The Wondrous Cross

Over the weekend I read Stephen R. Holmes book The Wondrous Cross.

I think it is a very sensible and clear book. It is brief (much briefer than Pierced for our Transgressions!), and written for a wide audience.

Holmes offers a stout defence of Penal Substitutionary Atonement but does so without overplaying his hand or becoming shrill. He doesn't overstate the scriptural case, for example. One of the things he notes is how the Bible rarely gives us an explanation of how the atonement works. Neither does he overstate the presence of PSA in the tradition: he can only find one clear reference, in Gregory the Great. It is with Calvin that the doctrine comes to full flower.

Furthermore, Holmes does think the doctrine has a contemporary relevance. One of the annoying things (for me) about contemporary missiological works is how the declare with such absoluteness and authority what everyone in contemporary culture does or doesn't think. Holmes seeks a more subtle account, and suggests that PSA may yet have a great deal of resonance with the culture of the West.

One strength of the book for me was that Holmes seeks an account of the atonement which recognises all the different 'stories' of the atonement that we find in Scripture and does not play one off against the other. The tendency for evangelicals who want to defend PSA is to make it the only or the absolutely determinative model of the atonement: something that is certainly hard to justify from Scripture. As Holmes shows, even Calvin would have no truck with this.

There's more to say. These are just a few jottings rather than a review: suffice it to say that I think it is a book that should be more widely read than it is.