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    Sacrifice and Atonement: Psychological Motives and Biblical Patterns
    Sacrifice and Atonement: Psychological Motives and Biblical Patterns
    Sacrifice and Atonement: Psychological Motives and Biblical Patterns
    Ebook241 pages4 hours

    Sacrifice and Atonement: Psychological Motives and Biblical Patterns

    By Stephen Finlan

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    About this ebook

    Beneath the commonplace affirmation that Jesus “paid for our sins” lie depths of implication: did God demand a blood sacrifice to assuage divine anger? Is sacrifice (consciously or unconsciously) intended to induce the deity to show favor? What underlies the various metaphors for atonement used in the Bible?

    Here, Stephen Finlan surveys psychological theories that help us to understand beliefs about sacrifice and atonement and what they may reveal about patterns of injury, guilt, shame, and appeasement. Early chapters examine the language in both testaments of purity and the “scapegoat,” and of payment, obligation, reciprocity, and redemption. Later chapters review theories of the origins of atonement thinking in fear and traumatic childhood experience, in ambivalent or avoidant attachment to the parents, and in “poisonous pedagogy.” The theories of Sandor Rado, Mary Ainsworth, Erik Erikson, and Alice Miller are examined, then Finlan draws conclusions about the moral responsibility of appropriating or rejecting atonement metapors and their effects today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFortress Press
    Release dateJun 3, 2016
    ISBN9781506401973
    Sacrifice and Atonement: Psychological Motives and Biblical Patterns
    Author

    Stephen Finlan

    Stephen Finlan received his PhD from the University of Durham. He taught religious and biblical studies for thirteen years. He is the author of The Background and Content of Paul’s Cultic Atonement Metaphors (2004); Problems with Atonement (2005); Options on Atonement in Christian Thought (2007); The Family Metaphor in Jesus’ Teaching (2009); and Bullying in the Churches (2015).

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