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The pagan drawing known as the graffito of Alexamenos illustrates the scandal of the worship of a “crucified God” in the Roman Hellenistic world. From Roman documents, an approximate idea of what the historical crucifixion of Jesus was like can be reconstructed. However, this historical event was soon translated into the spheres of religious myth and theology. The New Testament itself provides an early aesthetic mediation of the meaning of the cross. The Fathers of the Church, in particular Athanasius and Augustine, expand on New Testament concepts and images to understand the cross as the symbol of Christ’s divine victory, and produce a variety of conceptual explanations of its function in human salvation. Representations of the cross in this period, like the hymns of Venantius Fortunatus and the Byzantine liturgy, present it as the sign and instrument of Christ’s victory over sin and death.

This chapter continues the investigation of an emerging Afro‐Christian sensibility struggling with and against modernity by considering another text of American and African American letters, the 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. If Hammon's Narrative occupies the moment of the birth of Christ, Douglass's occupies that of the death and resurrection of Christ. The two Narratives together position black existence in its entirety inside of the economy of Christ's life. In this way, Douglass's Narrative pushes further the theological gesture begun in Hammon's tale, namely, articulating a vision of the person and work of Christ (Christology) that entails a counternarrative of Christian identity, one grounded in the particularity of Christ's Jewish‐covenantal and therefore nonracial flesh for the weakening of modernity's racial imagination of whiteness and the Christian supersessionism that founds it.

Augustine's surprise ordination as priest by wily old Bishop Valerius of Hippo thrust him into a whole new world. Wrenched from his contemplative life, he was suddenly responsible for preaching salvation to crowds of unsophisticated Christians. So Augustine ransacked the Scriptures for help, studying Genesis (again), the Sermon on the Mount, and the Psalms. But above all it was St. Paul, who was already Augustine's ideal ascetic and religious philosopher, who offered Augustine an integral model for reading and preaching the Scriptures. Paul tutored Augustine in the deeply historical character of salvation that culminated in the coming of the incarnate Mediator. Christ's uniquely human will-to-death “took up” the curse of sin and punishment; that act not only brought redemption but also revealed the grace at work in ancient Israel. This insight refuted the Manichees, reformatted Augustine's reading of the Old Testament, and nourished his hearers in Hippo.

This chapter appreciates Edwards’s desire to present Christ from all Scripture, but reminds readers of the importance of historical exegesis and warns that there is far more to Christ’s person and ministry than his death on the cross.

The transition from the teaching of Jesus to the theological frameworks of the Apostles is momentous. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Christianity assumes an essentially different form: focus shifts from Jesus’ teaching to his person, its absolute significance and saving work. Paul is the first to grasp that Jesus’ death is not a scandal; rather the Messiah is precisely destined to die, thereby accomplishing what the Old Testament could not, the realization of righteousness. Baur bases his reconstruction of Pauline theology on the four assuredly genuine epistles (Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Romans), and presents it under a series of themes: righteousness, sin, law, faith, christology (Jesus is a Spirit-filled human person), predestination, baptism, Lord’s Supper, eschatology, and God. Paul is the founder of Christian theology. In contrast, the Book of Revelation, written just before the fall of Jerusalem, sets forth an apocalyptic worldview based on prophetic Judaism.

Being the central chapter of the book, this chapter provides the first comprehensive exposition of John Davenant’s hypothetical universalism to date. It centers on his controversial work De Morte Christi. By way of a detailed examination at each of propositions of this treatise, this chapter shows how Davenant pushed back against a significant segment of Reformed theologians who denied that Christ died for all. On the other hand, as this chapter makes clear, the chapter also demonstrates how Davenant also distanced himself from the Remonstrant denial that Christ died for the elect. Instead, as the chapter proves, Davenant, citing a plethora of Reformed and Roman Catholic sources, understood his doctrine to be biblical, catholic, and Reformed.

This chapter has as its focus the British delegation’s role in the formation of the Second Main Doctrine—on the extent of Christ’s atoning work—at the Synod of Dordt. After expositing a couple of key documents by James Ussher and John Overall, the chapter carefully inspects and summarizes never-before-studied manuscripts tracing the role of the British delegation in shaping the actual form of the Canons of Dordt on the extent of Christ’s work. Indeed, by looking at the British suffrage and their comments on the various early drafts of the Canons, this chapter undoubtedly proves that the Canons were written in such a way as to allow space for English hypothetical universalism within its confessional bounds.

Chapter 2 builds on the previous chapter’s emphasis on the breadth and pastoral orientation of the Reformed Conformist approach to grace, with an examination of the Collegiate Suffrage of the British delegates at the Synod of Dort (1618–19). It underlines that the Suffrage was drawn up to make room for Davenant and Ward’s distinctive reading of the death of Christ, a reading shared by influential clerics at home. The chapter then shows how the positions adopted in the Suffrage were echoed but also given a different inflection in the lectures that Davenant delivered in Cambridge when he returned from the Synod. Davenant’s lectures on predestination and the death of Christ show how he adapted the teaching of Dort to suit his own reading of the Church of England’s confessional position, whilst offering extensive advice on its pastoral application both in the pulpit and in the spiritual lives of the faithful.

This chapter begins by observing the important precedent that patristic and medieval theology played in the development of Protestant theology, especially in Britain during the early modern period. It observes that early modern debates regarding the extent of Christ’s atoning work were, in many ways, grounded on the catholicity of one’s position. More important, this chapter surveys John Davenant’s own understanding of the history of the doctrine as it was exposited and debated in the patristic and medieval period. The final section of the chapter focuses on the so-called Lombardian formula and the scholastic consensus on the extent of Christ’s death.

The fifth chapter asks whether Augustine’s view of the relationship between judgement and grace, as it had developed until 396, returns in his theological autobiography, the Confessions. The conclusion is affirmative. Augustine’s life between the deferral of his baptism and its reception is described as God’s lawsuit with him, which finally leads to his surrender to God as Father. It is further argued that Augustine does not regard his conversion in the garden of Milan as the central moment of his conversion, but rather the moment of his baptism. After his conversion in the garden of Milan, he still had to learn at Cassiciacum—by divine chastisement—that the reign of sin in the Christian life is rather broken through the death of Christ (of which baptism assures the believer) than by the inward, spiritual strenght of the reborn heart.

After giving a brief biographical sketch of the life and work of John Davenant, this chapter explores the various secondary literature regarding Davenant and hypothetical universalism. This survey of literature looks not only at a vast array of writings on hypothetical universalism but also at the many misinterpretations of Davenant’s hypothetical universalism. This chapter also examines an assortment of important terms relative to this thesis. It includes an investigation into the various early modern language of what historians of theology have called hypothetical universalism. Finally, this chapter gives an outline of each chapter making up the rest of the study.

In a concluding chapter the answers to the three subquestions in the Introduction are given. Augustine develops himself as a representative of the anti-Gnostic tradition. In the course of his development, he retains its theodicy, but breaks with its pedagogical understanding of divine grace. Further, Augustine clearly places himself in the classical pedagogical tradition. This becomes evident in the way he speaks about the educating meaning of fortuna and the pedagogy of dialogue. Having become presbyter, classic notions regarding ‘corrective friendship’ keep determining his thinking, but he increasingly Christianizes them. The research also shows that the debate about grace among Augustine scholars can be enriched with the insight that Augustine increasingly emphasizes the unique meaning of the death of Christ for man’s salvation. With regard to the discussion on Augustine’s justification of coercion, the research shows that there is no rupture in Augustine’s thinking, but, rather, an organic development.