Review of The Wood Between the Worlds: a Poetic Theology of the Cross – by Brian Zahnd (IVP, 2024)
There is nothing more central to Christian theology than Jesus’ death on the cross. As Brian Zahnd puts it:
“Everything about the gospel message leads to the cross and proceeds from the cross…the crucifixion of Jesus is literally the crux of the story – the axis on which the biblical story turns.”
The Wood Between the Worlds is a beautiful, deep and rich book which illuminates Jesus’ death in a fresh and exciting way.
Poetic understanding
A key concept of the book is ‘theo-poetics’. Zahnd uses this term to show there is a depth to God’s actions which can never be captured by our intellect via prose, apologetics or theological theory and principles.
Those of us formed in a cerebral, Protestant tradition especially can benefit from appreciating how art – poetry, painting, iconography, literature and film – illuminate divine truth in a vitally important way:
‘Theo-poetics…beckons us beyond critical textual analysis into contemplative meditation…Scripture is not an encyclopedia of God facts, but a portal into the divine mystery.’
Beautifully produced
The Wood Between the Worlds embodies these qualities because it is almost a piece of art in itself. It is beautifully produced, with a stunning cover and 12 colour plates of the paintings and icons Zahnd refers to. As someone who knows little about art, I appreciated reflecting on the theological truths of these images.
As well as visual artists, Zahnd also draws on the literature of Dostoevsky and Tolkien, the poetry of WB Yeats and Frederick Buechner, the philosophy of Elie Wiesel and Rene Girard and the music of John Coltrane and Bob Dylan. The book’s title is taken from C.S Lewis’s Narnia story, The Magician’s Nephew, where two children discover a mysterious forest from which you can access other worlds.
The book also draws on ancient desert fathers and refers to contemporary issues of politics and capital punishment. The chapter on Franz Jagerstatter, a conscientious objector martyred by the Nazis in World War Two, led me to watch the powerful film A Hidden Life. All these references helped deepen my understanding of Jesus’ death and its implications for us today.
‘Inexhaustible revelation’
The Wood Between The Worlds is not a long book, less than 200 pages, but its deep and rich. It is best read slowly. Each chapter works as a stand-alone essay, packed with stimulating and accessible insights.
Zahnd writes with an essential humility because he admits it is impossible to fully capture the ‘inexhaustible revelation’ of Jesus’ death:
‘Everything that can be known about God is in some way present at the cross…the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is an inexhaustible revelation of who God is.’
Paganised
Zahnd does not flinch from criticising what he sees as false interpretations of the cross, especially those which justify violence, war and imperialism. He argues that the concept that Jesus died to appease or ‘satisfy’ God’s anger is more a pagan understanding than a biblical one:
‘If we construe an idea that atonement means the appeasement of God’s anger through the violent abuse of his Son then we have viewed the cross through a pagan lens.’
Rather than ‘the wrath of God’, it was divine love that was satisfied at the cross:
‘This is the moment when the eternal love of the triune God intervened decisively in human history …the Spirit of love which flows between the Father and the Son erupted to engulf and forgive the sin of the world.’
The true centre
I cannot recommend The World Between The Worlds more highly. I read it through once earlier this year and then went back and read it through again.
It will be particularly helpful for those struggling with deconstructing their faith or who feel scarred by narrow or judgmental interpretations of the cross. Zahnd’s theology presents a Jesus whose radical social ethics of the Sermon on the Mount integrate with the atoning power of his death on the cross.
The Wood Between The Worlds is a great book: a generous, exciting and demanding interpretation on the key moment in history:
‘The cross really is the wood between the worlds because it is the true centre of history…the death of God upon a tree is not just some event within history, but the event that defines and explains, reveals and redeems all of history.’
Buy The Wood Between The Worlds: a Poetic Theology of the Cross by Brian Zahnd
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The very popular hymn by Stuart Townend (especially popular at funerals it seems), verse 2 says…
In Christ alone! – who took on flesh,Fullness of God in helpless babe.This gift of love and righteousness,Scorned by the ones He came to save:Till on that cross as Jesus died,The wrath of God was satisfied –For every sin on Him was laid;Here in the death of Christ I live.
We learn a lot of theology from hymns, some good, some quite problematic in my opinion. But we sing them, often unthinkingly, because everyone else around us is, and the words sink into us and become ‘truth’. Perhaps in all our churches we should quietly change the word ‘wrath’ for ‘love’ and see if anyone notices?!
Thanks for the book recommendation Jon.
Stephen.
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I know the hymn well and have sung it many, many times. I never sing ‘wrath’ and always replace it with love. I have seen it cause some very intense debates. I know that the hymn writer, Stuart Townend, very much defends his original language and does not approve of people singing different words – but the line is not just uncomfortable – it is wrong and promotes a damaging idea of divine retribution – as Zahnd says, of an angry deity who needs to punish someone.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
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Being an Occam’s Razor sort of guy, I see God’s covenants with mankind as reducing to the following:
“Do things My way, and honour Me, and you will prosper. This is the way I set it all up when I created the world.
“Do things your own way, and thereby disown Me, and the natural consequences that follow from this will lead to your destruction. That’s the way it just happens to be within this world that I made.
“I love you. I ache for you to come to me, so that you will indeed prosper, and so that we can walk together, but I gave you the freedom to choose. I plead with you to choose life, not destruction!”
Now the ancients, who attributed all things that happen, whether good or evil, to the action of God (or, indeed, ‘the gods’), called these two opposites the Love of God or the Wrath of God and there are frequent references to both throughout the Scriptures. I am therefore comfortable with the terminology—but with the above understanding. We do however need to be careful—very careful—when speaking with today’s non-believers and be ready with an explanation should the ‘angry God’ issue come up in conversation or questioning.
I always sing. “The wrath of God was turned aside,” because, in my case, I was freed from this very threat, in these very terms, and I was filled with an inner peace, a joy, and a deep gratitude from that moment onwards. My Lord Jesus Christ, on a cross of wood, made that possible. Hallelujah!
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There’s a chorus we sing which contains the phrase “….the wrath of God was satisfied…” When it comes up I always sing “… the love of God was satisfied…”. Reading this review I understood better why. Can’t wait to get the book for Christmas. (Is this the first mention of Christmas on your blog Jon?)
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Hi Noel – me too – see the comment above. I found it helpful to see how Zahnd addresses this issue and he is very firm. He quotes NT Wright as follows:
‘The events of Good Friday are not God punishing his Son…’If we come to this conclusion, we know we have mot just made a trivial mistake that could easily be corrected but a major blunder. We have portrayed God not as the generous Creator, the loving Father, but as an angry despot. That idea belongs not to the biblical picture of God, but with pagan beliefs.’ (p16)
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The penal substitutionary aspect of the atonement is clearly taught in Scripture. Sin does incur God’s wrath and God is propitiated and his wrath is ‘turned aside’ by God-ordained blood sacrifice. The New Testament confirms that ‘there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood’ (Hebrews 9v:22). The Israelites in Egypt were sinners but the ‘blood of the lamb’ on the door frames caused the angel of death (his agent of wrath) to ‘pass-over’, or we might say ‘turn aside’. Isaiah 53 prophesies the suffering servant who would bear the punishment of our sins when the LORD ‘laid on him the iniquity of us all’ hundreds of years later at another Passover. Romans 3v25 says ‘God presented him (Jesus) as a sacrifice of atonement (the one who would turn aside his wrath) through faith in his blood, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. . . ‘ (The blood of bulls and goats could not really ultimately deal with sin but they pre-figured the sacrifice of Christ which did and therefore were the means by which he showed forebearance.)
The problems people have with this biblical doctrine tend to do with confusing sinful human anger with God’s holy and righteous antipathy to evil (which is consistent with his nature of love), a failure to grasp the nature of the Trinity, and a reaction to some false stereotypes as to what was going on when Jesus died on the cross. God is never portrayed in Scripture as ‘needing to vent his anger on some hapless person and bizarrely indulging in some cosmic child abuse to achieve this’. His plan, conceived before the creation of the world, was that he would be in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. The sacrifices that prefigured the ‘one perfect sacrifice’ had to be given freely and the animals ‘without blemish’. The sinless Jesus freely gave his life to make atonement for us, and God’s wrath was turned aside from us, which meant (along with the resurrection) redemption, victory over sin and evil, and reconciliation and all other benefits of Christ’s passion.
As to Stuart Townend’s great hymn In Christ Alone, I certainly notice when the word ‘wrath’ is changed to ‘love’ and I can see why it offends him. I think had I had the opportunity to advise Townend as to the lyrics, I would have suggested he write the line as ‘And on the cross as Jesus died, the wrath of God was turned aside.’ This is because the word ‘satisfied’ is seen by some as indicating that God demands ‘satisfaction’ in the manner of a haughty ruler whose sense of honour has been impinged upon. However, I believe what Townend meant by using the word ‘satisfied’ was that God’s righteous and holy wrath was expiated, exhausted, released, by this perfect, voluntary blood sacrifice so there was no wrath left in Him to be visited upon us. This is biblical propitiation.
God’s ‘love’ was not ‘satisfied’ in the above sense. It is there for us just as much as it ever was. It has not been ‘turned aside’. However, if you understand the wording ‘the love of God of was satisfied’, to mean that God’s love was given perfect expression or was fulfilled, then that would be theologically right. However, that is not what Townend meant. It also begs the question, ‘Why would sending his Son into the world to be crucified be the greatest expression or fullest satisfaction of his love?’ The he answer is because it was the only way our sin could be atoned and we could escape his holy and just wrath upon us, and it required the greatest self-giving act of sacrifice ever made.
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Strange: singing that ‘the wrath of God is satisfied’ has never made me think of God the Father punishing his Son (I must be very unimaginative!).
True, however: I don’t suppose I’ve ever thought how God’s ‘wrath’ does land, only that, somehow, in the love between Father and Son I am spared from it.
Now it pops into my head how I heard recently – nearly 50 years after the event – how my parents took the rap for a stupid thing I did when a teenager. It cost them (money), but for some (loving?!) reason they spared me that consequence. That might be relevant!
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Thanks for the comments everyone.
It seems that almost everyone is not comfortable with the words in that particular line of ‘In Christ Alone’ – albeit perhaps for different reasons and with different suggestions.
Thanks Martin for sharing your defence of PSA. As this is a book review I want to point people to read Zahnd’s book which covers it in a different way than I have read before and avoids some of the liberal interpretations I have read before. He has a chapter on the ‘Singularity of Good Friday’ which is particularly focused on this. ‘On Good Friday all the sins of the world became a single sin that it might be forgiven once and forever.’ But when he discusses the idea of Hebrew sacrifices he writes ‘It is important to recognise that the passover lamb was not being punished…the ritual killing of a human or animal to appease the gods is a pagan practice and not what was observed by the ancient Hebrews…it was about covenant and union with God, not the placation of a retributive deity’ (p19). He also writes about how Christ’s death paid a ransom to death rather than a ransom to God.
I have heard shared in numerous sermons the idea that Jesus takes a punishment to ‘save us from God’ and it does convey strongly that wrath needs to be expressed somewhere so Jesus took the hit. This is the kind of ‘satisfaction’ that rightly makes people uncomfortable.
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