The Passion and Persuasion

Robert Hach is a professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Miami Dade College in Miami, Florida. His first book, Possession and Persuasion: The Rhetoric of Christian Faith, is a rhetorical analysis of the development of Christian faith from its associational beginnings as the persuasive power of the spoken message that Jesus passed on to his first-century followers, to its organizational emergence as the possessive power of the religious institution that eventually became known as “the Church.” In the present volume, The Passion and Persuasion: A Biblical Deconstruction of the Evangelical Rhetoric of the Cross, the author analyzes the rhetoric of evangelical Christianity regarding the crucifixion of Jesus and shows that the evangelical doctrine of the atonement both misreads the New Testament language about Jesus’ crucifixion and perverts the biblical portrayal of Jesus’ God. By exposing the logical and theological fallacies of the evangelical doctrine, as well as its pernicious rhetorical effects, the author clears the way for an understanding of the crucifixion of Jesus that is not only demonstrably truer to the biblical language but also infinitely richer in its effect on believing hearts.