Greg Boyd in his never-ending book, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, lays out God’s martial arts program. (This won’t hook you enough to actually read the book, but I’m not going to go into any more detail than that because I would have to take three blog posts to explain it.)
BUT, there is a significant paragraph that is beautiful. It’s a quote from Sigve Tonstad and is a reminder of C.S. Lewis and the “deep magic” Aslan used to overcome the witch.
On the cross:
(God was) outsmarting and outmaneuvering ‘the rulers of this age’ to leave them defeated and discomfited on the cosmic battle field. Love laid a trap, as it were, deploying humility and unselfishness against the power and pride and hubris, a mismatch so stupendous that the outcome seemed a forgone conclusion until ‘the rulers of this age’ woke up to see their scheme disintegrate.
Boyd calls this the “Aikido-like dimension of God’s ‘wrath’.”
Greg frustrates me. Sometimes I think he is a heretic. And then quotes like this make me think he is a genius.
Origen had that same effect on the Church for hundreds of years. Their only sin? They write down their thoughts. Most of us THINK “heretical” things from time to time, but we’re not brave enough to put them into the public square and say, “Hey! What do you think about this?”
Yes. I understand that. My blog is full of meandering thoughts. Sometimes I read an old post and “Did I really think that?”