"I am disturbed to hear that you reject this atonement theology. It is one thing to say it is troubling or one doesn't fully grasp it; it is another thing to say one rejects it." --Ben Witherington

I must confess, however, that I am disturbed to hear that you reject this atonement theology. It is one thing to say it is troubling or one doesn't fully grasp it; it is another thing to say one rejects it. I would never want to put myself in the position of assuming that I know better than the New Testament writers what must have been true about Jesus' death or what could not be theologically true about that death.

I also would not want to distinguish between my faith and my theology. My faith is grounded in what I understand to be the historical and theological substance presented and affirmed in the Bible.

I really do believe that the Bible is a revelation from a loving God to us, a revelation about the divine nature, human nature, and the divine-human encounter. I believe that God, being omniscient and all-powerful, is perfectly capable of speaking clearly to us through human words and human writers on such matters. I am perfectly happy with 2 Tim. 3.16 ("All scripture [is] given by inspiration of God, and [is] profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness") as an affirmation in the first place about the Hebrew Scriptures, and equally applicable to the New Testament by extension.

What this means in principle to me is that I do not see theologizing as a creative enterprise where I get to generate my own belief system. Rather, I see it as a lifelong process of trying to understand what God is trying to tell us through these wonderful--and sometimes frustrating--Biblical sources.

My assumption is that once I understand what Scripture actually teaches on a subject like atonement, then it is an issue for affirmation and obedience, not debate. In my own personal experience, I have found that it is precisely the places I find in Scripture that seem to me more rough, scandalous, or hard to swallow that I need to beware of ignoring or condemning or rejecting, because they may well tell me precisely the points where I have most strayed in my understanding. I follow J. Bengel's motto--- "Apply the whole of the text to yourself; apply the whole of yourself to the text."

It appears to me that our approach to theology differs, to some degree because our view of Scripture and its role in the life of the believer differs. I don't say that pejoratively, but just as an observation of fact.

In regard to anti-Semitism, I am in perfect agreement with you. It's a horrible sin, and I pray that Mel Gibson's movie does not stir up such sentiments. I do think, however, that the old Latin dictum applies: "Abusus non tollit usum"--"the abuse of something does not rule out its proper use." Just because some New Testament texts have been used by racists for various purposes--including anti-Semitic purposes--doesn't mean either: 1) that that is what these texts were trying to prompt in their original contexts; 2) that we should abandon, ignore, or reject these texts because they have been misused. I don't think there are any anti-Semitic texts in the New Testament, which was, after all, written entirely or almost entirely by Jews (Luke-Acts might be an exception).

In regard to the "crowd" issue you raised, I quite agree with you that even if--worst case scenario--the whole of Jerusalem condemned Jesus, it would still not mean that all Jews are being tarred with that brush. Frankly, it seems clear to me that the phrase "the Jews" in the Gospel of John means the Jewish officials, and not just any Jewish officials, but those connected with the temple. (Not, for example, some official in a local synagogue in Galilee.) I think there is a pretty strong critique of the Caiaphas family in the New Testament, but frankly, Josephus critiques the same family when he criticizes the action taken against Jesus' brother James in A.D. 62, when James was martyred at the hands of the descendent of Caiaphas.

Historically, and trying to be honest without being inflammatory, I do believe that some Jewish officials played a role in handing Jesus over to Pilate. Pilate and his forces were responsible for the execution, and as you say, this should not lead to anti-Italianism!

I like your pressing of the issue of the crowd, and I agree with you that we should start with Mark. It may well be that the crowd was initially pro-Barabbas more than anti-Jesus, but in due course it seems the crowd was led to be anti-Jesus as well. I have no idea how many people were involved, but to judge from the site where this scene may have taken place in Jerusalem, it surely could not have been thousands, though it might have been a hundred or so. It is hard to tell, and I don't really think the exact number matters much.

In closing, I would want to give you something to ponder. This week I had a student who came to me and said, "Do you suppose the First Evangelist, who was a Jew, might have meant by the 'may his blood be on our heads' a positive reference to Christ's as the Passover Lamb whose blood is shed and covers even the sins of God's people?" In other words, he was asking if this might be a double entendre. I had never thought of it that way, but perhaps it is worth considering since that text has so often been a whipping boy for those who want to see anti-Semitism in portions of the New Testament.