Here I continue with my list of the best books of 2024. Again, I should point out that not all on my list were published this past year, only that I read them in 2024. Such is the case with number four.

(4) The Atonement and the Death of Christ: An Exegetical, Historical, and Philosophical Exploration, by William Lane Craig (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2020), 318pp.

You should understand from the beginning that Craig is a vocal and energetic advocate of penal substitutionary atonement (hereafter PSA). The scope of his study is remarkable. He divides his book into three sections. The first covers the biblical evidence for penal substitution, both in the Old Testament and in the New. Throughout the book Craig reminds us that there are elements of truth in all theories or models of atonement, but that PSA is foundational. In other words, the only reason why the death of Christ delivers us from Satan and serves to restore in us the image of God, etc., is because in his death he satisfied the demands of God’s justice and propitiated the wrath of God on our behalf.

Craig’s treatment of sacrifice in Leviticus and the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 is superb. When he turns to the NT, he covers Paul’s comments in Romans 3 and affirms (contrary to the theology of C. H. Dodd) the now widely accepted view that hilastērion does indeed refer to Christ’s pacifying or satisfying the wrath of God on behalf and in the place of those for whom he died. He writes: “Christ’s bearing the suffering that was our just desert satisfies God’s justice. Propitiation of God’s righteous wrath is at bottom a matter of the satisfaction of divine justice” (87).

In part two of the book Craig turns his attention to theories of the atonement found in church history. He demonstrates from the original sources that virtually all of the early fathers of the church advocated PSA at the same time they highlighted other features such as Christus Victor or Christ’s defeat of the devil and darkness. This is true of Eusebius, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine, just to mention a few. He concludes this section of the book with this comment:

“The notion that the Fathers were singularly committed to a Christus Victor theory of the atonement is a popular misimpression generated by the secondary literature. A reading of the primary sources makes it clear that they were equally committed to the understanding of Christ’s death as a sacrificial offering to God for human sins. Indeed, . . . by the fourth and fifth centuries in both the Latin West and the Greek East, ‘the sacrificial theory of salvation combined with the idea of penal substitution constituted the main stream of thinking’” (110-111).

His treatment of the medieval period covers the atonement as expressed by Anselm, Aquinas, and Abelard. When he turns to the time of the Reformation and post-Reformation, he writes:

“The Protestant Reformers, while appreciative of Anselm’s satisfaction theory and recognizing that Christ’s death satisfied God’s justice, interpreted the satisfaction of God’s justice in terms of penal substitution. That is to say, Christ voluntarily bore the suffering that we were due as the punishment for our sins. There is therefore no longer any punishment due to those who are the beneficiaries of Christ’s death. God’s wrath is propitiated by Christ’s substitutionary death, for the demands of divine justice have been met” (125).

He appeals to the work of Francis Turretin, a notable advocate of PSA, and also demonstrates that foundational to Hugo Grotius’s governmental theory of atonement is PSA. His refutation of Socinus’s view of atonement is thorough and undeniable.

In the final section of his book Craig addresses such questions as the nature of punishment, justice, and the alleged incoherence of PSA. This section will be less appreciated by many as Craig delves into a technical discussion of legal theory and the philosophical grounding of PSA. But he also explores the meaning and implication of such themes as redemption and justification.

If there is any weakness in Craig’s book it would be his affirmation of the universal extent of the atonement. But that should not prevent anyone from benefiting greatly from what he has produced. As best I can tell, this is the clearest and most persuasive case for PSA that I have yet to read.

[I need to preface my list of the next two books with a word of caution. It may seem strange to refer to “best” books those with which I have substantial disagreement. But they are so important, fascinating, informative, and challenging that I simply couldn’t ignore them. So, please be aware that by citing them among the best books of the year I am not endorsing everything (or even the majority) of what they say.]

(3) Jesus, Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently, by Michael R. Licona (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2024), 266pp.

For those not familiar with him, Licona is professor of New Testament studies at Houston Christian University. Perhaps the best way to summarize Licona’s work is to cite the dust jacket. Here is what it says:

“The differences and discrepancies in the Gospels constitute one of the foremost objections to their reliability and the credibility of their message. Some have tried to resolve Gospels contradictions with strained harmonization efforts. Others conclude that the Gospels are hopelessly contradictory and, therefore, historically unreliable accounts of Jesus.

In Jesus, Contradicted, New Testament scholar Michael R. Licona shows how the genre of ancient biography, to which the Gospels belong, actually allows biographers to be flexible in how they report events, construct narratives, and make arguments. Licona demonstrates that the intentional changes to the Gospels by the Evangelists are not grounds for their rejection. Instead, they are a result of the Gospel writers employing standard literary conventions for ancient biographies.”

Says Licona,

“Since Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true. And it remains true even if it turns out there are errors and contradictions in the Gospels” (6).

I’m sure the reaction of many is the same as mine: if there are “errors and contradictions” in the Gospels, how can we trust what they tell us about Jesus?

Licona believes that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John either belong to the genre of ancient biography or have much in common with it. The primary ancient biographer he cites throughout the book is Plutarch (b. 45 a.d.), who wrote more than sixty biographies, of which forty-eight have survived. This leads to the conclusion that we should “not assume that the literary conventions used by ancient biographers were the same as those used by modern biographers” (12). For example, if two biographies are published next year on the life and legacy of former President Jimmy Carter, and they disagree on the date of his birth and his stated position on several political issues, we would conclude that at least one of them (and possibly both) contain “errors” or “contradictions.” We expect precision from our modern biographies, and rightly so. But such was not the case, says Licona, when it comes to ancient biographies. He insists that “many items in the Gospels [items that clearly are inconsistent with one another] become clearer when the Gospels are read through a lens that has first-century literary conventions in view” (18).

Again, Licona insists that

“we should not conceive of ancient biography as the attempt to provide readers with precise reporting and historical descriptions nearing photographic accuracy. Imposing modern expectations on ancient texts and authors is anachronistic since it assumes a standard not aligned with their objectives” (58).

And since the Gospels are of the same genre as ancient biographies, or at least share a close affinity with them, it is a mistake to demand from the former that degree of precision and accuracy which we have come to expect in our modern biographies. Thus, “because the [ancient] biographer was given a bit of freedom when reporting events, we should not think an author is providing us with ‘verbal snapshots’ that replicate details precisely as they were at the moment being described” (62).

Licona’s book is superbly written with great clarity, making it accessible even for those not versed in technical biblical studies I say this in spite of the fact that he makes a couple of grammatical errors that I find present in numerous books. On p. 42 he spells “prophecy” as “prophesy.” Prophecy is a noun, while prophesy is a verb. On p. 78 he writes, “people who lived in a culture that was quite different than our own.” It should be “from” our own. And on p. 79 he writes: “Close readings of the Gospels reveal that Matthew and John take more liberties with the details than do Luke.” Clearly, he should have said, “than does Luke.”

Licona will eventually address a common objection to his view, one that causes a measure of unease among evangelicals: “If the Evangelists exercised some freedom in the manner they reported events, how can I be confident that anything they report is true?” (77). More on this later.

So, what are the literary conventions employed by ancient biographers that we should expect to see in our four Gospels? Without going into detail concerning each one, they would include: (1) paraphrasing; (2) compression (“an author knowingly portrays an event as though it occurred over a shorter period of time than it actually had occurred” (103); (3) displacement (“An author knowingly removes an event from its original context and places it in a different one. Thus, the time and/or location may be changed” (104); (4) transferal (“An author knowingly attributes the identity of a person producing or receiving an action to another” (104); (5) conflation (“An author combines elements from two or more events or people and narrates them as one” (104); (6) simplification (“An author omits or alters details that may complicate the overall narrative and may do so merely to abbreviate and communicate only the main ideas” (104); and (7) literary spotlighting (where “an author only mentions the person(s) in focus while being aware that others are present” (104), as when a gospel author mentions only one angel at the tomb of Jesus when we know there were two present.)

The bulk of the remainder of Licona’s book consists of numerous examples from the four Gospels where these specific literary conventions enable us to understand why there are discrepancies in how events are told. I appreciate Licona’s honesty when he writes: “To be transparent with you, I have felt uncomfortable at times – and still do – about the degree of flexibility many ancient historians and biographers took when writing. I want to know exactly how events transpired. I want to know precisely what was said, especially what Jesus said, so I can study his words in a microscopic manner and discover additional meanings to be found between the lines” (149-50). But he goes on to say, “the Gospel authors, like every other ancient author of historical literature of that era, paraphrased and altered the words of their characters to make points more clearly. This was consistent with the literary conventions they were taught and were expected to follow” (150).”

Other examples that we must acknowledge are when “a New Testament author will repurpose a text in the Old Testament, assigning a meaning to it that is foreign to its original one” (151). But most recognize this as entirely legitimate and refer to it as examples of typology. Or again, “sometimes an ancient author takes portions from two or more texts, combines them, and presents them as a single text. This produces a composite citation” (155).

Several questions remain. First, are the four Gospels truly aligned with the genre of ancient biography? Second, in the process of inspiration, would the Holy Spirit have moved upon the authors of the Gospels in such a way that they would knowingly employ the literary conventions that we have noted? Third, if the answer to these first two questions is yes, what does this say about our doctrine of biblical inerrancy? Fourth, is it wise for Licona to dismiss attempts at harmonization of supposedly disparate events? Fifth, is there a better way to account for discrepancies in the Gospels, such as transcriptional errors?

“What we can say,” says Licona, “is the way God chose for inspiration includes imperfections, memory lapse, and the New Testament authors employing the normal hermeneutical conventions of their day, repurposing various Old Testament Scriptures by assigning them meanings that differ, sometimes even radically, from what their original authors intended” (190).

What Licona is left with is asserting that the Scriptures are “sufficiently” accurate to preserve for us what God intended for us to hear him say. As such, he takes issue with the view of inerrancy found in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. Instead, he embraces what he calls “flexible inerrancy.” Flexible inerrancy, says Licona, “does not concern itself over whether there were errors in details in the original manuscripts. To fret over such is not a profitable exercise, since we do not have any of the originals and have not had them for a very long time” (206).

I’m not persuaded that the traditional notion of inerrancy as articulated in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy can survive Licona’s thesis. I remain convinced of the former and am still processing the legitimacy of the latter. In any case, Licona’s book is well worth the time invested to read it.

My comments on the final two books on my list are sufficiently lengthy to call for a separate post. So come back next week for the conclusion of my best books in 2024.