Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement

Westminster John Knox Press, September 1989. Paper Back. New. The Christian doctrine of the atonement is a difficult one, as difficult as the nature of God. It is at the very center of the New Testament narrative, of the apostolic preaching, of the preaching of St. Paul: ''I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.'' It has occupied the attention and image-forming imagination of the greatest lights of the Church, yet still confronts us with the question: How does the death of a crucified Man two millennia ago effect my own destiny, my own salvation? The question is profoundly deserving of our attention, and thus we are drawn to this study of the atonement, in the tradition of Gustaf Aulen's <i>Christus Victor</i>. Kenosis and unfathomable love lie at the heart of Fiddes' study, an emphasis certainly not new, but nevertheless brilliantly articulated here.