Talal Asad is a terrifically interesting writer on religion and secularism - though his views are certainly not incontestable. I picked up a copy of his book On Suicide Bombing.
In its opening pages he writes that:
...I draw on some aspects of Christian theology: the crucifixion is the most famous suicide in history, whose horror is transmuted into the project of redeeming universal humanity - again through a combination of cruelty and compassion. p. 3
I did a double-take of course. A suicide? Hmm... Turning to the later passages in his book he DOES have some very interesting things to say about the atonement (as Charles Taylor does in The Secular Age). But he takes as his guide Aulen's very dated Christus Victor...
5 comments:
I just doubled-taked (took?) as well. The term suicide for the cross suggests many wrong things about the death of Jesus, and obscures many of the most important. Not a helpful category, in definitional terms, in a book on suicide bombing. I hope his subsequent analysis is able to distance this "suicide" from the titular ones.
I think that may be a link to a virus. My virus-checker just freaked out when I clicked on it...
Yes, 'tis a rather strange comparison, although it is true that both Jesus and suicide bombers have chosen to die for what they believed in, although in very different ways.
Just wondering, in what respect do you see Aulen's work as being dated?
Re Aulen: I don't think anyone seriously thinks that his argument that Christus Victor is THE classic view of the atonement has been accepted.
His typology of accounts of the atonement still has enormous influence of course, but, it was written in the 1930s you know!
I'm in a lecture that has just made the point that in suicide-bombing, it's never the leaders of any particularly Islamic group that does it.
Quite a contrast to the cross.
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