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Criticism and Faith: William Robertson Smith on the Atonement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Richard A. Riesen
Affiliation:
1026 Memory Lane Escondido Cal. 92026 ,U.S.A.

Extract

William Robertson Smith and the heresy trial that secured his place in history apparently have lost none of their many-sided interest or dramatic appeal. It might even be argued that Smith today is as famous — or infamous — as he ever was. The most recent fulllength survey of the Church in nineteenth-century Scotland, for instance, devotes nearly forty pages to a blow by blow account and evaluation of the Smith case, and Professor A. C. Cheyne, in his excellent study of Victorian Scotland's religious revolution, contends that Smith is ‘a man with very strong claims to be regarded as his country's most influential modern churchman — claims only contestable, it may be supposed, by Thomas Chalmers or David Livingstone’.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1984

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References

page 171 note 1 Drummond, Andrew L. and Bulloch, James, The Church in Late Victorian Scotland: 1874–1900 (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1978), pp. 4079.Google Scholar

page 171 note 2 Cheyne, A. C., The Transforming of the Kirk (Edinburgh: The Sainl Andrew Press, 1983), p. 44.Google Scholar

page 172 note 3 Fleming, J. R., The Church in Scotland, 1875–1929 (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1933), p. 226.Google Scholar

page 172 note 4 Stewart, Alexander and Cameron, J. Kennedy, The Free Church of Scotland, 1843–1910: A Vindication (Edinburgh and Glasgow: William Hodge and Co., 1910), p. 63.Google Scholar

page 172 note 5 Cook, S. A., ‘George Adam Smith’, The Expository Times, vol. LIV, p. 33.Google Scholar

page 173 note 6 Answer to the Form of Libel Now Before the Free Church Presbytery of Aberdeen’ (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1878), p. 21.Google Scholar

page 173 note 7 Cheyne, A. C., The Transforming of the Kirk, p. 50.Google Scholar

page 174 note 8 A good example of this is found in Smith's essay ‘Christianity and the Supernatural’, lectures and Essays (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1912), pp. 121 ff.Google Scholar, where the words redemption (‘the work of redemption’), regeneration, and atonement are used repeatedly and emphatically but without distinction or discussion.

page 174 note 9 Black, John Sutherland and Chrystal, George, The Life of William Robertson Smith (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1912), pp. 417ff.Google Scholar

page 175 note 10 Encyclopaedia Britannica, ninth edition, vol. XXI, p. 133.

page 175 note 11 The Religion of the Semites: The Fundamental Institutions, third edition (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1927), p. 27.Google Scholar

page 175 note 12 Encyclopaedia Britannica, ninth edition, vol. XXI, p. 138.

page 175 note 13 ibid.

page 175 note 14 ibid.

page 176 note 15 Rather by Edwin Hatch, University Reader in Ecclesiastical History at Oxford.

page 176 note 16 The Old Testament in the Jewish Church (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1881), pp. 381382.Google Scholar

page 177 note 17 ibid., p. 382.

page 177 note 18 Life, p. 418.

page 177 note 19 The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, second edition (1892), p. 379.Google Scholar

page 178 note 20 ibid., pp. 380–1.

page 178 note 21 Bailey, Warner McReynolds, ‘Theology and Criticism in William Robertson Smith’, an unpublished dissertation, Yale University, 1970, pp. 294–5.Google Scholar

page 178 note 22 In fact that is exactly what he said in a letter to Messrs. Black, his publishers, dated 14th November 1891, concerning the revison of OTJC. He cut out what he did because it seemed to be superfluous, ‘as bearing rather on the temporary occasion of the lectures than on the subject itself’. C. 10, The W. Robertson Smith Collection, The Cambridge University Library. In this particular instance these remarks may be thought to argue Bailey's case as well, of course.

page 179 note 23 Moreover, any judgment would have to lake into account Smith's important footnote to the passage (Note 5, p. 438 of the first edition) as well as his note on p. 381 of the revised edition.

page 179 note 24 In a review in the Academy of 7th May 1881, Life, p. 419.

page 179 note 25 Anderson, G. W., ‘Two Scottish Semitists’ (Presidential Address to the Eighth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament), Congress Volume, 1974 (Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, Vol. XXVIII), p. xiv.Google Scholar

page 179 note 26 The Religion of the Semites, third edition (1927), p. 345.Google Scholar

page 180 note 27 ibid., p. 354.

page 180 note 28 ibid., pp. 348ff.

page 180 note 29 ibid., p. 3.

page 180 note 30 ibid.

page 180 note 31 ibid., also pp. 1–2.

page 181 note 32 As Stanley Cook argues in his notes to the third edition of The Religion of the Semites, p. 654.

page 181 note 33 Life, p. 148; Bailey, chapter IV.

page 182 note 34 Mackintosh, H. R., Types of Modern Theology (London: Nisbet and Co., 1937), pp. 158ffGoogle Scholar. Cf. Brunner's, Emil note on p. 282 of The Mediator translated by Wyon, Olive (London: Lutterworth Press, 1934), which Mackintosh cites in support.Google Scholar

page 182 note 35 Bailey, p. 234.

page 182 note 36 Orr, James, The Ritschlian Theology and the Evangelical Faith (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1898), pp. 136ffGoogle Scholar.; also Mackintosh, Types of Modern Theology, pp. 159ff.

page 182 note 37 Mackintosh, , Types of Modern Theology, pp. 159162.Google Scholar

page 182 note 38 Bailey, p. 210.

page 183 note 39 ibid., p. 240.

page 183 note 40 See Barth's, KarlFrom Rousseau to Ritschl (London: S.C.M. Press, 1959), pp. 390397, especially p. 395, for an interpretation of Ritschl on this point.Google Scholar

page 183 note 41 Bailey, p. 225.

page 183 note 42 ibid., p. 214.

page 184 note 43 In a letter from Smith to Ritschl in February, 1877. Bailey, p. 207; Life, p. 247.

page 184 note 44 Life, p. 267.

page 184 note 45 The Expositor, second scries, vol. II (1881), p. 419.Google Scholar

page 185 note 46 The Expositor, second series, vol. III (1882), p. 132.Google Scholar

page 185 note 47 ibid., p. 131. Italics arc Smith's.

page 185 note 48 ibid., p. 134.

page 185 note 49 Ritschl, Albrecht, Instruction in the Christian Religion, Three Essays, translated by Hefner, Philip (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), p. 238Google Scholar. Instruction in the Christian Religion is a handbook which Riischl prepared for use in German schools. As such it is a compendium of his theology which condenses what is given in his longer work, The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation. On this particular topic for instance, see The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, translated and edited by Mackintosh, H. R. and A. Macaulay, B. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1902), p. 477.Google Scholar

page 186 note 50 Ritschl, , Instruction in the Christian Religion, pp. 238239.Google Scholar

page 186 note 51 ibid., p. 240.

page 186 note 52 ibid., p. 245.

page 186 note 53 Ritschl, , The Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, p. 473.Google Scholar

page 187 note 54 Life, pp. 534–5.