What do you get when you combine exegetical precision, theological clarity, and dedicated churchmanship? In 2024, Thomas Schreiner or G.K. Beale might come to mind, as these two well-respected New Testament scholars join together biblical acumen with a deep and abiding love for the church. If you asked the same question in nineteenth century Scotland, however, you would get George Smeaton (1814–89). After serving faithfully as a pastor in the Free Church from 1843–54, he went on to assist Patrick Fairbairn in divinity at Aberdeen before assuming his final role, Professor of New Testament Exegesis at New College in Edinburgh from 1857–89.
For those who are unfamiliar with Smeaton, you would do well to acquaint yourself with him. You can find a brief biographical sketch by John W. Keddie in the Sermons and Addresses of George Smeaton. Keddie has also written a larger biography of Smeaton. I would commend both.[1]
1. John W. Keddie in the Sermons and Addresses of George Smeaton (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2022), vii–xxxv; John W. Keddie, George Smeaton: Learned Theologian and Biblical Scholar (Webster, NY: Evangelical Press, 2007).
Still, my acquaintance with Smeaton is not located in any biography, but in a bookshop. Somewhere near the beginning of my doctoral studies (circa 2010) I took the train to a series of bookstores near the University of Chicago. Walking past one of them, I began to peruse the dollar rack, where I stumbled across a worn out Zondervan edition of George Smeaton’s The Doctrine of the Atonement As Taught By Christ Himself (1953; Edinburgh, 1871), now retitled and republished as Christ’s Doctrine of the Atonement. Studying the cross of Christ myself, I immediately picked up the book and proceeded to find its pair on a shelf inside, The Apostles Doctrine of the Atonement (1957; Edinburgh, 1870).
Little did I know what awaited me in Smeaton’s two volumes, or the way these two books would unlock others published in nineteenth-century Scotland.[2] Personally, I am persuaded that Presbyterians and Baptists who lived in nineteenth-century Scotland, those who followed the Marrow Controversy, produced some of the best exegetical theology on cross in church history. Standing at the head of the line is George Smeaton’s work.
2. Here is a sample of other recommended nineteenth-century Scottish works on the atonement: Robert Stevenson, A Dissertation on the Atonement (Philadelphia: Towar & Hogan, 1832); William Symington, On the Atonement and Intercession of Jesus Christ (1834; reprint, Pittsburgh: United Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1864); Robert Smith Candlish, The Cross of Christ, The Call of God, Saving Faith: An Inquiry into the Completeness and Extent of the Atonement (Edinburgh, UK: John Johnstone, 1845); James Haldane, The Doctrine of the Atonement (Edinburgh, UK: 1847); Robert Smith Candlish, The Atonement: Its Efficacy and Extent (Edinburgh, UK: Adam and Charles Black, 1867); Hugh Martin, The Atonement: In Its Relation to the Covenant, the Priesthood, the Intercession of Our Lord (London: Ames Nisbet & Company,1870).
Totally 1,050 pages (in my two volumes), Smeaton addresses every passage in the New Testament which touches on the cross of Christ. In his first volume, he argues that Christ had a rich theological understanding of the cross, a debated subject for those who study the historical Jesus. Additionally, in that volume, Smeaton offers over 70 pages on the universal impact of a particular atonement. Lest anyone accuse Calvinists of restricting the impact of the cross to the elect only, Smeaton shows how a particular redemption touches all creation. As an aside, Smeaton employs the language of Christ’s lordship over “every square foot” years before Abraham Kuyper’s more famous “every square inch” quotation.[3]
Not restricting himself to the Gospels, however, Smeaton went on in his second volume to expound every place from Acts to Revelation where the Apostles speak of the cross. Yet, instead of merely giving exegetical notes on each passage, he brings the full weight of his Westminster theology to the text of Scripture. And in the end, he provides a historical sketch of the doctrine of the atonement too. In all, Smeaton’s approach is a near-perfect example of exegetical precision conjoined with confessional theology. And thus, the reader is rewarded with more than a thin list of proof-texts; he is given a rich feast of all the glories of Christ’s cross.
3. On this point, see David Schrock “George Smeaton and Abraham Kuyper on the Universal Reign of Christ,” Founders Ministries, https://founders.org/articles/george-smeaton-and-abraham-kuyper-on-the-universal-reign-of-christ/.
Back in the Summer of 2010, after picking up Smeaton’s two volumes, I would wake up early, make coffee, go outside, and read his chapters on the cross. If there is any one book that shaped my views on the cross or how to engage individual texts in light of biblical theology, Smeaton would be the one. And so, I commend his two volumes to you—you can get both from Banner of Truth or you can find a PDF at Monergism. I also want to encourage you to sample the way he introduces the four Gospels and their relationship to the cross.
As the editors of Christ Over All discussed the formation of this month, we wanted to show how each Gospel provides a different angle to the passion of the Christ. And in what follows, George Smeaton gives us exactly that. In the opening pages of his first volume on the cross, The Doctrine of the Atonement as Taught by Christ Himself, he explains the way the four Gospels present Christ and his cross, and this month they help us get our bearings as we begin to get into the details in the days to come. Take up and read. I pray you enjoy George Smeaton’s work as much as I have.
(This selection has been reformatted from the Monergism PDF).
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Section I.—The Four Gospels The Sources of Our Knowledge as to the Sayings of Jesus.
The Gospels, a record of facts, and of memorable sayings intended to explain those facts, are constructed in the way best adapted to set forth the design of the Lord’s death. A brief notice of their constituent elements will suffice for our present purpose.
As no one mind was competent to the task of delineating the divine riches of Christ’s life, we have a fourfold mirror presented to us, in order to reflect it on all sides. The four biographies, with each a distinct peculiarity, constitute a perfect harmony and an adequate revelation of the God-man. This explains why the apostles were, during His public ministry, placed in His immediate society. They were to be fitted, according to their divine call, to prepare, as eyewitnesses and earwitnesses, for the edification of the church, a faithful record of His deeds and words. And intimations of this occasionally occur before they were fully aware of all that was intended (Matt. 26:13; Acts 1:21). The precious record was for nearly thirty years suspended on their oft-imperiled lives. But it came forth in due time, when it could be committed to the Church already prepared to welcome and appreciate it as part of the oracles of God.
Though some men presumptuously talk of the entrance of myths, such a supposition is forestalled by the circumstances of the case. What was at length transferred to writing had been, for near a generation, orally rehearsed by the apostles in the churches which they founded. The Gospels were the productions of immediate eye-witnesses, or of men who wrote in their society and under their sanction. The fact that the apostles still presided over the churches when the Gospels were issued secured a twofold result the authenticity as well as faultless accuracy of the documents, and their unimpeded circulation. They were simply received as coming from men who had at once the competency and the call to digest them into form. And they have, in every corner of the Christian Church, been reverently preserved as the oracles of God.
Thus, the Gospel of Matthew the apostle was received by the Church as the production of an eyewitness: and it has its own peculiarity. As evidently appears from the care with which he digests the Jewish history and traces the genealogy from Abraham, in the descending line, Matthew wrote more especially for Jewish Christians. He places the life of Jesus in the light of the Messianic predictions. He does not enter much into detail, considerably less, indeed, than Mark and John. But he groups together a selection of important facts and sayings, with an ever recurring appeal to the fulfilment of prophecy.
The Gospel of Mark, again, is commonly called the Petrine Gospel, because it was composed in Peter’s society, and embodies Peter’s recollections, as Mark was in the habit of hearing them rehearsed in the churches. It is not to be regarded as an epitome of Matthew, but as an original Gospel (1 Pet. 5:13). In recent times not a few think they have warrant for representing it as the first published Gospel. Nor is this without very considerable probability. Beginning in the style of Peter’s evangelistic discourses (comp. Acts 10:36), it narrates especially the great deeds of Christ; and was fitted to show that the Lord’s life made the most powerful impression on all who saw Him. It contains few of Christ’s discourses, and has few allusions to prophecy.
The Gospel of Luke occupies precisely the same relation to Paul as does that of Mark to Peter, being prepared in Paul’s society and issued with his imprimatur. How much it deserves to be regarded as the Pauline Gospel appears by a great variety of topics. Thus, for example, without any distinction of Jew and Gentile, it traces up the Lord’s genealogy, not to Abraham, but to Adam (Luke 3:38). The same Pauline spirit comes to light in the manner in which this evangelist reports the Song of Simeon (Luke 2:32), the insufficiency of works (Luke 17:10), the immediate connection of salvation with faith alone (Luke 7:50).
The fourth Gospel, that of John, the beloved disciple and apostle, was written long after the others had passed away, and was intended to be supplementary to them. His principal object was to show that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God (John 20:31); and all this is delineated to a large extent from the Lord’s own consciousness, and in a manner not attempted before. For this peculiar description of Christ’s person John had a special gift and aptitude. He does not, like Matthew and Luke, commence with the infancy or human descent; and he does not, like Mark, commence with the public ministry of the Lord. He goes back to the Lord’s divine pre-existence and eternal Sonship (John 1:1–18).
This brings us to the narrative of the historic facts and sayings in the life of Jesus.
As to the facts, the history proceeds for the most part in the way of simple narrative in its most objective form. The facts, it is true, to be fully understood, require a certain interpretation or commentary; and this is supplied by the Lord’s sayings or by the doctrinal comments contained in the Epistles.
When the incidents in the suffering life of Jesus are read as a narrative of suffering without this interpretation, they commonly give rise to nothing beyond sentimental feelings or the idle sympathy which the Lord disclaimed in the days of His flesh (Luke 23:28). The facts and sayings are so connected, that had they stood alone neither could have been understood. The narrative would have been an insoluble enigma without the commentary. The historic incidents of the Lord’s suffering life supply what may be termed the realism of the atonement, or the exhibition of it in concrete personal form. The rounded doctrine is given in the apostolic Epistles, where the veil is, so to speak, lifted up, and where we see the divine thoughts or the redemption plan which the narrative embodies in historical reality. And when we put together divine thought and divine fact, plan and accomplishment, the coincidence serves to confirm both. The doctrine renders the history clear.
The Gospels are aright studied only when they are read agreeably to this divine plan; and without this men remain on the mere surface of historic fact, content with the bare example of Christ as a model man, or depositing some meagre arbitrary ideas of their own in narratives pre-eminently full of the vicarious sacrifice. When the history is perused by those who have an eye to trace the cause as well as the elements of the Lord’s sufferings, they discern in the sphere of fact every aspect of the doctrine. The Gospels, in a word, exhibit on a foundation of fact all the conditions of the atonement, together with all its constituent elements; and the more the history is examined, the more is the correspondence apparent between the sayings and the facts between the predictions which Jesus uttered and the fulfilment which followed.
When we narrowly examine the evangelists’ narratives, we find them peculiarly adapted to the design for which they were composed; and they must be perused agreeably to this design. They aim to bring out on a definite plan that Jesus of Nazareth is the suffering Messiah to whom all the prophets bore witness. Accordingly, their history is so arranged as to bring out in some more expressly, in others more indirectly the coincidence between fact and prophecy, but with no attempt to run a laboured parallel between the two. There is a threefold division of prophecy in the Old Testament bearing on the humiliations of Messiah. The first may be described as announcing a suffering Surety; the second, as exhibiting the voluntary subjection of Messiah to the sufferings encountered by Him; and the third sets forth how the tenor of His sufferings leads others to repose their trust in Him for salvation. We find a most impressive coincidence between fact and prophecy.
But still further: the structure of the Gospels, when minutely analysed, brings out all the great elements of the atonement on a basis of historical reality, showing how infinite Intelligence must have presided over their composition. No human reproducer of the Lord’s life can approach it. Thus the qualities essentially requisite in the atoning Surety were preeminently the following four, and they are all developed on a basis of fact. They must (1) be faultless sufferings, and without challenge, corresponding to the character of Him to whom the satisfaction required to be made; they were (2) to be painful and ignominious to the last degree; they must (3) have an unlimited worth or value derived from the dignity of the sufferer; and they must (4) accurately correspond to the declarations of God.
All these points are brought out in the narrative of the evangelists on the foundation of fact in the most remarkable way.
- As to the first, the declaration of Pilate and of Pilate’s wife, of Herod, and of the traitor, may be mentioned as illustrations of the faultless perfection of the sufferer, brought out in the most natural way.
- The second point receives its elucidation in what is recorded by the writers as to the scorn and mockery inflicted on the Sufferer, in the indignities done to Him, in the false charges on which He was condemned, as well as in the mode in which the sentence was carried out.
- The third point, relating to the Sufferer’s dignity, receives its confirmation in those touches in the historic narrative which describe His sacerdotal prayers and His sacrifice, as well as the benediction pronounced upon the murderer who was crucified along with Him. In the most simple form of narration, the evangelists record His royalty in prostrating His enemies and in protecting His disciples, in the inscription which by divine providence Pilate, notwithstanding all opposition, must needs write upon His cross, and in the confession to which the centurion gave utterance: “Truly this was THE SON OF GOD.”
- The fourth point receives the fullest illustration in the original threat of death, in the curse of which suspension on a tree was the obvious evidence and emblem, and in the details of the arrest and trial, the crucifixion and ignominy, the sufferings and death, as foreshadowed and foretold in the law, the prophets, and the Psalms, and all recalled as by a touch in those brief records supplied by the Gospels; not to mention little incidents occasionally introduced (John 19:28, 36).
As to the sayings, they are the expressions of the Lord’s own consciousness; and they are accurately given, being retained in the memory of the apostles. These sayings, beyond doubt, utter His own thoughts on the subject of His atoning death; and they announce the design, aim, and motive from which He acted. That the expression of them is according to truth, without overstatement on the one hand, or defect on the other; that they give not only an objective outline of His work in its nature and results, but also a glimpse of the very heart of His activity, will be admitted by every Christian as the most certain of certainties. In this light these sayings are invaluable, as they disclose His inner thoughts, and convey the absolute truth upon the subject of the atonement, according to that knowledge of His function which was peculiar to Himself, for His work was fully and adequately known only to His own mind. Here, then, we have perfect truth: here we may affirm, unless we are ready to give up all to uncertainty and doubt, that we have the whole truth as to the nature of the atonement, as well as in reference to the design and scope for which He gave Himself up to death for others.
