Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 21:1 (NA 1970)
Article: Christ In Our Place—The Contribution Of The Prepositions
Author: R. E. Davies

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TynBul 21:1 (1970) p. 71

Christ In Our Place—The Contribution Of The Prepositions

R. E. Davies

The Tyndale Biblical Theology Lecture, 1969

Delivered at Tyndale House, Cambridge, 10th July, 1969.

H. E. Guillebaud in his book Why the Cross?1 suggests that the Scriptural understanding of the atonement can be summarized in the verse of a well-known hymn by Philipp Bliss:

Bearing shame and scoffing rude,

In my place condemned He stood;

Sealed my pardon with His blood:

Hallelujah! What a Saviour!

Similarly, another writer2 says that ‘Charles Wesley correctly summarized New Testament doctrine when he wrote:

His death is my plea;

My Advocate see,

And hear the blood speak that hath answered for me:

He purchased the grace

Which now I embrace.

O Father, Thou know’st He hath died in my place.’

Christ dying in our place, the substitutionary suffering of our Lord—this, according to these writers, is a key concept in the New Testament understanding of the saving work of Christ.

This view, however, is not without its critics, and it is often suggested that such an understanding involves a reading into, rather than a reading out of, Scripture. It is said that the New Testament knows nothing of a ‘crude transactionalism’,3 and that even if certain elements which might suggest a vicarious, substitutionary idea appear, this is only one of many

TynBul 21:1 (1970) p. 72

ideas which are put forward in the New Testament to explain Christ’s death, and should not be made the controlling concept in our understanding of it.

It is not our purpose in this lecture to examine the whole of the New Testament teaching on the subject of Christ’s work but merely to consider two of the prepositions used in New Testament statements on the subject to see what contribution they have to make. Nor, in doing this, is the lecture intending to set forth a ‘theology of prepositions’, with the thought that a vital doctrine can be based on such minute foundations. Our title is ‘the contribution of the prepositions’, and we would merely ask that their contribution should be used when, any full account of the New Testament teaching on the subject is attempted.4

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