THE APOSTLES’ DOCTRINE OF THE ATONEMENT by George Smeaton. Banner of Truth Trust, £9.95. This sequel to the author’s “Christ’s Doctrine of the Atonement,” recently reviewed by us, is written with the same devout spirit and dignified style becoming such a serious subject. Expectedly, however, it is distinguished by a more academic strain reflecting the natural difference existing between the gospels and the Epistles. Hence there is required a deeper concentration as the author penetrates into the proper grammatical sense of the words themselves in order to refute such as would make an argument from context sufficient to control the usage of language.
In the earlier part of the book the reader may feel that he is being kept in the porch while the author takes a comprehensive view of his subject before entering in detail to the individual epistles, but any patience thus called for is well rewarded, when the reader realises that the purpose of this is to manifest that the apostles were not prejudiced by their age, as the Rationalists maintain. Further, by this means, the author demonstrates how much the influence of atonement is felt where it may not be expressly mentioned but is interwoven into the very texture of the epistles.
All along he keeps before the mind of the reader the juridical view of the atonement — a view derided by modernists who stress communion with God irrespective of righteousness, maintaining the propriety of looking at the juridical act extended from time to time to every believer arising from the fact that sin is not forgiven before it is committed. In stressing the need for a righteousness before man could have communion with God, however, the author was perhaps overemphasising the matter in calling the righteousness of Christ procured for man to be ‘human’ and not ‘divine.’
The leading opponents of the biblical doctrine of atonement receive their answer as the author manifests their arguments to be ‘all sorry evasions of biblical ideas.’ Not only so, but he makes clear that the objective reality of divine wrath on the supposition of sin is an axiom in Natural Theology as well as in the Theology of Revelation.
It seems to us an unhappy expression the author uses in reference to the Son of God taking our nature when he comments, ‘He took our nature as a workman takes a tool or instrument to accomplish a certain end.’ (p160). This does not take away anything from the author’s spiritual understanding, nor weaken his arguments to show that Christ’s satisfaction is perfectly identical with that which men should themselves have suffered and concluding that the theory of unconditional pardon is ‘the great untruth of the Modern Theology.’
An Appendix to the book on the History of the Atonement is most enlightening and refreshing as the author quotes freely from the pages of the fathers. The book is worthy of perusal and is calculated with the Lord’s blessing to lead to clearer views of the subject.
A.E.W. MacDonald