Contributors 4 Editorial Samuel L. Adams 5 Mending What Is Broken: The Logic of the Cross in 1 Corinthians Suzanne Watts Henderson In recent decades, scholars have come to see 1 Corinthians as a rhetorically unified response to the problem of divisions among Corinthian believers. This essay explores the ways in which Paul presents the cross as the organizing principle that can bind together three different forms of community division: the cult of the personality (1:10–4:21); the freedom to eat idol meat (8:1–11:1); and economic disparities when gathered for a meal (11:17–34). In each case, Paul appeals implicitly or explicitly to the cross as a remedy for the all-toofamiliar strains on the fractured community. In the end, Paul’s countercultural message about the cross offers a word of exhortation for the American church today, as it navigates a society that shares much in common with first-century Corinth. 15 The Cross as God’s Self-Exegesis: Some Contributions from Paul and John Michael J. Gorman This essay argues that for Paul and John, the cross is an act of divine self-exegesis, or self-explanation. It reveals the divine attributes of love (including enemy-love), humility/vulnerability, power, wisdom, and righteousness/justice. The cross is also intended to draw us into the life of God to share in these divine attributes. 27 Their Cross Problem and Ours: Thoughts on the Aesthetic of Crucifixion S. Mark Heim Contemporary Christian witness about the death of Jesus moves in a culture already saturated with an aesthetic or intuitive ethic of the crucifixion. This article describes the Roman context as the background to considering the absence of the crucifixion images in early Christianity, followed by an exploration of how subsequent Christians used typological images towards a new frame of meaning around the crucifixion. The discussion indicates how this new aesthetic lodged itself in shared cultural assumptions. Finally, the essay considers the crucial American case of lynching, in which White Christian churches betrayed this distinctive meaning of the crucifixion, Black churches affirmed it, and the cultural aesthetic of crucifixion proved itself a key medium for resistance to lynching. 39 Dangerous Memory: An Antiracist Political Theology of the Cross Roger J. Gench The dangerous memory of the crucified and risen Jesus confronts the “lie” of racism, past and present. The cross and resurrection disrupt our forgetfulness about the lie and awaken memory of our complicity in the reality of racism and its ongoing diminishment of the lives of racially-minoritized people. Indeed, the dangerous memory embodied in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus creates tension that evokes a relational and agitational community of resistance to racist ideas and policies. Between Text and Sermon 51 Mark 15:16–32 Sally A. Brown 54 Galatians 6:9–18 Joni S. Sancken 57 1 Peter 2:18–25 Jaewoong Jung Major Reviews 60 Wondrously Wounded: Theology, Disability and the Body of Christ by Brian R. Brock Bill Gaventa 63 Constructing Paul (The Canonical Paul, Vol.1) by Luke Timothy Johnson A. Katherine Grieb 66 Luke by F. Scott Spencer Andrew E. Arterbury 69 Shorter Reviews 90 Book Notes