The Wrath of the Lamb

Book excerpt: A study of the Book of Revelation suggested to Dr. Hanson the idea of tracing the conception of the wrath of God through the Bible, from its primitive and personalized form in the earliest strands of the Old Testament to its final development in the New. Under the impression that "the wrath of God" in the New Testament must be interpreted as if it had the same meaning as in the Old, some theologians have been driven to formulate a distorted doctrine of the atonement and others to repudiate the idea of the wrath altogether. Dr. Hanson shows that this is a false dilemma, and that there is a true New Testament doctrine of the wrath, profoundly influenced by the revelation of the love of God in Jesus Christ and at certain points essentially related to the Cross. This doctrine he finds most fully expressed in the Book of Revelation.