All this _versus_ Strauss, who thought that the dying of vast

masses of men, before and after Christ, who had not been brought

into relation to Christ, proves that the Christian religion is not

necessary to salvation, because not universal. For advocacy of

Christ’s preaching to the dead, see also Jahrbuch für d. Theol.,

23:177-228; W. W. Patton, in N. Eng., July, 1882:460-478; John

Miller, Problems Suggested by the Bible, part 1:93-98; part 2:38;

Plumptre, The Spirits in Prison; Kendrick, in Bap. Rev., Apl.

1888; Clemen, Niedergefahren zu den Toten.

For the opposite view, see “No Preaching to the Dead,” in

Princeton Rev., March, 1875:197; 1878:451-491; Hovey, in Bap.

Quar., 4:486 _sq._, and Bib. Eschatology, 97-107; Love, Christ’s

Preaching to the Spirits in Prison; Cowles, in Bib. Sac.,

1875:401; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:616-622; Salmond, in Popular

Commentary; and Johnstone, Com., in loco. So Augustine, Thomas

Aquinas, and Bishop Pearson. See also E. D. Morris, Is There

Salvation after Death? and Wright, Relation of Death to Probation,

22:28—“If Christ preached to spirits in Hades, it may have been to

demonstrate the _hopelessness_ of adding in the other world to the

privileges enjoyed in this. We do not read that it had any

favorable effect upon the hearers. If men will not hear Moses and

the Prophets, then they will not hear one risen from the dead.

‘_Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise_’ (_Luke 23:43_) was not

comforting, if Christ was going that day to the realm of lost

spirits. The antediluvians, however, were specially favored with

Noah’s preaching, and were specially wicked.”

For full statement of the view presented in the text, that the

preaching referred to was the preaching of Christ as preëxisting

Logos to the spirits, now in prison, when once they were

disobedient in the days of Noah, see Bartlett, in New Englander,

Oct. 1872: 601 sq., and in Bib. Sac., Apr. 1883:333-373. Before

giving the substance of Bartlett’s exposition, we transcribe in

full the passage in question, _1 Pet. 3:18-20_—“_Because Christ

also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous,

that he might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh,

but made alive in the spirit; in which also he went and preached

unto the spirits in prison, that aforetime were disobedient, when

the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah._”

Bartlett expounds as follows: “ ‘_In which_ [πνεύματι, divine

nature] ‘_he went and preached to the spirits in prison when once

they disobeyed._’ ἀπειθήσασιν is circumstantial aorist, indicating

the time of the preaching as a definite past: It is an anarthrous

dative, as in _Luke 8:27_; _Mat. 8:23_; _Acts 15:25_; _22:17_. It

is an appositive, or predicative, participle. [That the aorist

participle does not necessarily describe an action preliminary to

that of the principal verb appears from its use in _verse 18_

(θανατωθείς), in _1 Thess. 1:6_ (δεξάμενοι), and in _Col. 2:11,

13_.] The connection of thought is: Peter exhorts his readers to

endure suffering bravely, because Christ did so,—in his lower

nature being put to death, in his higher nature enduring the

opposition of sinners before the flood. Sinners of that time only

are mentioned, because this permits an introduction of the

subsequent reference to baptism. _Cf._ _Gen. 6:3_; _1 Pet. 1:10,

11_; _2 Pet. 2:4, 5_.”

(_b_) The ascension and sitting at the right hand of God.

As the resurrection proclaimed Christ to men as the perfected and

glorified man, the conqueror of sin and lord of death, the ascension

proclaimed him to the universe as the reinstated God, the possessor of

universal dominion, the omnipresent object of worship and hearer of

prayer. _Dextra Dei ubique est._

_Mat. 28:18, 20_—“_All authority hath been given unto me in heaven

and on earth.... lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of

the world_”; _Mark 16:19_—“_So then the Lord Jesus, after he had

spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the

right hand of God_”; _Acts 7:55_—“_But he, being full of the Holy

Spirit, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of

God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God_”; _2 Cor.

13:4_—“_he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth through

the power of God_”; _Eph. 1:22, 23_—“_he put all things in

subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things

to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth

all in all_”; _4:10_—“_He that descended is the same also that

ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all

things._” Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:184-189—“Before the

resurrection, Christ was the God-_man_; since the resurrection, he

is the _God_-man.... He ate with his disciples, not to show the

_quality_, but the _reality_, of his human body.” Nicoll, Life of

Christ: “It was hard for Elijah to ascend”—it required chariot and

horses of fire—“but it was easier for Christ to ascend than to

descend,”—there was a gravitation upwards. Maclaren: “He has not

left the world, though he has ascended to the Father, any more

than he left the Father when he came into the world”; _John

1:18_—“_the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the

Father_”; _3:13_—“_the Son of man, who is in heaven._”

We are compelled here to consider the problem of the relation of

the humanity to the Logos in the state of exaltation. The

Lutherans maintain the ubiquity of Christ’s human body, and they

make it the basis of their doctrine of the sacraments. Dorner,

Glaubenslehre, 2:674-676 (Syst. Doct., 4:138-142), holds to “a

presence, not simply of the Logos, but of the whole God-man, with

all his people, but not necessarily likewise a similar presence in

the world; in other words, his presence is morally conditioned by

men’s receptivity.” The old theologians said that Christ is not in

heaven, quasi carcere. Calvin, Institutes, 2:15—he is “incarnate,

but not incarcerated.” He has gone into heaven, the place of

spirits, and he manifests himself there; but he has also gone far

above all heavens, that he may fill all things. He is with his

people alway. All power is given into his hand. The church is the

fulness of him that filleth all in all. So the Acts of the

Apostles speak constantly of the Son of man, of the man Jesus as

God, ever present, the object of worship, seated at the right hand

of God, having all the powers and prerogatives of Deity. See

Westcott, Bible Com., on _John 20:22_—“_he breathed on them, and

saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit_”—“The characteristic

effect of the Paschal gift was shown in the new faith by which the

disciples were gathered into a living society; the characteristic

effect of the Pentecostal gift was shown in the exercise of

supremacy potentially universal.”

Who and what is this Christ who is present with his people when

they pray? It is not enough to say, He is simply the Holy Spirit;

for the Holy Spirit is the “_Spirit of Christ_” (_Rom. 8:9_), and

in having the Holy Spirit we have Christ himself (_John 16:7_—“_I

will send him_ [the Comforter] _unto you_”; _14:18_—“_I come unto

you_”). The Christ, who is thus present with us when we pray, is

not simply the Logos, or the divine nature of Christ,—his humanity

being separated from the divinity and being localized in heaven.

This would be inconsistent with his promise, “_Lo, I am with

you_,” in which the “I” that spoke was not simply Deity, but Deity

and humanity inseparably united; and it would deny the real and

indissoluble union of the two natures. The elder brother and

sympathizing Savior who is with us when we pray is man, as well as

God. This manhood is therefore ubiquitous by virtue of its union

with the Godhead.

But this is not to say that Christ’s human _body_ is everywhere

present. It would seem that body must exist in spatial relations,

and be confined to place. We do not know that this is so with

regard to soul. Heaven would seem to be a place, because Christ’s

body is there; and a spiritual body is not a body which is spirit,

but a body which is suited to the uses of the spirit. But even

though Christ may manifest himself, in a glorified human body,

only in heaven, his human soul, by virtue of its union with the

divine nature, can at the same moment be with all his scattered

people over the whole earth. As, in the days of his flesh, his

humanity was confined to place, while as to his Deity he could

speak of the Son of man who is in heaven, so now, although his

human body may be confined to place, his human soul is ubiquitous.

Humanity can exist without body; for during the three days in the

sepulchre, Christ’s body was on earth, but his soul was in the

other world; and in like manner there is, during the intermediate

state, a separation of the soul and the body of believers. But

humanity cannot exist without soul; and if the human Savior is

with us, then his humanity, at least so far as respects its

immaterial part, must be everywhere present. _Per contra_, see

Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:326, 327. Since Christ’s human nature has

derivatively become possessed of divine attributes, there is no

validity in the notion of a progressiveness in that nature, now

that it has ascended to the right hand of God. See Philippi,

Glaubenslehre, 4:131; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 558, 576.

Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:327—“Suppose the presence of the divine

nature of Christ in the soul of a believer in London. This divine

nature is at the same moment conjoined with, and present to, and

modified by, the human nature of Christ, which is in heaven and

not in London.” So Hooker, Eccl. Pol., 54, 55, and E. G. Robinson:

“Christ is in heaven at the right hand of the Father, interceding

for us, while he is present in the church by his Spirit. We pray

to the theanthropic Jesus. Possession of a human body does not now

constitute a limitation. We know little of the nature of the

present body.” We add to this last excellent remark the expression

of our own conviction that the modern conception of the merely

relative nature of space, and the idealistic view of matter as

only the expression of mind and will, have relieved this subject

of many of its former difficulties. If Christ is omnipresent and

if his body is simply the manifestation of his soul, then every

soul may feel the presence of his humanity even now and “_every

eye_” may “_see him_” at his second coming, even though believers

may be separated as far as is Boston from Pekin. The body from

which his glory flashes forth may be visible in ten thousand

places at the same time; (_Mat. 28:20_; _Rev. 1:7_).

Section IV.—The Offices Of Christ.

The Scriptures represent Christ’s offices as three in number,—prophetic,

priestly, and kingly. Although these terms are derived from concrete human

relations, they express perfectly distinct ideas. The prophet, the priest,

and the king, of the Old Testament, were detached but designed

prefigurations of him who should combine all these various activities in

himself, and should furnish the ideal reality, of which they were the

imperfect symbols.

_1 Cor. 1:30_—“_of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto

us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and

redemption._” Here “_wisdom_” seems to indicate the prophetic,

“_righteousness_” (or “_justification_”) the priestly, and

“_sanctification and redemption_” the kingly work of Christ.

Denovan: “Three offices are necessary. Christ must be a prophet,

to save us from the ignorance of sin; a priest, to save us from

its guilt; a king, to save us from its dominion in our flesh. Our

faith cannot have firm basis in any one of these alone, any more

than a stool can stand on less than three legs.” See Van

Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 583-586; Archer Butler, Sermons, 1:314.

A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 235—“For ‘office,’ there are two

words in Latin: _munus_ = position (of Mediator), and _officia_ =

functions (of Prophet, Priest, and King). They are not separate

offices, as are those of President, Chief-Justice, and Senator.

They are not separate functions, capable of successive and

isolated performance. They are rather like the several functions

of the one living human body—lungs, heart, brain—functionally

distinct, yet interdependent, and together constituting one life.

So the functions of Prophet, Priest, and King mutually imply one

another: Christ is always a prophetical Priest, and a priestly

Prophet; and he is always a royal Priest, and a priestly King; and

together they accomplish one redemption, to which all are equally

essential. Christ is both μεσίτης and παράκλητος.”

I. The Prophetic Office of Christ.

1. The nature of Christ’s prophetic work.

(_a_) Here we must avoid the narrow interpretation which would make the

prophet a mere foreteller of future events. He was rather an inspired

interpreter or revealer of the divine will, a medium of communication

between God and men (προφήτης = not foreteller, but forteller, or

forth-teller. _Cf._ Gen. 20:7,—of Abraham; Ps. 105:15,—of the patriarchs;

Mat. 11:9,—of John the Baptist; 1 Cor. 12:28, Eph. 2:20, and 3:5,—of N. T.

expounders of Scripture).

_Gen. 20:7_—“_restore the man’s wife; for he is a prophet_”—spoken

of Abraham; _Ps. 105:15_—“_Touch not mine anointed ones, And do my

prophets no harm_”—spoken of the patriarchs; _Mat. 11:9_—“_But

wherefore went ye out? to see a prophet? Yea, I say into you, and

much more than a prophet_”—spoken of John the Baptist, from whom

we have no recorded predictions, and whose pointing to Jesus as

the “_Lamb of God_” (_John 1:29_) was apparently but an echo of

_Isaiah 53_. _1 Cor. 12:28_—“_first apostles, secondly prophets_”;

_Eph. 2:20_—“_built upon the foundation of the apostles and

prophets_”; _3:5_—“_revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets

in the Spirit_”—all these latter texts speaking of New Testament

expounders of Scripture.

Any organ of divine revelation, or medium of divine communication,

is a prophet. “Hence,” says Philippi, “the books of Joshua,

Judges, Samuel, and Kings are called ‘_prophetæ priores_,’ or ‘the

earlier prophets.’ Bernard’s _Respice, Aspice, Prospice_ describes

the work of the prophet: for the prophet might see and might

disclose things in the past, things in the present, or things in

the future. Daniel was a prophet, in telling Nebuchadnezzar what

his dream had been, as well as in telling its interpretation

(_Dan. 2:28, 36_). The woman of Samaria rightly called Christ a

prophet, when he told her all things that ever she did (_John

4:29_).” On the work of the prophet, see Stanley, Jewish Church,

1:491.

(_b_) The prophet commonly united three methods of fulfilling his

office,—those of teaching, predicting, and miracle-working. In all these

respects, Jesus Christ did the work of a prophet (Deut 18:15; _cf._ Acts

3:22; Mat. 13:57; Luke 13:33; John 6:14). He taught (Mat. 5-7), he uttered

predictions (Mat. 24 and 25), he wrought miracles (Mat. 8 and 9), while in

his person, his life, his work, and his death, he revealed the Father

(John 8:26; 14:9; 17:8).

_Deut. 18:15_—“_Jehovah thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet,

from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him

shall ye hearken_”; _cf._ _Acts 3:22_—where this prophecy is said

to be fulfilled in Christ. Jesus calls himself a prophet in _Mat.

13:57_—“_A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country,

and in his own house_”; _Luke 13:33_—“_Nevertheless I must go on

my way to-day and to-morrow and the day following: for it cannot

be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem._” He was called a

prophet: _John 6:14_—“_When therefore the people saw the sign

which he did, they said, This is of a truth the prophet that

cometh into the world._” _John 8:26_—“_the things which I heard

from him_ [the Father], _these speak I unto the world_”;

_14:9_—“_he that hath seen me hath seen the Father_”; _17:8_—“_the

words which thou gavest me I have given unto them._”

Denovan: “Christ teaches us by his word, his Spirit, his example.”

Christ’s miracles were mainly miracles of healing. “Only sickness

is contagious with us. But Christ was an example of perfect

health, and his health was contagious. By its overflow, he healed

others. Only a ‘_touch_’ (_Mat. 9:21_) was necessary.”

Edwin P. Parker, on Horace Bushnell: “The two fundamental elements

of prophecy are insight and expression. Christian prophecy implies

insight or discernment of spiritual things by divine illumination,

and expression of them, by inspiration, in terms of Christian

truth or in the tones and cadences of Christian testimony. We may

define it, then, as the publication, under the impulse of

inspiration, and for edification, of truths perceived by divine

illumination, apprehended by faith, and assimilated by

experience.... It requires a natural basis and rational

preparation in the human mind, a suitable stock of natural gifts

on which to graft the spiritual gift for support and nourishment.

These gifts have had devout culture. They have been crowned by

illuminations and inspirations. Because insight gives foresight,

the prophet will be a seer of things as they are unfolding and

becoming; will discern far-signalings and intimations of

Providence; will forerun men to prepare the way for them, and them

for the way of God’s coming kingdom.”

2. The stages of Christ’s prophetic work.

These are four, namely:

(_a_) The preparatory work of the Logos, in enlightening mankind before

the time of Christ’s advent in the flesh.—All preliminary religious

knowledge, whether within or without the bounds of the chosen people, is

from Christ, the revealer of God.

Christ’s prophetic work began before he came in the flesh. _John

1:9_—“_There was the true light, even the light which lighteth

every man, coming into the world_”—all the natural light of

conscience, science, philosophy, art, civilization, is the light

of Christ. Tennyson: “Our little systems have their day, They have

their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And

thou, O Lord, art more than they.” _Heb. 12:25, 26_—“_See that ye

refuse not him that speaketh.... whose voice then_ [at Sinai]

_shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more

will I make to tremble not the earth only, but also the heaven_”;

_Luke 11:49_—“_Therefore said the wisdom of God, I will send unto

them prophets and apostles_”; _cf._ _Mat 23:34_—“_behold, I send

unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: some of them shall

ye kill and crucify_”—which shows that Jesus was referring to his

own teachings, as well as to those of the earlier prophets.

(_b_) The earthly ministry of Christ incarnate.—In his earthly ministry,

Christ showed himself the prophet _par excellence_. While he submitted,

like the Old Testament prophets, to the direction of the Holy Spirit,

unlike them, he found the sources of all knowledge and power within

himself. The word of God did not _come_ to him,—he was _himself_ the Word.

_Luke 6:19_—“_And all the multitude sought to touch him; for power

came forth from him, and healed them all_”; _John 2:11_—“_This

beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and

manifested his glory_”; _8:38, 58_—“_I speak the things which I

have seen with my Father.... Before Abraham was born, I am_”;

_cf._ _Jer. 2:1_—“_the word of Jehovah came to me_”; _John

1:1_—“_In the beginning was the Word._” _Mat. 26:53_—“_twelve

legions of angels_”; _John 10:18_—of his life: “_I have power to

lay it down, and I have power to take it again_”; _34_—“_Is it not

written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods,

unto whom the word of God came ... say ye of him, whom the Father

sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I

said, I am the Son of God?_” Martensen, Dogmatics, 295-301, says

of Jesus’ teaching that “its source was not inspiration, but

incarnation.” Jesus was not inspired,—he was the Inspirer.

Therefore he is the true “Master of those who know.” His disciples

act in his name; he acts in his own name.

(_c_) The guidance and teaching of his church on earth, since his

ascension.—Christ’s prophetic activity is continued through the preaching

of his apostles and ministers, and by the enlightening influences of his

Holy Spirit (John 16:12-14; Acts 1:1). The apostles unfolded the germs of

doctrine put into their hands by Christ. The church is, in a derivative

sense, a prophetic institution, established to teach the world by its

preaching and its ordinances. But Christians are prophets, only as being

proclaimers of Christ’s teaching (Num. 11:29; Joel 2:28).

_John 16:12-14_—“_I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye

cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is

come, he shall guide you into all the truth.... He shall glorify

me: for he shall take of mine and shall declare it unto you_”;

_Acts 1:1_—“_The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning

all that Jesus began both to do and to teach_”—Christ’s prophetic

work was only _begun_, during his earthly ministry; it is

continued since his ascension. The inspiration of the apostles,

the illumination of all preachers and Christians to understand and

to unfold the meaning of the word they wrote, the conviction of

sinners, and the sanctification of believers,—all these are parts

of Christ’s prophetic work, performed through the Holy Spirit.

By virtue of their union with Christ and participation in Christ’s

Spirit, all Christians are made in a secondary sense prophets, as

well as priests and kings. _Num. 11:29_—“_Would that all Jehovah’s

people were prophets, that Jehovah would put his Spirit upon

them_”; _Joel 2:28_—“_I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh;

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy._” All modern

prophecy that is true, however, is but the republication of

Christ’s message—the proclamation and expounding of truth already

revealed in Scripture. “All so-called new prophecy, from Montanus

to Swedenborg, proves its own falsity by its lack of attesting

miracles.”

A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 242—“Every human prophet

presupposes an infinite eternal divine Prophet from whom his

knowledge is received, just as every stream presupposes a fountain

from which it flows.... As the telescope of highest power takes

into its field the narrowest segment of the sky, so Christ the

prophet sometimes gives the intensest insight into the glowing

centre of the heavenly world to those whom this world regards as

unlearned and foolish, and the church recognizes as only babes in

Christ.”

(_d_) Christ’s final revelation of the Father to his saints in glory (John

16:25; 17:24, 26; _cf._ Is. 64:4; 1 Cor. 13:12).—Thus Christ’s prophetic

work will be an endless one, as the Father whom he reveals is infinite.

_John 16:25_—“_the hour cometh, when I shall no more speak unto

you in dark sayings, but shall tell you plainly of the Father_”;

_17:24_—“_I desire that where I am, they also may be with me; that

they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me_”; _26_—“_I

made known unto them thy name, and will make it known._” The

revelation of his own glory will be the revelation of the Father,

in the Son. _Is. 64:4_—“_For from of old men have not heard, nor

perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen a God besides

thee, who worketh for him that waiteth for him_”; _1 Cor.

13:12_—“_now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face:

now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was

fully known._” _Rev. 21:23_—“_And the city hath no need of the

sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God

did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb_”—not light, but

lamp. Light is something generally diffused; one sees _by_ it, but

one cannot see _it_. Lamp is the narrowing down, the

concentrating, the focusing of light, so that the light becomes

definite and visible. So in heaven Christ will be the visible God.

We shall never see the Father separate from Christ. No man or

angel has at any time seen God, “_whom no man hath seen, nor can

see._” “_The only begotten Son ... he hath declared him,_” and he

will forever declare him (_John 1:18_; _1 Tim. 6:16_).

The ministers of the gospel in modern times, so far as they are

joined to Christ and possessed by his spirit, have a right to call

themselves prophets. The prophet is one—1. sent by God and

conscious of his mission; 2. with a message from God which he is

under compulsion to deliver; 3. a message grounded in the truth of

the past, setting it in new lights for the present, and making new

applications of it for the future. The word of the Lord must come

to him; it must be his gospel; there must be things new as well as

old. All mathematics are in the simplest axiom; but it needs

divine illumination to discover them. All truth was in Jesus’

words, nay, in the first prophecy uttered after the Fall, but only

the apostles brought it out. The prophet’s message must be 4. a

message for the place and time—primarily for contemporaries and

present needs; 5. a message of eternal significance and worldwide

influence. As the prophet’s word was for the whole world, so our

word may be for other worlds, that _“__unto the principalities and

the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the

church the manifold wisdom of God__”__ (Eph. 3:10)_. It must be

also 6. a message of the kingdom and triumph of Christ, which puts

over against the distractions and calamities of the present time

the glowing ideal and the perfect consummation to which God is

leading his people: “_Blessed be the glory of Jehovah from his

place_”; “_Jehovah is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep

silence before him_” (_Ez. 3:12; Hab. 2:20_). On the whole subject

of Christ’s prophetic office, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV,

2:24-27; Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 320-330; Shedd, Dogm.

Theol., 2:366-370.

II. The Priestly Office of Christ.

The priest was a person divinely appointed to transact with God on man’s

behalf. He fulfilled his office, first by offering sacrifice, and secondly

by making intercession. In both these respects Christ is priest.

_Hebrews 7:24-28_—“_he, because he abideth forever, hath his

priesthood unchangeable. Wherefore also he is able to save to the

uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever

liveth to make intercession for them. For such a high priest

became us, holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and

made higher than the heavens; who needeth not daily, like these

high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, and

then for the sins of the people: for this he did once for all,

when he offered up himself. For the law appointeth men high

priests, having infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was

after the law, appointeth a Son, perfected for evermore._” The

whole race was shut out from God by its sin. But God chose the

Israelites as a priestly nation, Levi as a priestly tribe, Aaron

as a priestly family, the high priest out of this family as type

of the great high priest, Jesus Christ. J. S. Candlish, in Bib.

World, Feb. 1897:87-97, cites the following facts with regard to

our Lord’s sufferings as proofs of the doctrine of atonement: 1.

Christ gave up his life by a perfectly free act; 2. out of regard

to God his Father and obedience to his will; 3. the bitterest

element of his suffering was that he endured it at the hand of

God; 4. this divine appointment and infliction of suffering is

inexplicable, except as Christ endured the divine judgment against

the sin of the race.

1. Christ’s Sacrificial Work, or the Doctrine of the Atonement.

The Scriptures teach that Christ obeyed and suffered in our stead, to

satisfy an immanent demand of the divine holiness, and thus remove an

obstacle in the divine mind to the pardon and restoration of the guilty.

This statement may be expanded and explained in a preliminary way as

follows:—

(_a_) The fundamental attribute of God is holiness, and holiness is not

self-communicating love, but self-affirming righteousness. Holiness limits

and conditions love, for love can will happiness only as happiness results

from or consists with righteousness, that is, with conformity to God.

We have shown in our discussion of the divine attributes (vol. 1,

pages 268-275) that holiness is neither self-love nor love, but

self-affirming purity and right. Those who maintain that love is

self-affirming as well as self-communicating, and therefore that

holiness is God’s love for himself, must still admit that this

self-affirming love which is holiness conditions and furnishes the

standard for the self-communicating love which is benevolence. But

we hold that holiness is not identical with, nor a manifestation

of, love. Since self-maintenance must precede self-impartation;

and since benevolence finds its object, motive, standard, and

limit in righteousness, holiness, the self-affirming attribute,

can in no way be resolved into love, the self-communicating. God

must first maintain his own being before he can give to another;

and this self-maintenance must have its reason and motive in the

worth of that which is maintained. Holiness cannot be love,

because love is irrational and capricious except as it has a

standard by which it is regulated, and this standard cannot be

itself love, but must be holiness. To make holiness a form of love

is really to deny its existence, and with this to deny that any

atonement is necessary for man’s salvation.

(_b_) The universe is a reflection of God, and Christ the Logos is its

life. God has constituted the universe, and humanity as a part of it, so

as to express his holiness, positively by connecting happiness with

righteousness, negatively by attaching unhappiness or suffering to sin.

We have seen, in vol. I, pages 109, 309-311, 335-338, that since

Christ is the Logos, the immanent God, God revealed in nature, in

humanity, and in redemption, the universe must be recognized as

created, upheld and governed by the same Being who in the course

of history was manifest in human form and who made atonement for

human sin by his death on Calvary. As all God’s creative activity

has been exercised through Christ (vol. I, page 310), so it is

Christ in whom all things consist or are held together (vol. I,

page 311). Providence, as well as preservation, is his work. He

makes the universe to reflect God, and especially God’s ethical

nature. That pain or loss universally and inevitably follow sin is

the proof that God is unalterably opposed to moral evil; and the

demands and reproaches of conscience witness that holiness is the

fundamental attribute of God’s being.

(_c_) Christ the Logos, as the Revealer of God in the universe and in

humanity, must condemn sin by visiting upon it the suffering which is its

penalty; while at the same time, as the Life of humanity, he must endure

the reaction of God’s holiness against sin which constitutes that penalty.

Here is a double work of Christ which Paul distinctly declares in

_Rom. 8:3_—“_For what the law could not do, in that it was weak

through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of

sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh._” The

meaning is that God did through Christ what the law could not do,

namely, accomplish deliverance for humanity; and did this by

sending his son in a nature which in us is identified with sin. In

connection with sin (περὶ ἁμαρτίας), and as an offering for sin,

God condemned sin, by condemning Christ. Expositor’s Greek

Testament, _in loco_: “When the question is asked, In what sense

did God send his Son ‘in connection with sin’, there is only one

answer possible. He sent him to expiate sin by his sacrificial

death. This is the centre and foundation of Paul’s gospel; see

_Rom. 3:25_ _sq._” But whatever God did in condemning sin he did

through Christ; “_God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto

himself_” (_2 Cor. 5:19_); Christ was the condemner, as well as

the condemned; conscience in us, which unites the accuser and the

accused, shows us how Christ could be both the Judge and the

Sin-bearer.

(_d_) Our personality is not self-contained. We live, move, and have our

being naturally in Christ the Logos. Our reason, affection, conscience,

and will are complete only in him. He is generic humanity, of which we are

the offshoots. When his righteousness condemns sin, and his love

voluntarily endures the suffering which is sin’s penalty, humanity

ratifies the judgment of God, makes full propitiation for sin, and

satisfies the demands of holiness.

My personal existence is grounded in God. I cannot perceive the

world outside of me nor recognize the existence of my fellow men,

except as he bridges the gulf between me and the universe.

Complete self-consciousness would be impossible if we did not

partake of the universal Reason. The smallest child makes

assumptions and uses processes of logic which are all instinctive,

but which indicate the working in him of an absolute and infinite

Intelligence. True love is possible only as God’s love flows into

us and takes possession of us; so that the poet can truly say:

“Our loves in higher love endure.” No human will is truly free,

unless God emancipates it; only he whom the Son of God makes free

is free indeed; “_work out your own salvation with fear and

trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to

work_” (_Phil. 2:12, 13_). Our moral nature, even more than our

intellectual nature, witnesses that we are not sufficient to

ourselves, but are complete only in him in whom we live and move

and have our being (_Col. 2:10_; _Acts 17:28_). No man can make a

conscience for himself. There is a common conscience, over and

above the finite and individual conscience. That common conscience

is one in all moral beings. John Watson: “There is no

consciousness of self apart from the consciousness of other selves

and things, and no consciousness of the world apart from the

consciousness of the single Reality presupposed in both.” This

single Reality is Jesus Christ, the manifested God, the Light that

lighteth every man, and the Life of all that lives (_John 1:4,

9_). He can represent humanity before God, because his immanent

Deity constitutes the very essence of humanity.

(_e_) While Christ’s love explains his willingness to endure suffering for

us, only his holiness furnishes the reason for that constitution of the

universe and of human nature which makes this suffering necessary. As

respects us, his sufferings are substitutionary, since his divinity and

his sinlessness enable him to do for us what we could never do for

ourselves. Yet this substitution is also a sharing—not the work of one

external to us, but of one who is the life of humanity, the soul of our

soul and the life of our life, and so responsible with us for the sins of

the race.

Most of the recent treatises on the Atonement have been

descriptions of the effects of the Atonement upon life and

character, but have thrown no light upon the Atonement itself, if

indeed they have not denied its existence. We must not emphasize

the effects by ignoring the cause. Scripture declares the ultimate

aim of the Atonement to be that God “_might himself be just_”

(_Rom. 3:26_); and no theory of the atonement will meet the

demands of reason or conscience that does not ground its necessity

in God’s righteousness, rather than in his love. We acknowledge

that our conceptions of atonement have suffered some change. To

our fathers the atonement was a mere historical fact, a sacrifice

offered in a few brief hours upon the Cross. It was a literal

substitution of Christ’s suffering for ours, the payment of our

debt by another, and upon the ground of that payment we are

permitted to go free. Those sufferings were soon over, and the

hymn, “Love’s Redeeming Work is Done,” expressed the believer’s

joy in a finished redemption. And all this is true. But it is only

a part of the truth. The atonement, like every other doctrine of

Christianity, is a fact of life; and such facts of life cannot be

crowded into our definitions, because they are greater than any

definitions that we can frame. We must add to the idea of

_substitution_ the idea of _sharing_. Christ’s doing and suffering

is not that of one external and foreign to us. He is bone of our

bone, and flesh of our flesh; the bearer of our humanity; yes, the

very life of the race.

(_f_) The historical work of the incarnate Christ is not itself the

atonement,—it is rather the revelation of the atonement. The suffering of

the incarnate Christ is the manifestation in space and time of the eternal

suffering of God on account of human sin. Yet without the historical work

which was finished on Calvary, the age-long suffering of God could never

have been made comprehensible to men.

The life that Christ lived in Palestine and the death that he

endured on Calvary were the revelation of a union with mankind

which antedated the Fall. Being thus joined to us from the

beginning, he has suffered in all human sin; “_in all our

affliction he has been afflicted_” (_Is. 63:9_); so that the

Psalmist can say: “_Blessed be the Lord, who daily beareth our

burden, even the God who is our salvation_” (_Ps. 68:19_). The

historical sacrifice was a burning-glass which focused the

diffused rays of the Sun of righteousness and made them effective

in the melting of human hearts. The sufferings of Christ take

deepest hold upon us only when we see in them the two contrasted

but complementary truths: that holiness must make penalty to

follow sin, and that love must share that penalty with the

transgressor. The Cross was the concrete exhibition of the

holiness that required, and of the love that provided, man’s

redemption. Those six hours of pain could never have procured our

salvation if they had not been a revelation of eternal facts in

the being of God. The heart of God and the meaning of all previous

history were then unveiled. The whole evolution of humanity was

there depicted in its essential elements, on the one hand the sin

and condemnation of the race, on the other hand the grace and

suffering of him who was its life and salvation. As he who hung

upon the cross was God, manifest in the flesh, so the suffering of

the cross was God’s suffering for sin, manifest in the flesh. The

imputation of our sins to him is the result of his natural union

with us. He has been our substitute from the beginning. We cannot

quarrel with the doctrine of substitution when we see that this

substitution is but the sharing of our griefs and sorrows by him

whose very life pulsates in our veins. See A. H. Strong, Christ in

Creation, 78-80, 177-180.

(_g_) The historical sacrifice of our Lord is not only the final

revelation of the heart of God, but also the manifestation of the law of

universal life—the law that sin brings suffering to all connected with it,

and that we can overcome sin in ourselves and in the world only by

entering into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings and Christ’s victory,

or, in other words, only by union with him through faith.

We too are subject to the same law of life. We who enter into

fellowship with our Lord “_fill up ... that which is lacking of

the afflictions of Christ ... for his body’s sake, which is the

church_” (_Col. 1:24_). The Christian Church can reign with Christ

only as it partakes in his suffering. The atonement becomes a

model and stimulus to self-sacrifice, and a test of Christian

character. But it is easy to see how the subjective effect of

Christ’s sacrifice may absorb the attention, to the exclusion of

its ground and cause. The moral influence of the atonement has

taken deep hold upon our minds, and we are in danger of forgetting

that it is the holiness of God, and not the salvation of men, that

primarily requires it. When sharing excludes substitution; when

reconciliation of man to God excludes reconciliation of God to

man; when the only peace secured is peace in the sinner’s heart

and no thought is given to that peace with God which it is the

first object of the atonement to secure; then the whole

evangelical system is weakened, God’s righteousness is ignored,

and man is practically put in place of God. We must not go back to

the old mechanical and arbitrary conceptions of the atonement,—we

must go forward to a more vital apprehension of the relation of

the race to Christ. A larger knowledge of Christ, the life of

humanity, will enable us to hold fast the objective nature of the

atonement, and its necessity as grounded in the holiness of God;

while at the same time we appropriate all that is good in the

modern view of the atonement, as the final demonstration of God’s

constraining love which moves men to repentance and submission.

See A. H. Strong, Cleveland Address, 1904:16-18; Dinsmore, The

Atonement in Literature and in Life, 213-250.

A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.

We may classify the Scripture representations according as they conform to

moral, commercial, legal or sacrificial analogies.

(_a_) MORAL.—The atonement is described as

A _provision originating in God’s love_, and manifesting this love to the

universe; but also as an _example of disinterested love_, to secure our

deliverance from selfishness.—In these latter passages, Christ’s death is

referred to as a source of moral stimulus to men.

_A provision_: _John 3:16_—“_For God so loved the world, that he

gave his only begotten Son_”; _Rom. 5:8_—“_God commendeth his own

love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died

for us_”; _1 John 4:9_—“_Herein was the love of God manifested in

us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that

we might live through him_”; _Heb. 2:9_—“_Jesus, because of the

suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace

of God he should taste of death for every man_”—redemption

originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the

Son.—_An example_: _Luke 9:22-24_—“_The Son of man must suffer ...

and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take

up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his

life for my sake, the same shall save it_”; _2 Cor. 5:15_—“_he

died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto

themselves_”; _Gal. 1:4_—“_gave himself for our sins, that he

might deliver us out of this present __ evil world_”; _Eph.

5:25-27_—“_Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for

it; that he might sanctify it_”; _Col. 1:22_—“_reconciled in the

body of his flesh through death, to present you holy_”; _Titus

2:14_—“_gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all

iniquity, and purify_”; _1 Pet. 2:21-24_—“_Christ also suffered

for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps:

who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon

the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto

righteousness._” Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious

cottager, on hearing the text, ‘_God so loved the world_,’

exclaimed: ‘Ah, that _was_ love! I could have given myself, but I

could never have given my son.’ ” There was a wounding of the

Father through the heart of the Son: “_they shall look unto me

whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one

mourneth for his only son_” (_Zech. 12:10_).

(b) COMMERCIAL.—The atonement is described as

A _ransom_, paid to free us from the bondage of sin (note in these

passages the use of ἀντί, the preposition of price, bargain, exchange).—In

these passages, Christ’s death is represented as the price of our

deliverance from sin and death.

_Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45_—“_to give his life a ransom for

many_”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν. _1 Tim. 2:6_—“_who gave himself a

ransom for all_”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“_for_,” in the sense of

“instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“_for_,” in the sense

of “in behalf of,” “for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition

of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable

in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. See _Mat.

2:22_—“_Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of_ [ἀντί]

_his father Herod_”; _Luke 11:11_—“_shall his son ask ... a fish,

and he for_ [ἀντί] _a fish give him a serpent?_” _Heb.

12:2_—“_Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for_

[ἀντί = as the price of] _the joy that was set before him endured

the cross_”; _16_—“_Esau, who for_ [ἀντί = in exchange for] _one

mess of meat sold his own birthright._” See also _Mat.

16:26_—“_what shall a man give in exchange for_ (ἀντάλλαγμα) _his

life_” = how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it?

Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in _1 Tim.

2:6_ requires that ὑπέρ should mean “instead of.” We should

interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί in _Mat. 20:28_. “Something befell

Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall

sinners” (E. Y. Mullins).

Meyer, on _Mat. 20:28_—“_to give his life a ransom for many_”—“The

ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the

shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”

See also _1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23_—“_ye were bought with a price_”; and

_2 Pet. 2:1_—“_denying even the Master that bought them._” The

word “redemption,” indeed, means simply “repurchase,” or “the

state of being repurchased”—_i. e._, delivered by the payment of a

price. _Rev. 5:9_—“_thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God

with thy blood men of every tribe._” Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In

Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.” Buttmann, N. T. Grammar,

321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of,

for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.” See Grimm’s Wilke,

Lexicon Græco-Lat.: “ἀντί, _in vicem_, _anstatt_”; Thayer, Lexicon

N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received,

endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase) _Mat. 20:28_”;

also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.

Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever

really uttered the words “_give his life a ransom for many_”

(_Mat. 20:28_). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the

result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a

means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism,

377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel,

but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate

the apostolic conception of Jesus’ teaching, a conception which

Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the

Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his

apostles and should guide them into all the truth (_John 14:26_;

_16:13_). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline

doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.

(_c_) LEGAL.—The atonement is described as

An act of _obedience_ to the law which sinners had violated; a _penalty_,

borne in order to rescue the guilty; and an _exhibition_ of God’s

righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon

and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is

represented as demanded by God’s law and government.

_Obedience_: _Gal. 4:4, 5_—“_born of a woman, born under the law,

that he might redeem them that were under the law_”; _Mat.

3:15_—“_thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness_”—Christ’s

baptism prefigured his death, and was a consecration to death;

_cf._ _Mark 10:38_—“_Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or

to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?_” _Luke

12:50_—“_I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I

straitened till it be accomplished!_” _Mat. 26:39_—“_My Father, if

it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not

as I will, but as thou wilt_”; _5:17_—“_Think not that I came to

destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to

fulfil_”; _Phil. 2:8_—“_becoming obedient even unto death_”; _Rom.

5:19_—“_through the obedience of the one shall the many be made

righteous_”; _10:4_—“_Christ is the end of the law unto

righteousness to every one that believeth._”—_Penalty_: _Rom.

4:25_—“_who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised

for our justification_”; _8:3_—“_God, sending his own Son in the

likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the

flesh_”; _2 Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on

our behalf_”—here “_sin_”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer); _Gal.

1:4_—“_gave himself for our sins_”; _3:13_—“_Christ redeemed us

from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is

written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree_”; _cf._ _Deut

21:23_—“_he that is hanged is accursed of God._” _Heb.

9:28_—“_Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of

many_”; _cf._ _Lev. 5:17_—“_if any one sin ... yet is he guilty,

and shall bear his iniquity_”; _Num. 14:34_—“_for every day a

year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years_”; _Lam.

5:7_—“_Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their

iniquities._”—_Exhibition_: _Rom. 3:25, 26_—“_whom God set forth

to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his

righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done

aforetime, in the forbearance of God_”; _cf._ _Heb. 9:15_—“_a

death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions

that were under the first covenant._”

On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die

Ritschl’sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes

Ritschl’s evasion of their natural force and declares Paul’s

teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the

law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law

against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L.

L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New

Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation

on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn

from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews

made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the

reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor

Paine’s view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect.

“_God was in Christ_” (_2 Cor. 5:19_) and God “_manifested in the

flesh_” (_1 Tim. 3:16_) are the keynote of Paul’s teaching, and

this is identical with John’s doctrine of the Logos: “_the Word

was God_,” and “_the Word became flesh_” (_John 1:1, 14_)

The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states

three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential

kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness,

in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine

immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical

unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any

more than the presence of man’s spirit in all he thinks and does

proves that man’s spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3.

God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than

all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this

indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and

filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the

first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which

contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as

the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man

instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead

of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders

impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus

Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of

God’s feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within

the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity

of Christ and no objective atonement.

(d) SACRIFICIAL.—The atonement is described as

A work of _priestly mediation_, which reconciles God to men,—notice here

that the term “reconciliation” has its usual sense of removing enmity, not

from the offending, but from the offended party;—a _sin-offering_,

presented on behalf of transgressors;—a _propitiation_, which satisfies

the demands of violated holiness;—and a _substitution_, of Christ’s

obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show

that Christ’s death is demanded by God’s attribute of justice, or

holiness, if sinners are to be saved.

_Priestly mediation_: _Heb. 9:11, 12_—“_Christ having come a high

priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but

through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy

place, having obtained eternal redemption_”; _Rom. 5:10_—“_while

we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of

his Son_”; _2 Cor. 5:18, 19_—“_all things are of God, who

reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ

reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their

trespasses_”; _Eph. 2:16_—“_might reconcile them both in one body

unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby_”;

_cf._ _12, 13, 19_—“_strangers from the covenants of the

promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye

are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of

God_”; _Col. 1:20_—“_through him to reconcile all things unto

himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross._”

On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the

apostle to be, that “we were ‘_enemies_,’ not actively, as hostile

to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.” The

epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against

Gentile and Jew alike (_Rom. 1:18_). “_While we were enemies_”

(_Rom. 5:10_)—“when God was hostile to us.” “Reconciliation” is

therefore the removal of God’s wrath toward man. Meyer, on this

last passage, says that Christ’s death does not remove man’s wrath

toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy

Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself.

See Denney, Com. on _Rom. 5:9-11_, in Expositor’s Gk. Test.

_Cf._ _Num. 25:13_, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to

have “_made atonement for the children of Israel_.” Surely, the

“_atonement_” here cannot be a reconciliation of _Israel_. The

action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So,

_1 Sam. 29:4_—“_wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself

unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?_”

_Mat. 5:23, 24_—“_If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the

altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against

thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first

be reconciled to thy brother_ [_i. e._, remove his enmity, not

thine own], _and then come and offer thy gift._” See Shedd, Dogm.

Theol., 2:387-398.

Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl’sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (_Rom.

5:10_) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part,

but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.” Paul

was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it

from Christ himself (_Gal. 1:12_). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The

idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false

conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be

unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it

was before.” The old hymn expressed the truth: “My God is

reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child;

I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And

‘Father, Abba, Father’ cry.”

_A sin-offering_: _John 1:29_—“_Behold, the Lamb of God, that

taketh away the sin of the world_”—here αἴρων means to take away

by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion

to the sin-offering of _Isaiah 53:6-12_—“_when thou shalt make his

soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the

slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all._”

_Mat. 26:28_—“_this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured

out for many unto remission of sins_”; _cf._ _Ps. 50:5_—“_made a

covenant with me by sacrifice._” _1 John 1:7_—“_the blood of Jesus

his Son cleanseth us from all sin_”—not sanctification, but

justification; _1 Cor. 5:7_—“_our passover also hath been

sacrificed, even Christ_”; _cf._ _Deut. 16:2-6_—“_thou shalt

sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God._” _Eph. 5:2_—“_gave

himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor

of a sweet smell_” (see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor’s Greek

Testament); _Heb. 9:14_—“_the blood of Christ, who through the

eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God_”; _22,

26_—“_apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now

once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away

sin by the sacrifice of himself_”; _1 Pet. 1:18, 19_—“_redeemed

... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without

spot, even the blood of Christ._” See Expos. Gk. Test., on _Eph.

1:7_.

Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out that _John

6:52-59_—“_eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood_”—is Christ’s

reference to his death in terms of _sacrifice_. So, as we shall

see below, it is a _propitiation_ (_1 John 2:2_). We therefore

strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement,

64—“Christ’s death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning

instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which

springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of

substitution or expiation.” Wilson forgets that this necessity of

suffering arises from God’s righteousness; that without this

suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on

account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that

this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved

thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnation _constituted_ the

Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated.

Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words:

“Incarnation in order to Atonement.” We regard as still better the

words: “Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”

_A propitiation_: _Rom. 3:25, 26_—“_whom God set forth to be a

propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just,

and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus._” A full and

critical exposition of this passage will be found under the

Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is

sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ’s death is a

propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon

God; (3) that the particular attribute in God which demands the

atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction

of this holiness is the necessary condition of God’s justifying

the believer.

Compare _Luke 18:13_, marg.—“_God, be thou merciful unto me the

sinner_”; lit.: “_God be propitiated toward me the sinner_”—by the

sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even

while he prayed. _Heb. 2:17_—“_a merciful and faithful high priest

in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of

the people_”; _1 John 2:2_—“_and he is the propitiation for our

sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world_”;

_4:10_—“_Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved

us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins_”; _cf._

_Gen. 32:20_, LXX.—“_I will appease_ [ἐξιλάσομαι, “propitiate”]

_him with the present that goeth before me_”; _Prov. 16:14_,

LXX.—“_The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise

man will pacify it_” [ἐξιλάσεται, “propitiate it”].

On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology,

216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to

pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the

sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the

infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be

inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In

fact, it was he himself who ‘_set forth_’ Jesus as ‘_a

propitiation_’ (_Rom. 3:25, 26_).” Paul never merges the objective

atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New

Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With

him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for

Christ _in_ us by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75,

89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul’s representation of Christ

as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as

prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “The priest says: Man’s

return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man’s

sin. This is Paul’s doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a

divine provision for sacrifice. Man’s return to God is the thing

wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect

prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who

comes in to perfect man’s imperfect work. This is the doctrine of

the Epistle to the Hebrews.” This recognition of expiation in

Paul’s teaching, together with denial of its validity and

interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather

than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.

Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still

further and affirms: “In the N. T. God is never said to be

propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God

or satisfies God’s wrath.” Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T.

God is represented as self-propitiated: “Christianity is

distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his

own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of

his own love.” This self-propitiation however must not be thought

of as a bearing of penalty: “Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a

sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled

with purification—‘_with his stripes we are healed_’ (_Is. 53:5_).

And in the N. T., ‘_the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the

world_’ (_John 1:29_); ‘_the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth_’ (_1

John 1:7_).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the

penalty, but removal of the sin.” This seems to us a distinct

contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an

essential of Christian doctrine (see _Rom. 3:25_; _1 John 2:2_),

while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man,

but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on

The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol.,

1900:734-756.

_A substitution_: _Luke 22:37_—“_he was reckoned with

transgressors_”; _cf._ _Lev. 16:21, 22_—“_and Aaron shall lay both

his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all

the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them

upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all

their iniquities unto a solitary land_”; _Is. 53:5, 6_—“_he was

wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities;

the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes

we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned

every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the

iniquity of us all._” _John 10:11_—“_the good shepherd layeth down

his life for the sheep_”; _Rom. 5:6-8_—“_while we were yet weak,

in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a

righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some

one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward

us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us_”; _1

Pet. 3:18_—“_Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for

the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God._”

To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (_b_) above,

in which Christ’s death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer’s

comment, there quoted, on _Mat. 20:28_—“_to give his life a ransom

for many,_” λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says: “ἀντί denotes

substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of,

is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration

thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution

in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to

secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is

paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other

parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an

expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is

paid] are redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as

having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain

imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of

their sins were expiated.”

Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that “in both the N. T. texts, _Mat.

16:26_ and _Mark 8:37_, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin

to the conception of atonement: _cf._ _Is. 43:3, 4_; _51:11_;

_Amos 5:12_. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction

and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.”

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“_Mat. 20:28_

contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is

not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it,

Christ’s death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a

ransom.”

The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical

Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of

others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer,

Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol.

2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of

vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of

Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution,

but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί in _Mat. 20:28_

means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he

obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a

non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul

and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We

prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well

as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of

them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in

Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution

must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to

be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its

external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the

conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in

Jesus himself.

Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine

of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal

suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ’s

vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas

not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr.

Clarke’s Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not

import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling

or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may

bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or

approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed,

for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided

that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God,

is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.”

Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that “substitution means simply

that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something

which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done

and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free

life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be

preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever

dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his

cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken,

but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and

make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man’s redemption.” On the

Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale,

Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342;

Smeaton, Our Lord’s and the Apostles’ Doctrine of Atonement.

An examination of the passages referred to shows that, while the forms in

which the atoning work of Christ is described are in part derived from

moral, commercial, and legal relations, the prevailing language is that of

sacrifice. A correct view of the atonement must therefore be grounded upon

a proper interpretation of the institution of sacrifice, especially as

found in the Mosaic system.

The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus’

own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ

did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a

gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be

explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not to _speak_ about

it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in

his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to

a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy

Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that

the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles

to the gospels. The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of

Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of

salvation, but for the redeemed. “None of the ransomed ever knew.”

The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.

Harnack: “There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look

upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is

possible.” We regard this confession as a demonstration of the

psychological correctness of Paul’s doctrine of a vicarious

atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it

reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be

appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton

declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience,

which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that

Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in

fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he

forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also

transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only

indications of the higher verdicts of God: _1 John 3:20_—“_if our

heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all

things._” Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people

half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be

placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the

sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same

divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements

in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely

out of existence.” So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral

fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must

be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic,

but moral.” Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere

form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a

utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the

creature. A more correct view of God’s righteousness as the

fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the

constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting

suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine

wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a

divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.

B. The Institution of Sacrifice, more especially as found in the Mosaic

system.

(_a_) We may dismiss as untenable, on the one hand, the theory that

sacrifice is essentially the presentation of a gift (Hofmann,

Baring-Gould) or a feast (Spencer) to the Deity; and on the other hand the

theory that sacrifice is a symbol of renewed fellowship (Keil), or of the

grateful offering to God of the whole life and being of the worshiper

(Bähr). Neither of these theories can explain the fact that the sacrifice

is a bloody offering, involving the suffering and death of the victim, and

brought, not by the simply grateful, but by the conscience-stricken soul.

For the views of sacrifice here mentioned, see Hofmann,

Schriftbeweis, II, 1:214-294; Baring-Gould, Origin and Devel. of

Relig. Belief, 368-390; Spencer, De Legibus Hebræorum; Keil, Bib.

Archäologie, sec. 43, 47; Bähr, Symbolik des Mosaischen Cultus,

2:196, 269; also synopsis of Bähr’s view, in Bib. Sac., Oct.

1870:593; Jan. 1871:171. _Per contra_, see Crawford, Atonement,

228-240; Lange, Introd. to Com. on Exodus, 38—“The heathen change

God’s symbols into myths (rationalism), as the Jews change God’s

sacrifices into meritorious service (ritualism).” Westcott,

Hebrews, 281-294, seems to hold with Spencer that sacrifice is

essentially a feast made as an offering to God. So Philo: “God

receives the faithful offerer to his own table, giving him back

part of the sacrifice.” Compare with this the ghosts in Homer’s

Odyssey, who receive strength from drinking the blood of the

sacrifices. Bähr’s view is only half of the truth. Reunion

presupposes Expiation. Lyttleton, in Lux Mundi, 281—“The sinner

must first expiate his sin by suffering,—then only can he give to

God the life thus purified by an expiatory death.” Jahn, Bib.

Archæology, sec. 373, 378—“It is of the very idea of the sacrifice

that the victim shall be presented directly to God, and in the

presentation shall be destroyed.” Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 253,

speaks of the delicate feeling of the Biblical critic who, with

his mouth full of beef or mutton, professes to be shocked at the

cruelty to animals involved in the temple sacrifices. Lord Bacon:

“Hieroglyphics came before letters, and parables before

arguments.” “The old dispensation was God’s great parable to man.

The Theocracy was graven all over with divine hieroglyphics. Does

there exist the Rosetta stone by which we can read these

hieroglyphics? The shadows, that have been shortening up into

definiteness of outline, pass away and vanish utterly under the

full meridian splendor of the Sun of Righteousness.” On _Eph.

1:7_—“_the blood of Christ,_” as an expiatory sacrifice which

secures our justification, see Salmond, in Expositor’s Greek

Testament.

(_b_) The true import of the sacrifice, as is abundantly evident from both

heathen and Jewish sources, embraced three elements,—first, that of

satisfaction to offended Deity, or propitiation offered to violated

holiness; secondly, that of substitution of suffering and death on the

part of the innocent, for the deserved punishment of the guilty; and,

thirdly, community of life between the offerer and the victim. Combining

these three ideas, we have as the total import of the sacrifice:

Satisfaction by substitution, and substitution by incorporation. The

bloody sacrifice among the heathen expressed the consciousness that sin

involves guilt; that guilt exposes man to the righteous wrath of God; that

without expiation of that guilt there is no forgiveness; and that through

the suffering of another who shares his life the sinner may expiate his

sin.

Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 170, quotes from Nägelsbach,

Nachhomerische Theologie, 338 _sq._—“The essence of punishment is

retribution (Vergeltung), and retribution is a fundamental law of

the world-order. In retribution lies the atoning power of

punishment. This consciousness that the nature of sin demands

retribution, in other words, this certainty that there is in Deity

a righteousness that punishes sin, taken in connection with the

consciousness of personal transgression, awakens the longing for

atonement,”—which is expressed in the sacrifice of a slaughtered

beast. The Greeks recognized representative expiation, not only in

the sacrifice of beasts, but in human sacrifices. See examples in

Tyler, Theol. Gk. Poets, 196, 197, 245-253; see also Virgil,

Æneid, 5:815—“Unum pro multis dabitur caput”; Ovid, Fasti, vi—“Cor

pro corde, precor; pro fibris sumite fibras. Hanc animam vobis pro

meliore damus.”

Stahl, Christliche Philosophie, 146—“Every unperverted conscience

declares the eternal law of righteousness that punishment shall

follow inevitably on sin. In the moral realm, there is another way

of satisfying righteousness—that of atonement. This differs from

punishment in its effect, that is, reconciliation,—the moral

authority asserting itself, not by the destruction of the

offender, but by taking him up into itself and uniting itself to

him. But the offender cannot offer his own sacrifice,—that must be

done by the priest.” In the Prometheus Bound, of Æschylus, Hermes

says to Prometheus: “Hope not for an end to such oppression, until

a god appears as thy substitute in torment, ready to descend for

thee into the unillumined realm of Hades and the dark abyss of

Tartarus.” And this is done by Chiron, the wisest and most just of

the Centaurs, the son of Chronos, sacrificing himself for

Prometheus, while Hercules kills the eagle at his breast and so

delivers him from torment. This legend of Æschylus is almost a

prediction of the true Redeemer. See article on Sacrifice, by

Paterson, in Hastings, Bible Dictionary.

Westcott, Hebrews, 282, maintains that the idea of expiatory

offerings, answering to the consciousness of sin, does not belong

to the early religion of Greece. We reply that Homer’s Iliad, in

its first book, describes just such an expiatory offering made to

Phœbus Apollo, so turning away his wrath and causing the plague

that wastes the Greeks to cease. E. G. Robinson held that there is

“no evidence that the Jews had any idea of the efficacy of

sacrifice for the expiation of moral guilt.” But in approaching

either the tabernacle or the temple the altar always presented

itself before the laver. H. Clay Trumbull, S. S. Times, Nov. 30,

1901:801—“The Passover was not a passing by of the houses of

Israelites, but a passing over or crossing over by Jehovah to

enter the homes of those who would welcome him and who had entered

into covenant with him by sacrifice. The Oriental sovereign was

accompanied by his executioner, who entered to smite the

first-born of the house only when there was no covenanting at the

door.” We regard this explanation as substituting an incidental

result and effect of sacrifice for the sacrifice itself. This

always had in it the idea of reparation for wrong-doing by

substitutionary suffering.

Curtis, Primitive Semitic Religion of To-day, on the Significance

of Sacrifice, 218-237, tells us that he went to Palestine

prepossessed by Robertson Smith’s explanation that sacrifice was a

feast symbolizing friendly communion between man and his God. He

came to the conclusion that the sacrificial meal was not the

primary element, but that there was a substitutionary value in the

offering. Gift and feast are not excluded; but these are sequences

and incidentals. Misfortune is evidence of sin; sin needs to be

expiated; the anger of God needs to be removed. The sacrifice

consisted principally in the shedding of the blood of the victim.

The “bursting forth of the blood” satisfied and bought off the

Deity. George Adam Smith on _Isaiah 53_ (2:364)—“Innocent as he

is, he gives his life as a satisfaction to the divine law for the

guilt of his people. His death was no mere martyrdom or

miscarriage of human justice: in God’s intent and purpose, but

also by its own voluntary offering, it was an expiatory sacrifice.

There is no exegete but agrees to this. 353—The substitution of

the servant of Jehovah for the guilty people and the redemptive

force of that substitution are no arbitrary doctrine.”

_Satisfaction_ means simply that there is a principle in God’s

being which not simply refuses sin passively, but also opposes it

actively. The judge, if he be upright, must repel a bribe with

indignation, and the pure woman must flame out in anger against an

infamous proposal. R. W. Emerson: “Your goodness must have some

edge to it,—else it is none.” But the judge and the woman do not

enjoy this repelling,—they suffer rather. So God’s satisfaction is

no gloating over the pain or loss which he is compelled to

inflict. God has a wrath which is calm, judicial, inevitable—the

natural reaction of holiness against unholiness. Christ suffers

both as one with the inflicter and as one with those on whom

punishment is inflicted: “_For Christ also pleased not himself;

but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee

fell on me_” (_Rom. 15:3_; _cf._ _Ps. 69:9_).

(_c_) In considering the exact purport and efficacy of the Mosaic

sacrifices, we must distinguish between their theocratical, and their

spiritual, offices. They were, on the one hand, the appointed means

whereby the offender could be restored to the outward place and

privileges, as member of the theocracy, which he had forfeited by neglect

or transgression; and they accomplished this purpose irrespectively of the

temper and spirit with which they were offered. On the other hand, they

were symbolic of the vicarious sufferings and death of Christ, and

obtained forgiveness and acceptance with God only as they were offered in

true penitence, and with faith in God’s method of salvation.

_Heb. 9:13, 14_—“_For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the

ashes of a heifer sprinkling them that have been defiled, sanctify

unto the cleanness of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of

Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without

blemish unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve

the living God?_” _10:3, 4_—“_But in those sacrifices there is a

remembrance made of sins year by year. For it is impossible that

the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins._” Christ’s

death also, like the O. T. sacrifices, works temporal benefit even

to those who have no faith; see pages 771, 772.

Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, 441, 448, answers the

contention of the higher critics that, in the days of Isaiah,

Micah, Hosea, Jeremiah, no Levitical code existed; that these

prophets expressed disapproval of the whole sacrificial system, as

a thing of mere human device and destitute of divine sanction. But

the Book of the Covenant surely existed in their day, with its

command: “_An altar of earth shalt thou make unto me, and shalt

sacrifice thereon thy burnt-offerings_” (_Ex. 20:24_). Or, if it

is maintained that Isaiah condemned even that early piece of

legislation, it proves too much, for it would make the prophet

also condemn the Sabbath as a piece of will-worship, and even

reject prayer as displeasing to God, since in the same connection

he says: “_new moon and Sabbath ... I cannot away with ... when ye

spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you_” (_Is.

1:13-15_). Isaiah was condemning simply _heartless_ sacrifice;

else we make him condemn all that went on at the temple. _Micah

6:8_—“_what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly?_” This

does not exclude the offering of sacrifice, for Micah anticipates

the time when “_the mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be

established on the top of the mountains, ... And many nations

shall go and say, Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of

Jehovah_” (_Micah 4:1, 2_). _Hos. 6:6_—“_I desire goodness, and

not sacrifice,_” is interpreted by what follows, “_and the

knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings_.” Compare _Prov. 8:10;

17:12_; and Samuel’s words: “_to obey is better than sacrifice_”

(_1 Sam. 15:22_). What was the altar from which Isaiah drew his

description of God’s theophany and from which was taken the live

coal that touched his lips and prepared him to be a prophet? (_Is.

6:1-8). Jer. 7:22_—“_I spake not ... concerning burnt-offerings or

sacrifices ... but this thing ... Hearken unto my voice._”

Jeremiah insists only on the worthlessness of sacrifice where

there is no heart.

(_d_) Thus the Old Testament sacrifices, when rightly offered, involved a

consciousness of sin on the part of the worshiper, the bringing of a

victim to atone for the sin, the laying of the hand of the offerer upon

the victim’s head, the confession of sin by the offerer, the slaying of

the beast, the sprinkling or pouring-out of the blood upon the altar, and

the consequent forgiveness of the sin and acceptance of the worshiper. The

sin-offering and the scape-goat of the great day of atonement symbolized

yet more distinctly the two elementary ideas of sacrifice, namely,

satisfaction and substitution, together with the consequent removal of

guilt from those on whose behalf the sacrifice was offered.

_Lev. 1:4_—“_And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the

burnt-offering; and it shall be accepted for him, to make

atonement for him_”; _4:20_—“_Thus shall he do with the bullock;

as he did with the bullock of the sin-offering, so shall he do

with this; and the priest shall make atonement for them, and they

shall be forgiven_”; so _31_ and _35_—“_and the priest shall make

atonement for him as touching his sin that he hath sinned, and he

shall be forgiven_”; so _5:10, 16_; _6:7_. _Lev. 17:11_—“_For the

life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon

the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood

that maketh atonement by reason of the life._”

The patriarchal sacrifices were sin-offerings, as the sacrifice of

Job for his friends witnesses: _Job 42:7-9_—“_My wrath is kindled

against thee_ [Eliphaz] _... therefore, take unto you seven

bullocks ... and offer up for yourselves a burnt-offering_”; _cf._

_33:24_—“_Then God is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him

from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom_”; _1:5_—Job

offered burnt-offerings for his sons, for he said, “_It may be

that my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their hearts_”;

_Gen. 8:20_—Noah “_offered burnt-offerings on the altar_”;

_21_—“_and Jehovah smelled the sweet savor; and Jehovah said in

his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s

sake._”

That vicarious suffering is intended in all these sacrifices, is

plain from _Lev. 16:1-34_—the account of the sin-offering and the

scape-goat of the great day of atonement, the full meaning of

which we give below; also from _Gen. 22:13_—“_Abraham went and

took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead

of his son_”; _Ex. 32:30-32_—where Moses says: “_Ye have sinned a

great sin: and now I will go up unto Jehovah; peradventure I shall

make atonement for your sin. And Moses returned unto Jehovah, and

said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them

gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if

not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast

written._” See also _Deut. 21:1-9_—the expiation of an uncertain

murder, by the sacrifice of a heifer,—where Oehler, O. T.

Theology, 1:389, says: “Evidently the punishment of death incurred

by the manslayer is executed symbolically upon the heifer.” In

_Is. 53:1-12_—“_All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned

every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the

iniquity of us all ... stripes ... offering for sin_”—the ideas of

both satisfaction and substitution are still more plain.

Wallace, Representative Responsibility: “The animals offered in

sacrifice must be animals brought into direct relation to man,

subject to him, his property. They could not be spoils of the

chase. They must bear the mark and impress of humanity. Upon the

sacrifice human hands must be laid—the hands of the offerer and

the hands of the priest. The offering is the substitute of the

offerer. The priest is the substitute of the offerer. The priest

and the sacrifice were _one symbol_. [Hence, in the new

dispensation, the priest and the sacrifice are one—both are found

in Christ.] The high priest must enter the holy of holies with his

own finger dipped in blood: the blood must be in contact with his

own person,—another indication of the identification of the two.

Life is nourished and sustained by life. All life lower than man

may be sacrificed for the good of man. The blood must be spilled

on the ground. ‘_In the blood is the life._’ The life is reserved

by God. It is given _for_ man, but not _to_ him. Life for life is

the law of the creation. So the life of Christ, also, for _our_

life.—Adam was originally priest of the family and of the race.

But he lost his representative character by the one act of

disobedience, and his redemption was that of the individual, not

that of the race. The race ceased to have a representative. The

subjects of the divine government were henceforth to be, not the

natural offspring of Adam as such, but the redeemed. That the body

and the blood are both required, indicates the demand that the

death should be by a violence that sheds blood. The sacrifices

showed forth, not Christ himself [his character, his life], but

Christ’s death.”

This following is a tentative scheme of the JEWISH SACRIFICES. The

general reason for sacrifice is expressed in _Lev. 17:11_ (quoted

above). I. _For the individual_: 1. The sin-offering = sacrifice

to expiate sins of ignorance (thoughtlessness and plausible

temptation): _Lev. 4:14, 20, 31_. 2. The trespass-offering =

sacrifice to expiate sins of omission: _Lev. 5:5, 6_. 3. The

burnt-offering = sacrifice to expiate general sinfulness: _Lev.

1:3_ (the offering of Mary, _Luke 2:24_). II. _For the family_:

The Passover: _Ex. 12:27_. III. _For the people_: 1. The daily

morning and evening sacrifice: _Ex. 29:38-46_. 2. The offering of

the great day of atonement: _Lev. 16:6-10_. In this last, two

victims were employed, one to represent the means—death, and the

other to represent the result—forgiveness. One victim could not

represent both the atonement—by shedding of blood, and the

justification—by putting away sin.

Jesus died for our sins at the Passover feast and at the hour of

daily sacrifice. McLaren, in S. S. Times, Nov. 30,

1901:801—“Shedding of blood and consequent safety were only a part

of the teaching of the Passover. There is a double identification

of the person offering with his sacrifice: first, in that he

offers it as his representative, laying his hand on its head, or

otherwise transferring his personality, as it were, to it; and

secondly, in that, receiving it back again from God to whom he

gave it, he feeds on it, so making it part of his life and

nourishing himself thereby: ‘_My flesh ... which I will give ...

for the life of the world ... he that eateth me, he also shall

live because of me_’ (_John 6:51, 57_).”

Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1892:22-34—On the great

day of atonement “the double offering—one for Jehovah and the

other for Azazel—typified not only the removing of the guilt of

the people, but its transfer to the odious and detestable being

who was the first cause of its existence,” _i. e._, Satan.

Lidgett, Spir. Principle of the Atonement, 112, 113—“It was not

the punishment which the goat bore away into the wilderness, for

the idea of punishment is not directly associated with the

scapegoat. It bears the sin—the whole unfaithfulness of the

community which had defiled the holy places—out from them, so that

henceforth they may be pure.... The sin-offering—representing the

sinner by receiving the burden of his sin—makes expiation by

yielding up and yielding back its life to God, under conditions

which represent at once the wrath and the placability of God.”

On the Jewish sacrifices, see Fairbairn, Typology, 1:209-223;

Wünsche, Die Leiden des Messias; Jukes, O. T. Sacrifices; Smeaton,

Apostle’s Doctrine of Atonement, 25-53; Kurtz, Sacrificial Worship

of O. T., 120; Bible Com., 1:502-508, and Introd. to Leviticus;

Candlish on Atonement, 123-142; Weber, Vom Zorne Gottes, 161-180.

On passages in Leviticus, see Com. of Knobel, in Exeg. Handb. d.

Alt. Test.

(_e_) It is not essential to this view to maintain that a formal divine

institution of the rite of sacrifice, at man’s expulsion from Eden, can be

proved from Scripture. Like the family and the state, sacrifice may,

without such formal inculcation, possess divine sanction, and be ordained

of God. The well-nigh universal prevalence of sacrifice, however, together

with the fact that its nature, as a bloody offering, seems to preclude

man’s own invention of it, combines with certain Scripture intimations to

favor the view that it was a primitive divine appointment. From the time

of Moses, there can be no question as to its divine authority.

Compare the origin of prayer and worship, for which we find no

formal divine injunctions at the beginnings of history. _Heb.

11:4_—“_By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice

than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was

righteous, God bearing witness in respect of his gifts_”—here it

may be argued that since Abel’s faith was not presumption, it must

have had some injunction and promise of God to base itself upon.

_Gen. 4:3, 4_—“_Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an

offering unto Jehovah. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings

of his flock and of the fat thereof. And Jehovah had respect unto

Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had

not respect._”

It has been urged, in corroboration of this view, that the

previous existence of sacrifice is intimated in _Gen. 3:21_—“_And

Jehovah God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and

clothed them._” Since the killing of animals for food was not

permitted until long afterwards (_Gen. 9:3_—to Noah: “_Every

moving thing that liveth shall be food for you_”), the inference

has been drawn, that the skins with which God clothed our first

parents were the skins of animals slain for sacrifice,—this

clothing furnishing a type of the righteousness of Christ which

secures our restoration to God’s favor, as the death of the

victims furnished a type of the suffering of Christ which secures

for us remission of punishment. We must regard this, however, as a

pleasing and possibly correct hypothesis, rather than as a

demonstrated truth of Scripture. Since the unperverted instincts

of human nature are an expression of God’s will, Abel’s faith may

have consisted in trusting these, rather than the promptings of

selfishness and self-righteousness. The death of animals in

sacrifice, like the death of Christ which it signified, was only

the hastening of what belonged to them because of their connection

with human sin. Faith recognized this connection. On the divine

appointment of sacrifice, see Park, in Bib. Sac., Jan.

1876:102-132. Westcott, Hebrews, 281—“There is no reason to think

that sacrifice was instituted in obedience to a direct

revelation.... It is mentioned in Scripture at first as natural

and known. It was practically universal in prechristian times....

In due time the popular practice of sacrifice was regulated by

revelation as disciplinary, and also used as a vehicle for typical

teaching.” We prefer to say that sacrifice probably originated in

a fundamental instinct of humanity, and was therefore a divine

ordinance as much as were marriage and government.

On _Gen. 4:3, 4_, see C. H. M.—“The entire difference between Cain

and Abel lay, not in their natures, but in their sacrifices. Cain

brought to God the sin-stained fruit of a cursed earth. Here was

no recognition of the fact that he was a sinner, condemned to

death. All his toil could not satisfy God’s holiness, or remove

the penalty. But Abel recognized his sin, condemnation,

helplessness, death, and brought the bloody sacrifice—the

sacrifice of another—the sacrifice provided by God, to meet the

claims of God. He found a substitute, and he presented it in

faith—the faith that looks away from self to Christ, or God’s

appointed way of salvation. The difference was not in their

persons, but in their gifts. Of Abel it is said, that God ‘_bore

witness in respect of his gifts_’ (_Heb. 11:4_). To Cain it is

said, ‘_if thou doest well_ (LXX.: ὀρθῶς προσενένκης—_if thou

offerest correctly_) _shalt thou not be accepted?_’ But Cain

desired to get away from God and from God’s way, and to lose

himself in the world. This is ‘_the way of Cain_’ (_Jude 11_).”

_Per contra_, see Crawford, Atonement, 259—“Both in Levitical and

patriarchal times, we have no formal institution of sacrifice, but

the regulation of sacrifice already existing. But Abel’s faith may

have had respect, not to a revelation with regard to sacrificial

worship, but with regard to the promised Redeemer; and his

sacrifice may have expressed that faith. If so, God’s acceptance

of it gave a divine warrant to future sacrifices. It was not

will-worship, because it was not substituted for some other

worship which God had previously instituted. It is not necessary

to suppose that God gave an expressed command. Abel may have been

moved by some inward divine monition. Thus Adam said to Eve,

‘_This is now bone of my bones...._’ (_Gen. 2:23_), before any

divine command of marriage. No fruits were presented during the

patriarchal dispensation. Heathen sacrifices were corruptions of

primitive sacrifice.” Von Lasaulx, Die Sühnopfer der Griechen und

Römer, und ihr Verhältniss zu dem einen auf Golgotha, 1—“The first

word of the _original_ man was probably a prayer, the first action

of _fallen_ man a sacrifice”; see translation in Bib. Sac., 1:

368-408. Bishop Butler: “By the general prevalence of propitiatory

sacrifices over the heathen world, the notion of repentance alone

being sufficient to expiate guilt appears to be contrary to the

general sense of mankind.”

(_f_) The New Testament assumes and presupposes the Old Testament doctrine

of sacrifice. The sacrificial language in which its descriptions of

Christ’s work are clothed cannot be explained as an accommodation to

Jewish methods of thought, since this terminology was in large part in

common use among the heathen, and Paul used it more than any other of the

apostles in dealing with the Gentiles. To deny to it its Old Testament

meaning, when used by New Testament writers to describe the work of

Christ, is to deny any proper inspiration both in the Mosaic appointment

of sacrifices and in the apostolic interpretations of them. We must

therefore maintain, as the result of a simple induction of Scripture

facts, that the death of Christ is a vicarious offering, provided by God’s

love for the purpose of satisfying an internal demand of the divine

holiness, and of removing an obstacle in the divine mind to the renewal

and pardon of sinners.

“The epistle of James makes no allusion to sacrifice. But he would

not have failed to allude to it, if he had held the moral view of

the atonement; for it would then have been an obvious help to his

argument against merely formal service. Christ protested against

washing hands and keeping Sabbath days. If sacrifice had been a

piece of human formality, how indignantly would he have inveighed

against it! But instead of this he received from John the Baptist,

without rebuke, the words: ‘_Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh

away the sin of the world_’ (_John 1:29_).”

A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 247—“The sacrifices of bulls and

goats were like token-money, as our paper-promises to pay,

accepted at their face-value till the day of settlement. But the

sacrifice of Christ was the gold which absolutely extinguished all

debt by its intrinsic value. Hence, when Christ died, the veil

that separated man from God was rent from the top to the bottom by

supernatural hands. When the real expiation was finished, the

whole symbolical system representing it became _functum officio_,

and was abolished. Soon after this, the temple was razed to the

ground, and the ritual was rendered forever impossible.”

For denial that Christ’s death is to be interpreted by heathen or

Jewish sacrifices, see Maurice on Sac., 154—“The heathen

signification of words, when applied to a Christian use, must be

not merely modified, but inverted”; Jowett, Epistles of St. Paul,

2:479—“The heathen and Jewish sacrifices rather show us what the

sacrifice of Christ was not, than what it was.” Bushnell and Young

do not doubt the expiatory nature of heathen sacrifices. But the

main terms which the N. T. uses to describe Christ’s sacrifice are

borrowed from the Greek sacrificial ritual, _e. g._, θυσία,

προσφορά, ἰλασμός, ἁγιάζω, καθαίρω, ἰλάσκομαι. To deny that these

terms, when applied to Christ, imply expiation and substitution,

is to deny the inspiration of those who used them. See Cave,

Scripture Doctrine of Sacrifice; art. on Sacrifice, in Smith’s

Bible Dictionary.

With all these indications of our dissent from the modern denial

of expiatory sacrifice, we deem it desirable by way of contrast to

present the clearest possible statement of the view from which we

dissent. This may be found in Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion,

1:238, 260, 261—“The gradual distinction of the moral from the

ceremonial, the repression and ultimate replacement of ceremonial

expiation by the moral purification of the sense and life, and

consequently the transformation of the mystical conception of

redemption into the corresponding ethical conception of education,

may be designated as the kernel and the teleological principle of

the development of the history of religion.... But to Paul the

question in what sense the death of the Cross could be the means

of the Messianic redemption found its answer simply from the

presuppositions of the Pharisaic theology, which beheld in the

innocent suffering, and especially in the martyr-death, of the

righteous, an expiatory means compensating for the sins of the

whole people. What would be more natural than that Paul should

contemplate the death on the Cross in the same way, as an

expiatory means of salvation for the redemption of the sinful

world?

“We are thus led to see in this theory the symbolical presentment

of the truth that the new man suffers, as it were, vicariously,

for the old man; for he takes upon himself the daily pain of

self-subjugation, and bears guiltlessly in patience the evils

which the old man could not but necessarily impute to himself as

punishment. Therefore as Christ is the exemplification of the

moral idea of man, so his death is the symbol of that moral

process of painful self-subjugation in obedience and patience, in

which the true inner redemption of man consists.... In like manner

Fichte said that the only proper means of salvation is the death

of selfhood, death _with_ Jesus, regeneration.

“The defect in the Kant-Fichtean doctrine of redemption consisted

in this, that it limited the process of ethical transformation to

the individual, and endeavored to explain it from his subjective

reason and freedom alone. How could the individual deliver himself

from his powerlessness and become free? This question was

unsolved. The Christian doctrine of redemption is that the moral

liberation of the individual is not the effect of his own natural

power, but the effect of the divine Spirit, who, from the

beginning of human history, put forth his activity as the power

educating to the good, and especially has created for himself in

the Christian community a permanent organ for the education of the

people and of individuals. It was the moral individualism of Kant

which prevented him from finding in the historically realized

common spirit of the good the real force available for the

individual becoming good.”

C. Theories of the Atonement.

1st. The Socinian, or Example Theory of the Atonement.

This theory holds that subjective sinfulness is the sole barrier between

man and God. Not God, but only man, needs to be reconciled. The only

method of reconciliation is to better man’s moral condition. This can be

effected by man’s own will, through repentance and reformation. The death

of Christ is but the death of a noble martyr. He redeems us, only as his

human example of faithfulness to truth and duty has a powerful influence

upon our moral improvement. This fact the apostles, either consciously or

unconsciously, clothed in the language of the Greek and Jewish sacrifices.

This theory was fully elaborated by Lælius Socinus and Faustus Socinus of

Poland, in the 16th century. Its modern advocates are found in the

Unitarian body.

The Socinian theory may be found stated, and advocated, in

Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, 1:566-600; Martineau, Studies of

Christianity, 83-176; J. F. Clarke, Orthodoxy, Its Truths and

Errors, 235-265; Ellis, Unitarianism and Orthodoxy; Sheldon, Sin

and Redemption, 146-210. The text which at first sight most seems

to favor this view is _1 Pet 2:21_—“_Christ also suffered for you,

leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps._” But see

under (_e_) below. When Correggio saw Raphael’s picture of St.

Cecilia, he exclaimed: “I too am a painter.” So Socinus held that

Christ’s example roused our humanity to imitation. He regarded

expiation as heathenish and impossible; every one must receive

according to his deeds; God is ready to grant forgiveness on

simple repentance.

E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 277—“The theory first insists

on the inviolability of moral sequences in the conduct of every

moral agent; and then insists that, on a given condition, the

consequences of transgression may be arrested by almighty fiat....

Unitarianism errs in giving a transforming power to that which

works beneficently only after the transformation has been

wrought.” In ascribing to human nature a power of

self-reformation, it ignores man’s need of regeneration by the

Holy Spirit. But even this renewing work of the Holy Spirit

presupposes the atoning work of Christ. “_Ye must be born anew_”

(_John 3:7_) necessitates “_Even so must the Son of man be lifted

up_” (_John 3:14_). It is only the Cross that satisfies man’s

instinct of reparation. Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums,

99—“Those who regarded Christ’s death soon ceased to bring any

other bloody offering to God. This is true both in Judaism and in

heathenism. Christ’s death put an end to all bloody offerings in

religious history. The impulse to sacrifice found its satisfaction

in the Cross of Christ.” We regard this as proof that the Cross is

essentially a satisfaction to the divine justice, and not a mere

example of faithfulness to duty. The Socinian theory is the first

of six theories of the Atonement, which roughly correspond with

our six previously treated theories of sin, and this first theory

includes most of the false doctrine which appears in mitigated

forms in several of the theories following.

To this theory we make the following objections:

(_a_) It is based upon false philosophical principles,—as, for example,

that will is merely the faculty of volitions; that the foundation of

virtue is in utility; that law is an expression of arbitrary will; that

penalty is a means of reforming the offender; that righteousness, in

either God or man, is only a manifestation of benevolence.

If the will is simply the faculty of volitions, and not also the

fundamental determination of the being to an ultimate end, then

man can, by a single volition, effect his own reformation and

reconciliation to God. If the foundation of virtue is in utility,

then there is nothing in the divine being that prevents pardon,

the good of the creature, and not the demands of God’s holiness,

being the reason for Christ’s suffering. If law is an expression

of arbitrary will, instead of being a transcript of the divine

nature, it may at any time be dispensed with, and the sinner may

be pardoned on mere repentance. If penalty is merely a means of

reforming the offender, then sin does not involve objective guilt,

or obligation to suffer, and sin may be forgiven, at any moment,

to all who forsake it,—indeed, _must_ be forgiven, since

punishment is out of place when the sinner is reformed. If

righteousness is only a form or manifestation of benevolence, then

God can show his benevolence as easily through pardon as through

penalty, and Christ’s death is only intended to attract us toward

the good by the force of a noble example.

Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:218-264, is essentially Socinian in

his view of Jesus’ death. Yet he ascribes to Jesus the idea that

suffering is _necessary_, even for one who stands in perfect love

and blessed fellowship with God, since earthly blessedness is not

the true blessedness, and since a true piety is impossible without

renunciation and stooping to minister to others. The earthly

life-sacrifice of the Messiah was his necessary and greatest act,

and was the culminating point of his teaching. Suffering made him

a perfect example, and so ensured the success of his work. But why

God should have made it necessary that the holiest must suffer,

Wendt does not explain. This constitution of things we can

understand only as a revelation of the holiness of God, and of his

punitive relation to human sin. Simon, Reconciliation, 357, shows

well that example might have sufficed for a race that merely

needed leadership. But what the race needed most was energizing,

the fulfilment of the conditions of restoration to God on their

behalf by one of themselves, by one whose very essence they

shared, who created them, in whom they consisted, and whose work

was therefore their work. Christ condemned with the divine

condemnation the thoughts and impulses arising from his

subconscious life. Before the sin, which for the moment seemed to

be his, could become his, he condemned it. He sympathized with,

nay, he revealed, the very justice and sorrow of God. _Hebrews

2:16-18_—“_For verily not to angels doth he give help, but he

giveth help to the seed of Abraham. Wherefore it behooved him in

all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might become

a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God,

to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that he

himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them

that are tempted._”

(_b_) It is a natural outgrowth from the Pelagian view of sin, and

logically necessitates a curtailment or surrender of every other

characteristic doctrine of Christianity—inspiration, sin, the deity of

Christ, justification, regeneration, and eternal retribution.

The Socinian theory requires a surrender of the doctrine of

inspiration; for the idea of vicarious and expiatory sacrifice is

woven into the very warp and woof of the Old and New Testaments.

It requires an abandonment of the Scripture doctrine of sin; for

in it all idea of sin as perversion of nature rendering the sinner

unable to save himself, and as objective guilt demanding

satisfaction to the divine holiness, is denied. It requires us to

give up the deity of Christ; for if sin is a slight evil, and man

can save himself from its penalty and power, then there is no

longer need of either an infinite suffering or an infinite Savior,

and a human Christ is as good as a divine. It requires us to give

up the Scripture doctrine of justification, as God’s act of

declaring the sinner just in the eye of the law, solely on account

of the righteousness and death of Christ to whom he is united by

faith; for the Socinian theory cannot permit the counting to a man

of any other righteousness than his own. It requires a denial of

the doctrine of regeneration; for this is no longer the work of

God, but the work of the sinner; it is no longer a change of the

affections below consciousness, but a self-reforming volition of

the sinner himself. It requires a denial of eternal retribution;

for this is no longer appropriate to finite transgression of

arbitrary law, and to superficial sinning that does not involve

nature.