Just finished reading: “The Nonviolent Atonement: Human violence, discipleship, and God” (2006) by J. Denny Weaver, which I summarize as follows: All previous accounts of the role of the Cross in how God brings us back to Himself, except for most Girardian explanations and the cosmic battle version of Christus Victor, implicate God as in some way needing violence to get the job done. Yet such a need stands in unacceptable tension with the consistently nonviolent life lived by Jesus, God’s perfect and authoritative image. Thus, we should to what I call “narrative Christus Victor,” by which I posit that neither the Father nor the Son in any way willed the Son to die, and that God brings us to Himself instead by vindicating Jesus’ way via the Resurrection. If we need forgiveness, we need only repent.
I disagree with Weaver about the Cross and don’t think his argument about it succeeds on his own terms: The Father is still “implicated” in the Son’s death if He knew that Jesus’ death was inevitable and did not rescue Jesus upon the latter’s request. Additionally, even if dying was not an intrinsic part of Jesus’ mission, as Weaver maintains, it is nevertheless untrue that Jesus couldn’t have fulfilled His mission without being executed: He could simply have evaded capture, as He did when pushed to a precipice in Luke 4:29-30.
Still, Weaver and I agree about this: “…the focus of being Christian is a life transformed by the narrative of Jesus.”