“Morris made his name with The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (1955), based on his Cambridge doctoral thesis. He defended – against liberal academic resistance – the idea that in the Bible, Jesus’ death was a ‘propitiation’ which turned aside God’s righteous wrath.”

Leon Morris was born 15 March, 1914. So (last month marked) the centenary of his birth.

If you don’t know his name, he is one of foremost biblical scholars Australia has ever produced.

He made his name with The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (1955), based on his Cambridge doctoral thesis. He defended – against liberal academic resistance – the idea that in the Bible, Jesus’ death was a ‘propitiation’ which turned aside God’s righteous wrath at sin.

J.I. Packer, reviewing it in the Evangelical Quarterly, greeted it as “a book of the first importance”. Packer said it was a delight to follow Dr Morris as he repeatedly shifts the emphasis back to that “which the New Testament is concerned to emphasise above all – that Christ saves God’s people from wrath and ruin by dying for their sins in their place.” [Source: Australian Dictionary of Evangelical Biography online] [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

Amazingly, Morris had done much of his initial study of the ancient biblical languages and of theology, serving with BCA* as a ‘bush brother’, while his wife drove him across 40,000 square miles of bleak outback, to hold church services in the 20+ centres of the Minnipa Mission, Diocese of Willochra, South Australia, during World War Two (1940-45). [Source: D. A. Hubbard in his foreword, “Leon Morris: An Appreciation”, (pdf link) in Reconciliation and Hope: New Testament Essays on Atonement and Eschatology Presented to L.L. Morris on his 60th Birthday (ed. Robert Banks).]

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