wisdom of the world, the love of God that surpasses knowledge and the justice of God that exceeds our highest hopes.

This is the cross that Hojin Ahn invites us to see – not as a problem to be solved or a debate to be won, but as a mystery to be embraced, a love to be received, and a life to be lived. In this cross, we find not just the answer to the question of how God saves the world, but the shape of what it means to be human in relationship with this saving God. And that, ultimately, is the most important discovery of all.