It's not often that a book is written to answer the "So what?" question, but that's precisely the case with
Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross. Inspiration for the book came when Mark Baker and Joel Green wrote
Recovering the Scandal of the Cross, an argument against those evangelical theologians and pastors who focused on the penal satisfaction theory of the atonement to the exclusion of other complementary explanations. Readers were struck by their argument, but they looked in vain for pastoral application.
In Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross, Baker brings theologians and pastors, including Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, together with writers such as C. S. Lewis, Frederica Mathewes-Green, and Luci Shaw to shed light on the contemporary relevance of the atonement. These writers reveal that Christians should embrace a whole constellation of perspectives on the atonement, all mutually reinforcing, because the language of the atonement must at once be metaphorical, pastoral, and salvific. As such, the book will appeal to theologians, pastors, professors, and students who want to profit from the theology of the atonement as it applies across the whole spectrum of human experience.
