How could the life, let alone the death, of one man 2,000 years ago be the salvation of the human race? The biblical explanation is the atonement: the crucified one was the Son of God, acting and suffering in cooperation with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is presented in all four Gospels, and occupies considerable space in the overall narrative. The death of this one person has universal, inclusive and cosmic significance, because in him the Creator acts and suffers. This is the primary answer to "the scandal of particularity." There is also a special relationship between Christ and humanity—he was "with" us, and he was "for" us. The grandeur of the cross lies in the fact that the incarnate Son of God offered himself in our place, bearing the penalty for our sin. Donald Macleod considers seven key words Christians have used through the centuries to describe what happened on the cross: substitution, expiation, propitiation, reconciliation, satisfaction, redemption and victory. No single one of these tells the whole truth, nor do all of them together exhaust the meaning of the cross. Macleod shows that these concepts are interrelated and interdependent, and that together they give a coherent picture of the salvation wrought by Jesus at Calvary.
Author
Donald Macleod is a Scottish theologian. Macleod studied at the University of Glasgow and the Free Church College before being ordained as a minister of the Free Church of Scotland in 1964. He served as professor of systematic theology at the Free Church College from 1978 to 2011, and as principal from 1999 to 2010. In 1996, Macleod was cleared of allegations that he had sexually assaulted four women. The Sheriff court found that "the women had all lied in the witness box to further the ends of Professor Macleod's enemies in the Free Church of Scotland." A number of people who believed Macleod should be put on trial by the General Assembly then formed the Free Church Defence Association and ultimately a new denomination, the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing). However, Johnston McKay notes that although on the surface the split was about Donald Macleod, he believes it was about theology since Macleod belonged to the more "modernizing" wing of the Free Church. In 2011, a Festschrift was published in Macleod's honor. The People's Theologian: Writings in Honour of Donald Macleod (ISBN 1845505840) included contributions from Richard Gaffin, Derek Thomas, and Carl Trueman.
