Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

Here Bushnell contends for what has come to be known as the moral view of the Atonement, as distinct from the governmental, penal and satisfaction theories. His moral view of the Atonement is grounded in principles of universal obligation and universal vicariousness, later modified by the idea of God as propitiating himself in the forgiveness of the sinner. In Bushnell, God's sympathetic participation in the distortions of sin is a primordial fact. But the man Jesus unambiguously manifests this divine sympathy at the level of one human being. Since it is the very nature of sin to be bound to the world of sense, there must be some point in the world that unambiguously shows forth this divine sympathy. This point is made in Jesus and his cross. The cross of Christ represents the eternal suffering of God - a suffering born of his sympathy. The resurrection represents the perpetual endurance of God's love in spite of this suffering. It represents God's absolute adherence to the law of his nature, an adherence that he accomplishes even at great cost. In this endurance and this obedience, the law of God's nature is fulfilled. The relational law of love that man has trampled and insulted in the Fall, God has upheld. Such a supreme and inexhaustible love would lead ultimately to such a great suffering as was his death. For Bushnell, real redemption involves the subjective acceptance by man of God's love.

God's Wounds: Hermeneutic of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering, Volume I: Divine Vulnerability and Creation is the first of a three-volume study of Christian testimonies to divine suffering. The larger study focuses its inquiry on the testimonies to divine suffering themselves, seeking to allow the voices that attest to divine suffering to speak freely. The goal is then to discover and elucidate the internal logic or rationality of this family of testimonies, rather than defending these attestations against the dominant claims of classical Christian theism that have historically sought to eliminate such language altogether from Christian discourse about the nature and life of God. In this first volume, the author develops an approach to interpreting the contested claims about the suffering of God. Through this approach to the Christian symbol of divine suffering, he then investigates the two major presuppositions that the larger family of testimonies to divine suffering normally hold: an understanding of God through the primary metaphor of love ('God is love'); and an understanding of the human as created in the image of God, with a life (though finite) analogous to the divine life - the imago Dei as love. When fully elaborated, these presuppositions reveal the conditions of possibility for divine suffering and divine vulnerability with respect to creation.

This book constitutes the first volume of a three-volume study of Christian testimonies to divine suffering: God's Wounds: Hermeneutic of the Christian Symbol of Divine Suffering, Divine Vulnerability and Creation. This study first develops an approach to interpreting the contested claims about the suffering of God. Thus, the larger study focuses its inquiry into the testimonies to divine suffering themselves, seeking to allow the voices that attest to divine suffering to speak freely, to discover and elucidate the internal logic or rationality of this family of testimonies, rather than defending these attestations against the dominant claims of classical Christian theism that have historically sought to eliminate such language altogether from Christian discourse about the nature and life of God. Through this approach this volume of studies into the Christian symbol of divine suffering then investigates the two major presuppositions that the larger family of testimonies to divine suffering normally hold: an understanding of God through the primary metaphor of love ("God is love"); and an understanding of the human as created in the image of God, with a life (though finite) analogous to the divine life--the imago Dei as love. When fully elaborated, these presuppositions reveal the conditions of possibility for divine suffering and divine vulnerability with respect to creation.