The book’s final chapter draws on recent scholarship on cultic imagery in the New Testament to demonstrate that Jesus likely used temple and priestly imagery in his teaching, yet without the intention of repudiating the validity of the temple. Among other narratives, the Last Supper traditioins are given special attention.

The book concludes by looking at what Jung and Freud published and did not publish on Jonah after their break. This retrospective perspective helps us evaluate the legacy and aftereffects of what was written during the founding years of the psychoanalytic periodicals. The book concludes with a reappraisal of Freud’s decision to end his life on the Jewish Day of Atonement during the Second World War in the context of the extraordinary ways the story on the Book of Jonah played out before the First World War.

Kierkegaard’s writings are a mosaic of explorations of such spiritual excellences as faith, love, hope, patience, compassion, forgiveness, and bold confidence, explorations designed to “build up” the reader in these traits. The treatment of faith in The Sickness unto Death follows the classical pattern of virtue as an actualization of a creature’s potentiality. Faith is that state in which people realize the human telos; it is the completion of human nature. In Kierkegaard’s thought, all the other virtues presuppose the virtue of faith. But The Sickness unto Death also presents sin, the psychological condition that underlies wrongdoing, as deep and pervasive in a way that rules out some of the classical features of human virtues, for example that they are realizable perfections developed by habituation, and that virtue has not been achieved in a person who still has to struggle against vicious impulses. The features of Christian virtues that make them compatible with sin are that they depend on grace, that their development is subject to an “inverse dialectic,” that the conceptual grammar of many of the virtues makes reference to sin and sinfulness and more broadly accountability to God, and that the Christian virtues are not, at least in this life, perfections.

The literature on moral responsibility is ripe with accounts of what it takes for an agent to become blameworthy. By contrast, very little has been written about what it takes for an agent’s blameworthiness to cease or diminish. It seems that there are certain things a wrongdoer can feel or do that might make her less blameworthy than she would otherwise have been. She might experience guilt, atone, apologize, and make reparations. In this chapter, I will argue that prominent accounts of blameworthiness are unable to explain how such actions and emotions can influence one’s blameworthiness. I will then present an alternative account. If we understand blameworthiness in terms of deserved guilt rather than fitting resentment, we can give a plausible account of how blameworthiness can change over time. The fact that a wrongdoer has already experienced guilt, atoned, or apologized will make her less deserving of guilt, and therefore less blameworthy.

Chapter 1 examines the first era of veterans’ return journeys. Between 1981 and 1994, a trickle of Australian and American Vietnam veterans returned to Việt Nam on journeys of reconciliation. As Western war commemorations and popular culture representations allowed veterans to reflect on their wartime experiences, some returned to Việt Nam to address lingering questions they had about the people, the country, and the war. Others returned in reaction to contemporary political issues, while major economic changes within Việt Nam acted as a cue for veterans who had long dreamed of returning. For some veterans, returning marked a turning point that challenged them to atone for the war, while others found new opportunities and relationships. These first returnees discovered a place that had seemingly moved on from war, which brought them a measure of peace. Many became advocates for formal reconciliation with and restitution for the Vietnamese.

This chapter discusses the critical issues in the interpretation of Hebrews, including theories of the atonement and sacrifice more generally, the Jewish and Greco-Roman exegetical strategies the author employs, and the place of the resurrection in the author's thought.

This chapter analyzes Paul’s understanding of the atoning nature of Christ’s death and resurrection. Since Paul regularly uses imagery from Israel’s sacrificial cult to interpret the meaning of Jesus’ death, this chapter delves into recent work on the logic of Israel’s cult so as to understand what a first-century Jew would mean to say if they compared the events of Golgotha with the rite of Yom Kippur. The chapter contrasts Luther’s and Calvin’s understanding of the cross, which paint Paul’s account on a canvas of a generic, universal struggle with the powers of sin, guilt, and evil, with an argument in which Paul interprets the difference the cross makes as addressing a specific historical situation in the life of Israel and its relationship to Israel’s God.

In 2007 the bishops of the US Episcopal Church invited my advice on a “theology of same-sex relationships.” Of what other panelists said – PhDs teaching at respected institutions – the most arresting was: “The trouble with same-sex relationships is they impugn the blood of Christ.” They do what? The original remark attempted a hazing; the final result bestowed a gift, the gift of blood made strange. Blood is supposed to wash gay people with the atonement, even as self-accepting gay people say they don’t need cleansing. It’s supposed to unite Christians in communion, even as sexuality debates divide the churches. It’s supposed to protect the succession of priests, even as bishops shield them for sexual crimes. To some Christians, such failures of Christ’s blood amount to a cosmological disturbance. But what if Jesus becomes a bridegroom of blood, who stays on the cross for love of the (male) thief to whom he promises a life together in paradise? Reflects on Anselm, Abelard, Sebastian Moore, and "pleading the blood."

What is the proper aim of socially punitive responses to wrongdoing? The usual contenders in the debates about the justification of criminal punishment – retributivist, utilitarian, expressivist, and communicative theories – all encounter problems as accounts of social punishment. This chapter argues that the general justifying aim of social punishment is to pressure wrongdoers to make amends for their own transgressions. The view combines both desert and instrumental conditions for punishment but develops distinctive accounts of each.

Locke regarded the Law of Nature as divinely given and, hence, inherently rational, universally binding, and eternally valid. This view of the Law of Nature informs his natural law theory, which presents both biblical and natural theological arguments. Yet, he believed in the superiority of the Law of Faith, delivered by Christ, over both the Law of Nature and the Law of Moses. To Locke, Christ not only affirmed the Law of Nature completely and unambiguously, but also assured humanity of otherworldly rewards and sanctions and of God’s forgiveness of the repentant faithful. Thus, the Law of Faith effectively promotes the practice of morality and the development of moral character and enables human beings to pursue salvation. Maintaining the necessity both of good works and of acceptance of God’s assisting grace for salvation, Locke rejected predestination, denied original sin, and excluded the satisfaction theory of atonement, which he described as a disputed doctrine, from his account of Christianity in his public writings. However, some of his manuscripts demonstrate his dislike for the satisfaction theory, to which he preferred the Arminians’ governmental theory of atonement.

Moral progress is understood religiously as the hope that despite our having begun from evil, we can make ourselves well-pleasing to God. This hope rests on the hope that we have undergone the change of heart, which is symbolized in rational religion as faith in the Son of God or the ideal of humanity well-pleasing to God. Understanding this requires further investigation of the role of symbols and analogy in religion, which was discussed in Chapter 1. The hope to become well-pleasing to God is threatened by three difficulties, two of them based on doubts that we have undergone the change of heart or can sustain it in our lives, and the third (and greatest) based on the fact that we began from evil and have incurred a guilt we cannot wipe out. The hope to become well-pleasing to God therefore depends on God’s decree of grace. We can understand this in terms of God’s forgiveness – not the forgiveness of a debt but God’s willingness to accept our change of heart as an atonement making us morally receptive to his freely given mercy.

In this chapter, the author offers grounds for belief that, in the eschatological end, God will resurrect, transform, and include all non-human creatures and things in the messianic kingdom of God. Besides philosophical-theological and moral grounds, he appeals to doctrines of the “image of God,” the atonement, and the resurrection in support of this eschatological proposition. Next, he discusses recently offered scenarios of animals in Heaven. He focuses on the identity-problem of predation: will predators transformed into non-predators still be themselves? Finally, he offers his own scenario of God defeating Darwinian evil for animals by elevating them to a stature analogous to the exalted place of martyrs according to Christian tradition.

This chapter continues the exploration of the development of the doctrine of justification during the Middle Ages, focussing on the important concept of the ‘righteousness of God (Iustitia Dei)’. The chapter opens with some preliminary reflections on medieval understandings of Iustitia Dei, before moving on to discuss the highly significant contributions of Anselm of Canterbury to early medieval discussions of divine righteousness and the rationality of faith. This leads into a discussion of whether the ultimate basis of divine justice is to be discussed within an intellectualist or voluntarist framework, noting the quite distinct approaches found in writers such as Aquinas and William of Ockham. An important development which becomes of considerable significance in the fourteenth century is the use of covenantal understandings of the nature of divine righteousness, and the process of causality which lies in someone being ‘made righteous’. This theology of the Pactum, particularly associated with the via moderna, is explored, and its potential implications assessed. Finally, the chapter considers the discussion of the nature of the analogy between divine and human justice, and its implications for wider discussion of theological themes in this period.

This chapter contrasts theistic and nontheistic interpretations of religion, with attention to Buddha, Confucius, Krishna, Moses, Paul, and Muhammad.