James Denney, The Death of Christ (1902)
James Denney
The other half of the answer: grant every result and you are still holding a crucifixion.
Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.
James Denney taught in Glasgow alongside James Orr. Whatever critics decide about the sources, he argued, the death of Jesus is in all of them. So are men who watched it and then died saying it had saved them. An account that explains the documents but not that has explained the smaller thing.
By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.
| Lv | Move | Type | Cat. | Pwr | Acc | PP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chapter… | Bible | Scripture | — | — | 12 |
| 29 | Affirm | — | Status | — | — | 1 |
| 44 | Not a Softened Man | History | Argument | 90 | 100% | 12 |
| 46 | Random Verse | Bible | Argument | 10 | 100% | 30 |
| 48 | Explain the Death | Soteriology | Argument | 102 | 95% | 8 |
| 52 | It Rests on Christ | Ecclesiology | Argument | 72 | 100% | 10 |
How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.
Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.
“For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets have said.”
Acts 17:28 (WEB) — Paul at the Areopagus, quoting the Athenians’ own poets back to them.
In the gamePick the part of the opponent’s case that is true and affirm it. That point can no longer be used against you, and the opponent’s Defend falls sharply. It deals no damage. Affirm something false and you have only agreed with an error.
“He does not aim at cheap pathetic effects, like the modern romance writers, who studiously paint the brightness and gaiety of life against the omnipresent black background of death.”
James Denney, The Death of Christ I (1902), public domain.public domain
In the gameThe gentle teacher of the nineteenth century is the one figure the sources do not contain. They contain somebody who cursed a tree, cleared a temple with a whip, and told his closest friend to get behind him.
Denney points to the Jesus the Gospels actually show: one who drove the traders from the temple and set his face toward the cross. Renan’s gentle teacher is not in the sources.
“It is an immediate inference, then, from all that we have seen in the New Testament, that where there is no Atonement there is no gospel.”
James Denney, The Death of Christ VI (1902), public domain.public domain
In the gameGrant every critical result. You are still left with a crucifixion, and with men who watched it and died saying it had saved them. An account that explains the documents but not that has missed the main thing.
A sweet young man by a lake does not get crucified.
Denney asks about the cross. No mystery cult had a named man, executed under a named governor, whose followers died saying his death had saved them.
Denney grants every critical result and still asks about the cross. The first Christians died saying that Christ’s death had saved them. Myth does not explain that.
He does not dispute that it happened. He disputes that it was good — which is a moral claim, from the man who has just said there are none.
“When baptism is given in the words of the gospel, however great be the perverseness of understanding on the part either of him through whom, or of him to whom it is given, the sacrament itself is holy in itself on account of Him whose sacrament it is.”
Augustine, On Baptism, Against the Donatists 4.12.19 (trans. J. R. King, rev. Hartranft, NPNF¹ 4, public domain).public domain
In the gameIf a baptism were only as good as the hands that gave it, no one could ever be sure they had been baptised at all. The minister is not the one doing the saving.
It answers the sentence itself — the book was written at this man.
Everything rests on who Christ is. If his manhood had been swallowed up, there would be no man to stand in our place, and nothing for our salvation to rest on.
The church is not the states that fought in its name. It never was.
Augustine’s answer: baptism belongs to Christ, not to the minister. A traitor’s hands cannot undo what Christ gives.
The private inner experience is real. It is also not the thing faith rests on — that is outside you, finished, and does not rise and fall with how you feel about it on a given morning.