"The Promise of Peace" by Dr. Alan Spence

I'm currently reading 'The Promise of Peace' by Alan Spence, subtitled 'A Unified Theory of Atonement', T & T Clark, 2007. This is an important book. The book deserves a wide readership as it makes a significant contribution to current debates about the theology of the atonement. Alan Spence is a minister in the United Reformed Church in the UK, serving two congregations in London. I'm up to page 81 of its 118 pages of text. Spence covers an amazing amount of territory in such a short compass.

Spence takes on some big names in Theology, past and present, including Aquinas, Schleiermacher, Barth, Tom Torrance, Ed Sanders and Tom Wright. But he is also appreciative of aspects of the theology of some whom he criticises, including Barth, Torrance and Wright. His heros are Augustine (qualified), Luther and Calvin, at least in the pages I've read so far.

His major thesis is that rather than a number of metaphors in Scripture and in the Church's theological tradition, that variously capture aspects of the atonement, there is a coherent framework which incorporates all the major, biblical teaching on the meaning of Christ's cross. He ably defends his thesis that that framework is what he calls the mediatorial view. Christ is the Mediator sent by the Father to reconcile us to God, to repair the breach caused by human sin by bearing the judgement of God which rightly should fall on us. He defends, in other words, a fairly traditional understanding. Spence, rightly in my view, makes his case that this mediatorial understanding does justice to other models, especially the victory and exemplarist models, its main competitors. He argues that those models fail as coherent frameworks.

To the point I've read at the present, his summary of his theology of atonement is:
'The Father gave his only Son to become as we are so that, in offering up himself on our behalf through the Spirit, he might reconcile us to God." (p.69).

Spence's book is not written specifically as a contribution to the current, particularly intra-evangelical, debates about the penal substitutionary view of the atonement. That view is part of the mediatorial model but is not the specific focus of the book. Yet this book makes a major contribution to these debates.

Spence has served churches in Zimbabwe and South Africa, and his Ph.D is from Kings College London University, under the late Colin Gunton. Andy Goodliff on his blog mentioned recently that he is preparing a blog for Spence, who does have his own website (sorry but I haven't yet worked out how to link to other sites in the body of the text yet).