The Atonement

In recent years it has been increasingly suggested in some quarters that the doctrine of the atoning death of Christ did not come into being in the earliest stages of Christianity; the first interpretation of Jesus is said to have been the image of him as the eschatological prophet, or the innocent man suffering wrongly. Against such views which might seem to devalue the doctrine of the atonement, Professor Hengel argues forcefully and with great scholarship that the doctrine of the atoneme...