Christians have been taught that Jesus died on the cross to pay a fine or ransom to expiate or atone for our sins. Furthermore, they have been taught that the death of Jesus is the only way individuals can receive eternal salvation. In general, this notion is called the “doctrine of blood atonement” or “penal substitution,” or some similar name. One reason for this teaching is that the development of Newtonian mechanics has led us to believe that God’s “laws of salvation” must be as easy to understand as the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century “laws” of our physical world. This book demonstrates that there are alternatives for understanding Jesus’ execution that are consistent with the twentieth- and twenty-first-century understanding of our physical world. In fact, the early Christian writers (including the Bible itself) described these alternatives. “Sacrifice” was only one form of the early Christian narrative explaining the death of Jesus. Although "blood atonement" was understandable in ancient Roman culture, it is not understandable in our culture. The inevitable conclusion is that we should abandon "blood atonement" and develop one of the alternative ways of understanding the cosmic significance of Jesus’ execution.

Born of Water and the Spirit presents essays on the sacraments by the three major representatives of "Mercersburg Theology," John Nevin, Philip Schaff, and Emanuel Gerhart. It focuses on Mercersburg's doctrine of baptism and Christian nurture, attempts to correct putative deficiencies of the major Reformed trajectories (e.g., New England and Princeton), and vigorously critiques the anti-sacramental animus of revivalistic evangelicalism. Mercersburg understood baptism as initiating a person (adult or infant) into the sacramental life of the church. Baptism and Eucharist were objective, spiritually real actions that made (what Nevin called) the "mystical presence" of Jesus Christ present to Christians, bringing transformative power into their lives. The present critical edition carefully preserves the original texts, while providing extensive introductions, annotations, and bibliography to orient the modern reader and facilitate further scholarship. The Mercersburg Theology Study Series is an attempt to make available for the first time, in attractive, readable, and scholarly modern editions, the key writings of the nineteenth-century movement known as the Mercersburg Theology. An ambitious multiyear project, it aims to make an important contribution to the scholarly community and to the broader reading public, who can at last be properly introduced to this unique blend of American and European, Reformed and Catholic theology.

This final volume finishes off the talk of the doctrine of soteriology and the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit within the Bible. The next session deals with the topic of the church and its place within the world and the teachings of scripture about how the church is to be united with Christ when, in the final section, the eschaton happens and the world is renewed to a sinless state with Christ's return. Also covered is the topic of the intermediate state and what happens when we die.