New Books for 2007 | Steve Holmes on Atonement

New small book out in May from Steve Holmes called The Wondrous Cross: Atonement and Penal Substitution in the Bible and History. It is described as:

'An accessible defence of the view that we need multiple metaphors for how the cross saves us (including penal substitution).

In this book Stephen Holmes offers an accessible and authoritative account of the way the saving work of Jesus is presented in the Bible, and has been understood throughout Christian history. In particular, the book offers background to the current debates about penal substitutionary atonement by looking at that idea in biblical and historical perspective.

Holmes argues that we can, and should, continue to talk of the cross in penal substitutionary terms, if we understand this as one of many complimentary descriptions of the salvation we find in Christ.'

I'm not a fan of penal substitution, so I'll be interested to read Steve's defence. He wrote a paper for the Scottish Journal of Theology on the same subject here. There he argued that

a key element of penal substitution is language of acts of transgression – crimes – and the guilt they bring, which must be dealt with. Thus, penal substitution is a way of talking that speaks of the cross to the oppressors, to those who damage and kill. It speaks a word of deep criticism – Barth’s insight that only the cross shows us just how abhorrent our actions are – a
word of decisive judgement that is still, nonetheless, a word of hope, of life
beyond judgement.

Comments

[graham]

Andy, I thought that you might be interested in a review that I've just posted here.

[andy goodliff]

Thanks Graham. I have the book and gave it a quick read, but need to give a more careful read another time. I don't think Steve will be able to convince me. On another note, I didn't think £10 was too bad a price.

[graham]

Hi Andy,

I wasn't convinced either, but I was very impressed that such a small book can pack the punch that it does.

Relatively speaking, £10 isn't bad. Yet, when you consider the size of the book, I still think it's pretty outageous.