7. Most Christians believe that after crucifixion Christ rose from
the dead and ascended into Heaven.
8. Most Christians believe, or think they believe, in the efficacy
of prayer.
9. Most Christians believe in a Devil; but he is a great many different
kinds of a Devil.
Of these beliefs I should say:
1. As to God. If there is no God, or if God is not a loving Heavenly
Father, who answers prayer, Christianity as a religion cannot stand.
I do not pretend to say whether there is or is not a God, but I deny
that there is a loving Heavenly Father who answers prayer.
2 and 3. If there is no such thing as Free Will Man could not sin
against God, and Christianity as a religion will not stand.
I deny the existence of Free Will, and possibility of Man's sinning
against God.
4. If Jesus Christ is not necessary to Man's "salvation," Christianity
as a religion will not stand.
I deny that Christ is necessary to Man's salvation from Hell or from
Sin.
5. I do not assert or deny the immortality of the soul. I know nothing
about the soul, and no man is or ever was able to tell me more than I
know.
Of the remaining four doctrines I will speak in due course.
I spoke just now of the religion I was taught in my boyhood, some forty
years ago. As that religion seems to be still very popular I will try to
express it as briefly as I can.
Adam was the first man, and the father of the human race. He was created
by God, in the likeness of God: that is to say, he was made "perfect."
But, being tempted of the Devil, Adam sinned: he fell. God was so angry
with Adam for his sin that He condemned him and all his descendants for
five thousand years to a Hell of everlasting fire.
After consigning all the generations of men for five thousand years to
horrible torment in Hell, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, down on earth
to die, and to go Hell for three days, as an atonement for the sin of
Adam.
After Christ rose from the dead all who believed on Him and were
baptised would go to Heaven. All who did not believe on Him, or were not
baptised, would go to Hell, and burn for ever in a lake of fire.
That is what we were taught in our youth; and that is what millions
of Christians believe to-day. That is the old religion of the Fall, of
"Inherited Sin," of "Universal Damnation," and of atonement by the blood
of Christ.
There is a new religion now, which shuts out Adam and Eve, and the
serpent, and the hell of fire, but retains the "Fall," the "Sin against
God," and the "Atonement by Christ."
But in the new Atonement, as I understand, or try to understand it,
Christ is said to be God Himself, come down to win back to Himself Man,
who had estranged himself from God, or else God (as Christ) died to save
Man, not from Hell, but from Sin.
All these theories, old and new, seem to me impossible.
I will deal first, in a short way, with the new theories of the
Atonement.
If Christ died to save Man from sin, how is it that nineteen centuries
after His death the world is full of sin?
If God (the All-powerful God, who loves us better than an earthly father
loves his children) wished to forgive us the sin Adam committed ages
before we were born, why did He not forgive us without dying, or causing
His Son to die, on a cross?
If Christ is essential to a good life on earth, how is it that many who
believe in Him lead bad lives, while many of the best men and women of
this and former ages either never heard of Christ or did not follow Him?
As to the theory that Christ (or God) died to win back Man to Himself,
it does not harmonise with the facts.
Man never did estrange himself from God. All history shows that Man has
persistently and anxiously sought for God, and has served Him, according
to his light, with a blind devotion even to death and crime.
Finally, Man never did, and never could, sin against God. For Man is
what God made him; could only act as God enabled him, or constructed him
to act, and therefore was not responsible for his act, and could not sin
against God.
If God is responsible for Man's existence, God is responsible for Man's
act. Therefore Man cannot sin against God.
But I shall deal more fully with the subject of Free Will, and of the
need for Christ as our Saviour, in another part of this book.
Let us now turn to the old idea of the Fall and the Atonement.
First, as to Adam and the Fall and inherited sin. Evolution, historical
research, and scientific criticism have disposed of Adam. Adam was
a myth. Hardly any educated Christians now regard him as an historic
person.
But--no Adam, no Fall; no Fall, no Atonement; no Atonement, no Saviour.
Accepting Evolution, how can we believe in a Fall? _When_ did Man fall?
Was it before he ceased to be a monkey, or after? Was it when he was a
tree man, or later? Was it in the Stone Age, or the Bronze Age, or in
the Age of Iron?
There never _was_ any "Fall." Evolution proves a long slow _rise_.
And if there never was a Fall, why should there be any Atonement?
Christians accepting the theory of evolution have to believe that God
allowed the sun to form out of the nebula, and the earth to form
from the sun, that He allowed Man to develop slowly from the speck of
protoplasm in the sea. That at some period of Man's gradual evolution
from the brute, God found Man guilty of some sin, and cursed him. That
some thousands of years later God sent His only Son down upon the earth
to save Man from Hell.
But evolution shows Man to be, even now, an imperfect creature, an
unfinished work, a building still undergoing alterations, an animal
still evolving.
Whereas the doctrines of "the Fall" and the Atonement assume that he
was from the first a finished creature, and responsible to God for his
actions.
This old doctrine of the Fall, and the Curse, and the Atonement is
against reason as well as against science.
The universe is boundless. We know it to contain millions of suns, and
suppose it to contain millions of millions of suns. Our sun is but a
speck in the universe. Our earth is but a speck in the solar system.
Are we to believe that the God who created all this boundless universe
got so angry with the children of the apes that He condemned them all
to Hell for two score centuries, and then could only appease His rage by
sending His own Son to be nailed upon a cross? Do you believe that? Can
you believe it?
No. As I said before, if the theory of evolution be true, there was
nothing to atone for, and nobody to atone. _Man has never sinned against
God._ In fact, the whole of this old Christian doctrine is a mass of
error. There was no creation. There was no Fall. There was no Atonement.
There was no Adam, and no Eve, and no Eden, and no Devil, and no Hell.
If God is all-powerful, He had power to make Man by nature incapable of
sin. But if, having the power to make Man incapable of sin, God made Man
so weak as to "fall," then it was God who sinned against Man, and not
Man against God.
For if I had power to train a son of mine to righteousness, and I
trained him to wickedness, should I not sin against my son?
Or if a man had power to create a child of virtue and intellect, but
chose rather to create a child who was by nature a criminal or an idiot,
would not that man sin against his child?
And do you believe that "our Father in Heaven, our All-powerful God,
who is Love," would first create man fallible, and then punish him for
falling?
And if He did so create and so punish man, could you call that just or
merciful?
And if God is our "maker," who but He is responsible for our make-up?
And if He alone is responsible, how can Man have sinned against God?
I maintain that besides being unhistorical and unreasonable, the old
doctrine of the Atonement is unjust and immoral.
The doctrine of the Atonement is not just nor moral, because it implies
that man should not be punished or rewarded according to his own merit
or demerit, but according to the merit of another.
Is it just, or is it moral, to make the good suffer for the bad?
Is it just or moral to forgive one man his sin because another is
sinless? Such a doctrine--the doctrine of Salvation for Christ's sake,
and after a life of crime--holds out inducements to sin.
Repentance is only good because it is the precursor of reform. But no
repentance can merit pardon, nor atone for wrong. If, having done wrong,
I repent, and afterwards do right, that is good. But to be sorry and not
to reform is not good.
If I do wrong, my repentance will not cancel that wrong. An act
performed is performed for ever.
If I cut a man's hand off, I may repent, and he may pardon me. But
neither my remorse nor his forgiveness will make the hand grow again.
And if the hand could grow again, the wrong I did would still have been
done.
That is a stern morality, but it is moral. Your doctrine of pardon
"for Christ's sake" is not moral. God acts unjustly when He pardons for
Christ's sake. Christ acts unjustly when He asks that pardon be granted
for his sake. If one man injures another, the prerogative of pardon
should belong to the injured man. It is for him who suffers to forgive.
If your son injure your daughter, the pardon must come from her. It
would not be just for you to say: "He has wronged you, and has made no
atonement, but I forgive him." Nor would it be just for you to forgive
him because another son of yours was willing to be punished in his
stead. Nor would it be just for that other son to come forward, and
say to you, and not to his injured sister, "Father, forgive him for my
sake."
He who wrongs a fellow-creature wrongs himself as well, and wrongs both
for all eternity. Let this awful thought keep us just. It is more moral
and more corrective than any trust in the vicarious atonement of a
Saviour.
Christ's Atonement, or any other person's atonement, cannot _justly_
be accepted. For the fact that Christ is willing to suffer for another
man's sin only counts to the merit of Christ, and does not in any way
diminish the offence of the sinner. If I am bad, does it make my offence
the less that another man is so much better?
If a just man had two servants, and one of them did wrong, and if the
other offered to endure a flogging in expiation of his fault, what would
the just man do?
To flog John for the fault of James would be to punish John for being
better than James. To forgive James because John had been unjustly
flogged would be to assert that because John was good, and because the
master had acted unjustly, James the guilty deserved to be forgiven.
This is not only contrary to reason and to justice: it is also a very
false sentiment.