Books on the Atonement

In the year of his passing (1917), the great James Denney’s The Christian Doctrine of Reconciliation was published. Commenting on books written on the atonement, he penned the following:

‘Of all books that have ever been written on the atonement, as God’s way of reconciling man to Himself, McLeod Campbell’s is probably that which is most completely inspired by the spirit of the truth with which it deals. There is a reconciling power of Christ in it to which no tormented conscience can be insensible. The originality of it is spiritual as well as intellectual, and no one who has ever felt its power will cease to put it in a class by itself. In speculative power he cannot be compared to Schleiermacher, nor in historical learning to Ritschl, and sometimes he writes as badly as either; but he walks in the light all the time, and every thing he touches lives’.

Of course, the first half of the twentieth century saw some wonderful work done on the atonement. Forsyth’s The Cruciality of the Cross and The Work of Christ, and Denney’s The Death of Christ, being of, to my mind, the best. And in the previous century, Erskine’s The Brazen Serpent stands out alongside McLeod’s Campbell’s work.

But what of the second half of last century, and the first years of this one? What are the works that do (and should) stand out? Of whose work could it today be said, ‘There is a reconciling power of Christ in it to which no tormented conscience can be insensible’?

What works would you nominate?: Moltmann’s The Crucified God? Smail’s Once and For All? Torrance’s The Mediation of Christ? Gunton’s The Actuality of the Atonement? Bingham’s Christ’s Cross Over Man’s Abyss? Stott’s The Cross of Christ? Morris’ The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross? Schmiechen’s Saving Power? … ? What works would you nominate, and why?

Moreover, who is writing of the atonement today not as an onlooker but as one who has been there, and is there still?


16 comments

  1. I have to say of Denney’s work that I am an unabashed fan. And as an Aussie, I will also say that Leon Morris is top draw – it is amazing how little notice is taken of his exhaustive work on the biblical material by scholars who don’t like his conclusions. The claim of the blurb for ‘Pierced for Our Transgressions’, a new publication from Oak Hill, is that their work is in this tradition…

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  2. 1 – John McLeod Campbell – how can anyone say his book is “probably that which is most completely inspired by the spirit of the truth with which it deals.” His doctrine of the atonement, although applaudably pastoral is doctrinally hopeless surely?! In boosting his anthropocentric ideas of the way God “should” be (after all, it’s not about the God you WANT it’s about the God you’re damn well going to get) he misses out some key doctrines (for example, election) and has to mould certain parts of the biblical witness to remain faithful to others… Maybe I’m wrong… it was my impression.

    2 – Gunton’s book is a let down – methodologically sloppy, exegetically weak and I felt the conclusion reached was “metaphors are great” but no word of how we should use them… no theology of a metaphor – see Jungel for that.

    3 – I agree – I love Leon Morris and I think Michael is right in saying, ” it is amazing how little notice is taken of his exhaustive work on the biblical material by scholars who don’t like his conclusions.” I couldn’t agree more.

    4 – we need more GREAT theologians don’t we!

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  3. McCleod Campbell gave me nightmares in fourth year. Is this the best of Scottish prose?

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  4. I can’t believe you just asked that on Jason’s blog!

    *cough*

    PT Forsyth all the way…

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  5. Michael. Yeah, I love Morris’ book too. Thanks for the heads up on ‘Pierced for Our Transgressions’, though I did read a scathing review of it yesterday. I’ll look out for it. There is such a dearth of writing (and singing) on the atonement. In light of 1 Cor 2:2 this of great concern to me. No, McCleod Campbell is not the ‘best of Scottish prose’ but why is a book that gives us nightmares bad. I had nightmares for weeks when I first read Luke’s Gospel, and I can’t sleep for not a few days whenever I read Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’.

    Jon, though I don’t think the whole book can be uncritically swallowed, I think you’re being too hard on MC, but I will take on board your comments on Gunton’s book. It’s been a while since I read it, and I do need to reread it in the coming months. The first time I read it I thoroughly enjoyed it and found it a helpful antidote to a lot of the rubbish written along the same theme.

    To both of you (and others), who would you then recommend on the atonement in the past 50 years?

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  6. Jason,

    I would have to say that Hans Boersma’s ‘Violence, Hospitality and the Cross’ is definitely one of the best books about the atonement written in the last 10 years.

    And although not about the atonement per se, I would also include the late Alan Lewis’ ‘Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday’.

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  7. Thanks Paul. I’ve just ordered Boersma’s book and am waiting for it to arrive. What did you most/least appreciate about it? What were is greatest insights/limitations?

    Thanks too for mentioning Lewis’ book. Yes, it’s a ripper!

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  8. Jason I too found Gunton’s (not surprisingly perhaps!) Actuality of Atonement helpful. A book by Alan Mann (co-wrote The Lost of Message of Jesus with Steve Chalke) called Atonement in a Sinless Society is interesting. I’ve found Douglas Campbell’s work on atonement in Paul very helpful (see his The Quest for Paul’s Gospel). I have a copy of Paul Fiddes’ Salvation Past and Present, but not read it.

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  9. Thanks Andy. I’ll check out Campbell’s The Quest for Paul’s Gospel. What particularly did you find helpful about it?

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  10. Doug Campbell (new testament scholar at Duke, previously at KCL) critiques ‘justification by faith’ model of the church and outlines a pneumatological participatory martyrlogical eschatological description (what he calls PPME) of salvation. for me it offers a better reading of Paul. The book is a collection of essays and papers around the subject. His big book on Paul and the JF reading is forthcoming. Doug Campbell is a leading contributer to the ‘pistis christou’ debate, siding with the subjective reading against Dunn and co’s objective reading. The good thing about Doug is he reads theology (Gunton, AJ Torrance, JB Torrance, Zizioulas, etc)

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  12. Charles. Thanks for drawing our attention to these. I look forward to checking them out. I recently wrote a paper on McLeod Campbell. There’s still much work to be done on him, particularly on his less well know material.

    I greatly enjoyed his Responsibility for the Gift of Eternal Life and his Sermons and Lectures, 2 vols, and I found the studies by Peter Stevenson (God in Our Nature: The Incarnational Theology of John McLeod Campbell) and George Tuttle (So Rich a Soil: John McLeod Campbell on Christian Atonement) to be really helpful, particularly for placing McLeod Campbell in a broader context and for (especially in the case of Stevenson’s work) attending so much to McLeod Campbell’s lesser known writings, not least his sermons.

    BTW: You may want to update the links to my blog on your site.

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  13. Thanks for your reply, Jason.
    I reviewed the Tuttle book when it was first published. I’ll have a look at the review and let you know what I said about it.
    best wishes with your work on McLeod Campbell.
    I will add your site to my list of links.

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  14. Jason, I’ve added your site to my list of links.
    Here is the final paragraph of my review of Tuttle’s book:
    “I do not agree with Tuttle that “forgiveness … precedes the atonement” (p. 79). Rather, we should say: prior to the atonement, God wills forgiveness; through the atonement, God offers forgiveness; through faith, humanity receives forgiveness; to all, the gospel says, “You are loved”; to the believer, the gospel says, “You are forgiven.”

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