guilt as well as subjective defilement; that the holiness of God must
punish sin; that the atonement was a bearing of the punishment of sin for
men; and that this vicarious bearing of punishment was necessary, on the
part of God, to make possible the showing of favor to the guilty.
The Scriptures do not make the main object of the atonement to be
man’s subjective moral improvement. It is to God that the
sacrifice is offered, and the object of it is to satisfy the
divine holiness, and to remove from the divine mind an obstacle to
the showing of favor to the guilty. It was something external to
man and his happiness or virtue, that required that Christ should
suffer. What Emerson has said of the martyr is yet more true of
Christ: “Though love repine, and reason chafe, There comes a voice
without reply, ’Tis man’s perdition to be safe, When for the truth
he ought to die.” The truth for which Christ died was truth
internal to the nature of God; not simply truth externalized and
published among men. What the truth of God required, that Christ
rendered—full satisfaction to violated justice. “Jesus paid it
all”; and no obedience or righteousness of ours can be added to
his work, as a ground of our salvation.
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 276—“This theory fails of a
due recognition of that deep-seated, universal and innate sense of
ill-desert, which in all times and everywhere has prompted men to
aim at some expiation of their guilt. For this sense of guilt and
its requirements the moral influence theory makes no adequate
provision, either in Christ or in those whom Christ saves.
Supposing Christ’s redemptive work to consist merely in winning
men to the practice of righteousness, it takes no account of
penalty, either as the sanction of the law, as the reaction of the
divine holiness against sin, or as the upbraiding of the
individual conscience.... The Socinian theory overlooks the fact
that there must be some objective manifestation of God’s wrath and
displeasure against sin.”
(_d_) It furnishes no proper explanation of the sufferings and death of
Christ. The unmartyrlike anguish cannot be accounted for, and the
forsaking by the Father cannot be justified, upon the hypothesis that
Christ died as a mere witness to truth. If Christ’s sufferings were not
propitiatory, they neither furnish us with a perfect example, nor
constitute a manifestation of the love of God.
Compare Jesus’ feeling, in view of death, with that of Paul:
“_having the desire to depart_” (_Phil 1:23_). Jesus was filled
with anguish: “_Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?
Father, save me from this hour_” (_John 12:27_). If Christ was
simply a martyr, then he is not a perfect example; for many a
martyr has shown greater courage in prospect of death, and in the
final agony has been able to say that the fire that consumed him
was “a bed of roses.” Gethsemane, with its mental anguish, is
apparently recorded in order to indicate that Christ’s sufferings
even on the cross were not mainly physical sufferings. The Roman
Catholic Church unduly emphasizes the physical side of our Lord’s
passion, but loses sight of its spiritual element. The Christ of
Rome indeed is either a babe or dead, and the crucifix presents to
us not a risen and living Redeemer, but a mangled and lifeless
body.
Stroud, in his Physical Cause of our Lord’s Death, has made it
probable that Jesus died of a broken heart, and that this alone
explains _John 19:34_—“_one of the soldiers with a spear pierced
his side, and straightway there came out blood and water_”—_i.
e._, the heart had already been ruptured by grief. That grief was
grief at the forsaking of the Father (_Mat. 27:46_—“_My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?_”), and the resulting death shows
that that forsaking was no imaginary one. Did God make the holiest
man of all to be the greatest sufferer of all the ages? This heart
broken by the forsaking of the Father means more than martyrdom.
If Christ’s death is not propitiatory, it fills me with terror and
despair; for it presents me not only with a very imperfect example
in Christ, but with a proof of measureless injustice on the part
of God. _Luke 23:28_—“_weep not for me, but weep for
yourselves_”—Jesus rejects all pity that forgets his suffering for
others.
To the above view of Stroud, Westcott objects that blood does not
readily flow from an ordinary corpse. The separation of the red
corpuscles of the blood from the serum, or water, would be the
beginning of decomposition, and would be inconsistent with the
statement in _Acts 2:31_—“_neither did his flesh see corruption._”
But Dr. W. W. Keen of Philadelphia, in his article on The Bloody
Sweat of our Lord (Bib. Sac., July, 1897:469-484) endorses
Stroud’s view as to the physical cause of our Lord’s death.
Christ’s being forsaken by the Father was only the culmination of
that relative withdrawal which constituted the source of Christ’s
loneliness through life. Through life he was a servant of the
Spirit. On the cross the Spirit left him to the weakness of
unassisted humanity, destitute of conscious divine resources.
Compare the curious reading of _Heb. 2:9_—“_that he apart from
God_ (χωρὶς Θεοῦ) _should taste death for every man._”
If Christ merely supposed himself to be deserted by God, “not only
does Christ become an erring man, and, so far as the predicate
deity is applicable to him, an erring God; but, if he cherished
unfounded distrust of God, how can it be possible still to
maintain that his will was in abiding, perfect agreement and
identity with the will of God?” See Kant, Lotze, and Ritschl, by
Stählin, 219. Charles C. Everett, Gospel of Paul, says Jesus was
not crucified because he was accursed, but he was accursed because
he was crucified, so that, in wreaking vengeance upon him, Jewish
law abrogated itself. This interpretation however contradicts _2
Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our
behalf_”—where the divine identification of Christ with the race
of sinners antedates and explains his sufferings. _John
1:29_—“_the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the
world_”—does not refer to Jesus as a lamb for gentleness, but as a
lamb for sacrifice. Maclaren: “How does Christ’s death prove God’s
love? Only on one supposition, namely, that Christ is the
incarnate Son of God, sent by the Father’s love and being his
express image”; and, we may add, suffering vicariously for us and
removing the obstacle in God’s mind to our pardon.
(_e_) The influence of Christ’s example is neither declared in Scripture,
nor found in Christian experience, to be the chief result secured by his
death. Mere example is but a new preaching of the law, which repels and
condemns. The cross has power to lead men to holiness, only as it first
shows a satisfaction made for their sins. Accordingly, most of the
passages which represent Christ as an example also contain references to
his propitiatory work.
There is no virtue in simply setting an example. Christ did
nothing, simply for the sake of example. Even his baptism was the
symbol of his propitiatory death; see pages 761, 762. The
apostle’s exhortation is not “abstain from all _appearance_ of
evil” (_1 Thess. 5:22_, A. Vers.), but “_abstain from every form
of evil_” (Rev. Vers.). Christ’s death is the payment of a real
debt due to God; and the convicted sinner needs first to see the
debt which he owes to the divine justice paid by Christ, before he
can think hopefully of reforming his life. The hymns of the
church: “I lay my sins on Jesus,” and “Not all the blood of
beasts,” represent the view of Christ’s sufferings which
Christians have derived from the Scriptures. When the sinner sees
that the mortgage is cancelled, that the penalty has been borne,
he can devote himself freely to the service of his Redeemer. _Rev.
12:11_—“_they overcame him_ [Satan] _because of the blood of the
Lamb_”—as Christ overcame Satan by his propitiatory sacrifice, so
we overcome by appropriating to ourselves Christ’s atonement and
his Spirit; _cf._ _1 John 5:4_—“_this is the victory that hath
overcome the world, even our faith._” The very text upon which
Socinians most rely, when it is taken in connection with the
context, proves their theory to be a misrepresentation of
Scripture, _1 Pet. 2:21_—“_Christ also suffered for you, leaving
you an example, that ye should follow his steps_”—is succeeded by
_verse 24_—“_who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the
tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto
righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed_”—the latter words
being a direct quotation from Isaiah’s description of the
substitutionary sufferings of the Messiah (_Is. 53:5_).
When a deeply convicted sinner was told that God could cleanse his
heart and make him over anew, he replied with righteous
impatience: “That is not what I want,—I have a debt to pay first!”
A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 28, 89—“Nowhere in
tabernacle or temple shall we ever find the laver placed before
the altar. The altar is Calvary, and the laver is Pentecost,—one
stands for the sacrificial blood, the other for the sanctifying
Spirit.... So the oil which symbolised the sanctifying Spirit was
always put ‘_upon the blood of the trespass-offering_’ (_Lev.
14:17_).” The extremity of Christ’s suffering on the Cross was
coincident with the extremest manifestation of the guilt of the
race. The greatness of this he theoretically knew from the
beginning of his ministry. His baptism was not intended merely to
set an example. It was a recognition that sin deserved death; that
he was numbered with the transgressors; that he was sent to die
for the sin of the world. He was not so much a teacher, as he was
the subject of all teaching. In him the great suffering of the
holy God on account of sin is exhibited to the universe. The pain
of a few brief hours saves a world, only because it sets forth an
eternal fact in God’s being and opens to us God’s very heart.
Shakespeare, Henry V, 4:1—“There is some soul of goodness in
things evil. Would men observingly distil it out.” It is well to
preach on Christ as an example. Lyman Abbott says that Jesus’
blood purchases our pardon and redeems us to God, just as a
patriot’s blood redeems his country from servitude and purchases
its liberty. But even Ritschl, Just. and Recon., 2, goes beyond
this, when he says: “Those who advocate the example theory should
remember that Jesus withdraws himself from imitation when he sets
himself over against his disciples as the Author of forgiveness.
And they perceive that pardon must first be appropriated, before
it is possible for them to imitate his piety and moral
achievement.” This is a partial recognition of the truth that the
removal of objective guilt by Christ’s atonement must precede the
removal of subjective defilement by Christ’s regenerating and
sanctifying Spirit. Lidgett, Spir. Princ. of Atonement, 265-280,
shows that there is a fatherly demand for satisfaction, which must
be met by the filial response of the child. Thomas Chalmers at the
beginning of his ministry urged on his people the reformation of
their lives. But he confesses: “I never heard of any such
reformations being effected amongst them.” Only when he preached
the alienation of men from God, and forgiveness through the blood
of Christ, did he hear of their betterment.
Gordon, Christ of To-day, 129—“The consciousness of sin is largely
the creation of Christ.” Men like Paul, Luther, and Edwards show
this impressively. Foster, Christian life and Theology,
198-201—“There is of course a sense in which the Christian must
imitate Christ’s death, for he is to ‘_take up his cross daily_’
(_Luke 9:23_) and follow his Master; but in its highest meaning
and fullest scope the death of Christ is no more an object set for
our imitation than is the creation of the world.... Christ does
for man in his sacrifice what man could not do for himself. We see
in the Cross: 1. the magnitude of the guilt of sin; 2. our own
self-condemnation; 3. the adequate remedy,—for the object of law
is gained in the display of righteousness; 4. the objective ground
of forgiveness.” Maclaren: “Christianity without a dying Christ is
a dying Christianity.”
(_f_) This theory contradicts the whole tenor of the New Testament, in
making the life, and not the death, of Christ the most significant and
important feature of his work. The constant allusions to the death of
Christ as the source of our salvation, as well as the symbolism of the
ordinances, cannot be explained upon a theory which regards Christ as a
mere example, and considers his sufferings as incidents, rather than
essentials, of his work.
Dr. H. B. Hackett frequently called attention to the fact that the
recording in the gospels of only three years of Jesus’ life, and
the prominence given in the record to the closing scenes of that
life, are evidence that not his life, but his death, was the great
work of our Lord. Christ’s death, and not his life, is the central
truth of Christianity. The cross is _par excellence_ the Christian
symbol. In both the ordinances—in Baptism as well as in the Lord’s
Supper—it is the death of Christ that is primarily set forth.
Neither Christ’s example, nor his teaching, reveals God as does
his death. It is the death of Christ that links together all
Christian doctrines. The mark of Christ’s blood is upon them all,
as the scarlet thread running through every cord and rope of the
British navy gives sign that it is the property of the crown.
Did Jesus’ death have no other relation to our salvation than
Paul’s death had? Paul was a martyr, but his death is not even
recorded. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 92—“Paul does not dwell in any
way upon the life or work of our Lord, except as they are involved
in his death and resurrection.” What did Jesus’ words: “_It is
finished_” (_John 19:30_) mean? What was finished on the Socinian
theory? The Socinian salvation had not yet begun. Why did not
Jesus make the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper to be
memorials of his birth, rather than of his death? Why was not the
veil of the temple rent at his baptism, or at the Sermon on the
Mount? It was because only his death opened the way to God. In
talking with Nicodemus, Jesus brushed aside the complimentary:
“_we know that thou art a teacher come from God_” (_John 3:2_).
Recognizing Jesus as teacher is not enough. There must be a
renewal by the Spirit of God, so that one recognizes also the
lifting up of the Son of man as atoning Savior (_John 3:14, 15_).
And to Peter, Jesus said: “_If I wash thee not, thou hast no part
with me_” (_John 13:8_). One cannot have part with Christ as
Teacher, while one rejects him as Redeemer from sin. On the
Socinian doctrine of the Atonement, see Crawford, Atonement,
279-296; Shedd, History of Doctrine, 2:376-386; Doctrines of the
Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:156-180; Fock, Socinianismus.
2nd. The Bushnellian, or Moral Influence Theory of the Atonement.
This holds, like the Socinian, that there is no principle of the divine
nature which is propitiated by Christ’s death; but that this death is a
manifestation of the love of God, suffering in and with the sins of his
creatures. Christ’s atonement, therefore, is the merely natural
consequence of his taking human nature upon him; and is a suffering, not
of penalty in man’s stead, but of the combined woes and griefs which the
living of a human life involves. This atonement has effect, not to satisfy
divine justice, but so to reveal divine love as to soften human hearts and
to lead them to repentance; in other words, Christ’s sufferings were
necessary, not in order to remove an obstacle to the pardon of sinners
which exists in the mind of God, but in order to convince sinners that
there exists no such obstacle. This theory, for substance, has been
advocated by Bushnell, in America; by Robertson, Maurice, Campbell, and
Young, in Great Britain; by Schleiermacher and Ritschl, in Germany.
Origen and Abelard are earlier representatives of this view. It
may be found stated in Bushnell’s Vicarious Sacrifice. Bushnell’s
later work, Forgiveness and Law, contains a modification of his
earlier doctrine, to which he was driven by the criticisms upon
his Vicarious Sacrifice. In the later work, he acknowledges what
he had so strenuously denied in the earlier, namely, that Christ’s
death has effect upon God as well as upon man, and that God cannot
forgive without thus “making cost to himself.” He makes open
confession of the impotence of his former teaching to convert
sinners, and, as the only efficient homiletic, he recommends the
preaching of the very doctrine of propitiatory sacrifice which he
had written his book to supersede. Even in Forgiveness and Law,
however, there is no recognition of the true principle and ground
of the Atonement in God’s punitive holiness. Since the original
form of Bushnell’s doctrine is the only one which has met with
wide acceptance, we direct our objections mainly to this.
F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 1:163-178, holds that Christ’s
sufferings were the necessary result of the position in which he
had placed himself of conflict or collision with the evil that is
in the world. He came in contact with the whirling wheel, and was
crushed by it; he planted his heel upon the cockatrice’s den, and
was pierced by its fang. Maurice, on Sacrifice, 209, and Theol.
Essays, 141, 228, regards Christ’s sufferings as an illustration,
given by the ideal man, of the self-sacrifice due to God from the
humanity of which he is the root and head, all men being redeemed
in him, irrespective of their faith, and needing only to have
brought to them the news of this redemption. Young, Life and Light
of Men, holds a view essentially the same with Robertson’s.
Christ’s death is the necessary result of his collision with evil,
and his sufferings extirpate sin, simply by manifesting God’s
self-sacrificing love,
Campbell, Atonement, 129-191, quotes from Edwards, to show that
infinite justice might be satisfied in either one of two ways: (1)
by an infinite punishment; (2) by an adequate repentance. This
last, which Edwards passed by as impracticable, Campbell declares
to have been the real atonement offered by Christ, who stands as
the great Penitent, confessing the sin of the world. Mason, Faith
of the Gospel, 160-210, takes substantially the view of Campbell,
denying substitution, and emphasizing Christ’s oneness with the
race and his confession of human sin. He grants indeed that our
Lord bore penalty, but only in the sense that he realized how
great was the condemnation and penalty of the race.
Schleiermacher denies any satisfaction to God by substitution. He
puts in its place an influence of Christ’s personality on men, so
that they feel themselves reconciled and redeemed. The atonement
is purely subjective. Yet it is the work of Christ, in that only
_Christ’s_ oneness with God has taught men that _they_ can be one
with God. Christ’s consciousness of his being in God and knowing
God, and his power to impart this consciousness to others, make
him a Mediator and Savior. The idea of reparation, compensation,
satisfaction, substitution, is wholly Jewish. He regarded it as
possible only to a narrow-minded people. He tells us that he hates
in religion that kind of historic relation. He had no such sense
of the holiness of God, or of the guilt of man, as would make
necessary any suffering of punishment or offering to God for human
sin. He desires to replace external and historical Christianity by
a Christianity that is internal and subjective. See
Schleiermacher, Der Christliche Glaube, 2:94-161.
Ritschl however is the most recent and influential representative
of the Moral Influence theory in Germany. His view is to be found
in his Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, or in English translation,
Justification and Reconciliation. Ritschl is anti-Hegelian and
libertarian, but like Schleiermacher he does not treat sin with
seriousness; he regards the sense of guilt as an illusion which it
is the part of Christ to dispel; there is an inadequate conception
of Christ’s person, a practical denial of his pre-existence and
work of objective atonement; indeed, the work of Christ is hardly
put into any precise relation to sin at all; see Denney, Studies
in Theology, 136-151. E. H. Johnson: “Many Ritschlians deny both
the miraculous conception and the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
Sin does not particularly concern God; Christ is Savior only as
Buddha was, achieving lordship over the world by indifference to
it; he is the Word of God, only as he reveals this divine
indifference to things. All this does not agree with the N. T.
teaching that Christ is the only begotten Son of God, that he was
with the Father before the world was, that he made expiation of
sins to God, and that sin is that abominable thing that God
hates.” For a general survey of the Ritschlian theology, see Orr,
Ritschlian Theology, 231-271; Presb. and Ref. Rev., July,
1891:443-458 (art. by Zahn), and Jan. 1892:1-21 (art. by C. M.
Mead); Andover Review, July, 1893:440-461; Am. Jour. Theology,
Jan. 1899:22-44 (art. by H. R. Mackintosh); Lidgett, Spir. Prin.
of Atonement, 190-207; Foster, Christ. Life and Theology; and the
work of Garvie on Ritschl. For statement and criticism of other
forms of the Moral Influence theory, see Crawford, Atonement,
297-366; Watts, New Apologetic, 210-247.
To this theory we object as follows:
(_a_) While it embraces a valuable element of truth, namely, the moral
influence upon men _of_ the sufferings of the God-man, it is false by
defect, in that it substitutes a subordinate effect of the atonement for
its chief aim, and yet unfairly appropriates the name “vicarious,” which
belongs only to the latter. Suffering _with_ the sinner is by no means
suffering _in his stead_.
Dale, Atonement, 137, illustrates Bushnell’s view by the loyal
wife, who suffers exile or imprisonment with her husband; by the
philanthropist, who suffers the privations and hardships of a
savage people, whom he can civilize only by enduring the miseries
from which he would rescue them; by the Moravian missionary, who
enters for life the lepers’ enclosure, that he may convert its
inmates. So Potwin says that suffering and death are the cost of
the atonement, not the atonement _itself_.
But we reply that such sufferings as these do not make Christ’s
sacrifice _vicarious_. The word “vicarious” (from _vicis_) implies
substitution, which this theory denies. The vicar of a parish is
not necessarily one who performs service with, and in sympathy
with, the rector,—he is rather one who stands in the rector’s
place. A vice-president is one who acts in place of the president;
“A. B., appointed consul, _vice_ C. D., resigned,” implies that A.
B. is now to serve in the stead of C. D. If Christ is a “vicarious
sacrifice,” then he makes atonement to God _in the place and
stead_ of sinners. Christ’s suffering _in and with sinners_,
though it is a most important and affecting fact, is not the
suffering in their stead in which the atonement consists. Though
suffering in and with sinners may be in part the _medium_ through
which Christ was enabled to endure God’s wrath against sin, it is
not to be confounded with the _reason_ why God lays this suffering
upon him; nor should it blind us to the fact that this reason is
his standing in the sinner’s place to answer for sin to the
retributive holiness of God.
(_b_) It rests upon false philosophical principles,—as, that righteousness
is identical with benevolence, instead of conditioning it; that God is
subject to an eternal law of love, instead of being himself the source of
all law; that the aim of penalty is the reformation of the offender.
Hovey, God with Us, 181-271, has given one of the best replies to
Bushnell. He shows that if God is subject to an eternal law of
love, then God is necessarily a Savior; that he must have created
man as soon as he could; that he makes men holy as fast as
possible; that he does all the good he can; that he is no better
than he should be. But this is to deny the transcendence of God,
and reduce omnipotence to a mere nature-power. The conception of
God as subject to law imperils God’s self-sufficiency and freedom.
For Bushnell’s statements with regard to the identity of
righteousness and love, and for criticisms upon them, see our
treatment of the attribute of Holiness, vol. I, pages 268-275.
Watts, New Apologetic, 277-280, points out that, upon Bushnell’s
principles, there must be an atonement for fallen angels. God was
bound to assume the angelic nature and to do for angels all that
he has done for us. There is also no reason for restricting either
the atonement or the offer of salvation to the present life. B. B.
Warfield, in Princeton Review, 1903:81-92, shows well that all the
forms of the Moral Influence theory rest upon the assumption that,
God is only love, and that all that is required as ground of the
sinner’s forgiveness is penitence, either Christ’s, or his own, or
both together.
Ignoring the divine holiness and minimizing the guilt of sin, many
modern writers make atonement to be a mere incident of Christ’s
incarnation. Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:350, 351—“Atonement by
suffering is the result of the Incarnation; atonement being the
necessary, and suffering the incidental element of that result.
But sacrifice is an essential element, for sacrifice truly
signifies here the consecration of human nature to its highest use
and utterance, and does not necessarily involve the thought of
pain. It is not the destruction but the fulfilment of human life.
Inasmuch as the human life thus consecrated and fulfilled is the
same in us as in Jesus, and inasmuch as his consecration and
fulfilment makes morally possible for us the same consecration and
fulfilment of it which he achieved, therefore his atonement and
his sacrifice, and incidentally his suffering, become vicarious.
It is not that they make unnecessary, but that they make possible
and successful in us, the same processes which were perfect in
him.”
(_c_) The theory furnishes no proper reason for Christ’s suffering. While
it shows that the Savior necessarily suffers from his contact with human
sin and sorrow, it gives no explanation of that constitution of the
universe which makes suffering the consequence of sin, not only to the
sinner, but also to the innocent being who comes into connection with sin.
The holiness of God, which is manifested in this constitution of things
and which requires this atonement, is entirely ignored.
B. W. Lockhart, in a recent statement of the doctrine of the
atonement, shows this defect of apprehension: “God in Christ
reconciled the world to himself; Christ did not reconcile God to
man, but man to God. Christ did not enable God to save men; God
enabled Christ to save men. The sufferings of Christ were
vicarious as the highest illustration of that spiritual law by
which the good soul is impelled to suffer that others may not
suffer, to die that others may not die. The vicarious sufferings
of Jesus were also the great revelation to man of the vicarious
nature of God; a revelation of the cross as eternal in his nature;
that it is in the heart of God to bear the sin and sorrow of his
creatures in his eternal love and pity; a revelation moreover that
the law which saves the lost through the vicarious labors of
godlike souls prevails wherever the godlike and the lost soul can
influence each other.”
While there is much in the above statement with which we agree, we
charge it with misapprehending the reason for Christ’s suffering.
That reason is to be found only in that holiness of God which
expresses itself in the very constitution of the universe. Not
love but holiness has made suffering invariably to follow sin, so
that penalty falls not only upon the transgressor but upon him who
is the life and sponsor of the transgressor. God’s holiness brings
suffering to God, and to Christ who manifests God. Love bears the
suffering, but it is holiness that necessitates it. The statement
of Lockhart above gives account of the effect—reconciliation; but
it fails to recognize the cause—propitiation. The words of E. G.
Robinson furnish the needed complement: “The work of Christ has
two sides, propitiatory and reconciling. Christ felt the pang of
association with a guilty race. The divine displeasure rested on
him as possessing the guilty nature. In his own person he redeems
this nature by bearing its penalty. Propitiation must precede
reconciliation. The Moral Influence theory recognizes the
necessity of a subjective change in man, but makes no provision of
an objective agency to secure it.”
(_d_) It contradicts the plain teachings of Scripture, that the atonement
is necessary, not simply to reveal God’s love, but to satisfy his justice;
that Christ’s sufferings are propitiatory and penal; and that the human
conscience needs to be propitiated by Christ’s sacrifice, before it can
feel the moral influence of his sufferings.
That the atonement is primarily an offering to God, and not to the
sinner, appears from _Eph. 5:2_—“_gave himself up for us, an
offering and a sacrifice to God_”; _Heb. 9:14,_—“_offered himself
without blemish unto God._” Conscience, the reflection of God’s
holiness, can be propitiated only by propitiating holiness itself.
Mere love and sympathy are maudlin, and powerless to move, unless
there is a background of righteousness. Spear: “An appeal to man,
without anything back of it to emphasize and enforce the appeal,
will never touch the heart. The mere _appearance_ of an atonement
has no moral influence.” Crawford, Atonement, 358-367—“Instead of
delivering us from penalty, in order to deliver us from sin, this
theory made Christ to deliver us from sin, in order that he may
deliver us from penalty. But this reverses the order of Scripture.
And Dr. Bushnell concedes, in the end, that the moral view of the
atonement is morally powerless; and that the Objective view he
condemns is, after all, indispensable to the salvation of
sinners.”
Some men are quite ready to forgive those whom they have offended.
The Ritschlian school sees no guilt to be atoned for, and no
propitiation to be necessary. Only man needs to be reconciled.
Ritschlians are quite ready to forgive God. The only atonement is
an atonement, made by repentance, to the human conscience. Shedd
says well: “All that is requisite in order to satisfaction and
peace of conscience in the sinful soul is also requisite in order
to the satisfaction of God himself.” Walter Besant: “It is not
enough to be forgiven,—one has also to forgive one’s self.” The
converse proposition is yet more true: It is not enough to forgive
one’s self,—one has also to be forgiven; indeed, one cannot
rightly forgive one’s self, unless one has been first forgiven; _1
John 3:20_—“_if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our
heart, and knoweth all things._” A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the
Spirit, 201—“As the high priest carried the blood into the Holy of
Holies under the old dispensation, so does the Spirit take the
blood of Christ into the inner sanctuary of our spirit in the new
dispensation, in order that he may ‘_cleanse your conscience from
dead works to serve the living God_’ (_Heb. 9:14_).”
(_e_) It can be maintained, only by wresting from their obvious meaning
those passages of Scripture which speak of Christ as suffering for our
sins; which represent his blood as accomplishing something for us in
heaven, when presented there by our intercessor; which declare forgiveness
to be a remitting of past offences upon the ground of Christ’s death; and
which describe justification as a pronouncing, not a making, just.
We have seen that the forms in which the Scriptures describe
Christ’s death are mainly drawn from sacrifice. Notice Bushnell’s
acknowledgment that these “altar-forms” are the most vivid and
effective methods of presenting Christ’s work, and that the
preacher cannot dispense with them. Why he should not dispense
with them, if the meaning has gone out of them, is not so clear.
In his later work, entitled Forgiveness and Law, Bushnell appears
to recognize this inconsistency, and represents God as affected by
the atonement, after all; in other words, the atonement has an
objective as well as a subjective influence. God can forgive, only
by “making cost to himself.” He “works down his resentment, by
suffering for us.” This verges toward the true view, but it does
not recognize the demand of divine holiness for satisfaction; and
it attributes passion, weakness, and imperfection to God. Dorner,
Glaubenslehre, 2:591 (Syst. Doct., 4:59, 69), objects to this
modified Moral Influence theory, that the love that can do good to
an enemy is _already forgiving_ love; so that the benefit to the
enemy cannot be, as Bushnell supposes, a _condition of the
forgiveness_.
To Campbell’s view, that Christ is the great Penitent, and that
his atonement consists essentially in his confessing the sins of
the world, we reply, that no confession or penitence is possible
without responsibility. If Christ had no substitutionary office,
the ordering of his sufferings on the part of God was manifest
injustice. Such sufferings, moreover, are impossible upon grounds
of mere sympathy. The Scripture explains them by declaring that he
bore our curse, and became a ransom in our place. There was more
therefore in the sufferings of Christ than “a perfect Amen in
humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man.” Not Phinehas’s
zeal for God, but his execution of judgment, made an atonement
(_Ps. 106:30_—“_executed judgment_”—LXX.: ἐξιλάσατο, “_made
propitiation_”) and turned away the wrath of God. Observe here the
contrast between the _priestly_ atonement of Aaron, who stood
between the living and the dead, and the _judicial_ atonement of
Phinehas, who executed righteous judgment, and so turned away
wrath. In neither case did mere _confession_ suffice to take away
sin. On Campbell’s view see further, on page 760.
Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 98, has the great merit of
pointing out that Christ shares our sufferings in virtue of the
fact that our personality has its ground in him; but that this
sharing of our penalty was necessitated by God’s righteousness he
has failed to indicate. He tells us that “Christ sanctified the
present and cancels the past. He offers to God a living holiness
in human conditions and character; he makes the awful sacrifice in
humanity of a perfect contrition. The one is the offering of
obedience, the other the offering of atonement; the one the
offering of the life, the other the offering of the death.” This
modification of Campbell’s view can be rationally maintained only
by connecting with it a prior declaration that the fundamental
attribute of God is holiness; that holiness is self-affirming
righteousness; that this righteousness necessarily expresses
itself in the punishment of sin; that Christ’s relation to the
race as its upholder and life made him the bearer of its guilt and
justly responsible for its sin. 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 either reason or conscience that does not ground its
necessity in God’s righteousness, rather than in his love.
E. Y. Mullins: “If Christ’s union with humanity made it possible
for him to be ‘the representative Penitent,’ and to be the Amen of
humanity to God’s just condemnation of sin, his union with God
made it also possible for him to be the representative of the
Judge, and to be the Amen of the divine nature to suffering, as
the expression of condemnation.” Denney, Studies in Theology, 102,
103—“The serious element in sin is not man’s dislike, suspicion,
alienation from God, nor the debilitating, corrupting effects of
vice in human nature, but rather God’s condemnation of man. This
Christ endured, and died that the condemnation might be removed.
‘Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned he stood;
Sealed my pardon with his blood; Hallelujah!’ ”
Bushnell regards _Mat. 8:17_—“_Himself took our infirmities, and
bare our diseases_”—as indicating the nature of Christ’s atoning
work. The meaning then would be, that he sympathized so fully with
all human ills that he made them his own. Hovey, however, has
given a more complete and correct explanation. The words mean
rather: “His deep sympathy with these effects of sin so moved him,
that it typified his final bearing of the sins themselves, or
constituted a preliminary and partial endurance of the suffering
which was to expiate the sins of men.” His sighing when he cured
the deaf man (_Mark 7:34_) and his weeping at the grave of Lazarus
(_John 11:35_) were caused by the anticipatory realization that he
was one with the humanity which was under the curse, and that he
too had “_become a curse for us_” (_Gal. 3:13_). The great error
of Bushnell is his denial of the objective necessity and effect of
Jesus’ death, and all Scripture which points to an influence of
the atonement outside of us is a refutation of his theory.
(_f_) This theory confounds God’s method of saving men with men’s
experience of being saved. It makes the atonement itself consist of its
effects in the believer’s union with Christ and the purifying influence of
that union upon the character and life.
Stevens, in his Doctrine of Salvation, makes this mistake. He
says: “The old forms of the doctrine of the atonement—that the
suffering of Christ was necessary to appease the wrath of God and
induce him to forgive; or to satisfy the law of God and enable him
to forgive; or to move upon man’s heart to induce him to accept
forgiveness; have all proved inadequate. Yet to reject the passion
of Christ is to reject the chief element of power in
Christianity.... To me the words ‘eternal atonement’ denote the
dateless passion of God on account of sin; they mean that God is,
by his very nature, a sin-bearer—that sin grieves and wounds his
heart, and that he sorrows and suffers in consequence of it. It
results from the divine love—alike from its holiness and from its
sympathy—that ‘in our affliction he is afflicted.’ Atonement on
its ‘Godward side’ is a name for the grief and pain inflicted by
sin upon the paternal heart of God. Of this divine sorrow for sin,
the afflictions of Christ are a revelation. In the bitter grief
and anguish which he experienced on account of sin we see
reflected the pain and sorrow which sin brings to the divine
love.”
All this is well said, with the exception that holiness is
regarded as a form of love, and the primary offence of sin is
regarded as the grieving of the Father’s heart. Dr. Stevens fails
to consider that if love were supreme there would be nothing to
prevent unholy tolerance of sin. Because holiness is supreme, love
is conditioned thereby. It is holiness and not love that connects
suffering with sin, and requires that the Redeemer should suffer.
Dr. Stevens asserts that the theories hitherto current in
Protestant churches and the theory for which he pleads are
“forever irreconcilable”; they are “based on radically different
conceptions of God.” The British Weekly, Nov. 16, 1905—“The
doctrine of the atonement is not the doctrine that salvation is
deliverance from sin, and that this deliverance is the work of
God, a work the motive of which is God’s love for men; these are
truths which every one who writes on the Atonement assumes. The
doctrine of the Atonement has for its task to explain _how_ this
work is done.... Dr. Stevens makes no contribution whatever to its
fulfilment. He grants that we have in Paul ‘the theory of a
substitutionary expiation.’ But he finds something else in Paul
which he thinks a more adequate rendering of the apostle’s
Christian experience—the idea, namely, of dying with Christ and
rising with him; and on the strength of accepting this last he
feels at liberty to drop the substitutionary expiation overboard
as something to be explained from Paul’s controversial position,
or from his Pharisaic inheritance, something at all events which
has no permanent value for the Christian mind.... The experience
is dependent on the method. Paul did not die with Christ as an
alternative to having Christ die with him; he died with Christ
wholly and solely because Christ died for him. It was the meaning
carried by the last two words—the meaning unfolded in the theory
of substitutionary expiation—which had the moral motive in it to
draw Paul into union with his Lord in life and death.... On Dr.
Stevens’ own showing, Paul held the two ideas side by side; for
him the mystical union with Christ was only possible through the
acceptance of truths with which Dr. Stevens does not know what to
do.”
(_g_) This theory would confine the influence of the atonement to those
who have heard of it,—thus excluding patriarchs and heathen. But the
Scriptures represent Christ as being the Savior of all men, in the sense
of securing them grace, which, but for his atoning work, could never have
been bestowed consistently with the divine holiness.
Hovey: “The manward influence of the atonement is far more
extensive than the moral influence of it.” Christ is Advocate, not
with the sinner, but with the Father. While the Spirit’s work has
moral influence over the hearts of men, the Son secures, through
the presentation of his blood, in heaven, the pardon which can
come only from God (_1 John 2:1_—“_we have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for
our sins_”). Hence _1:9_—“_If we confess our sins, he_ [God] _is
faithful and righteous [faithful to his promise and righteous to
Christ] to forgive us our sins._” Hence the publican does not
first pray for change of heart, but for mercy upon the ground of
sacrifice (_Luke 18:13,_—“_God, be thou merciful to me a sinner,_”
but literally: “_God be propitiated toward me the sinner_”). See
Balfour, in Brit. and For. Ev. Rev., Apr. 1884:230-254; Martin,
Atonement, 216-237; Theol. Eclectic, 4:364-409.
Gravitation kept the universe stable, long before it was
discovered by man. So the atonement of Christ was inuring to the
salvation of men, long before they suspected its existence. The
“_Light of the world_” (_John 8:12_) has many “X rays,” beyond the
visible spectrum, but able to impress the image of Christ upon
patriarchs or heathen. This light has been shining through all the
ages, but “_the darkness apprehended it not_” (_John 1:5_). Its
rays register themselves only where there is a sensitive heart to
receive them. Let them shine through a man, and how much unknown
sin, and unknown possibilities of good, they reveal! The Moral
Influence theory does not take account of the preëxistent Christ
and of his atoning work before his manifestation in the flesh. It
therefore leads logically to belief in a second probation for the
many imbeciles, outcasts, and heathen who in this world do not
hear of Christ’s atonement. The doctrine of Bushnell in this way
undermines the doctrine of future retribution.
To Lyman Abbott, the atonement is the self-propitiation of God’s
love, and its influence is exerted through education. In his
Theology of an Evolutionist, 118, 190, he maintains that the
atonement is “a true reconciliation between God and man, making
them at one through the incarnation and passion of Jesus Christ,
who lived and suffered, not to redeem men from future torment, but
to purify and perfect them in God’s likeness by uniting them to
God.... Sacrifice is not a penalty borne by an innocent sufferer
for guilty men,—a doctrine for which there is no authority either
in Scripture or in life (_1 Peter 3:18?_)—but a laying down of
one’s life in love, that another may receive life.... Redemption
is not restoration to a lost state of innocence, impossible to be
restored, but a culmination of the long process when man shall be
presented before his Father ‘_not having spot or wrinkle or any
such thing_’ (_Eph. 5:27_).... We believe not in the propitiation
of an angry God by another suffering to appease the Father’s
wrath, but in the perpetual self-propitiation of the Father, whose
mercy, going forth to redeem from sin, satisfies as nothing else
could the divine indignation against sin, by abolishing it....
Mercy is hate pitying; it is the pity of wrath. The pity conquers
the hate only by lifting the sinner up from his degradation and
restoring him to purity.” And yet in all this there is no mention
of the divine righteousness as the source of the indignation and
the object of the propitiation!
It is interesting to note that some of the greatest advocates of
the Moral Influence theory have reverted to the older faith when
they came to die. In his dying moments, as L. W. Munhall tells us,
Horace Bushnell said: “I fear what I have written and said upon
the moral idea of the atonement is misleading and will do great
harm;” and, as he thought of it further, he cried: “Oh Lord Jesus,
I trust for mercy only in the shed blood that thou didst offer on
Calvary!” Schleiermacher, on his deathbed, assembled his family
and a few friends, and himself administered the Lord’s Supper.
After praying and blessing the bread, and after pronouncing the
words: “_This is my body, broken for you_,” he added: “This is our
foundation!” As he started to bless the cup, he cried: “Quick,
quick, bring the cup! I am so happy!” Then he sank quietly back,
and was no more; see life of Rothe, by Nippold, 2:53, 54. Ritschl,
in his History of Pietism, 2:65, had severely criticized Paul
Gerhardt’s hymn: “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,” as describing
physical suffering; but he begged his son to repeat the two last
verses of that hymn: “O sacred head now wounded!” when he came to
die. And in general, the convicted sinner finds peace most quickly
and surely when he is pointed to the Redeemer who died on the
Cross and endured the penalty of sin in his stead.
3d. The Grotian, or Governmental Theory of the Atonement.
This theory holds that the atonement is a satisfaction, not to any
internal principle of the divine nature, but to the necessities of
government. God’s government of the universe cannot be maintained, nor can
the divine law preserve its authority over its subjects, unless the pardon
of offenders is accompanied by some exhibition of the high estimate which
God sets upon his law, and the heinous guilt of violating it. Such an
exhibition of divine regard for the law is furnished in the sufferings and
death of Christ. Christ does not suffer the precise penalty of the law,
but God graciously accepts his suffering as a substitute for the penalty.
This bearing of substituted suffering on the part of Christ gives the
divine law such hold upon the consciences and hearts of men, that God can
pardon the guilty upon their repentance, without detriment to the
interests of his government. The author of this theory was Hugo Grotius,
the Dutch jurist and theologian (1583-1645). The theory is characteristic
of the New England theology, and is generally held by those who accept the
New School view of sin.
Grotius was a precocious genius. He wrote good Latin verses at
nine years of age; was ripe for the University at twelve: edited
the encyclopædic work of Marcianus Capella at fifteen. Even thus
early he went with an embassy to the court of France, where he
spent a year. Returning home, he took the degree of doctor of
laws. In literature he edited the remains of Aratus, and wrote
three dramas in Latin. At twenty he was appointed historiographer
of the United Provinces; then advocate-general of the fisc for
Holland and Zealand. He wrote on international law; was appointed
deputy to England; was imprisoned for his theological opinions;
escaped to Paris; became ambassador of Sweden to France. He wrote
commentaries on Scripture, also history, theology, and poetry. He
was indifferent to dogma, a lover of peace, a compromiser, an
unpartisan believer, dealing with doctrine more as a statesman
than as a theologian. Of Grotius, Dr. E. G. Robinson used to say:
“It is ordained of almighty God that the man who dips into
everything never gets to the bottom of anything.”
Grotius, the jurist, conceived of law as a mere matter of
political expediency—a device to procure practical governmental
results. The text most frequently quoted in support of his theory,
is _Is. 42:21_—“_It pleased Jehovah, for his righteousness’ sake,
to magnify the law, and make it honorable._” Strangely enough, the
explanation is added: “even when its demands are unfulfilled.”
Park: “Christ satisfied the law, by making it desirable and
consistent for God not to come up to the demands of the law.
Christ suffers a divine chastisement in consequence of our sins.
Christ was cursed for Adam’s sin, just as the heavens and the
earth were cursed for Adam’s sin,—that is, he bore pains and
sufferings on account of it.”
Grotius used the word _acceptilatio_, by which he meant God’s
sovereign provision of a suffering which was not itself penalty,
but which he had determined to accept as a substitute for penalty.
Here we have a virtual denial that there is anything in God’s
nature that requires Christ to suffer; for if penalty may be
remitted in part, it may be remitted in whole, and the reason why
Christ suffers at all is to be found, not in any demand of God’s
holiness, but solely in the beneficial influence of these
sufferings upon man; so that in principle this theory is allied to
the Example theory and the Moral Influence theory, already
mentioned.
Notice the difference between holding to a _substitute for
penalty_, as Grotius did, and holding to an _equivalent
substituted penalty_, as the Scriptures do. Grotius’s own
statement of his view may be found in his Defensio Fidei Catholicæ
de Satisfactione (Works, 4:297-338). More modern statements of it
are those of Wardlaw, in his Systematic Theology, 2:358-395, and
of Albert Barnes, on the Atonement. The history of New England
thought upon the subject is given in Discourses and Treatises on
the Atonement, edited by Prof. Park, of Andover. President
Woolsey: “Christ’s suffering was due to a deep and awful sense of
responsibility, a conception of the supreme importance to man of
his standing firm at this crisis. He bore, not the wrath of God,
but suffering, as the only way of redemption so far as men’s own
feeling of sin was concerned, and so far as the government of God
was concerned.” This unites the Governmental and the Moral
Influence theories.
Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 226, 227—“Grotius emphasized
the idea of law rather than that of justice, and made the
sufferings of Christ a legal example and the occasion of the
relaxation of the law, and not the strict penalty demanded by
justice. But this view, however it may have been considered and
have served in the clarification of the thinking of the times, met
with no general reception, and left little trace of itself among
those theologians who maintained the line of evangelical
theological descent.”
To this theory we urge the following objections:
(_a_) While it contains a valuable element of truth, namely, that the
sufferings and death of Christ secure the interests of God’s government,
it is false by defect, in substituting for the chief aim of the atonement
one which is only subordinate and incidental.
In our discussion of Penalty (pages 655, 656), we have seen that
the object of punishment is not primarily the security of
government. It is not right to punish a man for the beneficial
effect on society. Ill-desert must go before punishment, or the
punishment can have no beneficial effect on society. No punishment
can work good to society, that is not just and right in itself.
(_b_) It rests upon false philosophical principles,—as, that utility is
the ground of moral obligation; that law is an expression of the will,
rather than of the nature, of God; that the aim of penalty is to deter
from the commission of offences; and that righteousness is resolvable into
benevolence.
Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:573-581; 3:188, 189—“For God to take that
as satisfaction which is not really such, is to say that there is
no truth in anything. God may take a part for the whole, error for
truth, wrong for right. The theory really denies the necessity for
the work of Christ. If every created thing offered to God is worth
just so much as God accepts it for, then the blood of bulls and
goats might take away sins, and Christ is dead in vain.” Dorner,
Glaubenslehre, 2:570, 571 (Syst. Doct., 4:38-40)—“_Acceptilatio_
implies that nothing is good and right in itself. God is
indifferent to good or evil. Man is bound by authority and force
alone. There is no necessity of punishment or atonement. The
doctrine of indulgences and of supererogation logically follows.”
(_c_) It ignores and virtually denies that immanent holiness of God of
which the law with its threatened penalties, and the human conscience with
its demand for punishment, are only finite reflections. There is something
back of government; if the atonement satisfies government, it must be by
satisfying that justice of God of which government is an expression.
No deeply convicted sinner feels that his controversy is with
government. Undone and polluted, he feels himself in antagonism to
the purity of a personal God. Government is not greater than God,
but less. What satisfies God must satisfy government. Hence the
sinner prays: “_Against thee, thee only, have I sinned_” (_Ps.
51:4_); “_God be propitiated toward me the sinner_” (literal
translation of _Luke 18:13_),—propitiated through God’s own
appointed sacrifice whose smoke is ascending in his behalf even
while he prays.
In the divine government this theory recognizes no constitution,
but only legislative enactment; even this legislative enactment is
grounded in no necessity of God’s nature, but only in expediency
or in God’s arbitrary will; law may be abrogated for merely
economic reasons, if any incidental good may be gained thereby. J.
M. Campbell, Atonement, 81, 144—“No awakened sinner, into whose
spirit the terrors of the law have entered, ever thinks of
rectoral justice, but of absolute justice, and of absolute justice
only.... Rectoral justice so presupposes absolute justice, and so
throws the mind back on that absolute justice, that the idea of an
atonement that will satisfy the one, though it might not the
other, is a delusion.”
N. W. Taylor’s Theology was entitled: “Moral Government,” and C.
G. Finney’s Systematic Theology was a treatise on Moral
Government, although it called itself by another name. But because
New England ideas of government were not sufficiently grounded in
God’s holiness, but were rather based upon utility, expediency, or
happiness, the very idea of government has dropped out of the New
School theology, and its advocates with well-nigh one accord have
gone over to the Moral Influence theory of the atonement, which is
only a modified Socinianism. Both the Andover atonement and that
of Oberlin have become purely subjective. For this reason the
Grotian or Governmental theory has lost its hold upon the
theological world and needs to have no large amount of space
devoted to it.
(_d_) It makes that to be an exhibition of justice which is not an
exercise of justice; the atonement being, according to this theory, not an
execution of law, but an exhibition of regard for law, which will make it
safe to pardon the violators of law. Such a merely scenic representation
can inspire respect for law, only so long as the essential unreality of it
is unsuspected.
To teach that sin will be punished, there must be punishment.
Potwin: “How the exhibition of what sin deserves, but does not
get, can satisfy justice, is hard to see.” The Socinian view of
Christ as an example of virtue is more intelligible than the
Grotian view of Christ as an example of chastisement. Lyman
Abbott: “If I thought that Jesus suffered and died to produce a
moral impression on me, it would not produce a moral impression on
me.” William Ashmore: “A stage tragedian commits a mock murder in
order to move people to tears. If Christ was in no sense a
substitute, or if he was not co-responsible with the sinner he
represents, then God and Christ are participants in a real tragedy
the most awful that ever darkened human history, simply for the
sake of its effect on men to move their callous sensibilities—a
stage-trick for the same effect.”
The mother pretends to cry in order to induce her child to obey.
But the child will obey only while it thinks the mother’s grief a
reality, and the last state of that child is worse than the first.
Christ’s atonement is no passion-play. Hell cannot be cured by
homœopathy. The sacrifice of Calvary is no dramatic exhibition of
suffering for the purpose of producing a moral impression on
awe-stricken spectators. It is an object-lesson, only because it
is a reality. All God’s justice and all God’s love are focused in
the Cross, so that it teaches more of God and his truth than all
space and time beside.
John Milton, Paradise Lost, book 5, speaks of “mist, the common
gloss of theologians.” Such mist is the legal fiction by which
Christ’s suffering is taken in place of legal penalty, while yet
it is not the legal penalty itself. B. G. Robinson: “Atonement is
not an arbitrary contrivance, so that if one person will endure a
certain amount of suffering, a certain number of others may go
scot-free.” Mercy never cheats justice. Yet the New School theory
of atonement admits that Christ cheated justice by a trick. It
substituted the penalty of Christ for the penalty of the redeemed,
and then substituted something else for the penalty of Christ.
(_e_) The intensity of Christ’s sufferings in the garden and on the cross
is inexplicable upon the theory that the atonement was a histrionic
exhibition of God’s regard for his government, and can be explained only
upon the view that Christ actually endured the wrath of God against human
sin.
Christ refused the “_wine mingled with myrrh_” (_Mark 15:23_),
that he might to the last have full possession of his powers and
speak no words but words of truth and soberness. His cry of agony:
“_My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?_” (_Mat. 27:46_), was
not an ejaculation of thoughtless or delirious suffering. It
expressed the deepest meaning of the crucifixion. The darkening of
the heavens was only the outward symbol of the hiding of the
countenance of God from him who was “_made to be sin on our
behalf_” (_2 Cor. 5:21_). In the case of Christ, above that of all
others, _finis coronat_, and dying words are undying words. “The
tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony; When
words are scarce they’re seldom spent in vain, For they breathe
truth that breathe their words in pain.” _Versus_ Park,
Discourses, 328-355.
A pure woman needs to meet an infamous proposition with something
more than a mild refusal. She must flame up and be angry. _Ps.
97:10_—“_O ye that love Jehovah, hate evil_”; _Eph. 4:26_—“_Be ye
angry, and sin not._” So it belongs to the holiness of God not to
let sin go unchallenged. God not only _shows_ anger, but he _is_
angry. It is the wrath of God which sin must meet, and which
Christ must meet when he is numbered with the transgressors. Death
was the cup of which he was to drink (_Mat. 20:22_; _John 18:11_),
and which he drained to the dregs. Mason, Faith of the Gospel,
196—“Jesus alone of all men truly ‘_tasted death_’ (_Heb. 2:9_).
Some men are too stolid and unimaginative to taste it. To
Christians the bitterness of death is gone, just because Christ
died and rose again. But to Jesus its terrors were as yet
undiminished. He resolutely set all his faculties to sound to the
depths the dreadfulness of dying.”
We therefore cannot agree with either Wendt or Johnson in the
following quotations. Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:249, 250—“The
forsaking of the Father was not an absolute one, since Jesus still
called him ‘_My God_’ (_Mat. 27:46_). Jesus felt the failing of
that energy of spirit which had hitherto upheld him, and he
expresses simply his ardent desire and prayer that God would once
more grant him his power and assistance.” E. H. Johnson, The Holy
Spirit, 143, 144—“It is not even necessary to believe that God hid
his face from Christ at the last moment. It is necessary only to
admit that Christ no longer saw the Father’s face.... He felt that
it was so; but it was not so.” These explanations make Christ’s
sufferings and Christ’s words unreal, and to our mind they are
inconsistent with both his deity and his atonement.
(_f_) The actual power of the atonement over the human conscience and
heart is due, not to its exhibiting God’s regard for law, but to its
exhibiting an actual execution of law, and an actual satisfaction of
violated holiness made by Christ in the sinner’s stead.
Whiton, Gloria Patri, 143, 144, claims that Christ is the
propitiation for our sins only by bringing peace to the conscience
and satisfying the divine demand that is felt therein. Whiton
regards the atonement not as a governmental work outside of us,
but as an educational work within. Aside from the objection that
this view merges God’s transcendence in his immanence, we urge the
words of Matthew Henry: “Nothing can satisfy an offended
conscience but that which satisfied an offended God.” C. J.
Baldwin: “The lake spread out has no moving power; it turns the
mill-wheel only when contracted into the narrow stream and pouring
over the fall. So the wide love of God moves men, only when it is
concentrated into the sacrifice of the cross.”
(_g_) The theory contradicts all those passages of Scripture which
represent the atonement as necessary; as propitiating God himself; as
being a revelation of God’s righteousness; as being an execution of the
penalty of the law; as making salvation a matter of debt to the believer,
on the ground of what Christ has done; as actually purging our sins,
instead of making that purging possible; as not simply assuring the sinner
that God may now pardon him on account of what Christ has done, but that
Christ has actually wrought out a complete salvation, and will bestow it
upon all who come to him.
John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, chapter vi—“Upon that place stood
a Cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a Sepulchre. So I saw
in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the Cross, his
burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back,
and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the
mouth of the Sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.
Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry
heart, He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death.
Then he stood still awhile to look and wonder; for it was very
surprising to him that the sight of the Cross should thus ease him
of his burden.”
John Bunyan’s story is truer to Christian experience than is the
Governmental theory. The sinner finds peace, not by coming to God
with a distant respect to Christ, but by coming directly to the
“_Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world_” (_John
1:29_). Christ’s words to every conscious sinner are simply:
“_Come unto me_” (_Mat. 11:28_). Upon the ground of what Christ
has done, salvation is a matter of debt to the believer. _1 John
1:9_—“_If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to
forgive us our sins_”—faithful to his promise, and righteous to
Christ. The Governmental theory, on the other hand, tends to
discourage the sinner’s direct access to Christ, and to render the
way to conscious acceptance with God more circuitous and less
certain.
When The Outlook says: “Not even to the Son of God must we come
instead of coming to God,” we can see only plain denial of the
validity of Christ’s demands and promises, for he demands
immediate submission when he bids the sinner follow him, and he
promises immediate salvation when he assures all who come to him
that he will not cast them out. The theory of Grotius is legal and
speculative, but it is not Scriptural, nor does it answer the
needs of human nature. For criticism of Albert Barnes’s doctrine,
see Watts, New Apologetic, 210-300. For criticism of the Grotian
theory in general, see Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:347-369; Crawford,
Atonement, 367; Cunningham, Hist. Theology, 2:355; Princeton
Essays, 1:259-292; Essay on Atonement, by Abp. Thomson, in Aids to
Faith; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 194-196; S. H. Tyng,
Christian Pastor; Charles Hodge, Essays, 129-184; Lidgett, Spir.
Prin. of Atonement, 151-154.
4th. The Irvingian Theory, or Theory of Gradually Extirpated Depravity.
This holds that, in his incarnation, Christ took human nature as it was in
Adam, not before the Fall, but after the Fall,—human nature, therefore,
with its inborn corruption and predisposition to moral evil; that,
notwithstanding the possession of this tainted and depraved nature,
Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, or of his divine nature, not
only kept his human nature from manifesting itself in any actual or
personal sin, but gradually purified it, through struggle and suffering,
until in his death he completely extirpated its original depravity, and
reunited it to God. This subjective purification of human nature in the
person of Jesus Christ constitutes his atonement, and men are saved, not
by any objective propitiation, but only by becoming through faith
partakers of Christ’s new humanity. This theory was elaborated by Edward
Irving, of London (1792-1834), and it has been held, in substance, by
Menken and Dippel in Germany.
Irving was in this preceded by Felix of Urgella, in Spain († 818),
whom Alcuin opposed. Felix said that the Logos united with human
nature, without sanctifying it beforehand. Edward Irving, in his
early life colleague of Dr. Chalmers, at Glasgow, was in his later
years a preacher, in London, of the National Church of Scotland.
For his own statement of his view of the Atonement, see his
Collected Works, 5:9-398. See also Life of Irving, by Mrs.
Oliphant; Menken, Schriften, 3:279-404; 6:351 _sq._; Guericke, in
Studien und Kritiken, 1843: Heft 2; David Brown, in Expositor,
Oct. 1887:264 _sq._, and letter of Irving to Marcus Dods, in
British Weekly, Mch. 25, 1887. For other references, see
Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:496-498.
Irving’s followers differ in their representation of his views.
Says Miller, Hist. and Doct. of Irvingism, 1:85—“If indeed we made
Christ a sinner, then indeed all creeds are at an end and we are
worthy to die the death of blasphemers.... The miraculous
conception depriveth him of human personality, and it also
depriveth him of original sin and guilt needing to be atoned for
by another, but it doth not deprive him of the substance of sinful
flesh and blood,—that is, flesh and blood the same with the flesh
and blood of his brethren.” 2:14—Freer says: “So that, despite it
was fallen flesh he had assumed, he was, through the Eternal
Spirit, born into the world ‘the Holy Thing’.” 11-15,
282-305—“Unfallen humanity needed not redemption, therefore, Jesus
did not take it. He took fallen humanity, but purged it in the act
of taking it. The nature of which he took part was sinful in the
lump, but in his person most holy.”
So, says an Irvingian tract, “Being part of the very nature that
had incurred the penalty of sin, though in his person never having
committed or even thought it, part of the common humanity could
suffer that penalty, and did so suffer, to make atonement for that
nature, though he who took it knew no sin.” Dr. Curry, quoted in
McClintock and Strong, Encyclopædia, 4:663, 664—“The Godhead came
into vital union with humanity fallen and under the law. The last
thought carried, to Irving’s realistic mode of thinking, the
notion of Christ’s participation in the fallen character of
humanity, which he designated by terms that implied a real
sinfulness in Christ. He attempted to get rid of the odiousness of
that idea, by saying that this was overborne, and at length wholly
expelled, by the indwelling Godhead.”
We must regard the later expounders of Irvingian doctrine as
having softened down, if they have not wholly expunged, its most
characteristic feature, as the following notation from Irving’s
own words will show: Works, 5:115—“That Christ took our fallen
nature, is most manifest, because there was no other in existence
to take.” 123—“The human nature is thoroughly fallen; the mere
apprehension of it by the Son doth not make it holy.” 128—“His
soul did mourn and grieve and pray to God continually, that it
might be delivered from the mortality, corruption, and temptation
which it felt in its fleshly tabernacle.” 152—“These sufferings
came not by imputation merely, but by actual participation of the
sinful and cursed thing.” Irving frequently quoted _Heb.
2:10_—“_make the author of their salvation perfect through
sufferings._”
Irving’s followers deny Christ’s sinfulness, only by assuming that
inborn infirmity and congenital tendencies to evil are not sin,—in
other words, that not native depravity, but only actual
transgression, is to be denominated sin. Irving, in our judgment,
was rightly charged with asserting the sinfulness of Christ’s
human nature, and it was upon this charge that he was deposed from
the ministry by the Presbytery in Scotland.
Irving was of commanding stature, powerful voice, natural and
graceful oratory. He loved the antique and the grand. For a time
in London he was the great popular sensation. But shortly after
the opening of his new church in Regent’s Square in 1827, he found
that fashion had taken its departure and that his church was no
longer crowded. He concluded that the world was under the reign of
Satan; he became a fanatical millennarian; he gave himself wholly
to the study of prophecy. In 1830 he thought the apostolic gifts
were revived, and he held to the hope of a restoration of the
primitive church, although he himself was relegated to a
comparatively subordinate position. He exhausted his energies, and
died at the age of forty-two. “If I had married Irving,” said Mrs.
Thomas Carlyle, “there would have been no tongues.”
To this theory we offer the following objections:
(_a_) While it embraces an important element of truth, namely, the fact of
a new humanity in Christ of which all believers become partakers, it is
chargeable with serious error in denying the objective atonement which
makes the subjective application possible.
Bruce, in his Humiliation of Christ, calls this a theory of
“redemption by sample.” It is a purely subjective atonement which
Irving has in mind. Deliverance from sin, in order to deliverance
from penalty, is an exact reversal of the Scripture order. Yet
this deliverance from sin, to Irving’s view, was to be secured in
an external and mechanical way. He held that it was the Old
Testament economy which should abide, while the New Testament
economy should pass away. This is Sacramentarianism, or dependence
upon the external rite, rather than upon the internal grace, as
essential to salvation. The followers of Irving are
Sacramentarians. The crucifix and candles, incense and gorgeous
vestments, a highly complicated and symbolic ritual, they regard
as a necessary accompaniment of religion. They feel the need of
external authority, visible and permanent, but one that rests upon
inspiration and continual supernatural help. They do not find this
authority, as the Romanists do, in the Pope,—they find it in their
new Apostles and Prophets. The church can never be renewed, as
they think, except by the restoration of all the ministering
orders mentioned in _Eph. 4:11_—“_apostles ... prophets ...
evangelists ... pastors ... teachers._” But the N. T. mark of an
apostle is that Christ has appeared to him. Irving’s apostles
cannot stand this test. See Luthardt, Erinnerungen aus vergangenen
Tagen, 237.
(_b_) It rests upon false fundamental principles,—as, that law is
identical with the natural order of the universe, and as such, is an
exhaustive expression of the will and nature of God; that sin is merely a
power of moral evil within the soul, instead of also involving an
objective guilt and desert of punishment; that penalty is the mere
reaction of law against the transgressor, instead of being also the
revelation of a personal wrath against sin; that the evil taint of human
nature can be extirpated by suffering its natural consequences,—penalty in
this way reforming the transgressor.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:463 (Syst. Doct., 3:361, 362)—“On
Irving’s theory, evil inclinations are not sinful. Sinfulness
belongs only to evil acts. The loose connection between the Logos
and humanity savors of Nestorianism. It is the work of the
_person_ to rid itself of something in the humanity which does not
render it really sinful. If Jesus’ sinfulness of nature did not
render his person sinful, this must be true of us,—which is a
Pelagian element, revealed also in the denial that for our
redemption we need Christ as an atoning sacrifice. It is not
necessary to a complete incarnation for Christ to take a _sinful_
nature, unless sin is _essential_ to human nature. In Irving’s
view, the death of Christ’s body works the regeneration of his
sinful nature. But this is to make sin a merely physical thing,
and the body the only part of man needing redemption.” Penalty
would thus become a reformer, and death a Savior.
Irving held that there are two kinds of sin: 1. guiltless sin; 2.
guilty sin. Passive depravity is not guilty; it is a part of man’s
sensual nature; without it we would not be human. But the moment
this fallen nature expresses itself in action, it becomes guilty.
Irving near the close of his life claimed a sort of sinless
perfection; for so long as he could keep this sinful nature
inactive, and be guided by the Holy Spirit, he was free from sin
and guilt. Christ took this passive sin, that he might be like
unto his brethren, and that he might be able to suffer.
(_c_) It contradicts the express and implicit representations of
Scripture, with regard to Christ’s freedom from all taint of hereditary
depravity; misrepresents his life as a growing consciousness of the
underlying corruption of his human nature, which culminated at Gethsemane
and Calvary; and denies the truth of his own statements, when it declares
that he must have died on account of his own depravity, even though none
were to be saved thereby.
“I shall maintain until death,” said Irving, “that the flesh of
Christ was as rebellious as ours, as fallen as ours.... Human
nature was corrupt to the core and black as hell, and this is the
human nature the Son of God took upon himself and was clothed
with.” The Rescuer must stand as deep in the mire as the one he
rescues. There was no substitution. Christ waged war with the sin
of his own flesh and he expelled it. His glory was not in saving
others, but in saving himself, and so demonstrating the power of
man through the Holy Spirit to cast out sin from his heart and
life. Irving held that his theory was the only one taught in
Scripture and held from the first by the church.
Nicoll, Life of Christ, 183—“All others, as they grow in holiness,
grow in their sense of sin. But when Christ is forsaken of the
Father, he asks ‘Why?’ well knowing that the reason is not in his
sin. He never makes confession of sin. In his longest prayer, the
preface is an assertion of righteousness: ‘_I glorified thee_’
(_John 17:4_). His last utterance from the cross is a quotation
from _Ps. 31:5_—‘_Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit_’
(_Luke 23:46_), but he does not add, as the Psalm does, ‘_thou
hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth_,’ for he needed no
redemption, being himself the Redeemer.”
(_d_) It makes the active obedience of Christ, and the subjective
purification of his human nature, to be the chief features of his work,
while the Scriptures make his death and passive bearing of penalty the
centre of all, and ever regard him as one who is personally pure and who
vicariously bears the punishment of the guilty.
In Irving’s theory there is no imputation, or representation, or
substitution. His only idea of sacrifice is that sin itself shall
be sacrificed, or annihilated. The many subjective theories of the
atonement show that the offence of the cross has not ceased (_Gal.
5:11_—“_then hath the stumbling-block of the cross been done
away_”). Christ crucified is still a stumbling-block to modern
speculation. Yet it is, as of old, “_the power of God unto
salvation_” (_Rom. 1:16_; _cf._ _1 Cor. 1:23, 24_—“_we preach
Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling-block and unto Gentiles
foolishness; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God_”).
As the ocean receives the impurities of the rivers and purges
them, so Irving represented Christ as receiving into himself the
impurities of humanity and purging the race from its sin. Here is
the sense of defilement, but no sense of guilt; subjective
pollution, but no objective condemnation. We take precisely
opposite ground from that of Irving, namely, that Christ had, not
hereditary depravity, but hereditary guilt; that he was under
obligation to suffer for the sins of the race to which he had
historically united himself, and of which he was the creator, the
upholder, and the life. He was “_made to be sin on our behalf_”
(_2 Cor. 5:21_), not in the sense of one defiled, as Irving
thought, but in the sense of one condemned to bear our iniquities
and to suffer their penal consequences. The test of a theory of
the atonement, as the test of a religion, is its power to “cleanse
that red right hand” of Lady Macbeth; in other words, its power to
satisfy the divine justice of which our condemning conscience is
only the reflection. The theory of Irving has no such power. Dr.
E. G. Robinson verged toward Irving’s view, when he claimed that
“Christ took human nature as he found it.”
(_e_) It necessitates the surrender of the doctrine of justification as a
merely declaratory act of God; and requires such a view of the divine
holiness, expressed only through the order of nature, as can be maintained
only upon principles of pantheism.
Thomas Aquinas inquired whether Christ was slain by himself, or by
another. The question suggests a larger one—whether God has
constituted other forces than his own, personal and impersonal, in
the universe, over against which he stands in his transcendence;
or whether all his activity is merged in, and identical with, the
activity of the creature. The theory of a merely subjective
atonement is more consistent with the latter view than the former.
For criticism of Irvingian doctrine, see Studien und Kritiken.
1845:319; 1877:354-374; Princeton Rev., April 1863:207; Christian
Rev., 28:234 sq.; Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus, 219-232.
5th. The Anselmic, or Commercial Theory of the Atonement.
This theory holds that sin is a violation of the divine honor or majesty,
and, as committed against an infinite being, deserves an infinite
punishment; that the majesty of God requires him to execute punishment,
while the love of God pleads for the sparing of the guilty; that this
conflict of divine attributes is eternally reconciled by the voluntary
sacrifice of the God-man, who bears in virtue of the dignity of his person
the intensively infinite punishment of sin, which must otherwise have been
suffered extensively and eternally by sinners; that this suffering of the
God-man presents to the divine majesty an exact equivalent for the
deserved sufferings of the elect; and that, as the result of this
satisfaction of the divine claims, the elect sinners are pardoned and
regenerated. This view was first broached by Anselm of Canterbury
(1033-1109) as a substitute for the earlier patristic view that Christ’s
death was a ransom paid to Satan, to deliver sinners from his power. It is
held by many Scotch theologians, and, in this country, by the Princeton
School.
The old patristic theory, which the Anselmic view superseded, has
been called the Military theory of the Atonement. Satan, as a
captor in war, had a right to his captives, which could be bought
off only by ransom. It was Justin Martyr who first propounded this
view that Christ paid a ransom to Satan. Gregory of Nyssa added
that Christ’s humanity was the bait with which Satan was attracted
to the hidden hook of Christ’s deity, and so was caught by
artifice. Peter Lombard, Sent., 3:19—“What did the Redeemer to our
captor? He held out to him his cross as a mouse-trap; in it he
set, as a bait, his blood.” Even Luther compares Satan to the
crocodile which swallows the ichneumon, only to find that the
little animal eats its insides out.
These metaphors show this, at least, that no age of the church has
believed in a merely subjective atonement. Nor was this relation
to Satan the only aspect in which the atonement was regarded even
by the early church. So early as the fourth century, we find a
great church Father maintaining that the death of Christ was
required by the truth and goodness of God. See Crippen, History of
Christian Doctrine, 129—“Athanasius (325-373) held that the death
of Christ was the payment of a debt due to God. His argument is
briefly this: God, having threatened death as the punishment of
sin, would be untrue if he did not fulfil his threatening. But it
would be equally unworthy of the divine goodness to permit
rational beings, to whom he had imparted his own Spirit, to incur
this death in consequence of an imposition practiced on them by
the devil. Seeing then that nothing but death could solve this
dilemma, the Word, who could not die, assumed a mortal body, and,
offering his human nature a sacrifice for all, fulfilled the law
by his death.” Gregory Nazianzen (390) “retained the figure of a
ransom, but, clearly perceiving that the analogy was incomplete,
he explained the death of Christ as an expedient to reconcile the
divine attributes.”
But, although many theologians had recognized a relation of
atonement to God, none before Anselm had given any clear account
of the nature of this relation. Anselm’s acute, brief, and
beautiful treatise entitled “Cur Deus Homo” constitutes the
greatest single contribution to the discussion of this doctrine.
He shows that “whatever man owes, he owes to God, not to the
devil.... He who does not yield due honor to God, withholds from
him what is his, and dishonors him; and this is sin.... It is
necessary that either the stolen honor be restored, or that
punishment follow.” Man, because of original sin, cannot make
satisfaction for the dishonor done to God,—“a sinner cannot
justify a sinner.” Neither could an angel make this satisfaction.
None can make it but God. “If then none can make it but God, and
none owes it but man, it must needs be wrought out by God, made
man.” The God-man, to make satisfaction for the sins of all
mankind, must “give to God, of his own, something that is more
valuable than all that is under God.” Such a gift of infinite
value was his death. The reward of his sacrifice turns to the
advantage of man, and thus the justice and love of God are
reconciled.
The foregoing synopsis is mainly taken from Crippen, Hist. Christ.
Doct., 134, 135. The Cur Deus Homo of Anselm is translated in Bib.
Sac., 11:729; 12:52. A synopsis of it is given in Lichtenberger’s
Encyclopédie des Sciences Religieuses, vol. 1, art.: Anselm. The
treatises on the Atonement by Symington, Candlish, Martin,
Smeaton, in Great Britain, advocate for substance the view of
Anselm, as indeed it was held by Calvin before them. In America,
the theory is represented by Nathanael Emmons, A. Alexander, and
Charles Hodge (Syst. Theol., 2:470-540).
To this theory we make the following objections:
(_a_) While it contains a valuable element of truth, in its representation
of the atonement as satisfying a principle of the divine nature, it
conceives of this principle in too formal and external a manner,—making
the idea of the divine honor or majesty more prominent than that of the
divine holiness, in which the divine honor and majesty are grounded.
The theory has been called the “Criminal theory” of the Atonement,
as the old patristic theory of a ransom paid to Satan has been
called the “Military theory.” It had its origin in a time when
exaggerated ideas prevailed respecting the authority of popes and
emperors, and when dishonor done to their majesty (_crimen læsæ
majestatis_) was the highest offence known to law. See article by
Cramer, in Studien und Kritiken, 1880:7, on Wurzeln des
Anselm’schen Satisfactionsbegriffes.
Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 88, 89—“From the point of view of
Sovereignty, there could be no necessity for atonement. In
Mohammedanism, where sovereignty is the supreme and sole
theological principle, no need is felt for satisfying the divine
justice. God may pardon whom he will, on whatever grounds his
sovereign will may dictate. It therefore constituted a great
advance in Latin theology, as also an evidence of its immeasurable
superiority to Mohammedanism, when Anselm for the first time, in a
clear and emphatic manner, had asserted an inward necessity in the
being of God that his justice should receive satisfaction for the
affront which had been offered to it by human sinfulness.”
Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 481—“In the days of feudalism,
men thought of heaven as organized on a feudal basis, and ranked
the first and second Persons of the Trinity as Suzerain and
Tenant-in-Chief.” William James, Varieties of Religious
Experience, 329, 830—“The monarchical type of sovereignty was, for
example, so ineradicably planted in the mind of our forefathers,
that a dose of cruelty and arbitrariness in their Deity seems
positively to have been required by their imagination. They called
the cruelty ‘retributive justice,’ and a God without it would
certainly not have struck them as sovereign enough. But to-day we
abhor the very notion of eternal suffering inflicted; and that
arbitrary dealing out of salvation and damnation to selected
individuals, of which Jonathan Edwards could persuade himself that
he had not only a conviction, but a ‘delightful conviction,’ as of
a doctrine ‘exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet,’ appears to us,
if sovereignly anything, sovereignly irrational and mean.”
(_b_) In its eagerness to maintain the atoning efficacy of Christ’s
passive obedience, the active obedience, quite as clearly expressed in
Scripture, is insufficiently emphasized and well nigh lost sight of.
Neither Christ’s active obedience alone, nor Christ’s obedient
passion alone, can save us. As we shall see hereafter, in our
examination of the doctrine of Justification, the latter was
needed as the ground upon which our penalty could be remitted; the
former as the ground upon which we might be admitted to the divine
favor. Calvin has reflected the passive element in Anselm’s view,
in the following passages of his Institutes: II, 17:3—“God, to
whom we were hateful through sin, was appeased by the death of his
Son, and was made propitious to us.”... II, 16:7—“It is necessary
to consider how he substituted himself in order to pay the price
of our redemption. Death held us under its yoke, but he, in our
place, delivered himself into its power, that he might exempt us
from it.”... II, 16:2—“Christ interposed and bore what, by the
just judgment of God, was impending over sinners; with his own
blood expiated the sin which rendered them hateful to God; by this
expiation satisfied and duly propitiated the Father; by this
intercession appeased his anger; on this basis founded peace
between God and men; and by this tie secured the divine
benevolence toward them.”
It has been said that Anselm regarded Christ’s death not as a
vicarious punishment, but as a voluntary sacrifice in compensation
for which the guilty were released and justified. So Neander,
Hist. Christ. Dogmas (Bohn), 2:517, understands Anselm to teach
“the necessity of a satisfactio vicaria activa,” and says: “We do
not find in his writings the doctrine of a satisfactio passiva: he
nowhere says that Christ had endured the punishment of men.”
Shedd, Hist. Christ. Doctrine, 2:282, thinks this a
misunderstanding of Anselm. The Encyclopædia Britannica takes the
view of Shedd, when it speaks of Christ’s sufferings as penalty:
“The justice of man demands satisfaction; and as an insult to
infinite honor is itself infinite, the satisfaction must be
infinite, _i. e._, it must outweigh all that is not God. Such a
penalty can only be paid by God himself, and, as a penalty for
man, must be paid under the form of man. Satisfaction is only
possible through the God-man. Now this God-man, as sinless, is
exempt from the punishment of sin; his passion is therefore
voluntary, not given as due. The merit of it is therefore
infinite; God’s justice is thus appeased, and his mercy may extend
to man.” The truth then appears to be that Anselm held Christ’s
obedience to be passive, in that he satisfied God’s justice by
enduring punishment which the sinner deserved; but that he held
this same obedience of Christ to be active, in that he endured
this penalty voluntarily, when there was no obligation upon him so
to do.
Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 2:431, 461, 462—“Christ not only
suffered the penalty, but obeyed the precept, of the law. In this
case law and justice get their whole dues. But when lost man only
suffers the penalty, but does not obey the precept, the law is
defrauded of a part of its dues. No law is completely obeyed, if
only its penalty is endured.... Consequently, a sinner can never
completely and exhaustively satisfy the divine law, however much
or long he may suffer, because he cannot at one and the same time
endure the penalty and obey the precept. He owes ‘_ten thousand
talents_’ and has ‘_not wherewith to pay_’ (_Mat. 18:24, 25_), But
Christ did both, and therefore he ‘_magnified the law and made it
honorable_’ (_Is. 42:21_), in an infinitely higher degree than the
whole human family would have done, had they all personally
suffered for their sins.” _Cf._ Edwards, Works, 1:406.
(_c_) It allows disproportionate weight to those passages of Scripture
which represent the atonement under commercial analogies, as the payment
of a debt or ransom, to the exclusion of those which describe it as an
ethical fact, whose value is to be estimated not quantitatively, but
qualitatively.
Milton, Paradise Lost, 3:209-212—“Die he, or justice must, unless
for him Some other, able and as willing, pay The rigid
satisfaction, death for death.” The main text relied upon by the
advocates of the Commercial theory is _Mat. 20:28_—“_give his life
a ransom for many._” Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion,
1:257—“The work of Christ, as Anselm construed it, was in fact
nothing else than the prototype of the meritorious performances
and satisfactions of the ecclesiastical saints, and was therefore,
from the point of view of the mediæval church, thought out quite
logically. All the more remarkable is it that the churches of the
Reformation could be satisfied with this theory, notwithstanding
that it stood in complete contradiction to their deeper moral
consciousness. If, according to Protestant principles generally,
there are no supererogatory meritorious works, then one would
suppose that such cannot be accepted even in the case of Jesus.”
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 258—“The Anselmic theory was
rejected by Abelard for grounding the atonement in justice instead
of benevolence, and for taking insufficient account of the power
of Christ’s sufferings and death in procuring a subjective change
in man.” Encyc. Brit., 2:93 (art.: Anselm)—“This theory has
exercised immense influence on the form of church doctrine. It is
certainly an advance on the older patristic theory, in so far as
it substitutes for a contest between God and Satan, a contest
between the goodness and justice of God; but it puts the whole
relation on a merely legal footing, gives it no ethical bearing,
and neglects altogether the consciousness of the individual to be
redeemed. In this respect it contrasts unfavorably with the later
theory of Abelard.”
(_d_) It represents the atonement as having reference only to the elect,
and ignores the Scripture declarations that Christ died for all.
Anselm, like Augustine, limited the atonement to the elect. Yet
Leo the Great, in 461, had affirmed that “so precious is the
shedding of Christ’s blood for the unjust, that if the whole
universe of captives would believe in the Redeemer, no chain of
the devil could hold them” (Crippen, 132). Bishop Gailor, of the
Episcopal Church, heard General Booth at Memphis say in 1903:
“Friends, Jesus shed his blood to pay the price, and he bought
from God enough salvation to go round.” The Bishop says: “I felt
that his view of salvation was different from mine. Yet such
teaching, partial as it is, lifts men by the thousand from the
mire and vice of sin into the power and purity of a new life in
Jesus Christ.”
Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 221—“Anselm does not clearly
connect the death of Christ with the punishment of sin, since he
makes it a supererogatory work voluntarily done, in consequence of
which it is ‘fitting’ that forgiveness should be bestowed on
sinners.... Yet his theory served to hand down to later
theologians the great idea of the objective atonement.”
(_e_) It is defective in holding to a merely external transfer of the
merit of Christ’s work, while it does not clearly state the internal
ground of that transfer, in the union of the believer with Christ.
This needed supplement, namely, the doctrine of the Union of the
Believer with Christ, was furnished by Thomas Aquinas, Summa, pars
3, quæs. 8. The Anselmic theory is Romanist in its tendency, as
the theory next to be mentioned is Protestant in its tendency. P.
S. Moxom asserts that salvation is not by substitution, but by
incorporation. We prefer to say that salvation is by substitution,
but that the substitution is by incorporation. Incorporation
involves substitution, and another’s pain inures to my account.
Christ being incorporate with humanity, all the exposures and
liabilities of humanity fell upon him. Simon, Reconciliation by
Incarnation, is an attempt to unite the two elements of the
doctrine.
Lidgett, Spir. Prin. of Atonement, 182-189—“As Anselm represents
it, Christ’s death is not ours in any such sense that we can enter
into it. Bushnell justly charges that it leaves no moral dynamic
in the Cross.” For criticism of Anselm, see John Caird, Fund.
Ideas of Christianity, 2:172-193: Thomasius, Christi Person und
Werk, III, 2:230-241; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:70 sq.; Baur,
Dogmengeschichte, 2:416 _sq._; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 2:273-286;
Dale, Atonement, 279-292; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture,
196-199; Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre, 176-178.
6th. The Ethical Theory of the Atonement.
In propounding what we conceive to be the true theory of the atonement, it
seems desirable to divide our treatment into two parts. No theory can be
satisfactory which does not furnish a solution of the two problems: 1.
What did the atonement accomplish? or, in other words, what was the object
of Christ’s death? The answer to this question must be a description of
the atonement in its relation to holiness in God. 2. What were the means
used? or, in other words, how could Christ justly die? The answer to this
question must be a description of the atonement as arising from Christ’s
relation to humanity. We take up these two parts of the subject in order.
Edwards, Works, 1:609, says that two things make Christ’s
sufferings a satisfaction for human guilt: (1) their equality or
equivalence to the punishment that the sinner deserves; (2) the
union between him and them, or the propriety of his being
accepted, in suffering, as the representative of the sinner.
Christ bore God’s wrath: (1) by the sight of sin and punishment;
(2) by enduring the effects of wrath ordered by God. See also
Edwards, Sermon on the Satisfaction of Christ. These statements of
Edwards suggest the two points of view from which we regard the
atonement; but they come short of the Scriptural declarations, in
that they do not distinctly assert Christ’s endurance of penalty
itself. Thus they leave the way open for the New School theories
of the atonement, propounded by the successors of Edwards.
Adolphe Monod said well: “Save first the holy law of my God,—after
that you shall save me.” Edwards felt the first of these needs,
for he says, in his Mysteries of Scripture, Works, 3:542—“The
necessity of Christ’s satisfaction to divine justice is, as it
were, the centre and hinge of all doctrines of pure revelation.
Other doctrines are comparatively of little importance, except as
they have respect to this.” And in his Work of Redemption, Works,
1:412—“Christ was born to the end that he might die; and therefore
he did, as it were, begin to die as soon as he was born.” See
_John 12:32_—“_And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw
all men unto myself. But this he said, signifying by what manner
of death he should die._” Christ was “_lifted up_”: 1. as a
propitiation to the holiness of God, which makes suffering to
follow sin, so affording the only ground for pardon without and
peace within; 2. as a power to purify the hearts and lives of men,
Jesus being as “_the serpent lifted up in the wilderness_” (_John
3:14_), and we overcoming “_because of the blood of the Lamb_”
(_Rev. 12:11_).
_First_,—the Atonement as related to Holiness in God.
The Ethical theory holds that the necessity of the atonement is grounded
in the holiness of God, of which conscience in man is a finite reflection.
There is an ethical principle in the divine nature, which demands that sin
shall be punished. Aside from its results, sin is essentially
ill-deserving. As we who are made in God’s image mark our growth in purity
by the increasing quickness with which we detect impurity, and the
increasing hatred which we feel toward it, so infinite purity is a
consuming fire to all iniquity. As there is an ethical demand in our
natures that not only others’ wickedness, but our own wickedness, be
visited with punishment, and a keen conscience cannot rest till it has
made satisfaction to justice for its misdeeds, so there is an ethical
demand of God’s nature that penalty follow sin.
The holiness of God has conscience and penalty for its correlates
and consequences. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 216—“In old Athens,
the rock on whose top sat the Court of the Areopagus, representing
the highest reason and the best character of the Athenian state,
had underneath it the Cave of the Furies.” Shakespeare knew human
nature and he bears witness to its need of atonement. In his last
Will and Testament he writes: “First, I commend my soul into the
hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through
the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of
life everlasting.” Richard III, 1:4—“I charge you, as you hope to
have redemption By Christ’s dear blood shed for our grievous sins,
That you depart and lay no hands on me.” Richard II, 4:1—“The
world’s Ransom, blessed Mary’s Son.” Henry VI, 2d part, 3:2—“That
dread King took our state upon him, To free us from his Father’s
wrathful curse.” Henry IV, 1st part, 1:1—“Those holy fields, Over
whose acres walked those blessed feet, Which fourteen hundred
years ago were nailed For our advantage on the bitter Cross.”
Measure for Measure, 2:2—“Why, all the souls that are were forfeit
once; And he that might the vantage best have took Found out the
remedy.” Henry VI, 2d part, 1:1—“Now, by the death of him that
died for all!” All’s Well that Ends Well, 3:4—“What angel shall
Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive Unless her prayers,
whom heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from
the wrath Of greatest justice.” See a good statement of the
Ethical theory of the Atonement in its relation to God’s holiness,
in Denney, Studies in Theology, 100-124.
Punishment is the constitutional reaction of God’s being against moral
evil—the self-assertion of infinite holiness against its antagonist and
would-be destroyer. In God this demand is devoid of all passion, and is
consistent with infinite benevolence. It is a demand that cannot be
evaded, since the holiness from which it springs is unchanging. The
atonement is therefore a satisfaction of the ethical demand of the divine
nature, by the substitution of Christ’s penal sufferings for the
punishment of the guilty.
John Wessel, a Reformer before the Reformation (1419-1489): “Ipse
deus, ipse sacerdos, ipse hostia, pro se, de se, sibi
satisfecit”—“Himself being at the same time God, priest, and
sacrificial victim, he made satisfaction to himself, for himself
[_i. e._, for the sins of men to whom he had united himself], and
by himself [by his own sinless sufferings].” Quarles’s Emblems: “O
groundless deeps! O love beyond degree! The Offended dies, to set
the offender free!”
Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:98—“When I was in the hand of the Holy
Spirit, under conviction of sin, I had a clear and sharp sense of
the justice of God. Sin, whatever it might be to other people,
became to me an intolerable burden. It was not so much that I
feared hell, as that I feared sin; and all the while I had upon my
mind a deep concern for the honor of God’s name and the integrity
of his moral government. I felt that it would not satisfy my
conscience if I could be forgiven unjustly. But then there came
the question: ‘How could God be just, and yet justify me who had
been so guilty?’... The doctrine of the atonement is to my mind
one of the surest proofs of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. Who
would or could have thought of the just Ruler dying for the unjust
rebel?”
This substitution is unknown to mere law, and above and beyond the powers
of law. It is an operation of grace. Grace, however, does not violate or
suspend law, but takes it up into itself and fulfils it. The righteousness
of law is maintained, in that the source of all law, the judge and
punisher, himself voluntarily submits to bear the penalty, and bears it in
the human nature that has sinned.
Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 221—“In conscience, man condemns
and is condemned. Christ was God in the flesh, both priest and
sacrificial victim (_Heb. 9:12_). He is ‘_full of
grace_’—forgiving grace—but he is ‘_full of truth_’ also, and so
‘_the only-begotten from the Father_’ (_John 1:14_). Not
forgiveness that ignores sin, not justice that has no mercy. He
forgave the sinner, because he bore the sin.” Kaftan, referring to
some modern theologians who have returned to the old doctrine but
who have said that the basis of the atonement is, not the
juridical idea of punishment, but the ethical idea of
propitiation, affirms as follows: “On the contrary the highest
ethical idea of propitiation is just that of punishment. Take this
away, and propitiation becomes nothing but the inferior and
unworthy idea of appeasing the wrath of an incensed deity.
Precisely the idea of the vicarious suffering of punishment is the
idea which must in some way be brought to a full expression for
the sake of the ethical consciousness.
“The conscience awakened by God can accept no forgiveness which is
not experienced as at the same time a condemnation of sin....
Jesus, though he was without sin and deserved no punishment, took
upon himself all the evils which have come into the world as the
consequence and punishment of sin, even to the shameful death on
the Cross at the hand of sinners.... Consequently for the good of
man he bore all that which man had deserved, and thereby has man
escaped the final eternal punishment and has become a child of
God.... This is not merely a subjective conclusion upon the
related facts, but it is as objective and real as anything which
faith recognizes and knows.”
Thus the atonement answers the ethical demand of the divine nature that
sin be punished if the offender is to go free. The interests of the divine
government are secured as a first subordinate result of this satisfaction
to God himself, of whose nature the government is an expression; while, as
a second subordinate result, provision is made for the needs of human
nature,—on the one hand the need of an objective satisfaction to its
ethical demand of punishment for sin, and on the other the need of a
manifestation of divine love and mercy that will affect the heart and move
it to repentance.
The great classical passage with reference to the atonement is
_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; for the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present
season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him
that hath faith is Jesus._” Or, somewhat more freely translated,
the passage would read:—“_whom God hath set forth in his blood as
a propitiatory sacrifice, through faith, to show forth his
righteousness on account of the pretermission of past offenses in
the forbearance of God; to declare his righteousness in the time
now present, so that he may be just and yet may justify him who
believeth in Jesus_.”
EXPOSITION OF ROM. 3:25, 26.—These verses are an expanded
statement of the subject of the epistle—the revelation of the
“_righteousness of God_” (= the righteousness which God provides
and which God accepts)—which had been mentioned in _1:17_, but
which now has new light thrown upon it by the demonstration, in
_1:18-3:20_, that both Gentiles and Jews are under condemnation,
and are alike shut up for salvation to some other method than that
of works. We subjoin the substance of Meyer’s comments upon this
passage.
“_Verse 25._ ‘_God has set forth Christ as an effectual
propitiatory offering, through faith, by means of his blood_,’ _i.
e._, in that he caused him to shed his blood. ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ αἵματι
belongs to προέθετο, not to πίστεως. The purpose of this setting
forth in his blood is εἰς ἔνδειξιν τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ, ‘_for
the display of his_ [judicial and punitive] _righteousness_,’
which received its satisfaction in the death of Christ as a
propitiatory offering, and was thereby practically demonstrated
and exhibited. ‘_On account of the passing-by of sins that had
previously taken place_,’ _i. e._, because he had allowed the
pre-Christian sins to go without punishment, whereby his
righteousness had been lost sight of and obscured, and had come to
need an ἔνδειξις, or exhibition to men. Omittance is not
acquittance. πάρεσις, passing-by, is intermediate between pardon
and punishment. ‘_In virtue of the forbearance of God_’ expresses
the motive of the πάρεσις. Before Christ’s sacrifice, God’s
administration was a scandal,—it needed vindication. The atonement
is God’s answer to the charge of freeing the guilty.
“_Verse 26._ εἰς τὸ εἶναι is not epexegetical of εἰς ἔνδειξιν, but
presents the teleology of the ἱλαστήριον, the final aim of the
whole affirmation from ὂν προέθετο to καιρῷ—namely, first, God’s
_being just_, and secondly, his _appearing just_ in consequence of
this. _Justus et justificans_, instead of _justus et condemnans_,
this is the _summum paradoxon evangelicum_. Of this revelation of
righteousness, not through condemnation, but through atonement,
grace is the determining ground.”
We repeat what was said on pages 719, 720, with regard to the
teaching of the passage, namely, 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 in his justice, or holiness; (4) that the
satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God’s
justifying the believer. It is only incidentally and subordinately
that the atonement is a necessity to man; Paul speaks of it here
mainly as a necessity to God. Christ suffers, indeed, that God may
_appear_ righteous; but behind the appearance lies the reality;
the main object of Christ’s suffering is that God may _be_
righteous, while he pardons the believing sinner; in other words,
the ground of the atonement is something internal to God himself.
See _Heb. 2:10_—it “_became_” God = it was morally fitting in God,
to make Christ suffer; _cf._ _Zech. 6:8_—“_they that go toward the
north country have quieted my spirit in the north country_”—the
judgments inflicted on Babylon have satisfied my justice.
Charnock: “He who once ‘_quenched the violence of fire_’ for those
Hebrew children, has also quenched the fires of God’s anger
against the sinner, hotter than furnace heated seven times.” The
same God who is a God of holiness, and who in virtue of his
holiness must punish human sin, is also a God of mercy, and in
virtue of his mercy himself bears the punishment of human sin.
Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theologie, 98—“Christ is not only mediator
between God and man, but between the just God and the merciful
God”—_cf._ _Ps. 85:10_—“_Mercy and truth are met together;
righteousness and peace have kissed each other,_” “Conscience
demands vicariousness, for conscience declares that a gratuitous
pardon would not be just”; see Knight, Colloquia Peripatetica, 88.