God’s Apocalyptic Insurrection
A Post-Evangelical Theology of Salvation
- Theology
- Publisher: Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2024
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Publisher's Description
What if our inherited theologies of salvation are distorted by a sinful history that includes white supremacy, slavery, and colonial conquest? What if we perpetuate this distortion by continuing to imagine salvation as a legal transaction by which we are saved by God from divine punishment? If salvation merely rectifies the individual's standing before God, justice and human flourishing are viewed as peripheral to "the gospel." This book begins with a bit of "deconstruction." But the real need is construction or perhaps the discovery of another "soteriological imagination." To be saved is to be drawn into union with Jesus Messiah, the bringer of the now and future reign of God where all things are rectified. Jesus's life, death, and resurrected body are the space where a disordered creation is put right. Jesus is God's "apocalyptic insurrection" against every power that dehumanizes, harms, and destroys human persons. We are saved by the triune God, by God's gracious acceptance that cannot be earned. But we are saved for participation in the invasion of God's reign of justice, healing, and transformation. Salvation has everything to do with caring for refugees, resisting systemic racial and other injustices, food for the hungry, and valuing human persons as Christ incognito.
Endorsements (3)
“Richard Crane offers readers an historically informative, theologically rich, and biblically sound vision of not only what it means to ‘be saved,’ but also how ‘saved’ persons, ‘drawn into union with the Triune God,’ should work out their salvation in the power of the Spirit. Crane exhorts Christians to participate in the missio Dei as they partner with God on their life-giving journey in working to transform the lives of others, through actively struggling for justice and wholeness, striving to heal a dysfunctional world with the love of God in Christ.”
“Hallelujah! Richard Crane’s work on salvation is a salve to Americanized Christianity, disrupting soteriologies that reduce the gospel to fire insurance and leave racism and MAGA movements untouched. Reclaiming theosis and apocalyptic intrusion of death-dealing powers, Crane recovers actual good news—our participation in God’s very life through Jesus Christ and a Spirit-filled joining to God’s liberating movement of justice, healing, and repair in creation. This is a must-read for anyone trying to deconstruct bad-news Christianity!”
“How do Christians who know something has gone terribly wrong with Christianity in the US go on? God’s Apocalyptic Insurrection offers a compelling way. Assuming that what we need saved from is the very notion of what it means to be saved, Crane sets forth a much more beautiful vision of what we should be saved for that includes practical material guidance in the here-and-now within an eschatological vision of hope. Filled with wise counsel, it deserves a wide reading.”
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