Defending Substitution

“Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology Craig A. Evans and Lee Martin McDonald, General Editors The last two decades have witnessed dramatic developments in biblical and theological study. Full-time academics can scarcely keep up with fresh discoveries, recently published primary texts, ongoing archaeological work, new exegetical proposals, experiments in methods and hermeneutics, and innovative theological syntheses. For students and nonspecialists, these developments are confusing and daunting. What has been needed is a series of succinct studies that assess these issues and present their findings in a way that students, pastors, laity, and nonspecialists will find accessible and rewarding. Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology, sponsored by Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and in conjunction with the college’s Hayward Lectureship, constitutes such a series. The Hayward Lectureship has brought to Acadia many distinguished scholars of Bible and theology, such as Sir Robin Barbour, John Bright, Leander Keck, Helmut Koester, Richard Longenecker, Martin Marty, Jaroslav Pelikan, Ian Rennie, James Sanders, and Eduard Schweizer. The Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology series reflects this rich heritage. These studies are designed to guide readers through the ever more complicated maze of critical, interpretative, and theological discussion taking place today. But these studies are not introductory in nature; nor are they mere surveys. Written by leading authorities in the field, the Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology series offers critical assessments of the major issues that the church faces in the twenty-first century. Readers will gain the requisite orientation and fresh understanding of the important issues that will enable them to take part meaningfully in discussion and debate. “Addressing a hot topic in Pauline studies, Gathercole’s Defending Substitution agrees with those who see Christ’s death as one in which believers participate and as effecting apocalyptic deliverance. At the same time, he argues persuasively for the less-fashionable view that Paul also speaks of that death as substitutionary: Christ died in the place of others, and for their sins. A model of scholarly clarity and sobriety.”

Stephen Westerholm

“In this slender but admirably clear and focused volume, Simon Gathercole sets out to recover the recently unfashionable understanding of the atonement in classic Reformational terms of substitution. He concludes that there is indeed every reason to recognize this theme in key texts such as 1 Corinthians 15:3 and Romans 5:6, when they are understood in their Old Testament as well as Greco-Roman contexts. But this is for him a case of compatible rather than competing metaphors: Christ’s substitution for sinners does not make his death any the less representative or liberating. I warmly recommend this revival of a classic argument that recent New Testament scholarship sometimes appears to have forgotten. Here is an eminently accessible point of reference for future exegetical, theological, and, indeed, ecumenical engagement with St. Paul on the death of Christ.”

Markus Bockmuehl