Reviews and critiques of Rashdall's  work on Atonement:			HastingsRashdall.org.uk
Oxford Magazine, February 27th 1920: Review of  The Idea of Atonement in Christian Theology, by CCJ Webb. IT is given to very few scholars to make to three distinct branches of learning contributions of such solid worth and importance as those with which the present Dean of Carlisle has, in his History of European Universities, his Theory of Good and Evil and his Bampton Lectures on The Idea of Atonement enriched the literatures of mediaeval history, of moral philosophy, and of Christian theology respectively. Of the latest of these three notable works it may without hesitation be said that it is in every way worthy of the reputation of its distinguished author. An adequate notice of it would require in its reviewer an extensive acquaintance with New Testament criticism and with the writings of the Fathers of the Church, to which the present writer can make no claim. But within the limits of space assigned to him an adequate notice would have been impossible, while there was room for a few observations which the first reading of the book had suggested to his mind.     Perhaps the most impressive and convincing passage in it is that in which Dr. Rashdall contends that the belief in a propitiatory sacrifice in the death of Christ was established in the Christian Church before the conversion of St. Paul, and was based upon the application to our Lord of the prophecy respecting the Suffering Servant of jahveh, conceived, according to the then current view of the inspiration of the Scriptures, as revealing on divine authority the truth regarding the events which it was held to foretell. The discussion of the so-called "ransom" passage in the Synoptic Gospels – the only one which might plausibly be adduced as proof that this belief originated in the express teaching of our Lord himself – is, as it appears to me, inconclusive; but there seems to be nothing in the evidence to suggest that it was to the authority of any such words of Christ rather than to the Old Testament Scriptures that appeal was originally made on behalf of the doctrine in question.     I would also call attention to the lecture devoted to the teaching of St. Paul and to that in which the Dean examines the theories of Luther, as being specially valuable. The suggestion has been made that, in the discussion of the various doctrines of Justification, the notion of what may be called "justification by repentance," which has probably often been what was in the minds of those who have pressed "faith" against "works," is not sufficiently discriminated from that of "justification by good works." It is clear that repentance, such as that of the Publican in the Temple or of the Prodigal Son, is incompatible with continuance in sin: while the penitent, when he returns and comes to his Fat her, has no "good works" to his credit other than faith in his Father's love, and yet is forgiven.			The relation of the two conceptions is however, I think, clearly stated in the lecture on the Teaching of Christ; but more might perhaps have been with advantage said about it in that on Luther and the Reformation. Possibly what those who would make this criticism miss in Dr. Rashdall's discussion they would have found had his course been extended so as to cover the doctrine of such later schools of Protestant thought and piety as are represented chiefly among ourselves by Methodism.     Attentive students of Dr. Rashdall's earlier works will not be surprised, on making acquaintance with this latest expression of his mind, at the high place assigned by him to Abelard among those who have put forward theories of the Atonement. They will also be prepared for (even if not at all convinced by) his decided repudiation of the retributive theory of punishment, and for his moderate determinism. They will not improbably be disposed to think that, if there is ever to be detected in our author any inaccessibility to arguments advanced from a point of view different from his own, any dogmatic fixity of attitude, it is rather in regard to the problems of general philosophy than (where it is usually thought to be more common) in the sphere of theology. And a question of some interest may also suggest itself to them, which I can do no more than indicate very briefly. Are there not in the thought of Dr. Rashdall two tendencies, one towards a subordination of religion to ethics, and the other towards an emphasis on the paramount value of individual personality, which will ultimately turn out to be inconsistent with one another; since the former, if fully carried out, would issue in the denial of religious value to individual differences between persons as contrasted with universal moral principles, the other to such a recognition of the unique significance of individual persons as would justify some elements in religious tradition which our author Is apt to regard as merely mythological?     Mention should be made of the clear and sensible appendix on the now familiar question of the relation of Christianity to the "mystery-religions." There is a misprint of "or" for "of" on p.330, 1. 18                                C.C.J.W. Back to reviews and critiques of Rashdall's work on Atonement