Fortress Press

"Nothing shakes the faith of the morally sensitive more than the shocking violence of God as depicted in specific Old Testament texts, and yet nothing confirms the faith of the same people more than the cruciform love and peace of Jesus in the New Testament. Boyd's proposal is to bring these two poles into a cruciform hermeneutic. The old approach of Marcion doesn't resolve the problem, and neither do dismissals of the Old Testament in favor of the New nor do question-betting theological explanations help. What Greg Boyd does in The Crucifixion of the Warrior God is nothing less than a stunning re-imagination of how to read the Bible afresh through the cross of Jesus." 
—Scot McKnight, Northern Seminary, author of The King Jesus Gospel

"Gregory A. Boyd has written an impressive work: theologically alert, careful and thorough in its treatment of many difficult texts, comprehensively referenced, and moving in depth through both testaments. It deserves wide attention from readers across theological disciplines."
—Terence E. Fretheim, Luther Seminary

"Here a world is opened up where the violence of the Old Testament becomes not merely tolerable but illumines the God who loves, never coerces, and rejects all violence in Jesus Christ. A monumental work. Breathtaking in scope. A stunning accomplishment from one of the brilliant theological minds of our day. I could not be more thankful for a book."
—David Fitch, Northern Seminary, Chicago, author of Faithful Presence

"In this evocative new book, Gregory A. Boyd has taken the canonicity of Scripture seriously, avoiding both the pitfalls of Marcionism and Christomonism, and articulated what promises to reset the conversation around Scripture and violence. Boyd has pointed toward the scriptural scandal of a God who is crucified, and asked us to stand still to consider the implications for how we engage a violent world."
—Myles Werntz, Hardin-Simmons University

"The phrase "magnum opus" and the term "magisterial" truly apply to this two-volume work—for this is Gregory A. Boyd's voluminous gift to the church as well as to the contemporary theological enterprise. I predict that these volumes will quickly take their place as must-reads for Christian exegetes and theologians of all stripes."
—William Hamilton Barnes, University of Minnesota

"Gregory A. Boyd looks the violence of God, as attested in scripture, full in the face without flinching. But he submits that testimony to the absolute and ultimate truth of the cross that both permits and requires the recognition that we are not supposed to take these violent divine portrayals at face value. Boyd mobilizes the remarkable resources of the Christian interpretative tradition to show that such divine violence is strategic, pedagogical, and accommodating but is not definitional for the truth of God that is to be found in the self-giving of God in the cross. This is a most welcome and daring study that may indeed change the terms of our ongoing wonderment about how to read scripture and how to trust and obey the God who dwells therein."
—Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary

"Divine violence in the Old Testament has, in recent years, become one of the most pressing problems for Christian thinkers. Common ways forward include either synthesizing this material with the nonviolent portrait of God revealed in Jesus or dismissing it as lacking in any real revelational import. In this groundbreaking new work, Gregory A. Boyd charts a third way, a largely unexplored path that recovers lost intuitions of the early church. In the process, he offers a new hermeneutic that promises to put Christ and him crucified at the center of all biblical interpretation in a consistent fashion. This two-volume project is both sweeping in scope and stunning in its many insights." 
—Paul Rhodes Eddy, Bethel University