"When the church embraces and embodies the gospel, it exhibits the cross. Nothing is more alienating to the world than the cross. Consequently, in embodying the cross the church throws into question Everyman's everyday assumptions about the meaning of life and the human good. Performing the doctrine of the atonement thus produces a unique, distinctly prophetic A-effect: turning the world upside down by practicing what the world considers foolishness. Of course, it is really a matter of turning the world right side up, for the church's performance corresponds to what is ultimately real and confronts the world with the claim and provocation of reality as it is disclosed 'in Christ.' The church is salt and light precisely as an exhibit of the reality, and power, of the gospel--the exhibit of 'lived theo-dramatic knowledge.'"
[Kevin Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 428]
[Kevin Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine, 428]