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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3CHAPTER III THE DOCTRINE OF A RANSOM OR BARGAIN The treatment of the doctrine of the Atonement in the first two centuries was followed in the main by the fathers of the Greek Church and by those Latin fathers who came under their influence down to the tune of Anselm. Both in the New Testament and in the immediately subsequent literature great stress had been laid upon the fact of the Atonement as solving for man the problem of sin. At the very centre of the Christian tradition stood the Cross, " to the Jews a snare, and to the Greeks folly; but to the elect, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God." 1 Men did not assign meanings to the Cross, but it was to the Cross that they turned in every need. There is no better commentary on St. Paul's words, and no better witness to the place of the Cross in the thoughts and worship of the early Church, than the rude scratching, found on the Palatine Hill, of a crucified figure with an ass's head, and with the mocking inscription, " Alexamenos worships his God." 1 The mocker had made no mistake as to the central fact of the faith which he despised. But emphasis upon the fact of the Atonement had not as yet led to theory. Great wealth of metaphor was employed to express the fact, but the meaning of the metaphors so used was never stressed. Interest was in the result of the fact upon the status of sinfulman, rather than in discussions as to the intrinsic nature of the fact itself. 1 I Cor. I textit{23, 24. a 'AXe£d/wot 6fAc textit{atftfrai. This balance of interest, which it has been the work of the last century to restore, was characteristic of the Greek Church. Throughout its early history there is found the same wealth of metaphor, based on the New Testament, used in the endeavour to describe the fact of the Atonement. Spec...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2895281 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 216 pages

Customer Reviews

all theology is soteriology
All Christians agree that Jesus is the Messiah and Savoir, but what exactly does that mean? What did his death actually accomplish and for whom was it done? Is God the Father angry at us and needs to have his wrath given out on someone? Does Jesus redeem the world, the universe, or just the elect? Is the devil holding us hostage and in need of a ransom? Is the state of death what needs to be "satisfied" and broken? What do the Gospels tell us? St Paul? The earliest church writers? The Fathers East and West? The Medieval theologians? The later Romans and Reformers? These are the types of questions that are at the heart of Grensted's classic, and until recently out of print, text. Such questions are at the very heart of what we think about the nature and "personality" of our God. Grensted rightly says that from the beginning, all Christian theology is soteriology, having to do with the stuff of salvation.

I have used this book extensively in my own study and have found it a fantastic jumping off point, since he has extensive footnotes to the Fathers, theologians and reformers, and he almost always provides a full quotation in the footnotes in the original language after he translates it in the main body of the text. Also be warned that this edition is a copy of the original text, so some pages are a little faded and there is brief underlining by a previous owner, who provided the "proof pages", but they are minimal and neatly scribed. I have found no pages missing, although the publisher's preface warns of it. I think that it must be a general disclaimer. Something that I thought could have been made much more of is the Eastern doctrine of deification (theosis), since that is to my mind the heart of eastern soteriology, and I provide a link to a book on that subject below.

Other books that go along the lines of this one are:
Cur Deus Homo, On The Incarnation, Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement (which is VERY useful), The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views, Problems With Atonement: The Origins Of, And Controversy About, The Atonement DoctrineThe Background And Content Of Paul's Cultic Atonement Metaphors (Academia Biblica (Society of Biblical Literature) (Paper)), The Atonement: The Origins of the Doctrine in the New Testament (but if you can find Hengel's "The Cross of the Son of God" you will get this book along with two of his others on the subject in one binding. For a new view of Luther, see Union With Christ: The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther. For an Orthodox view, seePartakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions. Jordan Bajis' Common Ground is also a good comparison of Eastern and Western models.

Please see my other reviews for more books on this theme. Enjoy!