The latest volume of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology is out. And … surprise surprise … it’s dedicated to the crucial (pun intended) topic of substitutionary atonement. I suspect that there may be a wee run of journals dedicating an issue or two to this all important topic. For that I would be grateful. I do hope, however, that the attention on the substitutionary nature of the atonement would not be at the expense of the many other equally important realities of Christ’s atoning work.

One of the reasons that I love Forsyth so much is that he harnesses a broad range of metaphors – both biblical and extra-biblical – to talk about the work of Christ. Warfare, redemption, judicial and sacrificial dialects are all employed – as are dialects of poetry and the social and hard sciences – with the conviction that although no one group of metaphors can exhaust the atonement’s meaning, it is through metaphor that the Church has been able to say anything at all about the Cross. Moreover, Forsyth is concerned that no metaphor can translate the reality of the atonement. Christ did not die for a metaphor. The dominance of any metaphor risks distorting the reality which, like conversion itself, carries a totality in it, an eternal crisis, to which nothing in the world is comparable and all metaphor inadequate. Little wonder that Forsyth (like the Apostle Paul) wrestled for days on end to invent or discover ways – torturing language itself – of expressing what happened in the Crucified.

That said, I don’t normally read SBJT (nor do I have access to it) but I will be trying to chase down one or two of these articles:

	Editorial: Stephen J. Wellum “Articulating, Defending, and Proclaiming Christ our Substitute”
4	Gregg Allison “A History of the Doctrine of the Atonement”
20	Peter J. Gentry “The Atonement in Isaiah’s Fourth Servant Song” (Isaiah 52:13-53:12)
48	Derek Tidball “Songs of the Crucified One: The Psalms and the Crucifixion”
64	Simon Gathercole “The Cross and Substitutionary Atonement”
74	Barry C. Joslin “Christ Bore the Sins of Many: Substitution and the Atonement in Hebrews”
104	The SBJT Forum “The Atonement under Fire” HT: Justin for pointing this out.