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  • ISSN: 0036-9306 (Print), 1475-3065 (Online)
  • Editor: Professor Ian A. McFarland Candler School of Theology|Rita Anne Rollins Building|1531 Dickey Drive|Atlanta, Georgia 30322 USA
  • Editorial board
Scottish Journal of Theology is an international journal of systematic, historical and biblical theology. Since its foundation in 1948, it has become established as one of the world's leading theological journals, seeking to promote critical engagement across the full range of the Christian tradition. Scottish Journal of Theology provides an ecumenical forum for debate, and engages in extensive reviewing of theological and biblical literature.

January Article of the Month

Rewriting Calvin: Schleiermacher on the atonement and priestly office of Christ

Joshua Ralston

Abstract

The burden of this essay is to show that Friedrich Schleiermacher's theology of the atonement and account of Christ's soteriological work as priest is marked by recognisably Reformed commitments and logics that both build from and critique John Calvin and later Reformed scholastics. The essay contends that it is when Schleiermacher departs strongly from orthodox conclusions regarding substitutionary atonement that he mostly clearly appeals to key aspects of Reformed theology. Put differently, when Schleiermacher critiques the material content of Reformed orthodoxy, he does so by drawing on other doctrinal claims that are fundamental in Reformed thought: the divine decree, union with Christ, the import of sanctification and the interconnection between dogmatic expression and Christian piety. Schleiermacher presents creative solutions to theological conundrums, particularly those that plague Calvin and the later Reformed tradition about the relationship between God's eternal decree of grace and the appeasement of divine wrath on the cross.

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