A Necessary Suffering?: John McLeod Campbell and the Passion of Christ

Abstract

While John McLeod Campbell’s once controversial treatment of the doctrine of the atonement has now achieved a broad degree of acceptance, another aspect of the theory he put forward in The Nature of the Atonement (1856), his treatment of the role of Christ’s suffering in the atonement, remains highly contentious. This paper examines the issues at play here by first offering a brief outline of McLeod Campbell’s doctrine of the atonement, before moving on to consider in detail the nature and purpose of the sufferings of Christ within it. The paper proceeds in a final section to consider potential weaknesses of McLeod Campbell’s theory in this connection under three headings: the purpose of the sufferings of Christ, the cause of the cry of dereliction, and the logical ordering of the atonement.