Did God kill Jesus?

That seems to be the question really going down on a number of POMO/EC sites recently, albeit rather briefly summarised. For some people it seems out of character that God might have quite deliberately sent his son to die in our place, and so have rejected this. Others have applied modern sociological thinking to this act and concluded that God is a child abuser. There have also been rumblings about the 'medieval penal substitutionary theory', suggesting that it's a western view that Jesus died in our place to fulfill the demands of justice.

I was reading through John's gospel this morning. At the end of chapter 12 John quotes bits of Isiah about how God blinded the peoples eyes and deadened their hearts 'otherwise they might turn and I would heal them'. The suggestion to me is that one of the theories I heard from Dan (at signposts) might have been nearly right: that people might have turned and accepted Jesus and been 'healed'.

But the way I read this is that it wasn't God's plan.

He actually planned for Jesus to die, and die in a particular place, time and manner. Put like that, it sounds like the child abuser theory is reasonable, yet I am sure that this plan was worked out and agreed between them before Jesus was born. The Father and Son in perfect unity, working toward the salvation of the world. And one willing to take the pain and suffering of the world apon Himself - the other knowing the pain and suffering of a parent, cut off from the child they love, yet seeing them in an agony they must not prevent or reduce.

As it says elsewhere "your ways are not my ways, My thoughts are higher than your thoughts". This is certainly foolishness to our 'Greek' society, yet a greater wisdom than that society has ever perceived.