Its always wonderful to read books that are at once theologically insightful and literarily creative in their ability to twist and tweak language. Here are a couple of superb, creatively phrased passages from Douglas Knight’s The Eschatological Economy:
“Although [Jesus] is the resurrection, the one who may never die, he suffers and dies. He suffers the world. If we are allowed to abuse the language a little, we could say that Jesus is worlded. He calls out from the world what is most intrinsic to it — death — and summons it together to a single point, that of the cross. When Jesus calls, death comes out of the world. Jesus is able to break open the world and separate death from it. The indivisible Spirit drives division out. The world is Jesused. Death has no claim on him, so it finds nothing in him by which it can gain purchase. Death is deathed. The Spirit makes the Son indivisible and so impregnable: the world cannot break him.” (p. 128)
“In killing Jesus, the regime made the sacrifice that put the whole people out of relationship with their God. Yet this was not finally definitive of this event. Jesus made this the sacrifice that was righteous and life-generating. The cross was the act by which the regime gentiled itself and Jesus righteoused himself, and as such this was the joint act of God and human beings, in which the act of humankind was redeemed by God.” (p. 128-29)
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