Decades have passed since publication of the last major history of the doctrine of the atonement. The Atonement of the Death of Christ comes from one of the finest evangelical historical theologians writing today.
Expounded and evaluated in The Atonement are the views of more than eighty-five theologians, from Clement of Rome and Ignatius to Donald Bloesch and Gustavo Gutierrez. The author includes Eastern and Western theologians, orthodox and heterodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant, liberal and evangeli¬cal, European and American.
“It has been customary in histories of the atonement to single out two or three main ideas and to subsume under these headings writers on the subject throughout the centuries," writes the author. “But sometimes by this method the specific view of a writer is obscured. For even when an author avows his allegiance to any one theory, he still expresses it with his own nuance and nomenclature. It is these we have sought by going to the sources themselves in an effort to uncover the precise views of those with whom we are concerned, and to give to each view its own distinguishing title.”
Preceding the exposition of the doctrine’s history, which occupies almost three-fourths of the volume, is an incisive and succinct statement of the orthodox view of Christ’s atonement. The author also summarizes relevant teaching in the synoptic Gospels, the Johannine literature, the Pauline epistles, Hebrews, and remaining New Testament books. A bibliography and index complete the volume.
As far as Christianity is concerned,” writes the author, the cross of Christ’s atonement is its distinctive. It is here that its message of forgiveness, of new life, of hope, of reconciliation, of all that belongs to man’s salvation, has its source, its validity, and its power.”