Abstract
Smith, the author of a monograph on Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God, has now turned his attention towards another crucial item in Christian belief—the meaning of Jesus’ death, and more specifically its interpretation as sacrifice or atonement. In the first four of six chapters he studies successively the title Servant of God (YHWH), death and sacrifice, justification and divine righteousness, and “other” dimensions, such as reconciliation or redemption. The last two chapters deal with the development and reception of the notion of deliverance from evil in the NT and in early Christian authors, and with that of atonement, in which he opens the perspective to include also medieval theology and beyond. With regard to the latter notion, he emphasises in the Introduction that it was his purpose to adopt what he calls an ‘ad fontes methodology’, i.e., to start from a close analysis of the relevant NT sources, because all too often this aspect has been ignored in treating such concepts in biblical or systematic theology. It is a laudable decision, and one Smith applies throughout the first four chapters of his book when studying in some depth crucial passages from Isa 52–32 over Mark 10:41–45, Rom 3:25 and 5:12–19 to Heb 9, and citing many others, including Rabbinic sources.
It would seem, however, that he real interest of Smith’s book is in his study of the reception of these notions in Christian literature. The latter occasionally shows up already in the first four chapters (see p. 136), but becomes the central focus in the last two chapters. With the help of Gen 3:15 (the so-called ‘Protoevangelium’), early Christian authors further develop the notion that Jesus’ death delivers humankind from evil, which includes both sin and death as symbols of Satan’s dominion. In this way, Jesus’ death is understood in terms of battle an victory, a most imaginative and potentially forceful way of explaining the drama and the unexpected results that came from it. While much of what he says about Christian authors is correct or defendable, it is a pity that Smith hardly ever cites any secondary literature on specific authors and rather limits himself to more general titles on atonement theology or cites from the sources themselves (so with Origen), which one might call an ‘ad fontes’ of a second degree. I also miss a bibliography (there is an Index of Authors) and a conclusion, unless one takes the last chapter to fulfil this purpose.