SIN AND ATONEMENT._Our Unitarian Gospel

For the sake of clearness, and in order that you may definitely

comprehend the doctrine of sin and atonement which I believe to be the

true one, I need in the first place to outline as a background that

which lies at the foundation of all the popular theologies of

Christendom. I am perfectly well aware that at least a part of the

time, while I am doing this, I shall be traversing ground with which

you are already familiar. Some of it, however, I think may be somewhat

strange to you.

The tradition begins with the story of a war in heaven. In some way

rebellion began among the angels; and he who had been Lucifer, the

light-bearer, prince among the glorious sons of God, took up arms of

rebellion against the Almighty. Naturally, he failed in this inevitably

losing battle, and was cast out into the abyss, with a third part of

all the angels, who had followed him. Then the tradition goes on: God

decided to create the world, that the sons of men born and trained here

might ultimately take the places that had been held by the angels who

had been cast out on account of their sin. But Satan, seeing this fair

and beautiful earth, this wondrous handiwork of God, determined, if

possible, to thwart and defeat the purposes of the Almighty. He

therefore invades this beautiful world. He finds Adam and Eve in their

condition of perfect felicity, innocent, but inexperienced; and they

fall a ready prey to his intention.

They then share his rebellion, accept him instead of God as king.

Henceforth they are followers of him in his age-long warfare against

light and truth, and, unless in some way saved, are to be sharers of

his eternal destiny, cast out into chains and darkness forever.

Now comes the necessity for noting for a moment the nature of sin on

this theory. You see it is not ignorance, it is not weakness merely, it

is not inherited passion only: it is conscious and purposeful rebellion

against God, putting yourself at enmity with his truth, his

righteousness, his love. In action it is some specific deed done

against God or against his truth or his right. As a state of mind, it

is a heart perverted, choosing always that which is evil, a heart at

enmity with God and with all that is good; and the theologians have

always been obliged, as a matter of consistency, to hold, no matter how

noble, how unselfish men might appear to be, that the natural man has

inherently, always, necessarily been evil. He carries about with him

the taint of original sin; that is, sin of constitution, ingrained,

inherited, that which is of the very fibre of his being. This is the

character of man as required by the old theological systems; and this

is how it happened to come about. Evil is not something natural, not

imperfection, not something undeveloped, not yet outgrown. Sin

originated outside of this world, invaded it, and worked its ruin and

destruction.

Now comes the device that has been called the Atonement, by which it is

supposed that God is going to be able to save at least a part of this

rebellious humanity. There have been a good many different theories of

the atonement that have been held, eighteen or twenty varieties of the

doctrine, three or four of which I must outline, in order to make them

clear to your mind, that you may see what have been the devices by

which the theologians have supposed that they could find a way for the

deliverance of man from this condition of loss, and fit him to share

the felicity for which he was originally intended.

Of course, the main point in the whole scheme is that the Second Person

of the Trinity becomes incarnate, comes down here to this world, is

born, grows up, teaches, suffers and at last is put to an ignominious

death. This is the central idea of the doctrine of the atonement; or,

rather, the Christ is the central figure in that doctrine. But how is

it supposed to work out the atonement that is necessary, in order that

man may be saved? You will see that the world, according to the ideas I

have been delineating, is in a condition of rebellion. What men need is

to be persuaded that they are wrong, convinced of sin, in theological

language, and then made repentant, and in some way be forgiven for the

wrong which they have done.

Now it is supposed that God must invent some scheme by which to make it

possible for him to save these lost and fallen men. If you read the

parable of the Prodigal Son as Jesus has so tenderly, touchingly,

beautifully outlined it for us, you will see that there is no thought

or plan or necessity for either in that. The son left his home,

followed the impulses and passions of youth, had gone among those that

were degraded, had soiled his character, done despite to his father's

love, injured his own nature, degraded himself by his associations and

actions. But when at last he awakes, becomes conscious of his father's

love and righteousness and truth, and says, "I will arise, and go to my

father," there is no talk of God's not being ready to receive him, or

not being able to receive him, or needing to have something done before

he can receive him, no thought of anybody's suffering any more in order

that he may be forgiven. You see all these elements that are associated

with the popular doctrines of atonement are not once thought of, never

even alluded to. He simply arises, and goes to his father; and his

father is so anxious to help him that he goes to meet him before he

reaches the father's house, and gladly falls on his neck and kisses him

and folds him in his arms. It only needs that the son should recognize

the righteousness and goodness of his father, and should wish to go

back. That is the doctrine of Jesus as taught in this wonderfully sweet

and beautiful parable.

Now what are the theories of atonement as outlined in the popular

theology? For the first thousand years of Christian history one of the

strangest conceptions possessed the ecclesiastical mind that has ever

been dreamed of. It was held literally that through the sin of Adam the

human race had become the rightful subjects of Satan, that they

belonged to him. He was their king, their emperor, their ruler, and had

a right to them in this world and the next. And so some diplomatic

negotiations must be entered into with the Devil, in order to deliver a

certain part of these his subjects, and open the way for them to be

saved. So the Church Fathers taught that Satan recognized in Christ his

old adversary in heaven, and he entered into a bargain with God that,

if he could have Christ delivered over to him, in exchange for that he

would give up his right to so many of the souls of men as were to be

saved as the result of this compact. So the work of the atonement used

to be preached as being this sort of bargain entered into with Satan.

But note what quaint, naive ideas possessed the minds of people at that

time. Satan did not know that Jesus possessed a divine nature, and

that, consequently, he could not beholden of death; and so, when he

entered into this bargain, he was cheated, he found out to his dismay

that he had lost not only humanity, but Christ also, had been defrauded

of them both. This was the doctrine of the atonement that was preached

during the early centuries of the Christian Church, at least in certain

parts of Europe.

But later there came another doctrine, the belief that the sufferings

of the Christ were a substitute offered to God for what would have been

the sufferings of the lost. He was made sin for us, he who had known no

sin, as the New Testament phraseology has it. So that he, being

infinite, in a brief space of time during his little earthly career,

during his suspension on the cross and his descent into hell, was able

to suffer as much pain as all the lost would have suffered throughout

eternity. And this suffering of the Christ was supposed to be accepted

on the part of God as the substitute for that which he would have

exacted on the part of the souls of those that for his sake were to be

saved.

There is still another theory that I must mention briefly, that which

is called the governmental theory, that which I was taught during my

course of theological instruction. The idea was that God had a moral

government to maintain, not only on this earth, but throughout the

range of the universe among all his intelligent creatures, and, if he

permitted his laws to be broken without exacting an adequate penalty,

then all governmental authority would be overthrown. In other words,

men took their poor human legal devices, their political ideals, and

lifted them into the heavens, made them the models after which it was

supposed God was to govern his great, intelligent universe.

So they said that God would be willing to forgive, he would like to

forgive, he was loving and tender and kind, but it was not safe, safe

for the interests of his universal government, for him to forgive any

one until an adequate penalty had been paid in expiation of human sin.

You see, according to this theory, it does not apparently make much

difference who it is that suffers, whether it is the person who has

committed the sin or not; but somebody must pay an adequate penalty,

and Jesus volunteered to do this, to be the victim, and so to deliver

man from the righteous deserts which he had incurred as a transgressor

of the law of God.

Gradually, however, as the world became civilized, as wider and broader

thoughts manifested themselves in the human mind, as tenderer and truer

feelings took possession of the human heart, these theories receded

into the background; and there came to the front I remember the bitter

controversies over it in my younger days what was called the Moral

Theory of the Atonement. The originator and sponsor for this theory was

the famous Dr. Horace Bushnell, of Hartford. He taught that God did not

need the punishment of anybody to uphold the integrity of his moral

government. He taught that God was not angry with the race, and did not

care to exact a penalty before he was ready to forgive human sin. He

taught that the inner nature of God was love, and that in the Second

Person of the Trinity he came to earth, was born, grew up, taught,

suffered, died, as a manifestation to the world of his love, of his

goodness, of his readiness to forgive and help, and that the efficacy

of the atonement as thus wrought on the part of the Christ was in its

revelation to men of the love and saving power of righteousness.

This was the moral theory of the atonement. It was not supposed to work

any result in the nature of God or his disposition towards men. Its

effect was to work along the lines of human thought and human action:

it was to affect men, and make them willing to be saved instead of

making God willing to save them. This was the moral theory of the

atonement; and you will see how it gradually approaches that which

intelligent and free men, it seems to me, must hold to-day in the light

of their careful study of human history and human nature. It is almost

the theory which is being held by the freest and noblest men of to-day.

The difference between it and that which I shall in a moment try to set

forth is chiefly that Dr. Bushnell confines this work of the atonement

to the person and history and character of one man instead of letting

all men share in this divine and atoning work which is being wrought

out through all the ages.

Let me now come to set forth what I believe to be the simple and

demonstrated truth. My objections against this old theory are

threefold. I will mention them, and have done with them in a word.

In the first place, the supposed origin of sin in heaven seems to me so

absurd as to be utterly unthinkable. This idea of war in heaven,

rebellion against God, smacks too much of the Old World traditions, of

the mythologies of Greece and Rome and of other peoples. Jupiter could

dethrone his father, the god Saturn, because Saturn was not almighty

and all-wise. These gods of the ancient time were merely exaggerated

types of human heroes and despots. There could be war among them, and

one of them overthrown; and Jupiter could divide the universe, after he

had conquered and dethroned his father, with his two brothers.

All this is reasonable, when you are talking about finite creatures;

but try to think for one moment of an archangel, a pure and clear-eyed

intelligence, deliberately choosing to rebel against Omnipotence! He

must have known it would be utterly, absolutely, forever hopeless!

Intelligent creatures do not rebel under conditions like that,

particularly when you combine with the absolute hopelessness of the

case the fact that he knew he was choosing misery, suffering, forever.

As I said, the whole conception of the origin of evil that implies the

rebellion of a spiritual being who knew what he was doing is

inexpressibly absurd, so absurd that we may dismiss it as impossible.

If there were any such rebellion, if you waive the absurdity for the

moment and consider the possibility, God would be responsible; for he

made him. The whole theory is not only absurd: it is unjust in its

implications towards both God and man. And then, and perhaps we need

not say any more about it, we know that it is not true. It did not even

originate in the Bible, it did not even originate among the Jews: it is

nothing in the world but a pagan myth imported into Jewish tradition

just a few hundred years before the birth of Jesus. It is of no more

authority in rational human thought than the story of Jason or

Hercules, not one particle.

Let us now turn, then, to what we know, from the history of man and the

scientific study of the universe, to be something approaching the

reality of things. People have always been talking about the origin of

evil. It is not the origin of evil that we have to face or deal with or

explain at all. Let me ask you to consider for a moment the condition

of the world when man first appeared on this planet. Here among the

lower animals were what? All the vices and all the crimes that we can

conceive of, only they were not vices nor crimes at all. There were all

the external actions and all the internal feelings and passions; but

they were not vices, and they were not crimes. Why? Because there was

no moral sense which recognized anything better, no moral standard in

the light of which they might be judged.

Here, for example, in this lower world, were all hatreds, jealousies,

envies, cruelties, thefts, greeds, murders, every kind of action that

we speak of as evil in man. And yet I said there was no evil there, no

moral evil there, because there was no consciousness, no recognition,

of the distinction between the lower and the higher. This was a part of

the natural and intended order of the development of life, not an

accident, not an invasion from the outside, not a thwarting of the will

of God, not an interference with his purpose, all of this a part of the

working out of his purpose.

Now, when man appeared, what happened? The origin, not of evil, but the

origin of goodness. A conscience was born. Man came into possession of

a moral ideal, in the light of which he recognized something higher

than this animalism that was all around him, and became conscious of

the fact that he must battle against that, and put it under his feet.

So that the life of the world, from that day to this, has been the

growth, the gradual increase, and the gradual conquest of good over

that which was in existence before.

There is no fall of man, then, there is no conscious and purposeful

rebellion against God to be accounted for, there is no need of any

devil to explain the facts. He is only an encumbrance, only in the way,

only makes it difficult and practically impossible to solve our

problem.

The old story was that, after the rebellion, pain and death and all

evil came into the human world; and the natural world was blighted.

Thorns and briers and thistles sprang up on every hand; and animals

which before had been peaceful began to fight and destroy each other.

We all know this to be a childish myth, and pagan. The actual history

of the world has been something entirely other than that.

Now I do not wish that you should suppose that I minimize evil, that I

make light of sin, that I do not properly estimate the cruelties and

the wrongs that have devastated the world. I need only suggest to you

that you look in this direction and that to see how hideous all these

evils may be; how bitter, how cruel, is the fruit of wrong thoughts and

of wrong actions. Look at a man, for example, divine in the

possibilities of his being, but through vice, through drink, through

habits of one kind and another, corrupted until it is an insult to a

brute to call him brutal. We do not deny all this. Notice the cruelties

of men towards each other, the jealousies, the envies, the strifes, the

warfares. How one class looks down upon and treats with contempt

another that is a little lower! How masters have used their slaves; how

tyrants like Nero and Caligula have made themselves hideous spectacles

of what is possible to humanity, on a stage that is world-wide and

illuminated by the flash-lights of history!

I do not wish you to suppose for a moment that I belittle, that I

underestimate these evils, only we do not need anything other than the

scientific and historic facts of the world in order to account for

them. What is sin, as science looks at it and treats it? Not something

consciously and purposely developed, not something originating in a

rebellion in some other world than this. It seems to me that we can

very easily account for it when we recognize that man has been

gradually coming up from the lower orders of life, and that he still

has in him the snake and the hyena, the wolf, the tiger, the bear, all

the wild, fierce passions of the animal world only partly sloughed off,

not yet outgrown; when you remember how ignorant he is, how he does not

understand yet the meaning of these divine laws and the divine life,

glimpses of which now and then attract his attention and lure him on;

when you remember that selfishness, misguided by ignorance, can believe

that one man can get something for his behoof and happiness and good at

the expense of the welfare of somebody else, and harm come only to the

person that is defrauded. Right in here, if I had time to treat it in

still further detail, it seems to me we have a simple and adequate

explanation of all the evil that has ever blasted, blighted, and

darkened the history of man.

Now, man being this kind of a creature, having an animal origin as well

as a divine one, gradually climbing up out of this lower life and

looking towards God as his ideal, what is it that he needs? Is there

any need of atonement? All need of atonement! What does atonement mean?

The word itself carries its clearest explanation. In its root it means

"atonement," healing the division, whatever its nature or kind,

bringing man into one-ness with God and men into one-ness with each

other.

Now let me suggest to you a little as to the things that keep man and

God apart, keep men away from each other; and they will suggest the

atonement that is needed to heal all these divisions, and bring about

that ideal condition of things that we dream of and pray for and talk

about, when men shall perfectly love God, and when they shall love each

other as themselves.

What is it that keeps man from God? First, it seems to me, it is

ignorance. What man needs in order to bring him into oneness with God

is first to have some clear conceptions of the divine, some high,

sweet, noble thoughts of God, some knowledge of the laws of God as

embodied in himself and in the universe around him. Man needs

intelligence, then, to help him, needs education.

In the next place, he needs such a picture of God as shall; make him

seem lovable. You cannot make the human heart love that which seems

hateful. The picture of God, as he has been outlined to the world in

the past, has repelled the human heart; and I do not wonder. I do not

think it strange that humanity should be at enmity with that conception

of the divine. Make God the ideal of all that is noble and sweet and

lovely, and the heart will be as naturally attracted and drawn to him

as a flower is toward the sun.

Then man needs to have his spiritual side developed, that in him which

is akin to God, so that he shall naturally live out the divine love.

Education, then, is all on man's side, you will see. God does not need

to be changed: we need to know him, to love him, to come into conscious

relationship with him. This is what we need, so far as our relation to

God is concerned.

Now for the more important side; for it is infinitely the more

important practically. Let me speak a little while of the work of

atonement between man and man. If we trace the history of humanity, we

find that men were scattered in groups all over the world, isolated,

separated from each other, ignorant of each other, misunderstanding

each other, hating each other, fighting each other; and the work of

some other world than this. It seems to me that we can very easily

account for it when we recognize that man has been gradually coming up

from the lower orders of life, and that he still has in him the snake

and the hyena, the wolf, the tiger, the bear, all the wild, fierce

passions of the animal world only partly sloughed off, not yet

outgrown; when you remember how ignorant he is, how he does not