Distinctly as the Scriptures represent Jesus Christ to have been possessed
of a divine nature and of a human nature, each unaltered in essence and
undivested of its normal attributes and powers, they with equal
distinctness represent Jesus Christ as a single undivided personality in
whom these two natures are vitally and inseparably united, so that he is
properly, not God and man, but the God-man. The two natures are bound
together, not by the moral tie of friendship, nor by the spiritual tie
which links the believer to his Lord, but by a bond unique and
inscrutable, which constitutes them one person with a single consciousness
and will,—this consciousness and will including within their possible
range both the human nature and the divine.
Whiton, Gloria Patri, 79-81, would give up speaking of the union
of God _and_ man; for this, he says, involves the fallacy of two
natures. He would speak rather of the manifestation of God _in_
man. The ordinary Unitarian insists that Christ was “a mere man.”
As if there could be such a thing as _mere_ man, exclusive of
aught above him and beyond him, self-centered and self-moved. We
can sympathize with Whiton’s objection to the phrase “God _and_
man,” because of its implication of an imperfect union. But we
prefer the term “God-man” to the phrase “God _in_ man,” for the
reason that this latter phrase might equally describe the union of
Christ with every believer. Christ is “the only begotten,” in a
sense that every believer is not. Yet we can also sympathize with
Dean Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:115—“Alas that a Church that has
so divine a service should keep its long list of Articles! I am
strengthened more than ever in my opinion that there is only
needed, that there only should be, one, _viz_., ‘I believe that
Christ is both God and man.’ ”
1. Proof of this Union.
(_a_) Christ uniformly speaks of himself, and is spoken of, as a single
person. There is no interchange of “I” and “thou” between the human and
the divine natures, such as we find between the persons of the Trinity
(John 17:23). Christ never uses the plural number in referring to himself,
unless it be in John 3:11—“we speak that we do know,”—and even here “we”
is more probably used as inclusive of the disciples. 1 John 4:2—“is come
in the flesh”—is supplemented by John 1:14—“became flesh”; and these texts
together assure us that Christ so came in human nature as to make that
nature an element in his single personality.
_John 17:23_—“_I in them, and thou in me, that they may be
perfected into one; that the world may know that thou didst send
me, and lovedst them, even as thou lovedst me_”; _3:11_—“_We speak
that which we know, and bear witness of that which we have seen;
and ye receive not our witness_”; _1 John 4:2_—“_every spirit that
confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God_”;
_John 1:14_—“_And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us_”—he
so came in human nature that human nature and himself formed, not
two persons, but one person.
In the Trinity, the Father is objective to the Son, the Son to the
Father, and both to the Spirit. But Christ’s divinity is never
objective to his humanity, nor his humanity to his divinity.
Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 97—“He is not so much God
_and_ man, as God _in_, and _through_, and _as_ man. He is one
indivisible personality throughout.... We are to study the divine
in and through the human. By looking for the divine side by side
with the human, instead of discerning the divine within the human,
we miss the significance of them both.” We mistake when we say
that certain words of Jesus with regard to his ignorance of the
day of the end (_Mark 13:32_) were spoken by his human nature,
while certain other words with regard to his being in heaven at
the same time that he was on earth (_John 3:13_) were spoken by
his divine nature. There was never any separation of the human
from the divine, or of the divine from the human,—all Christ’s
words were spoken, and all Christ’s deeds were done, by the one
person, the God-man. See Forrest, The Authority of Christ, 49-100.
(_b_) The attributes and powers of both natures are ascribed to the one
Christ, and conversely the works and dignities of the one Christ are
ascribed to either of the natures, in a way inexplicable, except upon the
principle that these two natures are organically and indissolubly united
in a single person (examples of the former usage are Rom. 1:3 and 1 Pet.
3:18; of the latter, 1 Tim. 2:5 and Heb. 1:2, 3). Hence we can say, on the
one hand, that the God-man existed before Abraham, yet was born in the
reign of Augustus Cæsar, and that Jesus Christ wept, was weary, suffered,
died, yet is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever; on the other hand,
that a divine Savior redeemed us upon the cross, and that the human Christ
is present with his people even to the end of the world (Eph. 1:23; 4:10;
Mat. 28:20).
_Rom. 1:3_—“_his Son, who was born of the seed of David according
to the flesh_”; _1 Pet. 3:18_—“_Christ also suffered for sins once
... being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the
spirit_”; _1 Tim. 2:5_—“_one mediator also between God and men,
himself man, Christ Jesus_”; _Heb. 1:2, 3_—“_his Son, whom he
appointed heir of all things ... who being the effulgence of his
glory ... when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the
right hand of the Majesty on high_”; _Eph. 1:22, 23_—“_put all
things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over
all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him
that filleth all in all_”; _4:10_—“_He that descended is the same
also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill
all things_”; _Mat. 28:20_—“_lo, I am with you always, even unto
the end of the world._”
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 142-145—“Mary was Theotokos, but she
was not the mother of Christ’s Godhood, but of his humanity. We
speak of the blood of God the Son, but it is not as God that he
has blood. The hands of the babe Jesus made the worlds, only in
the sense that he whose hands they were was the Agent in
creation.... Spirit and body in us are not merely put side by
side, and insulated from each other. The spirit does not have the
rheumatism, and the reverent body does not commune with God. The
reason why they affect each other is because they are equally
ours.... Let us avoid sensuous, fondling, modes of addressing
Christ—modes which dishonor him and enfeeble the soul of the
worshiper.... Let us also avoid, on the other hand, such phrases
as ‘the dying God’, which loses the manhood in the Godhead.”
Charles H. Spurgeon remarked that people who “dear” everybody
reminded him of the woman who said she had been reading in “dear
Hebrews.”
(_c_) The constant Scriptural representations of the infinite value of
Christ’s atonement and of the union of the human race with God which has
been secured in him are intelligible only when Christ is regarded, not as
a man of God, but as the God-man, in whom the two natures are so united
that what each does has the value of both.
_1 John 2:2_—“_he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for
ours only, but also for the whole world,_”—as John in his gospel
proves that Jesus is the Son of God, the Word, God, so in his
first Epistle he proves that the Son of God, the Word, God, has
become man; _Eph. 2:16-18_—“_might reconcile them both_ [Jew and
Gentile] _in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the
enmity thereby; and he came and preached peace to you that were
far off, and peace to them that were nigh: for through him we both
have our access in one Spirit unto the Father_”; _21, 22_—“_in
whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a
holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for
a habitation of God in the Spirit_”; _2 Pet. 1:4_—“_that through
these_ [promises] _ye may become partakers of the divine nature._”
John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:107—“We cannot separate
Christ’s divine from his human acts, without rending in twain the
unity of his person and life.”
(_d_) It corroborates this view to remember that the universal Christian
consciousness recognizes in Christ a single and undivided personality, and
expresses this recognition in its services of song and prayer.
The foregoing proof of the union of a perfect human nature and of a
perfect divine nature in the single person of Jesus Christ suffices to
refute both the Nestorian separation of the natures and the Eutychian
confounding of them. Certain modern forms of stating the doctrine of this
union, however—forms of statement into which there enter some of the
misconceptions already noticed—need a brief examination, before we proceed
to our own attempt at elucidation.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:403-411 (Syst. Doct., 3:300-308)—“Three
ideas are included in incarnation: (1) assumption of human nature
on the part of the Logos (_Heb. 2:14_—‘_partook __ of ... flesh
and blood_’; _2 Cor. 5:19_—‘_God was in Christ_’; _Col. 2:9_—‘_in
him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily_’); (2) new
creation of the second Adam, by the Holy Ghost and power of the
Highest (_Rom. 5:14_—‘_Adam’s’ transgression, who is a figure of
him that was to come_’; _1 Cor. 15:22_—‘_as in Adam all die, so
also in Christ shall all be made alive_’; _15:45_—‘_The first man
Adam became a living soul, the last Adam became a life-giving
Spirit_’; _Luke 1:35_—‘_the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and
the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee_’; _Mat.
1:20_—‘_that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit_’);
(3) becoming flesh, without contraction of deity or humanity (_1
Tim. 3:16_—‘_who was manifested in the flesh_’; _1 John
4:2_—‘_Jesus Christ is come in the flesh_’; _John 6:41, 51_—‘_I am
the bread which came down out of heaven.... I am the living
bread_’; _2 John 7_—‘_Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh_’; _John
1:14_—‘_the word became flesh_’). This last text cannot mean: The
Logos ceased to be what he was, and began to be only man. Nor can
it be a mere theophany, in human form. The reality of the humanity
is intimated, as well as the reality of the Logos.”
The Lutherans hold to a communion of the natures, as well as to an
impartation of their properties: (1) _genus
idiomaticum_—impartation of attributes of both natures to the one
person; (2) _genus apotelesmaticum_ (from ἀποτέλεσμα, “that which
is finished or completed,” _i. e._, Jesus’ work)—attributes of the
one person imparted to each of the constituent natures. Hence Mary
may be called “the mother of God,” as the Chalcedon symbol
declares, “as to his humanity,” and what each nature did has the
value of both; (3) _genus majestaticum_—attributes of one nature
imparted to the other, yet so that the divine nature imparts to
the human, not the human to the divine. The Lutherans do not
believe in a _genus tapeinoticon_, _i. e._, that the human
elements communicated themselves to the divine. The only
communication of the human was to the person, not to the divine
nature, of the God-man. Examples of this third _genus
majestaticum_ are found is _John 3:13_—“_no one hath ascended into
heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of man,
who is in heaven_” [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with א and
B, omit ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ]; _5:27_—“_he gave him authority to
execute judgment, because he is a son of man._” Of the explanation
that this is the figure of speech called “_allæosis,_” Luther
says: “_Allæosis_ est larva quædam diaboli, secundum cujus
rationes ego certe nolim esse Christianus.”
The _genus majestaticum_ is denied by the Reformed Church, on the
ground that it does not permit a clear distinction of the natures.
And this is one great difference between it and the Lutheran
Church. So Hooker, in commenting upon the Son of man’s “ascending
up where he was before,” says: “By the ‘_Son of man_’ must be
meant the whole person of Christ, who, being man upon earth,
filled heaven with his glorious presence; but not according to
that nature for which the title of man is given him.” For the
Lutheran view of this union and its results in the communion of
natures, see Hase, Hutterus Redivivus, 11th ed., 195-197;
Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 2:24, 25. For the Reformed
view, see Turretin, loc. 13, quæst. 8; Hodge, Syst. Theol.,
2:387-397, 407-418.
2. Modern misrepresentations of this Union.
A. Theory of an incomplete humanity.—Gess and Beecher hold that the
immaterial part in Christ’s humanity is only contracted and metamorphosed
deity.
The advocates of this view maintain that the divine Logos reduced himself
to the condition and limits of human nature, and thus literally became a
human soul. The theory differs from Apollinarianism, in that it does not
necessarily presuppose a trichotomous view of man’s nature. While
Apollinarianism, however, denied the human origin only of Christ’s πνεῦμα,
this theory extends the denial to his entire immaterial being,—his body
alone being derived from the Virgin. It is held, in slightly varying
forms, by the Germans, Hofmann and Ebrard, as well as by Gess; and Henry
Ward Beecher was its chief representative in America.
Gess holds that Christ gave up his eternal holiness and divine
self-consciousness, to become man, so that he never during his
earthly life thought, spoke, or wrought as God, but was at all
times destitute of divine attributes. See Gess, Scripture Doctrine
of the Person of Christ; and synopsis of his view, by Reubelt, in
Bib. Sac., 1870:1-32; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:234-241, and 2:20;
Ebrard, Dogmatik, 2:144-151, and in Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.:
Jesus Christ, der Gottmensch; also Liebner, Christliche Dogmatik.
Henry Ward Beecher, in his Life of Jesus the Christ, chap. 3,
emphasizes the word “_flesh,_” in _John 1:14_ and declares the
passage to mean that the divine Spirit enveloped himself in a
human _body_, and in that condition was subject to the
indispensable limitations of material laws. All these advocates of
the view hold that Deity was dormant, or paralyzed, in Christ
during his earthly life. Its essence is there, but not its
efficiency at any time.
Against this theory we urge the following objections:
(_a_) It rests upon a false interpretation of the passage John 1:14—ὁ
λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο. The word σάρξ here has its common New Testament
meaning. It designates neither soul nor body alone, but human nature in
its totality (_cf._ John 3:6—τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τῆς σαρκὸς σάρξ ἐστιν;
Rom. 7:18—οὐκ οἰκεῖ ἐν ἐμοί, τοῦτ᾽ ἔστιν ἐν τῇ σαρκί μου, ἀγαθόν). That
ἐγένετο does not imply a transmutation of the λόγος into human nature, or
into a human soul, is evident from ἐσκήνωσεν which follows—an allusion to
the Shechinah of the Mosaic tabernacle; and from the parallel passage 1
John 4:2—ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυθότα—where we are taught not only the oneness of
Christ’s person, but the distinctness of the constituent natures.
_John 1:14_—“_the Word became flesh, and dwelt_ [tabernacled]
_among us, and we behold his glory_”; _3:6_—“_That which is born
of the flesh is flesh_”; _Rom., 7:18_—“_in me, that is, in my
flesh, dwelleth no good thing_”; _1 John 4:2_—“_Jesus Christ is
come in the flesh._” Since “_flesh_,” in Scriptural usage, denotes
human nature in its entirety, there is as little reason to infer
from these passages a change of the Logos into a human body, as a
change of the Logos into a human soul. There is no curtailed
humanity in Christ. One advantage of the monistic doctrine is that
it avoids this error. Omnipresence is the presence of the whole of
God in every place. _Ps. 85:9_—“_Surely his salvation is nigh them
that fear him, That glory may dwell in our land_”—was fulfilled
when Christ, the true Shekinah, tabernacled in human flesh and men
“_beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father,
full of grace and truth_” (_John 1:14_). And Paul can say in _2
Cor. 12:9_—“_Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my
weaknesses, that the power of Christ may spread a tabernacle over
me._”
(_b_) It contradicts the two great classes of Scripture passages already
referred to, which assert on the one hand the divine knowledge and power
of Christ and his consciousness of oneness with the Father, and on the
other hand the completeness of his human nature and its derivation from
the stock of Israel and the seed of Abraham (Mat. 1:1-16; Heb. 2:16). Thus
it denies both the true humanity, and the true deity, of Christ.
See the Scripture passages cited in proof of the Deity of Christ,
pages 305-315. Gess himself acknowledges that, if the passages in
which Jesus avers his divine knowledge and power and his
consciousness of oneness with the Father refer to his earthly
life, his theory is overthrown. “Apollinarianism had a certain
sort of grotesque grandeur, in giving to the human body and soul
of Christ an infinite, divine πνεῦμα. It maintained at least the
divine side of Christ’s person. But the theory before us denies
both sides.” While it so curtails deity that it is no proper
deity, it takes away from humanity all that is valuable in
humanity; for a manhood that consists only in body is no proper
manhood. Such manhood is like the “half length” portrait which
depicted only the _lower half_ of the man. _Mat. 1:1-16_, the
genealogy of Jesus, and _Heb. 2:16_—“_taketh hold of the seed of
Abraham_”—intimate that Christ took all that belonged to human
nature.
(_c_) It is inconsistent with the Scriptural representations of God’s
immutability, in maintaining that the Logos gives up the attributes of
Godhead, and his place and office as second person of the Trinity, in
order to contract himself into the limits of humanity. Since attributes
and substance are correlative terms, it is impossible to hold that the
substance of God is in Christ, so long as he does not possess divine
attributes. As we shall see hereafter, however, the possession of divine
attributes by Christ does not necessarily imply his constant exercise of
them. His humiliation indeed, consisted in his giving up their independent
exercise.
See Dorner, Unveränderlichkeit Gottes, in Jahrbuch für deutsche
Theologie, 1:361; 2:440; 3:579; esp. 1:390-412—“Gess holds that,
during the thirty-three years of Jesus’ earthly life, the Trinity
was altered; the Father no more poured his fulness into the Son;
the Son no more, with the Father, sent forth the Holy Spirit; the
world was upheld and governed by Father and Spirit alone, without
the mediation of the Son; the Father ceased to beget the Son. He
says the Father alone has _aseity_; he is the only Monas. The
Trinity is a family, whose head is the Father, but whose number
and condition is variable. To Gess, it is indifferent whether the
Trinity consists of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or (as during
Jesus’ life) of only one. But this is a Trinity in which two
members are accidental. A Trinity that can get along without one
of its members is not the Scriptural Trinity. The Father depends
on the Son, and the Spirit depends on the Son, as much as the Son
depends on the Father. To take away the Son is to take away the
Father and the Spirit. This giving up of the actuality of his
attributes, even of his holiness, on the part of the Logos, is in
order to make it possible for Christ to sin. But can we ascribe
the possibility of sin to a being who is really God? The reality
of temptation requires us to postulate a veritable human soul.”
(_d_) It is destructive of the whole Scriptural scheme of salvation, in
that it renders impossible any experience of human nature on the part of
the divine,—for when God becomes man he ceases to be God; in that it
renders impossible any sufficient atonement on the part of human
nature,—for mere humanity, even though its essence be a contracted and
dormant deity, is not capable of a suffering which shall have infinite
value; in that it renders impossible any proper union of the human race
with God in the person of Jesus Christ,—for where true deity and true
humanity are both absent, there can be no union between the two.
See Dorner, Jahrbuch f. d. Theologie, 1:390—“Upon this theory only
an exhibitory atonement can be maintained. There is no real
humanity that, in the strength of divinity, can bring a sacrifice
to God. Not substitution, therefore, but obedience, on this view,
reconciles us to God. Even if it is said that God’s Spirit is the
real soul in all men, this will not help the matter; for we should
then have to make an essential distinction between the indwelling
of the Spirit in the unregenerate, the regenerate, and Christ,
respectively. But in that case we lose the likeness between
Christ’s nature and our own,—Christ’s being preëxistent, and ours
not. Without this pantheistic doctrine, Christ’s unlikeness to us
is yet greater; for he is really a wandering God, clothed in a
human body, and cannot properly be called a human soul. We have
then no middle-point between the body and the Godhead; and in the
state of exaltation, we have no manhood at all,—only the infinite
Logos, in a glorified body as his garment.”
Isaac Watts’s theory of a preëxistent humanity in like manner
implies that humanity is originally in deity; it does not proceed
from a human stock, but from a divine; between the human and the
divine there is no proper distinction; hence there can be no
proper redeeming of humanity; see Bib. Sac., 1875:421. A. A.
Hodge, Pop. Lectures, 226—“If Christ does not take a human πνεῦμα,
he cannot be a high-priest who feels with us in all our
infirmities, having been tempted like us.” Mason, Faith of the
Gospel, 138—“The conversion of the Godhead into flesh would have
only added one more man to the number of men—a sinless one,
perhaps, among sinners—but it would have effected no union of God
and men.” On the theory in general, see Hovey, God with Us, 62-69;
Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:430-440; Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
4:386-408; Biedermann, Christliche Dogmatik, 356-359; Bruce,
Humiliation of Christ, 187, 230; Schaff, Christ and Christianity,
115-119.
B. Theory of a gradual incarnation.—Dorner and Rothe hold that the union
between the divine and the human natures is not completed by the
incarnating act.
The advocates of this view maintain that the union between the two natures
is accomplished by a gradual communication of the fulness of the divine
Logos to the man Christ Jesus. This communication is mediated by the human
consciousness of Jesus. Before the human consciousness begins, the
personality of the Logos is not yet divine-human. The personal union
completes itself only gradually, as the human consciousness is
sufficiently developed to appropriate the divine.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:660 (Syst. Doct., 4:125)—“In order that
Christ might show his high-priestly love by suffering and death,
the different sides of his personality yet stood to one another in
relative separableness. The divine-human union in him,
accordingly, was before his death not yet completely actualized,
although its completion was from the beginning divinely assured.”
2:431 (Syst. Doct., 3:328)—“In spite of this _becoming_, inside of
the _Unio_, the Logos is from the beginning united with Jesus in
the deepest foundation of his being, and Jesus’ life has ever been
a divine-human one, in that a present receptivity for the Godhead
has never remained without its satisfaction.... Even the
unconscious humanity of the babe turns receptively to the Logos,
as the plant turns toward the light. The initial union makes
Christ already the God-man, but not in such a way as to prevent a
subsequent _becoming_; for surely he did become omniscient and
incapable of death, as he was not at the beginning.”
2:464 _sq._ (Syst. Doct., 3:363 _sq._)—“The actual life of God, as
the Logos, reaches beyond the beginnings of the divine-human life.
For if the _Unio_ is to complete itself by growth, the relation of
impartation and reception must continue. In his personal
consciousness, there was a distinction between duty and being. The
will had to take up practically, and turn into action, each new
revelation or perception of God’s will on the part of intellect or
conscience. He had to maintain, with his will, each revelation of
his nature and work. In his twelfth year, he says: ‘_I must be
about my Father’s business._’ To Satan’s temptation: ‘_Art thou
God’s Son?_’ he must reply with an affirmation that suppresses all
doubt, though he will not prove it by miracle. This moral growth,
as it was the will of the Father, was his task. He hears from his
Father, and obeys. In him, imperfect knowledge was never the same
with false conception. In us, ignorance has error for its obverse
side. But this was never the case with him, though he grew in
knowledge unto the end.” Dorner’s view of the Person of Christ may
be found in his Hist. Doct. Person Christ, 5:248-261;
Glaubenslehre, 2:347-474 (Syst. Doct., 3:243-373).
A summary of his views is also given in Princeton Rev.,
1873:71-87—Dorner illustrates the relation between the humanity
and the deity of Christ by the relation between God and man, in
conscience, and in the witness of the Spirit. “So far as the human
element was immature or incomplete, so far the Logos was not
present. Knowledge advanced to unity with the Logos, and the human
will afterwards confirmed the best and highest knowledge. A
resignation of both the Logos and the human nature to the union is
involved in the incarnation. The growth continues until the idea,
and the reality, of divine humanity perfectly coincide. The
assumption of unity was gradual, in the life of Christ. His
exaltation began with the perfection of this development.” Rothe’s
statement of the theory can be found in his Dogmatik, 2:49-182;
and in Bib. Sac., 27:386.
It is objectionable for the following reasons:
(_a_) The Scripture plainly teaches that that which was born of Mary was
as completely Son of God as Son of man (Luke 1:35); and that in the
incarnating act, and not at his resurrection, Jesus Christ became the
God-man (Phil. 2:7). But this theory virtually teaches the birth of a man
who subsequently and gradually became the God-man, by consciously
appropriating the Logos to whom he sustained ethical relations—relations
with regard to which the Scripture is entirely silent. Its radical error
is that of mistaking an incomplete consciousness of the union for an
incomplete union.
In _Luke 1:35_—“_the holy thing which is begotten shall be called
the Son of God_”—and _Phil. 2:7_—“_emptied himself, taking the
form of servant, being made in the likeness of men_”—we have
evidence that Christ was both Son of God and Son of man from the
very beginning of his earthly life. But, according to Dorner,
before there was any human consciousness, the personality of Jesus
Christ was not divine-human.
(_b_) Since consciousness and will belong to personality, as distinguished
from nature, the hypothesis of a mutual, conscious, and voluntary
appropriation of divinity by humanity and of humanity by divinity, during
the earthly life of Christ, is but a more subtle form of the Nestorian
doctrine of a double personality. It follows, moreover, that as these two
personalities do not become absolutely one until the resurrection, the
death of the man Jesus Christ, to whom the Logos has not yet fully united
himself, cannot possess an infinite atoning efficacy.
Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 2:68-70, objects to Dorner’s
view, that it “leads us to a man who is in intimate communion with
God,—a man of God, but not a man who is God.” He maintains,
against Dorner, that “the union between the divine and human in
Christ exists before the consciousness of it.” 193-195—Dorner’s
view “makes each element, the divine and the human, long for the
other, and reach its truth and reality only in the other. This, so
far as the divine is concerned, is very like pantheism. Two
_willing_ personalities are presupposed, with ethical relation to
each other,—two persons, at least at the first. Says Dorner: ‘So
long as the manhood is yet unconscious, the person of the Logos is
not yet the central _ego_ of this man. At the beginning, the Logos
does not impart himself, so far as he is person or
self-consciousness. He keeps apart by himself, just in proportion
as the manhood fails in power of perception.’ At the beginning,
then, this man is not yet the God-man; the Logos only works in
him, and on him. ‘The _unio personalis_ grows and completes
itself,—becomes ever more all-sided and complete. Till the
resurrection, there is a relative separability still.’ Thus
Dorner. But the Scripture knows nothing of an ethical relation of
the divine, to the human in Christ’s person. It knows only of one
divine-human subject.” See also Thomasius, 2:80-92.
(_c_) While this theory asserts a final complete union of God and man in
Jesus Christ, it renders this union far more difficult to reason, by
involving the merging of two persons in one, rather than the union of two
natures in one person. We have seen, moreover, that the Scripture gives no
countenance to the doctrine of a double personality during the earthly
life of Christ. The God-man never says: “I and the Logos are one”; “he
that hath seen me hath seen the Logos”; “the Logos is greater than I”; “I
go to the Logos.” In the absence of all Scripture evidence in favor of
this theory, we must regard the rational and dogmatic arguments against it
as conclusive.
Liebner, in Jahrbuch f. d. Theologie, 3:349-366, urges, against
Dorner, that there is no sign in Scripture of such communion
between the two natures of Christ as exists between the three
persons of the Trinity. Philippi also objects to Dorner’s view:
(1) that it implies a pantheistic identity of essence in both God
and man; (2) that it makes the resurrection, not the birth, the
time when the Word became flesh; (3) that it does not explain how
two personalities can become one; see Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
4:364-380. Philippi quotes Dorner as saying: “The unity of essence
of God and man is the great discovery of this age.” But that
Dorner was no pantheist appears from the following quotations from
his Hist. Doctrine of the Person of Christ, II, 3:5, 23, 69,
115—“Protestant philosophy has brought about the recognition of
the essential connection and unity of the human and the divine....
To the theology of the present day, the divine and human are not
mutually exclusive but connected magnitudes, having an inward
relation to each other and reciprocally confirming each other, by
which view both separation and identification are set aside....
And now the common task of carrying on the union of faculties and
qualities to a union of essence was devolved on both. The
difference between them is that only God has aseity.... Were we to
set our face against every view which represents the divine and
human as intimately and essentially related, we should be wilfully
throwing away the gains of centuries, and returning to a soil
where a Christology is an absolute impossibility.”
See also Dorner, System, 1:123—“Faith postulates a difference
between the world and God, between whom religion seeks a union.
Faith does not wish to be a mere relation to itself or to its own
representations and thoughts. That would be a monologue; faith
desires a dialogue. Therefore it does not consent with a monism
which recognizes only God or the world (with the ego). The duality
(not the dualism, which is opposed to such monism, but which has
no desire to oppose the rational demand for unity) is in fact a
condition of true and vital unity.” The _unity_ is the foundation
of religion; the _difference_ is the foundation of morality.
Morality and religion are but different manifestations of the same
principle. Man’s moral endeavor is the working of God within him.
God can be revealed only in the perfect character and life of
Jesus Christ. See Jones, Robert Browning, 146.
Stalker, Imago Christi: “Christ was not half a God and half a man,
but he was perfectly God and perfectly man.” Moberly, Atonement
and Personality, 95—“The Incarnate did not oscillate between being
God and being man. He was indeed _always_ God, and yet never
otherwise God than as expressed within the possibilities of human
consciousness and character.” He knew that he was something more
than he was as incarnate. His miracles showed what humanity might
become. John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 14—“The divinity
of Christ was not that of a divine nature in local or mechanical
juxtaposition with a human, but of a divine nature that suffused,
blended, identified itself with the thoughts, feelings, volitions
of a human individuality. Whatever of divinity could not
organically unite itself with and breathe through a human spirit,
was not and could not be present in one who, whatever else he was,
was really and truly human.” See also Biedermann, Dogmatik,
351-353; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:428-430.
3. The real nature of this Union.
(_a_) Its great importance.—While the Scriptures represent the person of
Christ as the crowning mystery of the Christian scheme (Matt 11:27; Col.
1:27; 2:2; 1 Tim. 3:16), they also incite us to its study (John 17:3;
20:27; Luke 24:39; Phil. 3:8, 10). This is the more needful, since Christ
is not only the central point of Christianity, but is Christianity
itself—the embodied reconciliation and union between man and God. The
following remarks are offered, not as fully explaining, but only as in
some respects relieving, the difficulties of the subject.
_Matt. 11:27_—“_no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither
doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the
Son willeth to reveal him._” Here it seems to be intimated that
the mystery of the nature of the Son is even greater than that of
the Father. Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:408—The Person of Christ is in
some respects more baffling to reason than the Trinity. Yet there
is a profane neglect, as well as a profane curiosity: _Col.
1:27_—“_the riches of the glory of this mystery ... which is
Christ in you, the hope of glory_”; _2:2, 3_—“_the mystery of God,
even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge
hidden_”; _1 Tim. 3:16_—“_great is the mystery of godliness; He
who was manifested in the flesh_”—here the Vulgate, the Latin
Fathers, and Buttmann make μυστήριον the antecedent of ὅς, the
relative taking the _natural_ gender of its antecedent, and
μυστήριον referring to Christ; _Heb. 2:11_—“_both he that
sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one_ [not
father, but race, or substance]” (_cf._ _Acts 17:26_—“_he made of
one every nation of men_”)—an allusion to the solidarity of the
race and Christ’s participation in all that belongs to us.
_John 17:3_—“_this is life eternal, that they should know thee the
only true God, and him who thou didst send, even Jesus Christ_”;
_20:27_—“_Reach hither thy finger, and see my hands; and reach
hither thy hand, and put it into my side: and be not faithless,
but believing_”; _Luke 24:39_—“_See my hands and my feet, that it
is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and
bones, as ye behold me having_”; _Phil. 3:8, 10_—“_I count all
things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ
Jesus my Lord ... that I may know him_”; _1 John 1:1_—“_that which
we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which
we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of life._”
Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 254, 255—“Ranke said that Alexander
was one of the few men in whom biography is identical with
universal history. The words apply far better to Christ.” Crane,
Religion of To-morrow, 267—“Religion being merely the personality
of God, Christianity the personality of Christ.” Pascal: “Jesus
Christ is the centre of everything and the object of everything,
and he who does not know him knows nothing of the order of nature
and nothing of himself.” Goethe in his last years wrote: “Humanity
cannot take a retrograde step, and we may say that the Christian
religion, now that it has once appeared, can never again
disappear; now that it has once found a divine embodiment, cannot
again be dissolved.” H. B. Smith, that man of clear and devout
thought, put his whole doctrine into one sentence: “Let us come to
Jesus,—the person of Christ is the centre of theology.” Dean
Stanley never tired of quoting as his own Confession of Faith the
words of John Bunyan: “Blest Cross—blest Sepulchre—blest rather
he—The man who there was put to shame for me!” And Charles Wesley
wrote on Catholic Love: “Weary of all this wordy strife, These
motions, forms, and modes and names, To thee, the Way, the Truth,
the Life, Whose love my simple heart inflames—Divinely taught, at
last I fly, With thee and thine to live and die.”
“We have two great lakes, named Erie and Ontario, and these are
connected by the Niagara River through which Erie pours its waters
into Ontario. The whole Christian Church throughout the ages has
been called the overflow of Jesus Christ, who is infinitely
greater than it. Let Lake Erie be the symbol of Christ, the
pre-existent Logos, the Eternal Word, God revealed in the
universe. Let Niagara River be a picture to us of this same Christ
now confined to the narrow channel of His manifestation in the
flesh, but within those limits showing the same eastward current
and downward gravitation which men perceived so imperfectly
before. The tremendous cataract, with its waters plunging into the
abyss and shaking the very earth, is the suffering and death of
the Son of God, which for the first time makes palpable to human
hearts the forces of righteousness and love operative in the
Divine nature from the beginning. The law of universal life has
been made manifest; now it is seen that justice and judgment are
the foundations of God’s throne; that God’s righteousness
everywhere and always makes penalty to follow sin; that the love
which creates and upholds sinners must itself be numbered with the
transgressors, and must bear their iniquities. Niagara has
demonstrated the gravitation of Lake Erie. And not in vain. For
from Niagara there widens out another peaceful lake. Ontario is
the offspring and likeness of Erie. So redeemed humanity is the
overflow of Jesus Christ, but only of Jesus Christ after He has
passed through the measureless self-abandonment of His earthly
life and of His tragic death on Calvary. As the waters of Lake
Ontario are ever fed by Niagara, so the Church draws its life from
the cross. And Christ’s purpose is, not that we should repeat
Calvary, for that we can never do, but that we should reflect in
ourselves the same onward movement and gravitation towards
self-sacrifice which He has revealed as characterizing the very
life of God” (A. H. Strong, Sermon before the Baptist World
Congress, London, July 12, 1905).
(_b_) The chief problems.—These problems are the following: 1. one
personality and two natures; 2. human nature without personality; 3.
relation of the Logos to the humanity during the earthly life of Christ;
4. relation of the humanity to the Logos during the heavenly life of
Christ. We may throw light on 1, by the figure of two concentric circles;
on 2, by remembering that two earthly parents unite in producing a single
child; on 3, by the illustration of latent memory, which contains so much
more than present recollection; on 4, by the thought that body is the
manifestation of spirit, and that Christ in his heavenly state is not
confined to place.
Luther said that we should need “new tongues” before we could
properly set forth this doctrine,—particularly a new language with
regard to the nature of man. The further elucidation of the
problems mentioned above will immediately occupy our attention.
Our investigation should not be prejudiced by the fact that the
divine element in Jesus Christ manifests itself within human
limitations. This is the condition of all revelation. _John
14:9_—“_he that hath seen me hath seen the father_”; _Col.
2:9_—“_in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily_” =
up to the measure of human capacity to receive and to express the
divine. _Heb. 2:11_ and _Acts 17:26_ both attribute to man a
consubstantiality with Christ, and Christ is the manifested God.
It is a law of hydrostatics that the smallest column of water will
balance the largest. Lake Erie will be no higher than the water in
the tube connected therewith. So the person of Christ reached the
level of God, though limited in extent and environment. He was God
manifest in the flesh.
Robert Browning, Death in the Desert: “I say, the acknowledgment
of God in Christ Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee All
questions in the earth and out of it, And has so far advanced thee
to be wise”; Epilogue to Dramatis Personæ: “That one Face, far
from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become
my Universe that feels and knows.” “That face,” said Browning to
Mrs. Orr, as he finished reading the poem, “is the face of Christ.
That is how I feel him.” This is his answer to those victims of
nineteenth century scepticism for whom incarnate Love has
disappeared from the universe, carrying with it the belief in God.
He thus attests the continued presence of God in Christ, both in
nature and humanity. On Browning as a Christian Poet, see A. H.
Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 373-447; S. Law
Wilson, Theology of Modern Literature, 181-226.
(_c_) Reason for mystery.—The union of the two natures in Christ’s person
is necessarily inscrutable, because there are no analogies to it in our
experience. Attempts to illustrate it on the one hand from the union and
yet the distinctness of soul and body, of iron and heat, and on the other
hand from the union and yet the distinctness of Christ and the believer,
of the divine Son and the Father, are one-sided and become utterly
misleading, if they are regarded as furnishing a rationale of the union
and not simply a means of repelling objection. The first two illustrations
mentioned above lack the essential element of two natures to make them
complete: soul and body are not two natures, but one, nor are iron and
heat two substances. The last two illustrations mentioned above lack the
element of single personality: Christ and the believer are two persons,
not one, even as the Son and the Father are not one person, but two.
The two illustrations most commonly employed are the union of soul
and body, and the union of the believer with Christ. Each of these
illustrates one side of the great doctrine, but each must be
complemented by the other. The former, taken by itself, would be
Eutychian; the latter, taken by itself, would be Nestorian. Like
the doctrine of the Trinity, the Person of Christ is an absolutely
unique fact, for which we can find no complete analogies. But
neither do we know how soul and body are united. See Blunt, Dict.
Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Hypostasis; Sartorius, Person and
Work of Christ, 27-65; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 39-77; Luthardt,
Fund. Truths, 281-334.
A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 218, 230—“Many people are
Unitarians, not because of the difficulties of the Trinity, but
because of the difficulties of the Person of Christ.... The union
of the two natures is not mechanical, as between oxygen and
nitrogen in our air; nor chemical, as between oxygen and hydrogen
in water; nor organic, as between our hearts and our brains; but
personal. The best illustration is the union of body and soul in
our own persons,—how perfectly joined they are in the great
orator! Yet here are not two natures, but one human nature. We
need therefore to add the illustration of the union between the
believer and Christ.” And here too we must confess the
imperfection of the analogy, for Christ and the believer are two
persons, and not one. The person of the God-man is unique and
without adequate parallel. But this constitutes its dignity and
glory.
(_d_) Ground of possibility.—The possibility of the union of deity and
humanity in one person is grounded in the original creation of man in the
divine image. Man’s kinship to God, in other words, his possession of a
rational and spiritual nature, is the condition of incarnation. Brute-life
is incapable of union with God. But human nature is capable of the divine,
in the sense not only that it lives, moves, and has its being in God, but
that God may unite himself indissolubly to it and endue it with divine
powers, while yet it remains all the more truly human. Since the moral
image of God in human nature has been lost by sin, Christ, the perfect
image of God after which man was originally made, restores that lost image
by uniting himself to humanity and filling it with his divine life and
love.
_2 Pet. 1:4_—“_partakers of the divine nature._” Creation and
providence do not furnish the last limit of God’s indwelling.
Beyond these, there is the spiritual union between the believer
and Christ, and even beyond this, there is the unity of God and
man in the person of Jesus Christ. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:283
(Syst. Doct., 3:180)—“Humanity in Christ is related to divinity,
as woman to man in marriage. It is receptive, but it is exalted by
receiving. Christ is the offspring of the [marriage] covenant
between God and Israel.” _Ib._, 2:403-411 (Syst. Doct.,
3:301-308)—“The question is: How can Christ be both Creator and
creature? The Logos, as such, stands over against the creature as
a distinct object. How can he become, and be, that which exists
only as object of his activity and inworking? Can the cause become
its own effect? The problem is solved, only by remembering that
the divine and human, though distinct from each other, are not to
be thought of as foreign to each other and mutually exclusive. The
very thing that distinguishes them binds them together. Their
essential distinction is that God has aseity, while man has simply
dependence. ‘_Deep calleth unto deep_’ (_Ps. 42:7_)—the deep of
the divine riches, and the deep of human poverty, call to each
other. ‘From me a cry,—from him reply.’ God’s infinite resources
and man’s infinite need, God’s measureless supply and man’s
boundless receptivity, attract each other, until they unite in him
in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The mutual
attraction is of an ethical sort, but the divine love has ‘_first
loved_’ (_1 John 4:19_).
“The new second creation is therefore not merely, like the first
creation, one that distinguishes from God,—it is one that unites
with God. Nature is distinct from God, yet God moves and works in
nature. Much more does human nature find its only true reality, or
realization, in union with God. God’s uniting act does not violate
or unmake it, but rather first causes it to be what, in God’s
idea, it was meant to be.” Incarnation is therefore the very
fulfilment of the idea of humanity. The supernatural assumption of
humanity is the most natural of all things. Man is not a mere
tangent to God, but an empty vessel to be filled from the infinite
fountain. Natura humana in Christo capax divinæ. See Talbot, in
Bap. Quar., 1868:129; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 270.
God could not have become an angel, or a tree, or a stone. But he
could become man, because man was made in his image. God in man,
as Phillips Brooks held, is the absolutely natural. Channing said
that “all minds are of one family.” E. B. Andrews: “Divinity and
humanity are not contradictory predicates. If this had been
properly understood, there would have been no Unitarian movement.
Man is in a true sense divine. This is also true of Christ. But he
is infinitely further along in the divine nature than we are. If
we say his divinity is a new kind, then the new kind arises out of
the degree.” “Were not the eye itself a sun, No light for it could
ever shine: By nothing godlike could the soul be won, Were not the
soul itself divine.”
John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:165—“A smaller circle
may represent a larger in respect of its circularity; but a
circle, small or large, cannot be the image of a square.” ...
2:101—“God would not be God without union with man, and man would
not be man without union with God. Immanent in the spirits he has
made, he shares their pains and sorrows.... Showing the infinite
element in man, Christ attracts us toward his own moral
excellence.” Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist,
190—“Incarnation is the indwelling of God in his children, of
which the type and pattern is seen in him who is at once the
manifestation of God to man, and the revelation to men of what
humanity is to be when God’s work in the world is done—perfect God
and perfect man, because God perfectly dwelling in a perfect man.”
We have quoted these latter utterances, not because we regard them
as admitting the full truth with regard to the union of the divine
and human in Christ; but because they recognize the essential
likeness of the human to the divine, and so help our understanding
of the union between the two. We go further than the writers
quoted, in maintaining not merely an indwelling of God in Christ,
but an organic and essential union. Christ moreover is not the
God-man by virtue of his possessing a larger measure of the divine
than we, but rather by being the original source of all life, both
human and divine. We hold to his deity as well as to his divinity,
as some of these authors apparently do not. See _Heb. 7:15,
16_—“_another priest, who hath been made ... after the power of an
endless life_”; _John 1:4_—“_In him was life; and the life was the
light of men._”
(_e_) No double personality.—This possession of two natures does not
involve a double personality in the God-man, for the reason that the Logos
takes into union with himself, not an individual man with already
developed personality, but human nature which has had no separate
existence before its union with the divine. Christ’s human nature is
impersonal, in the sense that it attains self-consciousness, and
self-determination only in the personality of the God-man. Here it is
important to mark the distinction between nature and person. Nature is
substance possessed in common; the persons of the Trinity have one nature;
there is a common nature of mankind. Person is nature separately
subsisting, with powers of consciousness and will. Since the human nature
of Christ has not and never had a separate subsistence, it is impersonal,
and in the God-man the Logos furnishes the principle of personality. It is
equally important to observe that self-consciousness and
self-determination do not belong to nature as such, but only to
personality. For this reason, Christ has not two consciousnesses and two
wills, but a single consciousness and a single will. This consciousness
and will, moreover, is never simply human, but is always theanthropic—an
activity of the one personality which unites in itself the human and the
divine (Mark 13:32; Luke 22:42).
The human father and the human mother are distinct persons, and
they each give something of their own peculiar nature to their
child; yet the result is, not two persons in the child, but only
one person, with one consciousness and one will. So the Fatherhood
of God and the motherhood of Mary produced not a double
personality in Christ, but a single personality. Dorner
illustrates the union of human and divine in Jesus by the _Holy
Spirit_ in the Christian,—nothing foreign, nothing distinguishable
from the human life into which it enters; and by the _moral
sense_, which is the very presence and power of God in the human
soul,—yet conscience does not break up the unity of the life; see
C. C. Everett, Essays, 32. These illustrations help us to
understand the interpenetration of the human by the divine in
Jesus; but they are defective in suggesting that his relation to
God was different from ours not in kind but only in degree. Only
Jesus could say: “_Before Abraham was born, I am_” (_John 8:58_);
“_I and the Father are one_” (_John 10:30_).
The theory of two consciousnesses and two wills, first elaborated
by John of Damascus, was an unwarranted addition to the orthodox
doctrine propounded at Chalcedon. Although the view of John of
Damascus was sanctioned by the Council of Constantinople (681),
“this Council has never been regarded by the Greek Church as
œcumenical, and its composition and spirit deprive its decisions
of all value as indicating the true sense of Scripture”; see
Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 90. _Nature_ has consciousness and
will, only as it is manifested in _person_. The one person has a
single consciousness and will, which embraces within its scope at
all times a human nature, and sometimes a divine. Notice that we
do not say Christ’s human nature had no will, but only that it had
none before its union with the divine nature, and none separately
from the one will which was made up of the human and the divine
united; _versus_ Current Discussions in Theology, 5:283.
Sartorius uses the illustration of two concentric circles: the one
ego of personality in Christ is at the same time the centre of
both circles, the human nature and the divine. Or, still better,
illustrate by a smaller vessel of air inverted and sunk, sometimes
below its centre, sometimes above, in a far larger vessel of
water. See _Mark 13:32_—“_of that day or that hour knoweth no one,
not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son_”; _Luke
22:42_—“_Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me:
nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done._” To say that,
although in his capacity as man he was ignorant, yet at that same
moment in his capacity as God he was omniscient, is to accuse
Christ of unveracity. Whenever Christ spoke, it was not one of the
natures that spoke, but the person in whom both natures were
united.
We subjoin various definitions of personality: Boëthius, quoted in
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:415 (Syst. Doct., 3:313)—“Persona est
animæ rationalis individua substantia”; F. W. Robertson, Lect. on
Gen., p. 3—“Personality = self-consciousness, will, character”;
Porter, Human Intellect, 626—“Personality = distinct subsistence,
either actually or latently self-conscious and self-determining”;
Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 408—“Person = being, conscious of
self, subsisting in individuality and identity, and endowed with
intuitive reason, rational sensibility, and free-will.” Dr. E. G.
Robinson defines “nature” as “that substratum or condition of
being which determines the kind and attributes of the person, but
which is clearly distinguishable from the person itself.”
Lotze, Metaphysics, § 244—“The identity of the subject of inward
experience is all that we require. So far as, and so long as, the
soul knows itself as this identical subject, it is and is named,
simply for that reason, substance.” Illingworth, Personality,
Human and Divine, 32—“Our conception of substance is not derived
from the physical, but from the mental, world. Substance is first
of all that which underlies our mental affections and
manifestations. Kant declared that the idea of freedom is the
source of our idea of personality. Personality consists in the
freedom of the whole soul from the mechanism of nature.” On
personality, see Windelband, Hist. Philos., 238. For the theory of
two consciousnesses and two wills, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre,
4:129, 234; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2:314; Ridgeley, Body of Divinity,
1:476; Hodge, Syst Theol., 2:378-391; Shedd, Dogm. Theol.,
2:289-308, esp. 328. _Per contra_, see Hovey, God with Us, 66;
Schaff, Church Hist., 1:757, and 3:751; Calderwood, Moral
Philosophy, 12-14; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 148-169; Van
Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 512-518.
(_f_) Effect upon the human.—The union of the divine and the human natures
makes the latter possessed of the powers belonging to the former; in other
words, the attributes of the divine nature are imparted to the human
without passing over into its essence,—so that the human Christ even on
earth had power to be, to know, and to do, as God. That this power was
latent, or was only rarely manifested, was the result of the self-chosen
state of humiliation upon which the God-man had entered. In this state of
humiliation, the communication of the contents of his divine nature to the
human was mediated by the Holy Spirit. The God-man, in his servant-form,
knew and taught and performed only what the Spirit permitted and directed
(Mat. 3:16; John 3:34; Acts 1:2; 10:38; Heb. 9:14). But when thus
permitted, he knew, taught, and performed, not, like the prophets, by
power communicated from without, but by virtue of his own inner divine
energy (Mat. 17:2; Mark 5:41; Luke 5:20, 21; 6:19; John 2:11, 24, 25;
3:13; 20:19).
Kahnis, Dogmatik, 2d ed., 2:77—“Human nature does not become
divine, but (as Chemnitz has said) only the medium of the divine;
as the moon has not a light of her own, but only shines in the
light of the sun. So human nature may derivatively exercise divine
attributes, because it is united to the divine in one person.”
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 151—“Our souls spiritualize our
bodies, and will one day give us the spiritual body, while yet the
body does not become spirit. So the Godhead gives divine powers to
the humanity in Christ, while yet the humanity does not cease to
be humanity.”
Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:131—“The union exalts the human, as
light brightens the air, heat gives glow to the iron, spirit
exalts the body, the Holy Spirit hallows the believer by union
with his soul. Fire gives to iron its own properties of lighting
and burning; yet the iron does not become fire. Soul gives to body
its life-energy; yet the body does not become soul. The Holy
Spirit sanctifies the believer, but the believer does not become
divine; for the divine principle is the determining one. We do not
speak of airy light, of iron heat, or of a bodily soul. So human
nature possesses the divine only derivatively. In this sense it is
_our_ destiny to become ‘_partakers of the divine nature_’ (_2
Pet. 1:4_). Even in his earthly life, when he wished to be, or
more correctly, when the Spirit permitted, he was omnipotent,
omniscient, omnipresent, could walk the sea, or pass through
closed doors. But, in his state of humiliation, he was subject to
the Holy Spirit.”
In _Mat. 3:16_, the anointing of the Spirit at his baptism was not
the descent of a material dove (“_as a dove_”). The dove-like
appearance was only the outward sign of the coming forth of the
Holy Spirit from the depths of his being and pouring itself like a
flood into his divine-human consciousness. _John 3:34_—“_for he
giveth not the Spirit by measure_”; _Acts 1:2_—“_after that he had
given commandment through the Holy Spirit unto the apostles_”;
_10:38_—“_Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy
Spirit and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all
that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him_”; _Heb,
9:14_—“_the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit
offered himself without blemish onto God._”
When permitted by the Holy Spirit, he knew, taught, and wrought as
God: _Mat. 17:2_—“_he was transfigured before them_”; _Mark
5:41_—“_Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise_”; _Luke 5:20, 21_—“_Man,
thy sins are forgiven thee.... Who can forgive sins, but God
alone?_”—_Luke 6:19_—“_power came forth from him, and healed them
all_”; _John 2:11_—“_This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana
of Galilee, and manifested his glory_”; _24, 25_—“_he knew all
men.... he himself knew what was in man_”; _3:13_—“_the Son of
man, who is __ in heaven_” [here, however, Westcott and Hort, with
א and B, omit ὁ ὢν ἔν τῷ ὀυρανῷ,—for advocacy of the common
reading, see Broadus, in Hovey’s Com., on _John 3:13_];
_20:19_—“_when the doors were shut ... Jesus came and stood in the
midst._”
Christ is the “_servant of Jehovah_” (_Is. 42:1-7; 49:1-12; 52:13;
53:11_) and the meaning of παῖς (_Acts 3:13, 28; 4:27, 30_) is not
“child” or “Son”; it is “_servant_,” as in the Revised Version.
But, in the state of exaltation, Christ is the “_Lord of the
Spirit_” (_2 Cor. 3:18_—Meyer), giving the Spirit (_John 16:7_—“_I
will send him unto you_”), present in the Spirit (_John 14:18_—“_I
come unto you_”; _Mat. 28:20_—“_I am with you always, even unto
the the end of the world_”), and working through the Spirit (_1
Cor. 15:45_—“_The last Adam became a life-giving spirit_”); _2
Cor. 3:17_—“_Now the Lord is the Spirit_”. On Christ’s relation to
the Holy Spirit, see John Owen, Works, 282-297; Robins, in Bib.
Sac., Oct. 1874:615; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 208-241.
Delitzsch: “The conception of the servant of Jehovah is, as it
were, a pyramid, of which the base is the people of Israel as a
whole; the central part, Israel according to the Spirit; and the
summit, the Mediator of Salvation who rises out of Israel.” Cheyne
on Isaiah, 2:253, agrees with this view of Delitzsch, which is
also the view of Oehler. The O. T. is the life of a nation; the N.
T. is the life of a man. The chief end of the nation was to
produce the man; the chief end of the man was to save the world.
Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 59—“If humanity were not potentially
and in some degree an Immanuel, God with us, there would never
have issued from its bosom he who bore and revealed this blessed
name.” We would enlarge and amend this illustration of the
pyramid, by making the base to be the Logos, as Creator and
Upholder of all (_Eph. 1:23_; _Col. 1:16_); the stratum which
rests next upon the Logos is universal humanity (_Ps, 8:5, 6_);
then comes Israel as a whole (_Mat. 2:15_); spiritual Israel rests
upon Israel after the flesh (_Is. 42:1-7_); as the acme and cap
stone of all, Christ appears, to crown the pyramid, the true
servant of Jehovah and Son of man (_Is. 53:11_; _Mat. 20:28_). We
may go even further and represent Christ as forming the basis of
another inverted pyramid of redeemed humanity ever growing and
rising to heaven (_Is. 9:6_—“_Everlasting Father_”; _Is.
53:10_—“_he shall see his seed_”; _Rev. 22:16_—“_root and
offspring of David_”; _Heb. 2:13_—“_I and the children whom God
hath given me._”)
(_g_) Effect upon the divine.—This communion of the natures was such that,
although the divine nature in itself is incapable of ignorance, weakness,
temptation, suffering, or death, the one person Jesus Christ was capable
of these by virtue of the union of the divine nature with a human nature
in him. As the human Savior can exercise divine attributes, not in virtue
of his humanity alone, but derivatively, by virtue of his possession of a
divine nature, so the divine Savior can suffer and be ignorant as man, not
in his divine nature, but derivatively, by virtue of his possession of a
human nature. We may illustrate this from the connection between body and
soul. The soul suffers pain from its union with the body, of which apart
from the body it would be incapable. So the God-man, although in his
divine nature impassible, was capable, through his union with humanity, of
absolutely infinite suffering.
Just as my soul could never suffer the pains of fire if it were
only soul, but can suffer those pains in union with the body, so
the otherwise impassible God can suffer mortal pangs through his
union with humanity, which he never could suffer if he had not
joined himself to my nature. The union between the humanity and
the deity is so close, that deity itself is brought under the
curse and penalty of the law. Because Christ was God, did he pass
unscorched through the fires of Gethsemane and Calvary? Rather let
us say, because Christ was God, he underwent a suffering that was
absolutely infinite. Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:300 _sq._;
Lawrence, in Bib. Sac., 24:41; Schöberlein, in Jahrbuch für
deutsche Theologie, 1871:459-501.
A. J. F. Behrends, in The Examiner, April 21, 1898—“Jesus Christ
is God in the form of man; as completely God as if he were not
man; as completely man as if he were not God. He is always divine
and always human.... The infirmities and pains of his body pierced
his divine nature.... The demand of the law was not laid upon
Christ from without, but proceeded from within. It is the
righteousness _in_ him which makes his death necessary.”
(_h_) Necessity of the union.—The union of two natures in one person is
necessary to constitute Jesus Christ a proper mediator between man and
God. His two-fold nature gives him fellowship with both parties, since it
involves an equal dignity with God, and at the same time a perfect
sympathy with man (Heb. 2:17, 18; 4:15, 16). This two-fold nature,
moreover, enables him to present to both God and man proper terms of
reconciliation: being man, he can make atonement for man; being God, his
atonement has infinite value; while both his divinity and his humanity
combine to move the hearts of offenders and constrain them to submission
and love (1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 7:25).
_Heb. 2:17,18_—“_Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be
made like unto his brethren, that he might become a merciful and
faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make
propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself
hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are
tempted_”; _4:15,16_—“_For we have not a high priest that cannot
be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath
been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us
therefore draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that
we may receive mercy, and may find grace to help us in time of
need_”; _1 Tim. 2:5_—“_one God, one mediator also between God and
men, himself man, Christ Jesus_”; _Heb. 7:25_—“_Wherefore also he
is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God
through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for
them._”
Because Christ is man, he can make atonement for man and can
sympathize with man. Because Christ is God, his atonement has
infinite value, and the union which he effects with God is
complete. A merely human Savior could never reconcile or reunite
us to God. But a divine-human Savior meets all our needs. See
Wilberforce, Incarnation, 170-208. As the high priest of old bore
on his mitre the name Jehovah, and on his breastplate the names of
the tribes of Israel, so Christ Jesus is God with us, and at the
same time our propitiatory representative before God. In Virgil’s
Æneid, Dido says well: “Haud ignara malí, miseris succurrere
disco”—“Myself not ignorant of woe, Compassion I have learned to
show.” And Terence uttered almost a Christian word when he wrote:
“Homo sum, et humani nihil a me alienum puto”—“I am a man, and I
count nothing human as foreign to me.” Christ’s experience and
divinity made these words far more true of him than of any merely
human being.
(_i_) The union eternal.—The union of humanity with deity in the person of
Christ is indissoluble and eternal. Unlike the avatars of the East, the
incarnation was a permanent assumption of human nature by the second
person of the Trinity. In the ascension of Christ, glorified humanity has
attained the throne of the universe. By his Spirit, this same divine-human
Savior is omnipresent to secure the progress of his kingdom. The final
subjection of the Son to the Father, alluded to in 1 Cor. 15:28, cannot be
other than the complete return of the Son to his original relation to the
Father; since, according to John 17:5, Christ is again to possess the
glory which he had with the Father before the world was (_cf._ Heb. 1:8;
7:24, 25).
_1 Cor. 15:28_—“_and when all things have been subjected unto him,
then shall the Son also himself be subjected to him that did
subject all things unto him, that God may be all in all_”; _John
17:5_—“_Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory
which I had with thee before the world was_”; _Heb. 1:8_—“_of the
Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever_”;
_7:24_—“_he, because he abideth forever, hath his priesthood
unchangeable._” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:281-283 (Syst. Doct.
3:177-179), holds that there is a present and relative distinction
between the Son’s will, as Mediator, and that of the Father (_Mat.
26:39_—“_not as I will, but as thou wilt_”)—a distinction which
shall cease when Christ becomes Judge (_John 16:26_—“_In that day
ye shall ask in my name: and I say not onto you, that I will pray
the Father for you_”) If Christ’s _reign_ ceased, he would be
inferior to the saints, who are themselves to reign. But they are
to reign only in and with Christ, their head.
The best illustration of the possible meaning of Christ’s giving
up the kingdom is found in the Governor of the East India Company
giving up his authority to the Queen and merging it in that of the
home government, he himself, however, at the same time becoming
Secretary of State for India. So Christ will give up his
vicegerency, but not his mediatorship. Now he reigns by delegated
authority; then he will reign in union with the Father. So
Kendrick, in Bib. Sac., Jan. 1890:68-83. Wrightnour: “When the
great remedy has wrought its perfect cure, the physician will no
longer be looked upon as the physician. When the work of
redemption is completed, the mediatorial office of the Son will
cease.” We may add that other offices of friendship and
instruction will then begin.
Melanchthon: “Christ will finish his work as Mediator, and then
will reign as God, immediately revealing to us the Deity.”
Quenstedt, quoted in Schmid, Dogmatik, 293, thinks the giving up
of the kingdom will be only an exchange of outward administration
for inward,—not a surrender of all power and authority, but only
of one mode of exercising it. Hanna, on Resurrection, lect. 4—“It
is not a giving up of his mediatorial authority,—that throne is to
endure forever,—but it is a simple public recognition of the fact
that God is all in all, that Christ is God’s medium of
accomplishing all.” An. Par. Bible, on _1 Cor. 15:28_—“Not his
mediatorial relation to his own people shall be given up; much
less his personal relation to the Godhead, as the divine Word; but
only his mediatorial relation to the world at large.” See also
Edwards, Observations on the Trinity, 85 _sq._ Expositor’s Greek
Testament, on _1 Cor. 15:28_, “affirms no other subjection than is
involved in Sonship.... This implies no inferiority of nature, no
extrusion from power, but the free submission of love ... which is
the essence of the filial spirit which actuated Christ from first
to last.... Whatsoever glory he gains is devoted to the glory and
power of the Father, who glorifies him in turn.”
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:402 (Syst. Doct., 3:297-299)—“We are not
to imagine incarnations of Christ in the angel-world, or in other
spheres. This would make incarnation only the change of a garment,
a passing theophany; and Christ’s relation to humanity would be a
merely external one.” Bishop of Salisbury, quoted in Swayne, Our
Lord’s Knowledge as Man, XX—“Are we permitted to believe that
there is something parallel to the progress of our Lord’s humanity
in the state of humiliation, still going on even now, in the state
of exaltation? that it is, in fact, becoming more and more
adequate to the divine nature? See _Col. 1:24_—‘_fill up that
which is lacking_’; _Heb. 10:12, 13_—‘_expecting till his
enemies_’; _1 Cor. 15:28_—‘_when all things have been subjected
unto him._’ ” In our judgment such a conclusion is unwarranted, in
view of the fact that the God-man in his exaltation has the glory
of his preëxistent state (_John 17:5_); that all the heavenly
powers are already subject to him (_Eph. 1:21, 22_); and that he
is now omnipresent (_Mat. 28:20_).
(_j_) Infinite and finite in Christ.—Our investigation of the Scripture
teaching with regard to the Person of Christ leads us to three important
conclusions: 1. that deity and humanity, the infinite and the finite, in
him are not mutually exclusive; 2. that the humanity in Christ differs
from his deity not merely in degree but also in kind; and 3. that this
difference in kind is the difference between the infinite original and the
finite derivative, so that Christ is the source of life, both physical and
spiritual, for all men.
Our doctrine excludes the view that Christ is only quantitatively
different from other men in whom God’s Spirit dwells. He is
qualitatively different, in that he is the source of life, and
they the recipients. Not only is it true that the fulness of the
Godhead is in him alone,—it is also true that he is himself God,
self-revealing and self-communicating, as men are not. Yet we
cannot hold with E. H. Johnson, Outline of Syst. Theol., 176-178,
that Christ’s humanity was of one species with his deity, but not
of one substance. We know of but one underlying substance and
ground of being. This one substance is self-limiting, and so
self-manifesting, in Jesus Christ. The determining element is not
the human but the divine. The infinite Source has a finite
manifestation; but in the finite we see the Infinite; _2 Cor.
5:19_—“_God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself_”;
_John 14:9_—“_he that hath seen me hath seen the Father._” We can
therefore agree with the following writers who regard all men as
partakers of the life of God, while yet we deny that Christ is
only a man, distinguished from his fellows by having a larger
share in that life than they have.
J. M. Whiton: “How is the divine spirit which is manifest in the
life of the man Christ Jesus to be distinguished, _qua_ divine,
from the same divine spirit as manifested in the life of humanity?
I answer, that in him, the person Christ, dwelleth the _fulness_
of the Godhead bodily. I emphasize _fulness_, and say: The
God-head is alike in the race and in its spiritual head, but the
_fulness_ is in the head alone—a fulness of course not absolute,
since circumscribed by a human organism, but a fulness to the
limits of the organism. Essential deity cannot be ascribed to the
human Christ, except as in common with the race created in the
image of God. Life is one, and all life is divine.”... Gloria
Patri, 88, 23—“Every incarnation of life is _pro tanto_ and in its
measure an incarnation of God ... and God’s way is a perpetually
increasing incarnation of life whose climax and crown is the
divine fulness of life in Christ.... The _Homoousios_ of the
Nicene Creed was a great victory of the truth. But the Nicene
Fathers builded better than they knew. The Unitarian Dr. Hedge
praised them because they got at the truth, the logical conclusion
of which was to come so long after, that God and man are of one
substance.” So Momerie, Inspiration, holds man’s nature to be the
same in kind with God’s. See criticism of this view in Watts, New
Apologetic, 133, 134. _Homoiousios_ he regards as involving
_homoousios_; the divine nature capable of fission or
segmentation, broken off in portions, and distributed among finite
moral agents; the divine nature undergoing perpetual curtailment;
every man therefore to some extent inspired, and evil as truly an
inspiration of God as is good. Watts seems to us to lack the
proper conception of the infinite as the ground of the finite, and
so not excluding it.
Lyman Abbott affirms that Christ is, “not God _and_ man, but God
_in_ man.” Christ differs from other men only as the flower
differs from the bulb. As the true man, he is genuinely divine.
Deity and humanity are not two distinct natures, but one nature.
The ethico-spiritual nature which is finite in man is identical
with the nature which is infinite in God. Christ’s distinction
from other men is therefore in the degree in which he shared this
nature and possessed a unique fulness of life—“_anointed with the
Holy Spirit and with power_” (_Acts 10:38_). Phillips Brooks: “To
this humanity of man as a part of God—to this I cling; for I do
love it, and I will know nothing else.... Man is, in virtue of his
essential humanity, partaker of the life of the essential Word....
Into every soul, just so far as it is possible for that soul to
receive it, God beats his life and gives his help.” Phillips
Brooks believes in the redemptive indwelling of God in man, so
that salvation is of man, for man, and by man. He does not scruple
to say to every man: “You are a part of God.”
While we shrink from the expressions which seem to imply a
partition of the divine nature, we are compelled to recognize a
truth which these writers are laboring to express, the truth
namely of the essential oneness of all life, and of God in Christ
as the source and giver of it. “Jesus quotes approvingly the words
of _Psalm 82:6_—‘_I said, Ye are Gods._’ Microscopic, indeed, but
divine are we—sparks from the flame of deity. God is the Creator,
but it is through Christ as the mediating and as the final Cause.
‘_And we through him_’ (_1 Cor. 8:6_)—we exist for him, for the
realization of a divine humanity in solidarity with him. Christ is
at once the end and the instrumental cause of the whole process.”
Samuel Harris, God the Creator and Lord of All, speaks of “the
essentially human in God, and the essentially divine in man.” The
Son, or Word of God, “when manifested in the forms of a finite
personality, is the essential Christ, revealing that in God which
is essentially and eternally human.”
Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:196—“The whole of humanity is the
object of the divine love; it is an Immanuel and son of God; its
whole history is a continual incarnation of God; as indeed it is
said in Scripture that we are a divine offspring, and that we live
and move and have our being in God. But what lies potentially in
the human consciousness of God is not on that account also
manifestly revealed to it from the beginning.” Hatch, Hibbert
Lectures, 175-180, on Stoic monism and Platonic dualism, tells us
that the Stoics believed in a personal λόγος and an impersonal
ὕλη, both of them modes of a single substance. Some regarded God
as a mode of matter, _natura naturata_: “Jupiter est quodcunque
vides, quodcunque moveris” (Lucan, Phars., 9:579); others
conceived of him as the _natura naturans_,—this became the
governing conception.... The products are all divine, but not
equally divine.... Nearest of all to the pure essence of God is
the human soul: it is an emanation or outflow from him, a sapling
which is separate from and yet continues the life of the parent
tree, a colony in which some members of the parent state have
settled. Plato followed Anaxagoras in holding that mind is
separate from matter and acts upon it. God is outside the world.
He shapes it as a carpenter shapes wood. On the general subject of
the union of deity and humanity in the person of Christ, see
Herzog, Encyclopädie, art.: Christologie; Barrows, in Bib. Sac.,
10:765; 26:83; also, Bib. Sac., 17:535; John Owen, Person of
Christ, in Works, 1:223; Hooker, Eccl. Polity, book v. chap.
51-56: Boyce, in Bap. Quar., 1870:385; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 1:403
sq.; Hovey, God with Us, 61-88; Plumptre, Christ and Christendom,
appendix; E. H. Johnson, The Idea of Law in Christology, in Bib.
Sac., Oct. 1889:599-625.
Section III.—The Two States Of Christ.
I. The State of Humiliation.
1. The nature of this humiliation.
We may dismiss, as unworthy of serious notice, the views that it consisted
essentially either in the union of the Logos with human nature,—for this
union with human nature continues in the state of exaltation; or in the
outward trials and privations of Christ’s human life,—for this view casts
reproach upon poverty, and ignores the power of the soul to rise superior
to its outward circumstances.
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 224—“The error of supposing it
too humiliating to obey law was derived from the Roman treasury of
merit and works of supererogation. Better was Frederick the
Great’s sentiment when his sturdy subject and neighbor, the
miller, whose windmill he had attempted to remove, having beaten
him in a lawsuit, the thwarted monarch exclaimed: ‘Thank God,
there is law in Prussia!’ ” Palmer, Theological Definition,
79—“God reveals himself in the rock, vegetable, animal, man. Must
not the process go on? Must there not appear in the fulness of
time a man who will reveal God as perfectly as is possible in
human conditions—a man who is God under the limitations of
humanity? Such incarnation is humiliation only in the eyes of men.
To Christ it is lifting up, exaltation, glory; _John 12:32_—‘_And
I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto
myself._’ ” George Harris, Moral Evolution, 409—“The divinity of
Christ is not obscured, but is more clearly seen, shining through
his humanity.”
We may devote more attention to the
A. Theory of Thomasius, Delitzsch, and Crosby, that the humiliation
consisted in the surrender of the relative divine attributes.
This theory holds that the Logos, although retaining his divine
self-consciousness and his immanent attributes of holiness, love, and
truth, surrendered his relative attributes of omniscience, omnipotence,
and omnipresence, in order to take to himself veritable human nature.
According to this view, there are, indeed, two natures in Christ, but
neither of these natures is infinite. Thomasius and Delitzsch are the
chief advocates of this theory in Germany. Dr. Howard Crosby has
maintained a similar view in America.
The theory of Thomasius, Delitzsch, and Crosby has been, though
improperly, called the theory of the Kenosis (from
ἐκένωσεν—“_emptied himself_”—in _Phil. 2:7_), and its advocates
are often called Kenotic theologians. There is a Kenosis of the
Logos, but it is of a different sort from that which this theory
supposes. For statements of this theory, see Thomasius, Christi
Person und Werk, 2:233-255, 542-550; Delitzsch, Biblische
Psychologie, 323-333; Howard Crosby, in Bap. Quar., 1870:350-363—a
discourse subsequently published in a separate volume, with the
title: The True Humanity of Christ, and reviewed by Shedd, in
Presb. Rev., April, 1881:429-431. Crosby emphasizes the word
“_became_,” in _John 1:14_—“_and the Word became flesh_”—and gives
the Word “_flesh_” the sense of “man,” or “human.” Crosby, then,
should logically deny, though he does not deny, that Christ’s body
was derived from the Virgin.
We object to this view that:
(_a_) It contradicts the Scriptures already referred to, in which Christ
asserts his divine knowledge and power. Divinity, it is said, can give up
its world-functions, for it existed without these before creation. But to
give up divine attributes is to give up the substance of Godhead. Nor is
it a sufficient reply to say that only the relative attributes are given
up, while the immanent attributes, which chiefly characterize the Godhead,
are retained; for the immanent necessarily involve the relative, as the
greater involve the less.
Liebner, Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 3:349-356—“Is the Logos here? But
wherein does he show his presence, that it may be known?” Hase,
Hutterus Redivivus, 11th ed., 217, note. John Caird, Fund. Ideas
of Christianity, 2:125-146, criticises the theory of the Kenosis,
but grants that, with all its self-contradictions, as he regards
them, it is an attempt to render conceivable the profound truth of
a sympathizing, self-sacrificing God.
(_b_) Since the Logos, in uniting himself to a human soul, reduces himself
to the condition and limitations of a human soul, the theory is virtually
a theory of the coëxistence of two human souls in Christ. But the union of
two finite souls is more difficult to explain than the union of a finite
and an infinite,—since there can be in the former case no intelligent
guidance and control of the human element by the divine.
Dorner, Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 1:397-408—“The impossibility of
making two finite souls into one finally drove Arianism to the
denial of any human soul in Christ” (Apollinarianism). This
statement of Dorner, which we have already quoted in our account
of Apollinarianism, illustrates the similar impossibility, upon
the theory of Thomasius, of constructing out of two finite souls
the person of Christ. See also Hovey, God with Us, 68.
(_c_) This theory fails to secure its end, that of making comprehensible
the human development of Jesus,—for even though divested of the relative
attributes of Godhood, the Logos still retains his divine
self-consciousness, together with his immanent attributes of holiness,
love, and truth. This is as difficult to reconcile with a purely natural
human development as the possession of the relative divine attributes
would be. The theory logically leads to a further denial of the possession
of any divine attributes, or of any divine consciousness at all, on the
part of Christ, and merges itself in the view of Gess and Beecher, that
the Godhead of the Logos is actually transformed into a human soul.
Kahnis, Dogmatik 3:343—“The old theology conceived of Christ as in
full and unbroken use of the divine self-consciousness, the divine
attributes, and the divine world-functions, from the conception
until death. Though Jesus, as fœtus, child, boy, was not almighty
and omnipresent according to his human nature, yet he was so, as
to his divine nature, which constituted one _ego_ with his human.
Thomasius, however, declared that the Logos gave up his relative
attributes, during his sojourn in flesh. Dorner’s objection to
this, on the ground of the divine unchangeableness, overshoots the
mark, because it makes any _becoming_ impossible.
“But some things in Thomasius’ doctrine are still difficult: 1st,
divinity can certainly give up its world-functions, for it has
existed without these before the world was. In the nature of an
absolute personality, however, lies an absolute knowing, willing,
feeling, which it cannot give up. Hence _Phil. 2:6-11_ speaks of a
giving-up of divine glory, but not of a giving-up of divine
attributes or nature. 2d, little is gained by such an assumption
of the giving-up of _relative_ attributes, since the Logos, even
while divested of a part of his attributes, still has full
possession of his divine self-consciousness, which must make a
purely human development no less difficult. 3d, the expressions of
divine self-consciousness, the works of divine power, the words of
divine wisdom, prove that Jesus was in possession of his divine
self-consciousness and attributes.
“The essential thing which the Kenotics aim at, however, stands
fast; namely, that the divine personality of the Logos divested
itself of its glory (_John 17:5_), riches (_2 Cor. 8:6_), divine
form (_Phil. 2:6_). This divesting is the becoming man. The
humiliation, then, was a giving up of the use, not of the
possession, of the divine nature and attributes. That man can thus
give up self-consciousness and powers, we see every day in sleep.
But man does not, thereby, cease to be man. So we maintain that
the Logos, when he became man, did not divest himself of his
divine person and nature, which was impossible; but only divested
himself of the use and exercise of these—these being latent to
him—in order to unfold themselves to use in the measure to which
his human nature developed itself—a use which found its completion
in the condition of exaltation.” This statement of Kahnis,
although approaching correctness, is still neither quite correct
nor quite complete.
B. Theory that the humiliation consisted in the surrender of the
independent exercise of the divine attributes.
This theory, which we regard as the most satisfactory of all, may be more
fully set forth as follows. The humiliation, as the Scriptures seem to
show, consisted:
(_a_) In that act of the preëxistent Logos by which he gave up his divine
glory with the Father, in order to take a servant-form. In this act, he
resigned not the possession, nor yet entirely the use, but rather the
independent exercise, of the divine attributes.
_John 17:5_—“_glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory
which I had with thee before the world was_”; _Phil. 2:6,
7_—“_who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an
equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men_”;
_2 Cor. 8:9_—“_For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,
that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that
ye through his poverty might become rich._” Pompilia, in Robert
Browning’s The Ring and the Book: “Now I see how God is likest God
in being born.”
Omniscience gives up all knowledge but that of the child, the
infant, the embryo, the infinitesimal germ of humanity.
Omnipotence gives up all power but that of the impregnated ovum in
the womb of the Virgin. The Godhead narrows itself down to a point
that is next to absolute extinction. Jesus washing his disciples’
feet, in _John 13:1-20_, is the symbol of his coming down from his
throne of glory and taking the form of a servant, in order that he
may purify us, by regeneration and sanctification, for the
marriage-supper of the Lamb.
(_b_) In the submission of the Logos to the control of the Holy Spirit and
the limitations of his Messianic mission, in his communication of the
divine fulness of the human nature which he had taken into union with
himself.
_Acts 1:2_—Jesus, “_after that he had given commandment through
the Holy Spirit unto the apostles whom he had chosen_”;
_10:38_—“_Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy
Spirit and with power_”; _Heb. 9:14_—“_the blood of Christ, who
through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto
God._” A minor may have a great estate left to him, yet may have
only such use of it as his guardian permits. In Homer’s Iliad,
when Andromache brings her infant son to part with Hector, the boy
is terrified by the warlike plumes of his father’s helmet, and
Hector puts them off to embrace him. So God lays aside “That
glorious form, that light unsufferable, And that far-beaming blaze
of majesty.” Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown’s Rab and his
Friends, 282, 283—“Revelation is the voluntary approximation of
the infinite Being to the ways and thoughts of finite humanity.”
(_c_) In the continuous surrender, on the part of the God-man, so far as
his human nature was concerned, of the exercise of those divine powers
with which it was endowed by virtue of its union with the divine, and in
the voluntary acceptance, which followed upon this, of temptation,
suffering, and death.
_Mat. 26:53_—“_thinkest thou that I cannot beseech my Father, and
he shall even now send me more than twelve legions of angels?_”
_John 10:17, 18_—“_Therefore doth the Father love me, because I
lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one taketh it away
from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down,
and I have power to take it again_”; _Phil. 2:8_—“_and being found
in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even
unto death, yea, the death of the cross._” _Cf._ Shakespeare,
Merchant of Venice: “Such music is there in immortal souls, That
while this muddy vesture of decay Doth close it in, we cannot see
it.”
Each of these elements of the doctrine has its own Scriptural support. We
must therefore regard the humiliation of Christ, not as consisting in a
single act, but as involving a continuous self-renunciation, which began
with the Kenosis of the Logos in becoming man, and which culminated in the
self-subjection of the God-man to the death of the cross.
Our doctrine of Christ’s humiliation will be better understood if
we put it midway between two pairs of erroneous views, making it
the third of five. The list would be as follows: (1) Gess: The
Logos gave up all divine attributes; (2) Thomasius: The Logos gave
up relative attributes only; (3) True View: The Logos gave up the
independent exercise of divine attributes; (4) Old Orthodoxy:
Christ gave up the use of divine attributes; (5) Anselm: Christ
acted as if he did not possess divine attributes. The full
exposition of the classical passage with reference to the
humiliation, namely, _Phil. 2:5-8_, we give below, under the next
paragraph, pages 705, 706. Brentius illustrated Christ’s
humiliation by the king who travels incognito. But Mason, Faith of
the Gospel, 158, says well that “to part in appearance with only
the fruition of the divine attributes would be to impose upon us
with a pretence of self-sacrifice; but to part with it in reality
was to manifest most perfectly the true nature of God.”
This same objection lies against the explanation given in the
Church Quarterly Review, Oct. 1891:1-30, on Our Lord’s Knowledge
as Man: “If divine knowledge exists in a different form from
human, and a translation into a different form is necessary before
it can be available in the human sphere, our Lord might know the
day of judgment as God, and yet be ignorant of it as man. This
must have been the case if he did not choose to translate it into
the human form. But it might also have been incapable of
translation. The processes of divine knowledge may be far above
our finite comprehension.” This seems to us to be a virtual denial
of the unity of Christ’s person, and to make our Lord play fast
and loose with the truth. He either knew, or he did not know; and
his denial that he knew makes it impossible that he should have
known in any sense.
2. The stages of Christ’s humiliation.
We may distinguish: (_a_) That act of the preïncarnate Logos by which, in
becoming man, he gave up the independent exercise of the divine
attributes. (_b_) His submission to the common laws which regulate the
origin of souls from a preëxisting sinful stock, in taking his human
nature from the Virgin,—a human nature which only the miraculous
conception rendered pure. (_c_) His subjection to the limitations involved
in a human growth and development,—reaching the consciousness of his
sonship at his twelfth year, and working no miracles till after the
baptism. (_d_) The subordination of himself, in state, knowledge,
teaching, and acts, to the control of the Holy Spirit,—so living, not
independently, but as a servant. (_e_) His subjection, as connected with a
sinful race, to temptation and suffering, and finally to the death which
constituted the penalty of the law.
Peter Lombard asked whether God could know more than he was aware
of? It is only another way of putting the question whether, during
the earthly life of Christ, the Logos existed outside of the flesh
of Jesus. We must answer in the affirmative. Otherwise the number
of the persons in the Trinity would be variable, and the universe
could do without him who is ever “_upholding all things by the
word of his power_” (_Heb. 1:3_), and in whom “_all things
consist_” (_Col. 1:17_). Let us recall the nature of God’s
omnipresence (see pages 279-282). Omnipresence is nothing less
than the presence of the whole of God in every place. From this it
follows, that the whole Christ can be present in every believer as
fully as if that believer were the only one to receive of his
fulness, and that the whole Logos can be united to and be present
in the man Christ Jesus, while at the same time he fills and
governs the universe. By virtue of this omnipresence, therefore,
the whole Logos can suffer on earth, while yet the whole Logos
reigns in heaven. The Logos outside of Christ has the perpetual
consciousness of his Godhead, while yet the Logos, as united to
humanity in Christ, is subject to ignorance, weakness, and death.
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:153—“Jehovah, though present in the form of
the burning bush, was at the same time omnipresent also”;
2:265-284, esp. 282—“Because the sun is shining in and through a
cloud, it does not follow that it cannot at the same time be
shining through the remainder of universal space, unobstructed by
any vapor whatever.” Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 21—“Not with
God, as with finite man, does arrival in one place necessitate
withdrawal from another.” John Calvin: “The whole Christ was
there; but not all that was in Christ was there.” See Adamson, The
Mind of Christ.
How the independent exercise of the attributes of omnipotence,
omniscience, and omnipresence can be surrendered, even for a time,
would be inconceivable, if we were regarding the Logos as he is in
himself, seated upon the throne of the universe. The matter is
somewhat easier when we remember that it was not the Logos _per
se_, but rather the God-man, Jesus Christ, in whom the Logos
submitted to this humiliation. South, Sermons, 2:9—“Be the
fountain never so full, yet if it communicate itself by a little
pipe, the stream can be but small and inconsiderable, and equal to
the measure of its conveyance.” Sartorius, Person and Work of
Christ, 39—“The human eye, when open, sees heaven and earth; but
when shut, it sees little or nothing. Yet its inherent capacity
does not change. So divinity does not change its nature, when it
drops the curtain of humanity before the eyes of the God-man.”
The divine in Christ, during most of his earthly life, is latent,
or only now and then present to his consciousness or manifested to
others. Illustrate from second childhood, where the mind itself
exists, but is not capable of use; or from first childhood, where
even a Newton or a Humboldt, if brought back to earth and made to
occupy an infant body and brain, would develop as an infant, with
infantile powers. There is more in memory than we can at this
moment recall,—memory is greater than recollection. There is more
of us at all times than we know,—only the sudden emergency reveals
the largeness of our resources of mind and heart and will. The new
nature, in the regenerate, is greater than it appears: “_Beloved,
now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what
we shall be. We, know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be
like him_” (_1 John 3:2_). So in Christ there was an ocean-like
fulness of resource, of which only now and then the Spirit
permitted the consciousness and the exercise.
Without denying (with Dorner) the completeness, even from the
moment of the conception, of the union between the deity and the
humanity, we may still say with Kahnis: “The human nature of
Christ, according to the measure of its development, appropriates
more and more to its conscious use the latent fulness of the
divine nature.” So we take the middle ground between two opposite
extremes. On the one hand, the Kenosis was not the extinction of
the Logos. Nor, on the other hand, did Christ hunger and sleep by
miracle,—this is Docetism. We must not minimize Christ’s
humiliation, for this was his glory. There was no limit to his
descent, except that arising from his sinlessness. His humiliation
was not merely the giving-up of the appearance of Godhead. Baird,
Elohim Revealed, 585—“Should any one aim to celebrate the
condescension of the emperor Charles the Fifth, by dwelling on the
fact that he laid aside the robes of royalty and assumed the style
of a subject, and altogether ignore the more important matter that
he actually became a private person, it would be very weak and
absurd.” _Cf._ _2 Cor. 8:9_—“_though he was rich, yet for your
sakes he became poor_” = he beggared himself. _Mat. 27:46_—“_My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?_” = non-exercise of divine
omniscience.
Inasmuch, however, as the passage _Phil. 2:6-8_ is the chief basis
and support of the doctrine of Christ’s humiliation, we here
subjoin a more detailed examination of it.
EXPOSITION OF PHILIPPIANS, 2:6-8. The passage reads: “_who,
existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality
with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the
form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being
found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient
even unto death, yea, the death of the cross_.”
The subject of the sentence is at first (_verses 6, 7_) Christ
Jesus, regarded as the preëxistent Logos; subsequently (_verse
8_), this same Christ Jesus, regarded as incarnate. This change in
the subject is indicated by the contrast between μορφῇ θεοῦ
(_verse 6_) and μορφὴν δούλου (_verse 7_), as well as by the
participles λαβών and γενόμενος (_verse 7_) and εύρεθείς (_verse
8_) It is asserted, then, that the preëxisting Logos, “although
subsisting in the form of God, did not regard his equality with
God as a thing to be forcibly retained, but emptied himself by
taking the form of a servant, (that is,) by being made in the
likeness of men. And being found in outward condition as a man, he
(the incarnate son of God, yet further) humbled himself, by
becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (_verse
8_).
Here notice that what the Logos divested himself of, in becoming
man, is not the substance of his Godhead, but the “_form of God_”
in which this substance was manifested. This “_form of God_” can
be only that independent exercise of the powers and prerogatives
of Deity which constitutes his “_equality with God_.” This he
surrenders, in the act of “_taking the form of a servant_”—or
becoming subordinate, as man. (Here other Scriptures complete the
view, by their representations of the controlling influence of the
Holy Spirit in the earthly life of Christ.) The phrases “made in
the likeness of men” and “found in fashion as a man” are used to
intimate, not that Jesus Christ was not really man, but that he
was God as well as man, and therefore free from the sin which
clings to man (_cf._ _Rom. 8:3_—ἐν ὁμοιώματι σαρκὸς
ἁμαρτίας—Meyer). Finally, this one person, now God and man united,
submits himself, consciously and voluntarily, to the humiliation
of an ignominious death.
See Lightfoot, on _Phil. 2:8_—“Christ divested himself, not of his
divine nature, for that was impossible, but of the glories and
prerogatives of Deity. This he did by taking the form of a
servant.” Evans, in Presb. Rev., 1883:287—“Two stages in Christ’s
humiliation, each represented by a finite verb defining the
central act of the particular stage, accompanied by two modal
participles. 1st stage indicated in _v. 7_. Its central act is:
‘_he emptied himself_.’ Its two modalities are: (1) ‘_taking the
form of servant_’; (2) ‘_being made in the likeness of men_.’ Here
we have the humiliation of the Kenosis,—that by which Christ
_became_ man. 2d stage, indicated in _v. 8_. Its central act is:
‘_he humbled himself_.’ Its two modalities are: (1) ‘_being found
in fashion as a man_’; (2) ‘_becoming obedient unto death, yea,
the death of the cross_.’ Here we have the humiliation of his
obedience and death,—that by which, _in_ humanity, he became a
sacrifice for our sins.”
Meyer refers _Eph. 5:31_ exclusively to Christ and the church,
making the completed union future, however, _i. e._, at the time
of the Parousia. “_For this cause shall a man leave his father and
mother_” = “in the incarnation, Christ leaves father and mother
(his seat at the right hand of God), and cleaves to his wife (the
church), and then the two (the descended Christ and the church)
become one flesh (one ethical person, as the married pair become
one by physical union). The Fathers, however, (Jerome, Theodoret,
Chrysostom), referred it to the incarnation.” On the
interpretation of _Phil 2:6-11_, see Comm. of Neander, Meyer,
Lange, Ellicott.
On the question whether Christ would have become man had there
been no sin, theologians are divided. Dorner, Martensen, and
Westcott answer in the affirmative; Robinson, Watts, and Denney in
the negative. See Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, 5:236;
Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 327-329; Westcott, Com. on
Hebrews, page 8—“The Incarnation is in its essence independent of
the Fall, though conditioned by it as to its circumstances.” _Per
contra_, see Robinson, Christ. Theol., 219, note—“It would be
difficult to show that a like method of argument from _a priori_
premisses will not equally avail to prove sin to have been a
necessary part of the scheme of creation.” Denney, Studies in
Theology, 101, objects to the doctrine of necessary incarnation
irrespective of sin, that it tends to obliterate the distinction
between nature and grace, to blur the definite outlines of the
redemption wrought by Christ, as the supreme revelation of God and
his love. See also Watts, New Apologetic, 198-202; Julius Müller,
Dogmat. Abhandlungen, 66-126; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 512-526,
543-548; Forrest, The Authority of Christ, 340-345. On the general
subject of the Kenosis of the Logos, see Bruce, Humiliation of
Christ; Robins, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1874:615; Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, 4:138-150, 386-475; Pope, Person of Christ, 23;
Bodemeyer, Lehre von der Kenosis; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:610-625.
II. The State of Exaltation.
1. The nature of this exaltation.
It consisted essentially in: (_a_) A resumption, on the part of the Logos,
of his independent exercise of divine attributes. (_b_) The withdrawal, on
the part of the Logos, of all limitations in his communication of the
divine fulness to the human nature of Christ. (_c_) The corresponding
exercise, on the part of the human nature, of those powers which belonged
to it by virtue of its union with the divine.
The eighth Psalm, with its account of the glory of human nature,
is at present fulfilled only in Christ (see _Heb. 2:9_—“_but we
behold ... Jesus_”). _Heb. 2:7_—ἠλάττωσας αὐτὸν βραχύ τι παρ᾽
ἀγγέλους—may be translated, as in the margin of the Rev. Vers.:
“_Thou madest __ him for a little while lower than the angels._”
Christ’s human body was not necessarily subject to death; only by
outward compulsion or voluntary surrender could he die. Hence
resurrection was a natural necessity (_Acts 2:24_—“_whom God
raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not
possible he should be holden of it_”; _31_—“_neither was he left
unto Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption_”). This exaltation,
which then affected humanity only in its head, is to be the
experience also of the members. Our bodies also are to be
delivered from the bondage of corruption, and we are to sit with
Christ upon his throne.
2. The stages of Christ’s exaltation.
(a) The quickening and resurrection.
Both Lutherans and Romanists distinguish between these two, making the
former precede, and the latter follow, Christ’s “preaching to the spirits
in prison.” These views rest upon a misinterpretation of 1 Pet. 3:18-20.
Lutherans teach that Christ descended into hell, to proclaim his triumph
to evil spirits. But this is to give ἐκήρυξεν the unusual sense of
proclaiming his triumph, instead of his gospel. Romanists teach that
Christ entered the underworld to preach to Old Testament saints, that they
might be saved. But the passage speaks only of the disobedient; it cannot
be pressed into the support of a sacramental theory of the salvation of
Old Testament believers. The passage does not assert the descent of Christ
into the world of spirits, but only a work of the preïncarnate Logos in
offering salvation, through Noah, to the world then about to perish.
Augustine, Ad Euodiam, ep. 99—“The spirits shut up in prison are
the unbelievers who lived in the time of Noah, whose spirits or
souls were shut up in the darkness of ignorance as in a prison;
Christ preached to them, not in the flesh, for he was not yet
incarnate, but in the spirit, that is, in his divine nature.”
Calvin taught that Christ descended into the underworld and
suffered the pains of the lost. But not all Calvinists hold with
him here; see Princeton Essays, 1:153. Meyer, on _Rom. 10:7_,
regards the question—“_Who shall descend into the abyss?_ (_that
is, to bring Christ up from the dead_)”—as an allusion to, and so
indirectly a proof-text for, Christ’s descent into the underworld.
Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 211, favors a preaching to the dead:
“During that time [the three days] he did not return to heaven and
his Father.” But though _John 20:17_ is referred to for proof, is
not this statement true only of his body? So far as the soul is
concerned, Christ can say: “_Father, into thy hands I commend my
spirit_,” and “_To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise_” (_Luke
23:43, 46_).
Zahn and Dorner best represent the Lutheran view. Zahn, in
Expositor, March, 1898: 216-223—“If Jesus was truly man, then his
soul, after it left the body, entered into the fellowship of
departed spirits.... If Jesus is he who lives forevermore and even
his dying was his act, this carrying in the realm of the dead
cannot be thought of as a purely passive condition, but must have
been known to those who dwelt there..... If Jesus was the Redeemer
of mankind, the generations of those who had passed away must have
thus been brought into personal relation to him, his work and his
kingdom, without waiting for the last day.”
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:662 (Syst. Doct., 4:127), thinks
“Christ’s descent into Hades marks a new era of his pneumatic
life, in which he shows himself free from the limitations of time
and space.” He rejects “Luther’s notion of a merely triumphal
progress and proclamation of Christ. Before Christ,” he says,
“there was no abode peopled by the damned. The descent was an
application of the benefit of the atonement (implied in
κηρύσσειν). The work was prophetic, not high-priestly nor kingly.
Going to the spirits in prison is spoken of as a spontaneous act,
not one of physical necessity. No power of Hades led him over into
Hades. Deliverance from the limitations of a mortal body is
already an indication of a higher stage of existence. Christ’s
soul is bodiless for a time—πνεῦμα only—as the departed were.
“The ceasing of this preaching is neither recorded, nor reasonably
to be supposed,—indeed the ancient church supposed it carried on
through the apostles. It expresses the universal significance of
Christ for former generations and for the entire kingdom of the
dead. No physical power is a limit to him. The gates of hell, or
Hades, shall not prevail over or against him. The intermediate
state is one of blessedness for him, and he can admit the penitent
thief into it. Even those who were not laid hold of by Christ’s
historic manifestation in this earthly life still must, and may,
be brought into relation with him, in order to be able to accept
or to reject him. And thus the universal relation of Christ to
humanity and the absoluteness of the Christian religion are
confirmed.” So Dorner, for substance.
All this _versus_ Strauss, who thought that the dying of vast
masses of men, before and after Christ, who had not been brought
into relation to Christ, proves that the Christian religion is not
necessary to salvation, because not universal. For advocacy of
Christ’s preaching to the dead, see also Jahrbuch für d. Theol.,
23:177-228; W. W. Patton, in N. Eng., July, 1882:460-478; John
Miller, Problems Suggested by the Bible, part 1:93-98; part 2:38;
Plumptre, The Spirits in Prison; Kendrick, in Bap. Rev., Apl.
1888; Clemen, Niedergefahren zu den Toten.
For the opposite view, see “No Preaching to the Dead,” in
Princeton Rev., March, 1875:197; 1878:451-491; Hovey, in Bap.
Quar., 4:486 _sq._, and Bib. Eschatology, 97-107; Love, Christ’s
Preaching to the Spirits in Prison; Cowles, in Bib. Sac.,
1875:401; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:616-622; Salmond, in Popular
Commentary; and Johnstone, Com., in loco. So Augustine, Thomas
Aquinas, and Bishop Pearson. See also E. D. Morris, Is There
Salvation after Death? and Wright, Relation of Death to Probation,
22:28—“If Christ preached to spirits in Hades, it may have been to
demonstrate the _hopelessness_ of adding in the other world to the
privileges enjoyed in this. We do not read that it had any
favorable effect upon the hearers. If men will not hear Moses and
the Prophets, then they will not hear one risen from the dead.
‘_Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise_’ (_Luke 23:43_) was not
comforting, if Christ was going that day to the realm of lost
spirits. The antediluvians, however, were specially favored with
Noah’s preaching, and were specially wicked.”
For full statement of the view presented in the text, that the
preaching referred to was the preaching of Christ as preëxisting
Logos to the spirits, now in prison, when once they were
disobedient in the days of Noah, see Bartlett, in New Englander,
Oct. 1872: 601 sq., and in Bib. Sac., Apr. 1883:333-373. Before
giving the substance of Bartlett’s exposition, we transcribe in
full the passage in question, _1 Pet. 3:18-20_—“_Because Christ
also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous,
that he might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh,
but made alive in the spirit; in which also he went and preached
unto the spirits in prison, that aforetime were disobedient, when
the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah._”
Bartlett expounds as follows: “ ‘_In which_ [πνεύματι, divine
nature] ‘_he went and preached to the spirits in prison when once
they disobeyed._’ ἀπειθήσασιν is circumstantial aorist, indicating
the time of the preaching as a definite past: It is an anarthrous
dative, as in _Luke 8:27_; _Mat. 8:23_; _Acts 15:25_; _22:17_. It
is an appositive, or predicative, participle. [That the aorist
participle does not necessarily describe an action preliminary to
that of the principal verb appears from its use in _verse 18_
(θανατωθείς), in _1 Thess. 1:6_ (δεξάμενοι), and in _Col. 2:11,
13_.] The connection of thought is: Peter exhorts his readers to
endure suffering bravely, because Christ did so,—in his lower
nature being put to death, in his higher nature enduring the
opposition of sinners before the flood. Sinners of that time only
are mentioned, because this permits an introduction of the
subsequent reference to baptism. _Cf._ _Gen. 6:3_; _1 Pet. 1:10,
11_; _2 Pet. 2:4, 5_.”
(_b_) The ascension and sitting at the right hand of God.
As the resurrection proclaimed Christ to men as the perfected and
glorified man, the conqueror of sin and lord of death, the ascension
proclaimed him to the universe as the reinstated God, the possessor of
universal dominion, the omnipresent object of worship and hearer of
prayer. _Dextra Dei ubique est._
_Mat. 28:18, 20_—“_All authority hath been given unto me in heaven
and on earth.... lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of
the world_”; _Mark 16:19_—“_So then the Lord Jesus, after he had
spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the
right hand of God_”; _Acts 7:55_—“_But he, being full of the Holy
Spirit, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of
God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God_”; _2 Cor.
13:4_—“_he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth through
the power of God_”; _Eph. 1:22, 23_—“_he put all things in
subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things
to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth
all in all_”; _4:10_—“_He that descended is the same also that
ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all
things._” Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:184-189—“Before the
resurrection, Christ was the God-_man_; since the resurrection, he
is the _God_-man.... He ate with his disciples, not to show the
_quality_, but the _reality_, of his human body.” Nicoll, Life of
Christ: “It was hard for Elijah to ascend”—it required chariot and
horses of fire—“but it was easier for Christ to ascend than to
descend,”—there was a gravitation upwards. Maclaren: “He has not
left the world, though he has ascended to the Father, any more
than he left the Father when he came into the world”; _John
1:18_—“_the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the
Father_”; _3:13_—“_the Son of man, who is in heaven._”
We are compelled here to consider the problem of the relation of
the humanity to the Logos in the state of exaltation. The
Lutherans maintain the ubiquity of Christ’s human body, and they
make it the basis of their doctrine of the sacraments. Dorner,
Glaubenslehre, 2:674-676 (Syst. Doct., 4:138-142), holds to “a
presence, not simply of the Logos, but of the whole God-man, with
all his people, but not necessarily likewise a similar presence in
the world; in other words, his presence is morally conditioned by
men’s receptivity.” The old theologians said that Christ is not in
heaven, quasi carcere. Calvin, Institutes, 2:15—he is “incarnate,
but not incarcerated.” He has gone into heaven, the place of
spirits, and he manifests himself there; but he has also gone far
above all heavens, that he may fill all things. He is with his
people alway. All power is given into his hand. The church is the
fulness of him that filleth all in all. So the Acts of the
Apostles speak constantly of the Son of man, of the man Jesus as
God, ever present, the object of worship, seated at the right hand
of God, having all the powers and prerogatives of Deity. See
Westcott, Bible Com., on _John 20:22_—“_he breathed on them, and
saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit_”—“The characteristic
effect of the Paschal gift was shown in the new faith by which the
disciples were gathered into a living society; the characteristic
effect of the Pentecostal gift was shown in the exercise of
supremacy potentially universal.”
Who and what is this Christ who is present with his people when
they pray? It is not enough to say, He is simply the Holy Spirit;
for the Holy Spirit is the “_Spirit of Christ_” (_Rom. 8:9_), and
in having the Holy Spirit we have Christ himself (_John 16:7_—“_I
will send him_ [the Comforter] _unto you_”; _14:18_—“_I come unto
you_”). The Christ, who is thus present with us when we pray, is
not simply the Logos, or the divine nature of Christ,—his humanity
being separated from the divinity and being localized in heaven.
This would be inconsistent with his promise, “_Lo, I am with
you_,” in which the “I” that spoke was not simply Deity, but Deity
and humanity inseparably united; and it would deny the real and
indissoluble union of the two natures. The elder brother and
sympathizing Savior who is with us when we pray is man, as well as
God. This manhood is therefore ubiquitous by virtue of its union
with the Godhead.
But this is not to say that Christ’s human _body_ is everywhere
present. It would seem that body must exist in spatial relations,
and be confined to place. We do not know that this is so with
regard to soul. Heaven would seem to be a place, because Christ’s
body is there; and a spiritual body is not a body which is spirit,
but a body which is suited to the uses of the spirit. But even
though Christ may manifest himself, in a glorified human body,
only in heaven, his human soul, by virtue of its union with the
divine nature, can at the same moment be with all his scattered
people over the whole earth. As, in the days of his flesh, his
humanity was confined to place, while as to his Deity he could
speak of the Son of man who is in heaven, so now, although his
human body may be confined to place, his human soul is ubiquitous.
Humanity can exist without body; for during the three days in the
sepulchre, Christ’s body was on earth, but his soul was in the
other world; and in like manner there is, during the intermediate
state, a separation of the soul and the body of believers. But
humanity cannot exist without soul; and if the human Savior is
with us, then his humanity, at least so far as respects its
immaterial part, must be everywhere present. _Per contra_, see
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:326, 327. Since Christ’s human nature has
derivatively become possessed of divine attributes, there is no
validity in the notion of a progressiveness in that nature, now
that it has ascended to the right hand of God. See Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, 4:131; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 558, 576.
Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:327—“Suppose the presence of the divine
nature of Christ in the soul of a believer in London. This divine
nature is at the same moment conjoined with, and present to, and
modified by, the human nature of Christ, which is in heaven and
not in London.” So Hooker, Eccl. Pol., 54, 55, and E. G. Robinson:
“Christ is in heaven at the right hand of the Father, interceding
for us, while he is present in the church by his Spirit. We pray
to the theanthropic Jesus. Possession of a human body does not now
constitute a limitation. We know little of the nature of the
present body.” We add to this last excellent remark the expression
of our own conviction that the modern conception of the merely
relative nature of space, and the idealistic view of matter as
only the expression of mind and will, have relieved this subject
of many of its former difficulties. If Christ is omnipresent and
if his body is simply the manifestation of his soul, then every
soul may feel the presence of his humanity even now and “_every
eye_” may “_see him_” at his second coming, even though believers
may be separated as far as is Boston from Pekin. The body from
which his glory flashes forth may be visible in ten thousand
places at the same time; (_Mat. 28:20_; _Rev. 1:7_).
Section IV.—The Offices Of Christ.
The Scriptures represent Christ’s offices as three in number,—prophetic,
priestly, and kingly. Although these terms are derived from concrete human
relations, they express perfectly distinct ideas. The prophet, the priest,
and the king, of the Old Testament, were detached but designed
prefigurations of him who should combine all these various activities in
himself, and should furnish the ideal reality, of which they were the
imperfect symbols.
_1 Cor. 1:30_—“_of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto
us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and
redemption._” Here “_wisdom_” seems to indicate the prophetic,
“_righteousness_” (or “_justification_”) the priestly, and
“_sanctification and redemption_” the kingly work of Christ.
Denovan: “Three offices are necessary. Christ must be a prophet,
to save us from the ignorance of sin; a priest, to save us from
its guilt; a king, to save us from its dominion in our flesh. Our
faith cannot have firm basis in any one of these alone, any more
than a stool can stand on less than three legs.” See Van
Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 583-586; Archer Butler, Sermons, 1:314.
A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 235—“For ‘office,’ there are two
words in Latin: _munus_ = position (of Mediator), and _officia_ =
functions (of Prophet, Priest, and King). They are not separate
offices, as are those of President, Chief-Justice, and Senator.
They are not separate functions, capable of successive and
isolated performance. They are rather like the several functions
of the one living human body—lungs, heart, brain—functionally
distinct, yet interdependent, and together constituting one life.
So the functions of Prophet, Priest, and King mutually imply one
another: Christ is always a prophetical Priest, and a priestly
Prophet; and he is always a royal Priest, and a priestly King; and
together they accomplish one redemption, to which all are equally
essential. Christ is both μεσίτης and παράκλητος.”
I. The Prophetic Office of Christ.
1. The nature of Christ’s prophetic work.
(_a_) Here we must avoid the narrow interpretation which would make the
prophet a mere foreteller of future events. He was rather an inspired
interpreter or revealer of the divine will, a medium of communication
between God and men (προφήτης = not foreteller, but forteller, or
forth-teller. _Cf._ Gen. 20:7,—of Abraham; Ps. 105:15,—of the patriarchs;
Mat. 11:9,—of John the Baptist; 1 Cor. 12:28, Eph. 2:20, and 3:5,—of N. T.
expounders of Scripture).
_Gen. 20:7_—“_restore the man’s wife; for he is a prophet_”—spoken
of Abraham; _Ps. 105:15_—“_Touch not mine anointed ones, And do my
prophets no harm_”—spoken of the patriarchs; _Mat. 11:9_—“_But
wherefore went ye out? to see a prophet? Yea, I say into you, and
much more than a prophet_”—spoken of John the Baptist, from whom
we have no recorded predictions, and whose pointing to Jesus as
the “_Lamb of God_” (_John 1:29_) was apparently but an echo of
_Isaiah 53_. _1 Cor. 12:28_—“_first apostles, secondly prophets_”;
_Eph. 2:20_—“_built upon the foundation of the apostles and
prophets_”; _3:5_—“_revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets
in the Spirit_”—all these latter texts speaking of New Testament
expounders of Scripture.
Any organ of divine revelation, or medium of divine communication,
is a prophet. “Hence,” says Philippi, “the books of Joshua,
Judges, Samuel, and Kings are called ‘_prophetæ priores_,’ or ‘the
earlier prophets.’ Bernard’s _Respice, Aspice, Prospice_ describes
the work of the prophet: for the prophet might see and might
disclose things in the past, things in the present, or things in
the future. Daniel was a prophet, in telling Nebuchadnezzar what
his dream had been, as well as in telling its interpretation
(_Dan. 2:28, 36_). The woman of Samaria rightly called Christ a
prophet, when he told her all things that ever she did (_John
4:29_).” On the work of the prophet, see Stanley, Jewish Church,
1:491.
(_b_) The prophet commonly united three methods of fulfilling his
office,—those of teaching, predicting, and miracle-working. In all these
respects, Jesus Christ did the work of a prophet (Deut 18:15; _cf._ Acts
3:22; Mat. 13:57; Luke 13:33; John 6:14). He taught (Mat. 5-7), he uttered
predictions (Mat. 24 and 25), he wrought miracles (Mat. 8 and 9), while in
his person, his life, his work, and his death, he revealed the Father
(John 8:26; 14:9; 17:8).
_Deut. 18:15_—“_Jehovah thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet,
from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him
shall ye hearken_”; _cf._ _Acts 3:22_—where this prophecy is said
to be fulfilled in Christ. Jesus calls himself a prophet in _Mat.
13:57_—“_A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country,
and in his own house_”; _Luke 13:33_—“_Nevertheless I must go on
my way to-day and to-morrow and the day following: for it cannot
be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem._” He was called a
prophet: _John 6:14_—“_When therefore the people saw the sign
which he did, they said, This is of a truth the prophet that
cometh into the world._” _John 8:26_—“_the things which I heard
from him_ [the Father], _these speak I unto the world_”;
_14:9_—“_he that hath seen me hath seen the Father_”; _17:8_—“_the
words which thou gavest me I have given unto them._”
Denovan: “Christ teaches us by his word, his Spirit, his example.”
Christ’s miracles were mainly miracles of healing. “Only sickness
is contagious with us. But Christ was an example of perfect
health, and his health was contagious. By its overflow, he healed
others. Only a ‘_touch_’ (_Mat. 9:21_) was necessary.”
Edwin P. Parker, on Horace Bushnell: “The two fundamental elements
of prophecy are insight and expression. Christian prophecy implies
insight or discernment of spiritual things by divine illumination,
and expression of them, by inspiration, in terms of Christian
truth or in the tones and cadences of Christian testimony. We may
define it, then, as the publication, under the impulse of
inspiration, and for edification, of truths perceived by divine
illumination, apprehended by faith, and assimilated by
experience.... It requires a natural basis and rational
preparation in the human mind, a suitable stock of natural gifts
on which to graft the spiritual gift for support and nourishment.
These gifts have had devout culture. They have been crowned by
illuminations and inspirations. Because insight gives foresight,
the prophet will be a seer of things as they are unfolding and
becoming; will discern far-signalings and intimations of
Providence; will forerun men to prepare the way for them, and them
for the way of God’s coming kingdom.”
2. The stages of Christ’s prophetic work.
These are four, namely:
(_a_) The preparatory work of the Logos, in enlightening mankind before
the time of Christ’s advent in the flesh.—All preliminary religious
knowledge, whether within or without the bounds of the chosen people, is
from Christ, the revealer of God.
Christ’s prophetic work began before he came in the flesh. _John
1:9_—“_There was the true light, even the light which lighteth
every man, coming into the world_”—all the natural light of
conscience, science, philosophy, art, civilization, is the light
of Christ. Tennyson: “Our little systems have their day, They have
their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And
thou, O Lord, art more than they.” _Heb. 12:25, 26_—“_See that ye
refuse not him that speaketh.... whose voice then_ [at Sinai]
_shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more
will I make to tremble not the earth only, but also the heaven_”;
_Luke 11:49_—“_Therefore said the wisdom of God, I will send unto
them prophets and apostles_”; _cf._ _Mat 23:34_—“_behold, I send
unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: some of them shall
ye kill and crucify_”—which shows that Jesus was referring to his
own teachings, as well as to those of the earlier prophets.
(_b_) The earthly ministry of Christ incarnate.—In his earthly ministry,
Christ showed himself the prophet _par excellence_. While he submitted,
like the Old Testament prophets, to the direction of the Holy Spirit,
unlike them, he found the sources of all knowledge and power within
himself. The word of God did not _come_ to him,—he was _himself_ the Word.
_Luke 6:19_—“_And all the multitude sought to touch him; for power
came forth from him, and healed them all_”; _John 2:11_—“_This
beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and
manifested his glory_”; _8:38, 58_—“_I speak the things which I
have seen with my Father.... Before Abraham was born, I am_”;
_cf._ _Jer. 2:1_—“_the word of Jehovah came to me_”; _John
1:1_—“_In the beginning was the Word._” _Mat. 26:53_—“_twelve
legions of angels_”; _John 10:18_—of his life: “_I have power to
lay it down, and I have power to take it again_”; _34_—“_Is it not
written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods,
unto whom the word of God came ... say ye of him, whom the Father
sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I
said, I am the Son of God?_” Martensen, Dogmatics, 295-301, says
of Jesus’ teaching that “its source was not inspiration, but
incarnation.” Jesus was not inspired,—he was the Inspirer.
Therefore he is the true “Master of those who know.” His disciples
act in his name; he acts in his own name.
(_c_) The guidance and teaching of his church on earth, since his
ascension.—Christ’s prophetic activity is continued through the preaching
of his apostles and ministers, and by the enlightening influences of his
Holy Spirit (John 16:12-14; Acts 1:1). The apostles unfolded the germs of
doctrine put into their hands by Christ. The church is, in a derivative
sense, a prophetic institution, established to teach the world by its
preaching and its ordinances. But Christians are prophets, only as being
proclaimers of Christ’s teaching (Num. 11:29; Joel 2:28).
_John 16:12-14_—“_I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye
cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is
come, he shall guide you into all the truth.... He shall glorify
me: for he shall take of mine and shall declare it unto you_”;
_Acts 1:1_—“_The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning
all that Jesus began both to do and to teach_”—Christ’s prophetic
work was only _begun_, during his earthly ministry; it is
continued since his ascension. The inspiration of the apostles,
the illumination of all preachers and Christians to understand and
to unfold the meaning of the word they wrote, the conviction of
sinners, and the sanctification of believers,—all these are parts
of Christ’s prophetic work, performed through the Holy Spirit.
By virtue of their union with Christ and participation in Christ’s
Spirit, all Christians are made in a secondary sense prophets, as
well as priests and kings. _Num. 11:29_—“_Would that all Jehovah’s
people were prophets, that Jehovah would put his Spirit upon
them_”; _Joel 2:28_—“_I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh;
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy._” All modern
prophecy that is true, however, is but the republication of
Christ’s message—the proclamation and expounding of truth already
revealed in Scripture. “All so-called new prophecy, from Montanus
to Swedenborg, proves its own falsity by its lack of attesting
miracles.”
A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 242—“Every human prophet
presupposes an infinite eternal divine Prophet from whom his
knowledge is received, just as every stream presupposes a fountain
from which it flows.... As the telescope of highest power takes
into its field the narrowest segment of the sky, so Christ the
prophet sometimes gives the intensest insight into the glowing
centre of the heavenly world to those whom this world regards as
unlearned and foolish, and the church recognizes as only babes in
Christ.”
(_d_) Christ’s final revelation of the Father to his saints in glory (John
16:25; 17:24, 26; _cf._ Is. 64:4; 1 Cor. 13:12).—Thus Christ’s prophetic
work will be an endless one, as the Father whom he reveals is infinite.
_John 16:25_—“_the hour cometh, when I shall no more speak unto
you in dark sayings, but shall tell you plainly of the Father_”;
_17:24_—“_I desire that where I am, they also may be with me; that
they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me_”; _26_—“_I
made known unto them thy name, and will make it known._” The
revelation of his own glory will be the revelation of the Father,
in the Son. _Is. 64:4_—“_For from of old men have not heard, nor
perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen a God besides
thee, who worketh for him that waiteth for him_”; _1 Cor.
13:12_—“_now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face:
now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was
fully known._” _Rev. 21:23_—“_And the city hath no need of the
sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God
did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb_”—not light, but
lamp. Light is something generally diffused; one sees _by_ it, but
one cannot see _it_. Lamp is the narrowing down, the
concentrating, the focusing of light, so that the light becomes
definite and visible. So in heaven Christ will be the visible God.
We shall never see the Father separate from Christ. No man or
angel has at any time seen God, “_whom no man hath seen, nor can
see._” “_The only begotten Son ... he hath declared him,_” and he
will forever declare him (_John 1:18_; _1 Tim. 6:16_).
The ministers of the gospel in modern times, so far as they are
joined to Christ and possessed by his spirit, have a right to call
themselves prophets. The prophet is one—1. sent by God and
conscious of his mission; 2. with a message from God which he is
under compulsion to deliver; 3. a message grounded in the truth of
the past, setting it in new lights for the present, and making new
applications of it for the future. The word of the Lord must come
to him; it must be his gospel; there must be things new as well as
old. All mathematics are in the simplest axiom; but it needs
divine illumination to discover them. All truth was in Jesus’
words, nay, in the first prophecy uttered after the Fall, but only
the apostles brought it out. The prophet’s message must be 4. a
message for the place and time—primarily for contemporaries and
present needs; 5. a message of eternal significance and worldwide
influence. As the prophet’s word was for the whole world, so our
word may be for other worlds, that _“__unto the principalities and
the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the
church the manifold wisdom of God__”__ (Eph. 3:10)_. It must be
also 6. a message of the kingdom and triumph of Christ, which puts
over against the distractions and calamities of the present time
the glowing ideal and the perfect consummation to which God is
leading his people: “_Blessed be the glory of Jehovah from his
place_”; “_Jehovah is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep
silence before him_” (_Ez. 3:12; Hab. 2:20_). On the whole subject
of Christ’s prophetic office, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV,
2:24-27; Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 320-330; Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 2:366-370.
II. The Priestly Office of Christ.
The priest was a person divinely appointed to transact with God on man’s
behalf. He fulfilled his office, first by offering sacrifice, and secondly
by making intercession. In both these respects Christ is priest.
_Hebrews 7:24-28_—“_he, because he abideth forever, hath his
priesthood unchangeable. Wherefore also he is able to save to the
uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever
liveth to make intercession for them. For such a high priest
became us, holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and
made higher than the heavens; who needeth not daily, like these
high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, and
then for the sins of the people: for this he did once for all,
when he offered up himself. For the law appointeth men high
priests, having infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was
after the law, appointeth a Son, perfected for evermore._” The
whole race was shut out from God by its sin. But God chose the
Israelites as a priestly nation, Levi as a priestly tribe, Aaron
as a priestly family, the high priest out of this family as type
of the great high priest, Jesus Christ. J. S. Candlish, in Bib.
World, Feb. 1897:87-97, cites the following facts with regard to
our Lord’s sufferings as proofs of the doctrine of atonement: 1.
Christ gave up his life by a perfectly free act; 2. out of regard
to God his Father and obedience to his will; 3. the bitterest
element of his suffering was that he endured it at the hand of
God; 4. this divine appointment and infliction of suffering is
inexplicable, except as Christ endured the divine judgment against
the sin of the race.
1. Christ’s Sacrificial Work, or the Doctrine of the Atonement.
The Scriptures teach that Christ obeyed and suffered in our stead, to
satisfy an immanent demand of the divine holiness, and thus remove an
obstacle in the divine mind to the pardon and restoration of the guilty.
This statement may be expanded and explained in a preliminary way as
follows:—
(_a_) The fundamental attribute of God is holiness, and holiness is not
self-communicating love, but self-affirming righteousness. Holiness limits
and conditions love, for love can will happiness only as happiness results
from or consists with righteousness, that is, with conformity to God.
We have shown in our discussion of the divine attributes (vol. 1,
pages 268-275) that holiness is neither self-love nor love, but
self-affirming purity and right. Those who maintain that love is
self-affirming as well as self-communicating, and therefore that
holiness is God’s love for himself, must still admit that this
self-affirming love which is holiness conditions and furnishes the
standard for the self-communicating love which is benevolence. But
we hold that holiness is not identical with, nor a manifestation
of, love. Since self-maintenance must precede self-impartation;
and since benevolence finds its object, motive, standard, and
limit in righteousness, holiness, the self-affirming attribute,
can in no way be resolved into love, the self-communicating. God
must first maintain his own being before he can give to another;
and this self-maintenance must have its reason and motive in the
worth of that which is maintained. Holiness cannot be love,
because love is irrational and capricious except as it has a
standard by which it is regulated, and this standard cannot be
itself love, but must be holiness. To make holiness a form of love
is really to deny its existence, and with this to deny that any
atonement is necessary for man’s salvation.
(_b_) The universe is a reflection of God, and Christ the Logos is its
life. God has constituted the universe, and humanity as a part of it, so
as to express his holiness, positively by connecting happiness with
righteousness, negatively by attaching unhappiness or suffering to sin.
We have seen, in vol. I, pages 109, 309-311, 335-338, that since
Christ is the Logos, the immanent God, God revealed in nature, in
humanity, and in redemption, the universe must be recognized as
created, upheld and governed by the same Being who in the course
of history was manifest in human form and who made atonement for
human sin by his death on Calvary. As all God’s creative activity
has been exercised through Christ (vol. I, page 310), so it is
Christ in whom all things consist or are held together (vol. I,
page 311). Providence, as well as preservation, is his work. He
makes the universe to reflect God, and especially God’s ethical
nature. That pain or loss universally and inevitably follow sin is
the proof that God is unalterably opposed to moral evil; and the
demands and reproaches of conscience witness that holiness is the
fundamental attribute of God’s being.
(_c_) Christ the Logos, as the Revealer of God in the universe and in
humanity, must condemn sin by visiting upon it the suffering which is its
penalty; while at the same time, as the Life of humanity, he must endure
the reaction of God’s holiness against sin which constitutes that penalty.
Here is a double work of Christ which Paul distinctly declares in
_Rom. 8:3_—“_For what the law could not do, in that it was weak
through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh._” The
meaning is that God did through Christ what the law could not do,
namely, accomplish deliverance for humanity; and did this by
sending his son in a nature which in us is identified with sin. In
connection with sin (περὶ ἁμαρτίας), and as an offering for sin,
God condemned sin, by condemning Christ. Expositor’s Greek
Testament, _in loco_: “When the question is asked, In what sense
did God send his Son ‘in connection with sin’, there is only one
answer possible. He sent him to expiate sin by his sacrificial
death. This is the centre and foundation of Paul’s gospel; see
_Rom. 3:25_ _sq._” But whatever God did in condemning sin he did
through Christ; “_God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto
himself_” (_2 Cor. 5:19_); Christ was the condemner, as well as
the condemned; conscience in us, which unites the accuser and the
accused, shows us how Christ could be both the Judge and the
Sin-bearer.
(_d_) Our personality is not self-contained. We live, move, and have our
being naturally in Christ the Logos. Our reason, affection, conscience,
and will are complete only in him. He is generic humanity, of which we are
the offshoots. When his righteousness condemns sin, and his love
voluntarily endures the suffering which is sin’s penalty, humanity
ratifies the judgment of God, makes full propitiation for sin, and
satisfies the demands of holiness.
My personal existence is grounded in God. I cannot perceive the
world outside of me nor recognize the existence of my fellow men,
except as he bridges the gulf between me and the universe.
Complete self-consciousness would be impossible if we did not
partake of the universal Reason. The smallest child makes
assumptions and uses processes of logic which are all instinctive,
but which indicate the working in him of an absolute and infinite
Intelligence. True love is possible only as God’s love flows into
us and takes possession of us; so that the poet can truly say:
“Our loves in higher love endure.” No human will is truly free,
unless God emancipates it; only he whom the Son of God makes free
is free indeed; “_work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to
work_” (_Phil. 2:12, 13_). Our moral nature, even more than our
intellectual nature, witnesses that we are not sufficient to
ourselves, but are complete only in him in whom we live and move
and have our being (_Col. 2:10_; _Acts 17:28_). No man can make a
conscience for himself. There is a common conscience, over and
above the finite and individual conscience. That common conscience
is one in all moral beings. John Watson: “There is no
consciousness of self apart from the consciousness of other selves
and things, and no consciousness of the world apart from the
consciousness of the single Reality presupposed in both.” This
single Reality is Jesus Christ, the manifested God, the Light that
lighteth every man, and the Life of all that lives (_John 1:4,
9_). He can represent humanity before God, because his immanent
Deity constitutes the very essence of humanity.
(_e_) While Christ’s love explains his willingness to endure suffering for
us, only his holiness furnishes the reason for that constitution of the
universe and of human nature which makes this suffering necessary. As
respects us, his sufferings are substitutionary, since his divinity and
his sinlessness enable him to do for us what we could never do for
ourselves. Yet this substitution is also a sharing—not the work of one
external to us, but of one who is the life of humanity, the soul of our
soul and the life of our life, and so responsible with us for the sins of
the race.
Most of the recent treatises on the Atonement have been
descriptions of the effects of the Atonement upon life and
character, but have thrown no light upon the Atonement itself, if
indeed they have not denied its existence. We must not emphasize
the effects by ignoring the cause. Scripture declares the ultimate
aim of the Atonement to be that God “_might himself be just_”
(_Rom. 3:26_); and no theory of the atonement will meet the
demands of reason or conscience that does not ground its necessity
in God’s righteousness, rather than in his love. We acknowledge
that our conceptions of atonement have suffered some change. To
our fathers the atonement was a mere historical fact, a sacrifice
offered in a few brief hours upon the Cross. It was a literal
substitution of Christ’s suffering for ours, the payment of our
debt by another, and upon the ground of that payment we are
permitted to go free. Those sufferings were soon over, and the
hymn, “Love’s Redeeming Work is Done,” expressed the believer’s
joy in a finished redemption. And all this is true. But it is only
a part of the truth. The atonement, like every other doctrine of
Christianity, is a fact of life; and such facts of life cannot be
crowded into our definitions, because they are greater than any
definitions that we can frame. We must add to the idea of
_substitution_ the idea of _sharing_. Christ’s doing and suffering
is not that of one external and foreign to us. He is bone of our
bone, and flesh of our flesh; the bearer of our humanity; yes, the
very life of the race.
(_f_) The historical work of the incarnate Christ is not itself the
atonement,—it is rather the revelation of the atonement. The suffering of
the incarnate Christ is the manifestation in space and time of the eternal
suffering of God on account of human sin. Yet without the historical work
which was finished on Calvary, the age-long suffering of God could never
have been made comprehensible to men.
The life that Christ lived in Palestine and the death that he
endured on Calvary were the revelation of a union with mankind
which antedated the Fall. Being thus joined to us from the
beginning, he has suffered in all human sin; “_in all our
affliction he has been afflicted_” (_Is. 63:9_); so that the
Psalmist can say: “_Blessed be the Lord, who daily beareth our
burden, even the God who is our salvation_” (_Ps. 68:19_). The
historical sacrifice was a burning-glass which focused the
diffused rays of the Sun of righteousness and made them effective
in the melting of human hearts. The sufferings of Christ take
deepest hold upon us only when we see in them the two contrasted
but complementary truths: that holiness must make penalty to
follow sin, and that love must share that penalty with the
transgressor. The Cross was the concrete exhibition of the
holiness that required, and of the love that provided, man’s
redemption. Those six hours of pain could never have procured our
salvation if they had not been a revelation of eternal facts in
the being of God. The heart of God and the meaning of all previous
history were then unveiled. The whole evolution of humanity was
there depicted in its essential elements, on the one hand the sin
and condemnation of the race, on the other hand the grace and
suffering of him who was its life and salvation. As he who hung
upon the cross was God, manifest in the flesh, so the suffering of
the cross was God’s suffering for sin, manifest in the flesh. The
imputation of our sins to him is the result of his natural union
with us. He has been our substitute from the beginning. We cannot
quarrel with the doctrine of substitution when we see that this
substitution is but the sharing of our griefs and sorrows by him
whose very life pulsates in our veins. See A. H. Strong, Christ in
Creation, 78-80, 177-180.
(_g_) The historical sacrifice of our Lord is not only the final
revelation of the heart of God, but also the manifestation of the law of
universal life—the law that sin brings suffering to all connected with it,
and that we can overcome sin in ourselves and in the world only by
entering into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings and Christ’s victory,
or, in other words, only by union with him through faith.
We too are subject to the same law of life. We who enter into
fellowship with our Lord “_fill up ... that which is lacking of
the afflictions of Christ ... for his body’s sake, which is the
church_” (_Col. 1:24_). The Christian Church can reign with Christ
only as it partakes in his suffering. The atonement becomes a
model and stimulus to self-sacrifice, and a test of Christian
character. But it is easy to see how the subjective effect of
Christ’s sacrifice may absorb the attention, to the exclusion of
its ground and cause. The moral influence of the atonement has
taken deep hold upon our minds, and we are in danger of forgetting
that it is the holiness of God, and not the salvation of men, that
primarily requires it. When sharing excludes substitution; when
reconciliation of man to God excludes reconciliation of God to
man; when the only peace secured is peace in the sinner’s heart
and no thought is given to that peace with God which it is the
first object of the atonement to secure; then the whole
evangelical system is weakened, God’s righteousness is ignored,
and man is practically put in place of God. We must not go back to
the old mechanical and arbitrary conceptions of the atonement,—we
must go forward to a more vital apprehension of the relation of
the race to Christ. A larger knowledge of Christ, the life of
humanity, will enable us to hold fast the objective nature of the
atonement, and its necessity as grounded in the holiness of God;
while at the same time we appropriate all that is good in the
modern view of the atonement, as the final demonstration of God’s
constraining love which moves men to repentance and submission.
See A. H. Strong, Cleveland Address, 1904:16-18; Dinsmore, The
Atonement in Literature and in Life, 213-250.
A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.
We may classify the Scripture representations according as they conform to
moral, commercial, legal or sacrificial analogies.
(_a_) MORAL.—The atonement is described as
A _provision originating in God’s love_, and manifesting this love to the
universe; but also as an _example of disinterested love_, to secure our
deliverance from selfishness.—In these latter passages, Christ’s death is
referred to as a source of moral stimulus to men.
_A provision_: _John 3:16_—“_For God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son_”; _Rom. 5:8_—“_God commendeth his own
love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us_”; _1 John 4:9_—“_Herein was the love of God manifested in
us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that
we might live through him_”; _Heb. 2:9_—“_Jesus, because of the
suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace
of God he should taste of death for every man_”—redemption
originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the
Son.—_An example_: _Luke 9:22-24_—“_The Son of man must suffer ...
and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take
up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his
life for my sake, the same shall save it_”; _2 Cor. 5:15_—“_he
died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto
themselves_”; _Gal. 1:4_—“_gave himself for our sins, that he
might deliver us out of this present __ evil world_”; _Eph.
5:25-27_—“_Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for
it; that he might sanctify it_”; _Col. 1:22_—“_reconciled in the
body of his flesh through death, to present you holy_”; _Titus
2:14_—“_gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all
iniquity, and purify_”; _1 Pet. 2:21-24_—“_Christ also suffered
for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps:
who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon
the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto
righteousness._” Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious
cottager, on hearing the text, ‘_God so loved the world_,’
exclaimed: ‘Ah, that _was_ love! I could have given myself, but I
could never have given my son.’ ” There was a wounding of the
Father through the heart of the Son: “_they shall look unto me
whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one
mourneth for his only son_” (_Zech. 12:10_).
(b) COMMERCIAL.—The atonement is described as
A _ransom_, paid to free us from the bondage of sin (note in these
passages the use of ἀντί, the preposition of price, bargain, exchange).—In
these passages, Christ’s death is represented as the price of our
deliverance from sin and death.
_Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45_—“_to give his life a ransom for
many_”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν. _1 Tim. 2:6_—“_who gave himself a
ransom for all_”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“_for_,” in the sense of
“instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“_for_,” in the sense
of “in behalf of,” “for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition
of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable
in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. See _Mat.
2:22_—“_Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of_ [ἀντί]
_his father Herod_”; _Luke 11:11_—“_shall his son ask ... a fish,
and he for_ [ἀντί] _a fish give him a serpent?_” _Heb.
12:2_—“_Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for_
[ἀντί = as the price of] _the joy that was set before him endured
the cross_”; _16_—“_Esau, who for_ [ἀντί = in exchange for] _one
mess of meat sold his own birthright._” See also _Mat.
16:26_—“_what shall a man give in exchange for_ (ἀντάλλαγμα) _his
life_” = how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it?
Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in _1 Tim.
2:6_ requires that ὑπέρ should mean “instead of.” We should
interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί in _Mat. 20:28_. “Something befell
Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall
sinners” (E. Y. Mullins).
Meyer, on _Mat. 20:28_—“_to give his life a ransom for many_”—“The
ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the
shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”
See also _1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23_—“_ye were bought with a price_”; and
_2 Pet. 2:1_—“_denying even the Master that bought them._” The
word “redemption,” indeed, means simply “repurchase,” or “the
state of being repurchased”—_i. e._, delivered by the payment of a
price. _Rev. 5:9_—“_thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God
with thy blood men of every tribe._” Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In
Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.” Buttmann, N. T. Grammar,
321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of,
for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.” See Grimm’s Wilke,
Lexicon Græco-Lat.: “ἀντί, _in vicem_, _anstatt_”; Thayer, Lexicon
N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received,
endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase) _Mat. 20:28_”;
also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.
Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever
really uttered the words “_give his life a ransom for many_”
(_Mat. 20:28_). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the
result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a
means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism,
377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel,
but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate
the apostolic conception of Jesus’ teaching, a conception which
Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the
Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his
apostles and should guide them into all the truth (_John 14:26_;
_16:13_). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline
doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.
(_c_) LEGAL.—The atonement is described as
An act of _obedience_ to the law which sinners had violated; a _penalty_,
borne in order to rescue the guilty; and an _exhibition_ of God’s
righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon
and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is
represented as demanded by God’s law and government.
_Obedience_: _Gal. 4:4, 5_—“_born of a woman, born under the law,
that he might redeem them that were under the law_”; _Mat.
3:15_—“_thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness_”—Christ’s
baptism prefigured his death, and was a consecration to death;
_cf._ _Mark 10:38_—“_Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or
to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?_” _Luke
12:50_—“_I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I
straitened till it be accomplished!_” _Mat. 26:39_—“_My Father, if
it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not
as I will, but as thou wilt_”; _5:17_—“_Think not that I came to
destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to
fulfil_”; _Phil. 2:8_—“_becoming obedient even unto death_”; _Rom.
5:19_—“_through the obedience of the one shall the many be made
righteous_”; _10:4_—“_Christ is the end of the law unto
righteousness to every one that believeth._”—_Penalty_: _Rom.
4:25_—“_who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised
for our justification_”; _8:3_—“_God, sending his own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the
flesh_”; _2 Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on
our behalf_”—here “_sin_”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer); _Gal.
1:4_—“_gave himself for our sins_”; _3:13_—“_Christ redeemed us
from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is
written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree_”; _cf._ _Deut
21:23_—“_he that is hanged is accursed of God._” _Heb.
9:28_—“_Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of
many_”; _cf._ _Lev. 5:17_—“_if any one sin ... yet is he guilty,
and shall bear his iniquity_”; _Num. 14:34_—“_for every day a
year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years_”; _Lam.
5:7_—“_Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their
iniquities._”—_Exhibition_: _Rom. 3:25, 26_—“_whom God set forth
to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his
righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done
aforetime, in the forbearance of God_”; _cf._ _Heb. 9:15_—“_a
death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions
that were under the first covenant._”
On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die
Ritschl’sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes
Ritschl’s evasion of their natural force and declares Paul’s
teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the
law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law
against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L.
L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New
Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation
on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn
from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews
made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the
reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor
Paine’s view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect.
“_God was in Christ_” (_2 Cor. 5:19_) and God “_manifested in the
flesh_” (_1 Tim. 3:16_) are the keynote of Paul’s teaching, and
this is identical with John’s doctrine of the Logos: “_the Word
was God_,” and “_the Word became flesh_” (_John 1:1, 14_)
The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states
three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential
kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness,
in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine
immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical
unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any
more than the presence of man’s spirit in all he thinks and does
proves that man’s spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3.
God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than
all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this
indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and
filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the
first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which
contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as
the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man
instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead
of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders
impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus
Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of
God’s feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within
the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity
of Christ and no objective atonement.
(d) SACRIFICIAL.—The atonement is described as
A work of _priestly mediation_, which reconciles God to men,—notice here
that the term “reconciliation” has its usual sense of removing enmity, not
from the offending, but from the offended party;—a _sin-offering_,
presented on behalf of transgressors;—a _propitiation_, which satisfies
the demands of violated holiness;—and a _substitution_, of Christ’s
obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show
that Christ’s death is demanded by God’s attribute of justice, or
holiness, if sinners are to be saved.
_Priestly mediation_: _Heb. 9:11, 12_—“_Christ having come a high
priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but
through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy
place, having obtained eternal redemption_”; _Rom. 5:10_—“_while
we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of
his Son_”; _2 Cor. 5:18, 19_—“_all things are of God, who
reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ
reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their
trespasses_”; _Eph. 2:16_—“_might reconcile them both in one body
unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby_”;
_cf._ _12, 13, 19_—“_strangers from the covenants of the
promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye
are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of
God_”; _Col. 1:20_—“_through him to reconcile all things unto
himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross._”
On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the
apostle to be, that “we were ‘_enemies_,’ not actively, as hostile
to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.” The
epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against
Gentile and Jew alike (_Rom. 1:18_). “_While we were enemies_”
(_Rom. 5:10_)—“when God was hostile to us.” “Reconciliation” is
therefore the removal of God’s wrath toward man. Meyer, on this
last passage, says that Christ’s death does not remove man’s wrath
toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy
Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself.
See Denney, Com. on _Rom. 5:9-11_, in Expositor’s Gk. Test.
_Cf._ _Num. 25:13_, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to
have “_made atonement for the children of Israel_.” Surely, the
“_atonement_” here cannot be a reconciliation of _Israel_. The
action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So,
_1 Sam. 29:4_—“_wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself
unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?_”
_Mat. 5:23, 24_—“_If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the
altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against
thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first
be reconciled to thy brother_ [_i. e._, remove his enmity, not
thine own], _and then come and offer thy gift._” See Shedd, Dogm.
Theol., 2:387-398.
Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl’sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (_Rom.
5:10_) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part,
but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.” Paul
was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it
from Christ himself (_Gal. 1:12_). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The
idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false
conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be
unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it
was before.” The old hymn expressed the truth: “My God is
reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child;
I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And
‘Father, Abba, Father’ cry.”
_A sin-offering_: _John 1:29_—“_Behold, the Lamb of God, that
taketh away the sin of the world_”—here αἴρων means to take away
by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion
to the sin-offering of _Isaiah 53:6-12_—“_when thou shalt make his
soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the
slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all._”
_Mat. 26:28_—“_this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured
out for many unto remission of sins_”; _cf._ _Ps. 50:5_—“_made a
covenant with me by sacrifice._” _1 John 1:7_—“_the blood of Jesus
his Son cleanseth us from all sin_”—not sanctification, but
justification; _1 Cor. 5:7_—“_our passover also hath been
sacrificed, even Christ_”; _cf._ _Deut. 16:2-6_—“_thou shalt
sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God._” _Eph. 5:2_—“_gave
himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor
of a sweet smell_” (see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor’s Greek
Testament); _Heb. 9:14_—“_the blood of Christ, who through the
eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God_”; _22,
26_—“_apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now
once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away
sin by the sacrifice of himself_”; _1 Pet. 1:18, 19_—“_redeemed
... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without
spot, even the blood of Christ._” See Expos. Gk. Test., on _Eph.
1:7_.
Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out that _John
6:52-59_—“_eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood_”—is Christ’s
reference to his death in terms of _sacrifice_. So, as we shall
see below, it is a _propitiation_ (_1 John 2:2_). We therefore
strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement,
64—“Christ’s death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning
instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which
springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of
substitution or expiation.” Wilson forgets that this necessity of
suffering arises from God’s righteousness; that without this
suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on
account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that
this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved
thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnation _constituted_ the
Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated.
Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words:
“Incarnation in order to Atonement.” We regard as still better the
words: “Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”
_A propitiation_: _Rom. 3:25, 26_—“_whom God set forth to be a
propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just,
and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus._” A full and
critical exposition of this passage will be found under the
Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is
sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ’s death is a
propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon
God; (3) that the particular attribute in God which demands the
atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction
of this holiness is the necessary condition of God’s justifying
the believer.
Compare _Luke 18:13_, marg.—“_God, be thou merciful unto me the
sinner_”; lit.: “_God be propitiated toward me the sinner_”—by the
sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even
while he prayed. _Heb. 2:17_—“_a merciful and faithful high priest
in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of
the people_”; _1 John 2:2_—“_and he is the propitiation for our
sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world_”;
_4:10_—“_Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved
us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins_”; _cf._
_Gen. 32:20_, LXX.—“_I will appease_ [ἐξιλάσομαι, “propitiate”]
_him with the present that goeth before me_”; _Prov. 16:14_,
LXX.—“_The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise
man will pacify it_” [ἐξιλάσεται, “propitiate it”].
On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology,
216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to
pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the
sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the
infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be
inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In
fact, it was he himself who ‘_set forth_’ Jesus as ‘_a
propitiation_’ (_Rom. 3:25, 26_).” Paul never merges the objective
atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New
Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With
him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for
Christ _in_ us by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75,
89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul’s representation of Christ
as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as
prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “The priest says: Man’s
return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man’s
sin. This is Paul’s doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a
divine provision for sacrifice. Man’s return to God is the thing
wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect
prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who
comes in to perfect man’s imperfect work. This is the doctrine of
the Epistle to the Hebrews.” This recognition of expiation in
Paul’s teaching, together with denial of its validity and
interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather
than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.
Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still
further and affirms: “In the N. T. God is never said to be
propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God
or satisfies God’s wrath.” Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T.
God is represented as self-propitiated: “Christianity is
distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his
own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of
his own love.” This self-propitiation however must not be thought
of as a bearing of penalty: “Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a
sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled
with purification—‘_with his stripes we are healed_’ (_Is. 53:5_).
And in the N. T., ‘_the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the
world_’ (_John 1:29_); ‘_the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth_’ (_1
John 1:7_).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the
penalty, but removal of the sin.” This seems to us a distinct
contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an
essential of Christian doctrine (see _Rom. 3:25_; _1 John 2:2_),
while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man,
but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on
The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol.,
1900:734-756.
_A substitution_: _Luke 22:37_—“_he was reckoned with
transgressors_”; _cf._ _Lev. 16:21, 22_—“_and Aaron shall lay both
his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all
the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them
upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all
their iniquities unto a solitary land_”; _Is. 53:5, 6_—“_he was
wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities;
the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes
we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned
every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all._” _John 10:11_—“_the good shepherd layeth down
his life for the sheep_”; _Rom. 5:6-8_—“_while we were yet weak,
in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a
righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some
one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward
us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us_”; _1
Pet. 3:18_—“_Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for
the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God._”
To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (_b_) above,
in which Christ’s death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer’s
comment, there quoted, on _Mat. 20:28_—“_to give his life a ransom
for many,_” λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says: “ἀντί denotes
substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of,
is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration
thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution
in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to
secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is
paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other
parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an
expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is
paid] are redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as
having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain
imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of
their sins were expiated.”
Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that “in both the N. T. texts, _Mat.
16:26_ and _Mark 8:37_, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin
to the conception of atonement: _cf._ _Is. 43:3, 4_; _51:11_;
_Amos 5:12_. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction
and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.”
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“_Mat. 20:28_
contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is
not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it,
Christ’s death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a
ransom.”
The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical
Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of
others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer,
Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol.
2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of
vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of
Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution,
but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί in _Mat. 20:28_
means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he
obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a
non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul
and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We
prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well
as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of
them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in
Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution
must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to
be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its
external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the
conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in
Jesus himself.
Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine
of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal
suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ’s
vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas
not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr.
Clarke’s Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not
import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling
or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may
bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or
approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed,
for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided
that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God,
is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.”
Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that “substitution means simply
that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something
which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done
and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free
life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be
preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever
dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his
cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken,
but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and
make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man’s redemption.” On the
Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale,
Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342;
Smeaton, Our Lord’s and the Apostles’ Doctrine of Atonement.
An examination of the passages referred to shows that, while the forms in
which the atoning work of Christ is described are in part derived from
moral, commercial, and legal relations, the prevailing language is that of
sacrifice. A correct view of the atonement must therefore be grounded upon
a proper interpretation of the institution of sacrifice, especially as
found in the Mosaic system.
The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus’
own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ
did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a
gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be
explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not to _speak_ about
it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in
his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to
a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy
Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that
the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles
to the gospels. The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of
Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of
salvation, but for the redeemed. “None of the ransomed ever knew.”
The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.
Harnack: “There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look
upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is
possible.” We regard this confession as a demonstration of the
psychological correctness of Paul’s doctrine of a vicarious
atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it
reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be
appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton
declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience,
which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that
Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in
fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he
forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also
transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only
indications of the higher verdicts of God: _1 John 3:20_—“_if our
heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all
things._” Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people
half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be
placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the
sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same
divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements
in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely
out of existence.” So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral
fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must
be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic,
but moral.” Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere
form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a
utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the
creature. A more correct view of God’s righteousness as the
fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the
constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting
suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine
wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a
divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.
B. The Institution of Sacrifice, more especially as found in the Mosaic
system.
(_a_) We may dismiss as untenable, on the one hand, the theory that
sacrifice is essentially the presentation of a gift (Hofmann,
Baring-Gould) or a feast (Spencer) to the Deity; and on the other hand the
theory that sacrifice is a symbol of renewed fellowship (Keil), or of the
grateful offering to God of the whole life and being of the worshiper
(Bähr). Neither of these theories can explain the fact that the sacrifice
is a bloody offering, involving the suffering and death of the victim, and
brought, not by the simply grateful, but by the conscience-stricken soul.
For the views of sacrifice here mentioned, see Hofmann,
Schriftbeweis, II, 1:214-294; Baring-Gould, Origin and Devel. of
Relig. Belief, 368-390; Spencer, De Legibus Hebræorum; Keil, Bib.
Archäologie, sec. 43, 47; Bähr, Symbolik des Mosaischen Cultus,
2:196, 269; also synopsis of Bähr’s view, in Bib. Sac., Oct.
1870:593; Jan. 1871:171. _Per contra_, see Crawford, Atonement,
228-240; Lange, Introd. to Com. on Exodus, 38—“The heathen change
God’s symbols into myths (rationalism), as the Jews change God’s
sacrifices into meritorious service (ritualism).” Westcott,
Hebrews, 281-294, seems to hold with Spencer that sacrifice is
essentially a feast made as an offering to God. So Philo: “God
receives the faithful offerer to his own table, giving him back
part of the sacrifice.” Compare with this the ghosts in Homer’s
Odyssey, who receive strength from drinking the blood of the
sacrifices. Bähr’s view is only half of the truth. Reunion
presupposes Expiation. Lyttleton, in Lux Mundi, 281—“The sinner
must first expiate his sin by suffering,—then only can he give to
God the life thus purified by an expiatory death.” Jahn, Bib.
Archæology, sec. 373, 378—“It is of the very idea of the sacrifice
that the victim shall be presented directly to God, and in the
presentation shall be destroyed.” Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 253,
speaks of the delicate feeling of the Biblical critic who, with
his mouth full of beef or mutton, professes to be shocked at the
cruelty to animals involved in the temple sacrifices. Lord Bacon:
“Hieroglyphics came before letters, and parables before
arguments.” “The old dispensation was God’s great parable to man.
The Theocracy was graven all over with divine hieroglyphics. Does
there exist the Rosetta stone by which we can read these
hieroglyphics? The shadows, that have been shortening up into
definiteness of outline, pass away and vanish utterly under the
full meridian splendor of the Sun of Righteousness.” On _Eph.
1:7_—“_the blood of Christ,_” as an expiatory sacrifice which
secures our justification, see Salmond, in Expositor’s Greek
Testament.
(_b_) The true import of the sacrifice, as is abundantly evident from both
heathen and Jewish sources, embraced three elements,—first, that of
satisfaction to offended Deity, or propitiation offered to violated
holiness; secondly, that of substitution of suffering and death on the
part of the innocent, for the deserved punishment of the guilty; and,
thirdly, community of life between the offerer and the victim. Combining
these three ideas, we have as the total import of the sacrifice:
Satisfaction by substitution, and substitution by incorporation. The
bloody sacrifice among the heathen expressed the consciousness that sin
involves guilt; that guilt exposes man to the righteous wrath of God; that
without expiation of that guilt there is no forgiveness; and that through
the suffering of another who shares his life the sinner may expiate his
sin.
Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 170, quotes from Nägelsbach,
Nachhomerische Theologie, 338 _sq._—“The essence of punishment is
retribution (Vergeltung), and retribution is a fundamental law of
the world-order. In retribution lies the atoning power of
punishment. This consciousness that the nature of sin demands
retribution, in other words, this certainty that there is in Deity
a righteousness that punishes sin, taken in connection with the
consciousness of personal transgression, awakens the longing for
atonement,”—which is expressed in the sacrifice of a slaughtered
beast. The Greeks recognized representative expiation, not only in
the sacrifice of beasts, but in human sacrifices. See examples in
Tyler, Theol. Gk. Poets, 196, 197, 245-253; see also Virgil,
Æneid, 5:815—“Unum pro multis dabitur caput”; Ovid, Fasti, vi—“Cor
pro corde, precor; pro fibris sumite fibras. Hanc animam vobis pro
meliore damus.”
Stahl, Christliche Philosophie, 146—“Every unperverted conscience
declares the eternal law of righteousness that punishment shall
follow inevitably on sin. In the moral realm, there is another way
of satisfying righteousness—that of atonement. This differs from
punishment in its effect, that is, reconciliation,—the moral
authority asserting itself, not by the destruction of the
offender, but by taking him up into itself and uniting itself to
him. But the offender cannot offer his own sacrifice,—that must be
done by the priest.” In the Prometheus Bound, of Æschylus, Hermes
says to Prometheus: “Hope not for an end to such oppression, until
a god appears as thy substitute in torment, ready to descend for
thee into the unillumined realm of Hades and the dark abyss of
Tartarus.” And this is done by Chiron, the wisest and most just of
the Centaurs, the son of Chronos, sacrificing himself for
Prometheus, while Hercules kills the eagle at his breast and so
delivers him from torment. This legend of Æschylus is almost a
prediction of the true Redeemer. See article on Sacrifice, by
Paterson, in Hastings, Bible Dictionary.
Westcott, Hebrews, 282, maintains that the idea of expiatory
offerings, answering to the consciousness of sin, does not belong
to the early religion of Greece. We reply that Homer’s Iliad, in
its first book, describes just such an expiatory offering made to
Phœbus Apollo, so turning away his wrath and causing the plague
that wastes the Greeks to cease. E. G. Robinson held that there is
“no evidence that the Jews had any idea of the efficacy of
sacrifice for the expiation of moral guilt.” But in approaching
either the tabernacle or the temple the altar always presented
itself before the laver. H. Clay Trumbull, S. S. Times, Nov. 30,
1901:801—“The Passover was not a passing by of the houses of
Israelites, but a passing over or crossing over by Jehovah to
enter the homes of those who would welcome him and who had entered
into covenant with him by sacrifice. The Oriental sovereign was
accompanied by his executioner, who entered to smite the
first-born of the house only when there was no covenanting at the
door.” We regard this explanation as substituting an incidental
result and effect of sacrifice for the sacrifice itself. This
always had in it the idea of reparation for wrong-doing by
substitutionary suffering.
Curtis, Primitive Semitic Religion of To-day, on the Significance
of Sacrifice, 218-237, tells us that he went to Palestine
prepossessed by Robertson Smith’s explanation that sacrifice was a
feast symbolizing friendly communion between man and his God. He
came to the conclusion that the sacrificial meal was not the
primary element, but that there was a substitutionary value in the
offering. Gift and feast are not excluded; but these are sequences
and incidentals. Misfortune is evidence of sin; sin needs to be
expiated; the anger of God needs to be removed. The sacrifice
consisted principally in the shedding of the blood of the victim.
The “bursting forth of the blood” satisfied and bought off the
Deity. George Adam Smith on _Isaiah 53_ (2:364)—“Innocent as he
is, he gives his life as a satisfaction to the divine law for the
guilt of his people. His death was no mere martyrdom or
miscarriage of human justice: in God’s intent and purpose, but
also by its own voluntary offering, it was an expiatory sacrifice.
There is no exegete but agrees to this. 353—The substitution of
the servant of Jehovah for the guilty people and the redemptive
force of that substitution are no arbitrary doctrine.”
_Satisfaction_ means simply that there is a principle in God’s
being which not simply refuses sin passively, but also opposes it
actively. The judge, if he be upright, must repel a bribe with
indignation, and the pure woman must flame out in anger against an
infamous proposal. R. W. Emerson: “Your goodness must have some
edge to it,—else it is none.” But the judge and the woman do not
enjoy this repelling,—they suffer rather. So God’s satisfaction is
no gloating over the pain or loss which he is compelled to
inflict. God has a wrath which is calm, judicial, inevitable—the
natural reaction of holiness against unholiness. Christ suffers
both as one with the inflicter and as one with those on whom
punishment is inflicted: “_For Christ also pleased not himself;
but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee
fell on me_” (_Rom. 15:3_; _cf._ _Ps. 69:9_).
(_c_) In considering the exact purport and efficacy of the Mosaic
sacrifices, we must distinguish between their theocratical, and their
spiritual, offices. They were, on the one hand, the appointed means
whereby the offender could be restored to the outward place and
privileges, as member of the theocracy, which he had forfeited by neglect
or transgression; and they accomplished this purpose irrespectively of the
temper and spirit with which they were offered. On the other hand, they
were symbolic of the vicarious sufferings and death of Christ, and
obtained forgiveness and acceptance with God only as they were offered in
true penitence, and with faith in God’s method of salvation.
_Heb. 9:13, 14_—“_For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the
ashes of a heifer sprinkling them that have been defiled, sanctify
unto the cleanness of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of
Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without
blemish unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve
the living God?_” _10:3, 4_—“_But in those sacrifices there is a
remembrance made of sins year by year. For it is impossible that
the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins._” Christ’s
death also, like the O. T. sacrifices, works temporal benefit even
to those who have no faith; see pages 771, 772.
Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, 441, 448, answers the
contention of the higher critics that, in the days of Isaiah,
Micah, Hosea, Jeremiah, no Levitical code existed; that these
prophets expressed disapproval of the whole sacrificial system, as
a thing of mere human device and destitute of divine sanction. But
the Book of the Covenant surely existed in their day, with its
command: “_An altar of earth shalt thou make unto me, and shalt
sacrifice thereon thy burnt-offerings_” (_Ex. 20:24_). Or, if it
is maintained that Isaiah condemned even that early piece of
legislation, it proves too much, for it would make the prophet
also condemn the Sabbath as a piece of will-worship, and even
reject prayer as displeasing to God, since in the same connection
he says: “_new moon and Sabbath ... I cannot away with ... when ye
spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you_” (_Is.
1:13-15_). Isaiah was condemning simply _heartless_ sacrifice;
else we make him condemn all that went on at the temple. _Micah
6:8_—“_what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly?_” This
does not exclude the offering of sacrifice, for Micah anticipates
the time when “_the mountain of Jehovah’s house shall be
established on the top of the mountains, ... And many nations
shall go and say, Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of
Jehovah_” (_Micah 4:1, 2_). _Hos. 6:6_—“_I desire goodness, and
not sacrifice,_” is interpreted by what follows, “_and the
knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings_.” Compare _Prov. 8:10;
17:12_; and Samuel’s words: “_to obey is better than sacrifice_”
(_1 Sam. 15:22_). What was the altar from which Isaiah drew his
description of God’s theophany and from which was taken the live
coal that touched his lips and prepared him to be a prophet? (_Is.
6:1-8). Jer. 7:22_—“_I spake not ... concerning burnt-offerings or
sacrifices ... but this thing ... Hearken unto my voice._”
Jeremiah insists only on the worthlessness of sacrifice where
there is no heart.
(_d_) Thus the Old Testament sacrifices, when rightly offered, involved a
consciousness of sin on the part of the worshiper, the bringing of a
victim to atone for the sin, the laying of the hand of the offerer upon
the victim’s head, the confession of sin by the offerer, the slaying of
the beast, the sprinkling or pouring-out of the blood upon the altar, and
the consequent forgiveness of the sin and acceptance of the worshiper. The
sin-offering and the scape-goat of the great day of atonement symbolized
yet more distinctly the two elementary ideas of sacrifice, namely,
satisfaction and substitution, together with the consequent removal of
guilt from those on whose behalf the sacrifice was offered.
_Lev. 1:4_—“_And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the
burnt-offering; and it shall be accepted for him, to make
atonement for him_”; _4:20_—“_Thus shall he do with the bullock;
as he did with the bullock of the sin-offering, so shall he do
with this; and the priest shall make atonement for them, and they
shall be forgiven_”; so _31_ and _35_—“_and the priest shall make
atonement for him as touching his sin that he hath sinned, and he
shall be forgiven_”; so _5:10, 16_; _6:7_. _Lev. 17:11_—“_For the
life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon
the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood
that maketh atonement by reason of the life._”
The patriarchal sacrifices were sin-offerings, as the sacrifice of
Job for his friends witnesses: _Job 42:7-9_—“_My wrath is kindled
against thee_ [Eliphaz] _... therefore, take unto you seven
bullocks ... and offer up for yourselves a burnt-offering_”; _cf._
_33:24_—“_Then God is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him
from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom_”; _1:5_—Job
offered burnt-offerings for his sons, for he said, “_It may be
that my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their hearts_”;
_Gen. 8:20_—Noah “_offered burnt-offerings on the altar_”;
_21_—“_and Jehovah smelled the sweet savor; and Jehovah said in
his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s
sake._”
That vicarious suffering is intended in all these sacrifices, is
plain from _Lev. 16:1-34_—the account of the sin-offering and the
scape-goat of the great day of atonement, the full meaning of
which we give below; also from _Gen. 22:13_—“_Abraham went and
took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead
of his son_”; _Ex. 32:30-32_—where Moses says: “_Ye have sinned a
great sin: and now I will go up unto Jehovah; peradventure I shall
make atonement for your sin. And Moses returned unto Jehovah, and
said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them
gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if
not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast
written._” See also _Deut. 21:1-9_—the expiation of an uncertain
murder, by the sacrifice of a heifer,—where Oehler, O. T.
Theology, 1:389, says: “Evidently the punishment of death incurred
by the manslayer is executed symbolically upon the heifer.” In
_Is. 53:1-12_—“_All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned
every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the
iniquity of us all ... stripes ... offering for sin_”—the ideas of
both satisfaction and substitution are still more plain.
Wallace, Representative Responsibility: “The animals offered in
sacrifice must be animals brought into direct relation to man,
subject to him, his property. They could not be spoils of the
chase. They must bear the mark and impress of humanity. Upon the
sacrifice human hands must be laid—the hands of the offerer and
the hands of the priest. The offering is the substitute of the
offerer. The priest is the substitute of the offerer. The priest
and the sacrifice were _one symbol_. [Hence, in the new
dispensation, the priest and the sacrifice are one—both are found
in Christ.] The high priest must enter the holy of holies with his
own finger dipped in blood: the blood must be in contact with his
own person,—another indication of the identification of the two.
Life is nourished and sustained by life. All life lower than man
may be sacrificed for the good of man. The blood must be spilled
on the ground. ‘_In the blood is the life._’ The life is reserved
by God. It is given _for_ man, but not _to_ him. Life for life is
the law of the creation. So the life of Christ, also, for _our_
life.—Adam was originally priest of the family and of the race.
But he lost his representative character by the one act of
disobedience, and his redemption was that of the individual, not
that of the race. The race ceased to have a representative. The
subjects of the divine government were henceforth to be, not the
natural offspring of Adam as such, but the redeemed. That the body
and the blood are both required, indicates the demand that the
death should be by a violence that sheds blood. The sacrifices
showed forth, not Christ himself [his character, his life], but
Christ’s death.”
This following is a tentative scheme of the JEWISH SACRIFICES. The
general reason for sacrifice is expressed in _Lev. 17:11_ (quoted
above). I. _For the individual_: 1. The sin-offering = sacrifice
to expiate sins of ignorance (thoughtlessness and plausible
temptation): _Lev. 4:14, 20, 31_. 2. The trespass-offering =
sacrifice to expiate sins of omission: _Lev. 5:5, 6_. 3. The
burnt-offering = sacrifice to expiate general sinfulness: _Lev.
1:3_ (the offering of Mary, _Luke 2:24_). II. _For the family_:
The Passover: _Ex. 12:27_. III. _For the people_: 1. The daily
morning and evening sacrifice: _Ex. 29:38-46_. 2. The offering of
the great day of atonement: _Lev. 16:6-10_. In this last, two
victims were employed, one to represent the means—death, and the
other to represent the result—forgiveness. One victim could not
represent both the atonement—by shedding of blood, and the
justification—by putting away sin.
Jesus died for our sins at the Passover feast and at the hour of
daily sacrifice. McLaren, in S. S. Times, Nov. 30,
1901:801—“Shedding of blood and consequent safety were only a part
of the teaching of the Passover. There is a double identification
of the person offering with his sacrifice: first, in that he
offers it as his representative, laying his hand on its head, or
otherwise transferring his personality, as it were, to it; and
secondly, in that, receiving it back again from God to whom he
gave it, he feeds on it, so making it part of his life and
nourishing himself thereby: ‘_My flesh ... which I will give ...
for the life of the world ... he that eateth me, he also shall
live because of me_’ (_John 6:51, 57_).”
Chambers, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., Jan. 1892:22-34—On the great
day of atonement “the double offering—one for Jehovah and the
other for Azazel—typified not only the removing of the guilt of
the people, but its transfer to the odious and detestable being
who was the first cause of its existence,” _i. e._, Satan.
Lidgett, Spir. Principle of the Atonement, 112, 113—“It was not
the punishment which the goat bore away into the wilderness, for
the idea of punishment is not directly associated with the
scapegoat. It bears the sin—the whole unfaithfulness of the
community which had defiled the holy places—out from them, so that
henceforth they may be pure.... The sin-offering—representing the
sinner by receiving the burden of his sin—makes expiation by
yielding up and yielding back its life to God, under conditions
which represent at once the wrath and the placability of God.”
On the Jewish sacrifices, see Fairbairn, Typology, 1:209-223;
Wünsche, Die Leiden des Messias; Jukes, O. T. Sacrifices; Smeaton,
Apostle’s Doctrine of Atonement, 25-53; Kurtz, Sacrificial Worship
of O. T., 120; Bible Com., 1:502-508, and Introd. to Leviticus;
Candlish on Atonement, 123-142; Weber, Vom Zorne Gottes, 161-180.
On passages in Leviticus, see Com. of Knobel, in Exeg. Handb. d.
Alt. Test.
(_e_) It is not essential to this view to maintain that a formal divine
institution of the rite of sacrifice, at man’s expulsion from Eden, can be
proved from Scripture. Like the family and the state, sacrifice may,
without such formal inculcation, possess divine sanction, and be ordained
of God. The well-nigh universal prevalence of sacrifice, however, together
with the fact that its nature, as a bloody offering, seems to preclude
man’s own invention of it, combines with certain Scripture intimations to
favor the view that it was a primitive divine appointment. From the time
of Moses, there can be no question as to its divine authority.
Compare the origin of prayer and worship, for which we find no
formal divine injunctions at the beginnings of history. _Heb.
11:4_—“_By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice
than Cain, through which he had witness borne to him that he was
righteous, God bearing witness in respect of his gifts_”—here it
may be argued that since Abel’s faith was not presumption, it must
have had some injunction and promise of God to base itself upon.
_Gen. 4:3, 4_—“_Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an
offering unto Jehovah. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings
of his flock and of the fat thereof. And Jehovah had respect unto
Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had
not respect._”
It has been urged, in corroboration of this view, that the
previous existence of sacrifice is intimated in _Gen. 3:21_—“_And
Jehovah God made for Adam and for his wife coats of skins, and
clothed them._” Since the killing of animals for food was not
permitted until long afterwards (_Gen. 9:3_—to Noah: “_Every
moving thing that liveth shall be food for you_”), the inference
has been drawn, that the skins with which God clothed our first
parents were the skins of animals slain for sacrifice,—this
clothing furnishing a type of the righteousness of Christ which
secures our restoration to God’s favor, as the death of the
victims furnished a type of the suffering of Christ which secures
for us remission of punishment. We must regard this, however, as a
pleasing and possibly correct hypothesis, rather than as a
demonstrated truth of Scripture. Since the unperverted instincts
of human nature are an expression of God’s will, Abel’s faith may
have consisted in trusting these, rather than the promptings of
selfishness and self-righteousness. The death of animals in
sacrifice, like the death of Christ which it signified, was only
the hastening of what belonged to them because of their connection
with human sin. Faith recognized this connection. On the divine
appointment of sacrifice, see Park, in Bib. Sac., Jan.
1876:102-132. Westcott, Hebrews, 281—“There is no reason to think
that sacrifice was instituted in obedience to a direct
revelation.... It is mentioned in Scripture at first as natural
and known. It was practically universal in prechristian times....
In due time the popular practice of sacrifice was regulated by
revelation as disciplinary, and also used as a vehicle for typical
teaching.” We prefer to say that sacrifice probably originated in
a fundamental instinct of humanity, and was therefore a divine
ordinance as much as were marriage and government.
On _Gen. 4:3, 4_, see C. H. M.—“The entire difference between Cain
and Abel lay, not in their natures, but in their sacrifices. Cain
brought to God the sin-stained fruit of a cursed earth. Here was
no recognition of the fact that he was a sinner, condemned to
death. All his toil could not satisfy God’s holiness, or remove
the penalty. But Abel recognized his sin, condemnation,
helplessness, death, and brought the bloody sacrifice—the
sacrifice of another—the sacrifice provided by God, to meet the
claims of God. He found a substitute, and he presented it in
faith—the faith that looks away from self to Christ, or God’s
appointed way of salvation. The difference was not in their
persons, but in their gifts. Of Abel it is said, that God ‘_bore
witness in respect of his gifts_’ (_Heb. 11:4_). To Cain it is
said, ‘_if thou doest well_ (LXX.: ὀρθῶς προσενένκης—_if thou
offerest correctly_) _shalt thou not be accepted?_’ But Cain
desired to get away from God and from God’s way, and to lose
himself in the world. This is ‘_the way of Cain_’ (_Jude 11_).”
_Per contra_, see Crawford, Atonement, 259—“Both in Levitical and
patriarchal times, we have no formal institution of sacrifice, but
the regulation of sacrifice already existing. But Abel’s faith may
have had respect, not to a revelation with regard to sacrificial
worship, but with regard to the promised Redeemer; and his
sacrifice may have expressed that faith. If so, God’s acceptance
of it gave a divine warrant to future sacrifices. It was not
will-worship, because it was not substituted for some other
worship which God had previously instituted. It is not necessary
to suppose that God gave an expressed command. Abel may have been
moved by some inward divine monition. Thus Adam said to Eve,
‘_This is now bone of my bones...._’ (_Gen. 2:23_), before any
divine command of marriage. No fruits were presented during the
patriarchal dispensation. Heathen sacrifices were corruptions of
primitive sacrifice.” Von Lasaulx, Die Sühnopfer der Griechen und
Römer, und ihr Verhältniss zu dem einen auf Golgotha, 1—“The first
word of the _original_ man was probably a prayer, the first action
of _fallen_ man a sacrifice”; see translation in Bib. Sac., 1:
368-408. Bishop Butler: “By the general prevalence of propitiatory
sacrifices over the heathen world, the notion of repentance alone
being sufficient to expiate guilt appears to be contrary to the
general sense of mankind.”
(_f_) The New Testament assumes and presupposes the Old Testament doctrine
of sacrifice. The sacrificial language in which its descriptions of
Christ’s work are clothed cannot be explained as an accommodation to
Jewish methods of thought, since this terminology was in large part in
common use among the heathen, and Paul used it more than any other of the
apostles in dealing with the Gentiles. To deny to it its Old Testament
meaning, when used by New Testament writers to describe the work of
Christ, is to deny any proper inspiration both in the Mosaic appointment
of sacrifices and in the apostolic interpretations of them. We must
therefore maintain, as the result of a simple induction of Scripture
facts, that the death of Christ is a vicarious offering, provided by God’s
love for the purpose of satisfying an internal demand of the divine
holiness, and of removing an obstacle in the divine mind to the renewal
and pardon of sinners.
“The epistle of James makes no allusion to sacrifice. But he would
not have failed to allude to it, if he had held the moral view of
the atonement; for it would then have been an obvious help to his
argument against merely formal service. Christ protested against
washing hands and keeping Sabbath days. If sacrifice had been a
piece of human formality, how indignantly would he have inveighed
against it! But instead of this he received from John the Baptist,
without rebuke, the words: ‘_Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh
away the sin of the world_’ (_John 1:29_).”
A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 247—“The sacrifices of bulls and
goats were like token-money, as our paper-promises to pay,
accepted at their face-value till the day of settlement. But the
sacrifice of Christ was the gold which absolutely extinguished all
debt by its intrinsic value. Hence, when Christ died, the veil
that separated man from God was rent from the top to the bottom by
supernatural hands. When the real expiation was finished, the
whole symbolical system representing it became _functum officio_,
and was abolished. Soon after this, the temple was razed to the
ground, and the ritual was rendered forever impossible.”
For denial that Christ’s death is to be interpreted by heathen or
Jewish sacrifices, see Maurice on Sac., 154—“The heathen
signification of words, when applied to a Christian use, must be
not merely modified, but inverted”; Jowett, Epistles of St. Paul,
2:479—“The heathen and Jewish sacrifices rather show us what the
sacrifice of Christ was not, than what it was.” Bushnell and Young
do not doubt the expiatory nature of heathen sacrifices. But the
main terms which the N. T. uses to describe Christ’s sacrifice are
borrowed from the Greek sacrificial ritual, _e. g._, θυσία,
προσφορά, ἰλασμός, ἁγιάζω, καθαίρω, ἰλάσκομαι. To deny that these
terms, when applied to Christ, imply expiation and substitution,
is to deny the inspiration of those who used them. See Cave,
Scripture Doctrine of Sacrifice; art. on Sacrifice, in Smith’s
Bible Dictionary.
With all these indications of our dissent from the modern denial
of expiatory sacrifice, we deem it desirable by way of contrast to
present the clearest possible statement of the view from which we
dissent. This may be found in Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion,
1:238, 260, 261—“The gradual distinction of the moral from the
ceremonial, the repression and ultimate replacement of ceremonial
expiation by the moral purification of the sense and life, and
consequently the transformation of the mystical conception of
redemption into the corresponding ethical conception of education,
may be designated as the kernel and the teleological principle of
the development of the history of religion.... But to Paul the
question in what sense the death of the Cross could be the means
of the Messianic redemption found its answer simply from the
presuppositions of the Pharisaic theology, which beheld in the
innocent suffering, and especially in the martyr-death, of the
righteous, an expiatory means compensating for the sins of the
whole people. What would be more natural than that Paul should
contemplate the death on the Cross in the same way, as an
expiatory means of salvation for the redemption of the sinful
world?
“We are thus led to see in this theory the symbolical presentment
of the truth that the new man suffers, as it were, vicariously,
for the old man; for he takes upon himself the daily pain of
self-subjugation, and bears guiltlessly in patience the evils
which the old man could not but necessarily impute to himself as
punishment. Therefore as Christ is the exemplification of the
moral idea of man, so his death is the symbol of that moral
process of painful self-subjugation in obedience and patience, in
which the true inner redemption of man consists.... In like manner
Fichte said that the only proper means of salvation is the death
of selfhood, death _with_ Jesus, regeneration.
“The defect in the Kant-Fichtean doctrine of redemption consisted
in this, that it limited the process of ethical transformation to
the individual, and endeavored to explain it from his subjective
reason and freedom alone. How could the individual deliver himself
from his powerlessness and become free? This question was
unsolved. The Christian doctrine of redemption is that the moral
liberation of the individual is not the effect of his own natural
power, but the effect of the divine Spirit, who, from the
beginning of human history, put forth his activity as the power
educating to the good, and especially has created for himself in
the Christian community a permanent organ for the education of the
people and of individuals. It was the moral individualism of Kant
which prevented him from finding in the historically realized
common spirit of the good the real force available for the
individual becoming good.”
C. Theories of the Atonement.
1st. The Socinian, or Example Theory of the Atonement.
This theory holds that subjective sinfulness is the sole barrier between
man and God. Not God, but only man, needs to be reconciled. The only
method of reconciliation is to better man’s moral condition. This can be
effected by man’s own will, through repentance and reformation. The death
of Christ is but the death of a noble martyr. He redeems us, only as his
human example of faithfulness to truth and duty has a powerful influence
upon our moral improvement. This fact the apostles, either consciously or
unconsciously, clothed in the language of the Greek and Jewish sacrifices.
This theory was fully elaborated by Lælius Socinus and Faustus Socinus of
Poland, in the 16th century. Its modern advocates are found in the
Unitarian body.
The Socinian theory may be found stated, and advocated, in
Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, 1:566-600; Martineau, Studies of
Christianity, 83-176; J. F. Clarke, Orthodoxy, Its Truths and
Errors, 235-265; Ellis, Unitarianism and Orthodoxy; Sheldon, Sin
and Redemption, 146-210. The text which at first sight most seems
to favor this view is _1 Pet 2:21_—“_Christ also suffered for you,
leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps._” But see
under (_e_) below. When Correggio saw Raphael’s picture of St.
Cecilia, he exclaimed: “I too am a painter.” So Socinus held that
Christ’s example roused our humanity to imitation. He regarded
expiation as heathenish and impossible; every one must receive
according to his deeds; God is ready to grant forgiveness on
simple repentance.
E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 277—“The theory first insists
on the inviolability of moral sequences in the conduct of every
moral agent; and then insists that, on a given condition, the
consequences of transgression may be arrested by almighty fiat....
Unitarianism errs in giving a transforming power to that which
works beneficently only after the transformation has been
wrought.” In ascribing to human nature a power of
self-reformation, it ignores man’s need of regeneration by the
Holy Spirit. But even this renewing work of the Holy Spirit
presupposes the atoning work of Christ. “_Ye must be born anew_”
(_John 3:7_) necessitates “_Even so must the Son of man be lifted
up_” (_John 3:14_). It is only the Cross that satisfies man’s
instinct of reparation. Harnack, Das Wesen des Christenthums,
99—“Those who regarded Christ’s death soon ceased to bring any
other bloody offering to God. This is true both in Judaism and in
heathenism. Christ’s death put an end to all bloody offerings in
religious history. The impulse to sacrifice found its satisfaction
in the Cross of Christ.” We regard this as proof that the Cross is
essentially a satisfaction to the divine justice, and not a mere
example of faithfulness to duty. The Socinian theory is the first
of six theories of the Atonement, which roughly correspond with
our six previously treated theories of sin, and this first theory
includes most of the false doctrine which appears in mitigated
forms in several of the theories following.
To this theory we make the following objections:
(_a_) It is based upon false philosophical principles,—as, for example,
that will is merely the faculty of volitions; that the foundation of
virtue is in utility; that law is an expression of arbitrary will; that
penalty is a means of reforming the offender; that righteousness, in
either God or man, is only a manifestation of benevolence.
If the will is simply the faculty of volitions, and not also the
fundamental determination of the being to an ultimate end, then
man can, by a single volition, effect his own reformation and
reconciliation to God. If the foundation of virtue is in utility,
then there is nothing in the divine being that prevents pardon,
the good of the creature, and not the demands of God’s holiness,
being the reason for Christ’s suffering. If law is an expression
of arbitrary will, instead of being a transcript of the divine
nature, it may at any time be dispensed with, and the sinner may
be pardoned on mere repentance. If penalty is merely a means of
reforming the offender, then sin does not involve objective guilt,
or obligation to suffer, and sin may be forgiven, at any moment,
to all who forsake it,—indeed, _must_ be forgiven, since
punishment is out of place when the sinner is reformed. If
righteousness is only a form or manifestation of benevolence, then
God can show his benevolence as easily through pardon as through
penalty, and Christ’s death is only intended to attract us toward
the good by the force of a noble example.
Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:218-264, is essentially Socinian in
his view of Jesus’ death. Yet he ascribes to Jesus the idea that
suffering is _necessary_, even for one who stands in perfect love
and blessed fellowship with God, since earthly blessedness is not
the true blessedness, and since a true piety is impossible without
renunciation and stooping to minister to others. The earthly
life-sacrifice of the Messiah was his necessary and greatest act,
and was the culminating point of his teaching. Suffering made him
a perfect example, and so ensured the success of his work. But why
God should have made it necessary that the holiest must suffer,
Wendt does not explain. This constitution of things we can
understand only as a revelation of the holiness of God, and of his
punitive relation to human sin. Simon, Reconciliation, 357, shows
well that example might have sufficed for a race that merely
needed leadership. But what the race needed most was energizing,
the fulfilment of the conditions of restoration to God on their
behalf by one of themselves, by one whose very essence they
shared, who created them, in whom they consisted, and whose work
was therefore their work. Christ condemned with the divine
condemnation the thoughts and impulses arising from his
subconscious life. Before the sin, which for the moment seemed to
be his, could become his, he condemned it. He sympathized with,
nay, he revealed, the very justice and sorrow of God. _Hebrews
2:16-18_—“_For verily not to angels doth he give help, but he
giveth help to the seed of Abraham. Wherefore it behooved him in
all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might become
a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God,
to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that he
himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them
that are tempted._”
(_b_) It is a natural outgrowth from the Pelagian view of sin, and
logically necessitates a curtailment or surrender of every other
characteristic doctrine of Christianity—inspiration, sin, the deity of
Christ, justification, regeneration, and eternal retribution.
The Socinian theory requires a surrender of the doctrine of
inspiration; for the idea of vicarious and expiatory sacrifice is
woven into the very warp and woof of the Old and New Testaments.
It requires an abandonment of the Scripture doctrine of sin; for
in it all idea of sin as perversion of nature rendering the sinner
unable to save himself, and as objective guilt demanding
satisfaction to the divine holiness, is denied. It requires us to
give up the deity of Christ; for if sin is a slight evil, and man
can save himself from its penalty and power, then there is no
longer need of either an infinite suffering or an infinite Savior,
and a human Christ is as good as a divine. It requires us to give
up the Scripture doctrine of justification, as God’s act of
declaring the sinner just in the eye of the law, solely on account
of the righteousness and death of Christ to whom he is united by
faith; for the Socinian theory cannot permit the counting to a man
of any other righteousness than his own. It requires a denial of
the doctrine of regeneration; for this is no longer the work of
God, but the work of the sinner; it is no longer a change of the
affections below consciousness, but a self-reforming volition of
the sinner himself. It requires a denial of eternal retribution;
for this is no longer appropriate to finite transgression of
arbitrary law, and to superficial sinning that does not involve
nature.
(_c_) It contradicts the Scripture teachings, that sin involves objective
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.
Lidgett, Spir. Principle of the Atonement, 219, 304—“The Atonement
1. has Godward significance; 2. consists in our Lord’s endurance
of death on our behalf; 3. the spirit in which he endured death is
of vital importance to the efficacy of his sacrifice, namely,
obedience.... God gives repentance, yet requires it; he gives
atonement, yet requires it. ‘_Thanks be to God for his unspeakable
gift_’ (_2 Cor. 9:15_).” Simon, in Expositor, 6:321-334 (for
substance)—“As in prayer we ask God to energize us and enable us
to obey his law, and he answers by entering our hearts and obeying
in us and for us: as we pray for strength in affliction, and find
him helping us by putting his Spirit into us, and suffering in us
and for us; so in atonement, Christ, the manifested God, obeys and
suffers in our stead. Even the moral theory implies substitution
also. God in us obeys his own law and bears the sorrows that sin
has caused. Why can he not, in human nature, also endure the
penalty of sin? The possibility of this cannot be consistently
denied by any who believe in divine help granted in answer to
prayer. The doctrine of the atonement and the doctrine of prayer
stand or fall together.”
See on the whole subject, Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 272-324,
Philosophy of History, 65-69, and Dogmatic Theology, 2:401-463;
Magee, Atonement and Sacrifice, 27, 53, 258; Edwards’s Works,
4:140 sq.; Weber, Vom Zorne Gottes, 214-334; Owen, on Divine
Justice, in Works, 10:500-512; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV,
2:27-114; Hopkins, Works, 1:319-368; Schöberlein, in Studien und
Kritiken, 1845:267-318, and 1847:7-70, also in Herzog,
Encyclopädie, art.: Versöhnung; Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 3:713, and
8:213; Macdonnell, Atonement, 115-214; Luthardt, Saving Truths,
114-138; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 605-637; Lawrence, in Bib. Sac.,
20:332-339; Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre; Waffle, in Bap. Rev.,
1882:263-286; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:641-662 (Syst. Doct.,
4:107-124); Remensnyder, The Atonement and Modern Thought.
_Secondly_,—the Atonement as related to Humanity in Christ.
The Ethical theory of the atonement holds that Christ stands in such
relation to humanity, that what God’s holiness demands Christ is under
obligation to pay, longs to pay, inevitably does pay, and pays so fully,
in virtue of his two-fold nature, that every claim of justice is
satisfied, and the sinner who accepts what Christ has done in his behalf
is saved.
Dr. R. W. Dale, in his work on The Atonement, states the question
before us: “What must be Christ’s relation to men, in order to
make it possible that he should die for them?” We would change the
form of the question, so that it should read: “What must be
Christ’s relation to men, in order to make it not only possible,
but just and necessary, that he should die for them?” Dale
replies, for substance, that Christ must have had an original and
central relation to the human race and to every member of it; see
Denney, Death of Christ, 318. In our treatment of Ethical Monism,
of the Trinity, and of the Person of Christ, we have shown that
Christ, as Logos, as the immanent God, is the Life of humanity,
laden with responsibility for human sin, while yet he personally
knows no sin. Of this race-responsibility and race-guilt which
Christ assumed, and for which he suffered so soon as man had
sinned, Christ’s obedience and suffering in the flesh were the
visible reflection and revelation. Only in Christ’s organic union
with the race can we find the vital relation which will make his
vicarious sufferings either possible or just. Only when we regard
Calvary as revealing eternal principles of the divine nature, can
we see how the sufferings of those few hours upon the Cross could
suffice to save the millions of mankind.
Dr. E. Y. Mullins has set forth the doctrine of the Atonement in
five propositions: “1. In order to atonement Christ became vitally
united to the human race. It was only by assuming the nature of
those he would redeem that he could break the power of their
captor.... The human race may be likened to many sparrows who had
been caught in the snare of the fowler, and were hopelessly
struggling against their fate. A great eagle swoops down from the
sky, becomes entangled with the sparrows in the net, and then
spreading his mighty wings he soars upward bearing the snare and
captives and breaking its meshes he delivers himself and them....
Christ the fountain head of life imparting his own vitality to the
redeemed, and causing them to share in the experiences of
Gethsemane and Calvary, breaking thus for them the power of sin
and death—this is the atonement, by virtue of which sin is put
away and man is united to God.”
Dr. Mullins properly regards this view of atonement as too narrow,
inasmuch as it disregards the differences between Christ and men
arising from his sinlessness and his deity. He adds therefore that
“2. Christ became the substitute for sinners; 3. became the
representative of men before God; 4. gained power over human
hearts to win them from sin and reconcile them to God; and 5.
became a propitiation and satisfaction, rendering the remission of
sins consistent with the divine holiness.” If Christ’s union with
the race be one which begins with creation and antedates the Fall,
all of the later points in the above scheme are only natural
correlates and consequences of the first,—substitution,
representation, reconciliation, propitiation, satisfaction, are
only different aspects of the work which Christ does for us, by
virtue of the fact that he is the immanent God, the Life of
humanity, priest and victim, condemning and condemned, atoning and
atoned.
We have seen how God can justly demand satisfaction; we now show how
Christ can justly make it; or, in other words, how the innocent can justly
suffer for the guilty. The solution of the problem lies in Christ’s union
with humanity. The first result of that union is obligation to suffer for
men; since, being one with the race, Christ had a share in the
responsibility of the race to the law and the justice of God. In him
humanity was created; at every stage of its existence humanity was upheld
by his power; as the immanent God he was the life of the race and of every
member of it. Christ’s sharing of man’s life justly and inevitably
subjected him to man’s exposures and liabilities, and especially to God’s
condemnation on account of sin.
In the seventh chapter of Elsie Venner, Oliver Wendell Holmes
makes the Reverend Mr. Honeywood lay aside an old sermon on Human
Nature, and write one on The Obligations of an infinite Creator to
a finite Creature. A. J. F. Behrends grounded our Lord’s
representative relation not in his human nature but in his divine
nature. “He is our representative not because he was in the loins
of Adam, but because we, Adam included, were in his loins.
Personal created existence is grounded in the Logos, so that God
must deal with him as well as with every individual sinner, and
sin and guilt and punishment must smite the Logos as well as the
sinner, and that, whether the sinner is saved or not. This is not,
as is often charged, a denial of grace or of freedom in grace, for
it is no denial of freedom or grace to show that they are
eternally rational and conformable to eternal law. In the ideal
sphere, necessity and freedom, law and grace, coalesce.” J. C. C.
Clarke, Man and his Divine Father, 387—“Vicarious atonement does
not consist in any single act.... No one act embraces it all, and
no one definition can compass it.” In this sense we may adopt the
words of Forsyth: “In the atonement the Holy Father dealt with a
world’s sin on (not _in_) a world-soul.”
G. B. Foster, on _Mat. 26:53, 54_—“_Thinkest thou that I cannot
beseech my Father, and he shall even now send me more than twelve
legions of angels? How then should the Scriptures be fulfilled,
that thus it must be?_” “On this ‘_must be_’ the Scripture is
based, not this ‘_must be_’ on the Scripture. The ‘_must be_’ was
the ethical demand of his connection with the race. It would have
been immoral for him to break away from the organism. The law of
the organism is: From each according to ability; to each according
to need. David in song, Aristotle in logic, Darwin in science, are
under obligation to contribute to the organism the talent they
have. Shall they be under obligation, and Jesus go scot-free? But
Jesus can contribute atonement, and because he can, he must.
Moreover, he is a member, not only of the whole, but of each
part,—_Rom. 12:5_—‘_members one of another._’ As membership of the
whole makes him liable for the sin of the whole, so his being a
member of the part makes him liable for the sin of that part.”
Fairbairn, Place of Christ in Modern Theology, 483, 484—“There is
a sense in which the Patripassian theory is right; the Father did
suffer; though it was not as the Son that he suffered, but in
modes distinct and different.... Through his pity the misery of
man became his sorrow.... There is a disclosure of his suffering
in the surrender of the Son. This surrender represented the
sacrifice and passion of the whole Godhead. Here degree and
proportion are out of place; were it not, we might say that the
Father suffered more in giving than the Son in being given. He who
gave to duty had not the reward of him who rejoiced to do it....
One member of the Trinity could not suffer without all
suffering.... The visible sacrifice was that of the Son; the
invisible sacrifice was that of the Father.” The Andover Theory,
represented in Progressive Orthodoxy, 43-53, affirms not only the
Moral Influence of the Atonement, but also that the whole race of
mankind is naturally in Christ and was therefore punished in and
by his suffering and death; quoted in Hovey, Manual of Christian
Theology, 269; see Hovey’s own view, 270-276, though he does not
seem to recognize the atonement as existing before the
incarnation.
Christ’s share in the responsibility of the race to the law and justice of
God was not destroyed by his incarnation, nor by his purification in the
womb of the virgin. In virtue of the organic unity of the race, each
member of the race since Adam has been born into the same state into which
Adam fell. The consequences of Adam’s sin, both to himself and to his
posterity, are: (1) depravity, or the corruption of human nature; (2)
guilt, or obligation to make satisfaction for sin to the divine holiness;
(3) penalty, or actual endurance of loss or suffering visited by that
holiness upon the guilty.
Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 117—“Christ had taken upon
him, as the living expression of himself, a nature which was
weighed down, not merely by present incapacities, but by present
incapacities as part of the judicial necessary result of accepted
and inherent sinfulness. Human nature was not only disabled but
guilty, and the disabilities were themselves a consequence and
aspect of the guilt”; see review of Moberly by Rashdall, in Jour.
Theol. Studies, 3:198-211. Lidgett, Spir. Princ. of Atonement,
166-168, criticizes Dr. Dale for neglecting the fatherly purpose
of the Atonement to serve the moral training of the
child—punishment marking ill-desert in order to bring this
ill-desert to the consciousness of the offender,—and for
neglecting also the positive assertion in the atonement that the
law is holy and just and good—something more than the negative
expression of sin’s ill-desert. See especially Lidgett’s chapter
on the relation of our Lord to the human race, 351-378, in which
he grounds the atonement in the solidarity of mankind, its organic
union with the Son of God, and Christ’s immanence in humanity.
Bowne, The Atonement, 101—“Something like this work of grace was a
moral necessity with God. It was an awful responsibility that was
taken when our human race was launched with its fearful
possibilities of good and evil. God thereby put himself under
infinite obligation to care for his human family; and reflections
upon his position as Creator and Ruler, instead of removing only
make more manifest this obligation. So long as we conceive of God
as sitting apart in supreme ease and self-satisfaction, he is not
love at all, but only a reflex of our selfishness and vulgarity.
So long as we conceive him as bestowing upon us out of his
infinite fulness but at no real cost to himself, he sinks before
the moral heroes of the race. There is ever a higher thought
possible, until we see God taking the world upon his heart,
entering into the fellowship of our sorrow, and becoming the
supreme burdenbearer and leader in all self-sacrifice. Then only
are the possibilities of grace and love and moral heroism and
condescension filled up, so that nothing higher remains. And the
work of Christ himself, so far as it was an historical event, must
be viewed, not merely as a piece of history, but also as a
manifestation of that Cross which was hidden in the divine love
from the foundation of the world, and which is involved in the
existence of the human world at all.”
John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:90, 91—“Conceive of the
ideal of moral perfection incarnate in a human personality, and at
the same time one who loves us with a love so absolute that he
identifies himself with us and makes our good and evil his
own—bring together these elements in a living, conscious human
spirit, and you have in it a capacity of shame and anguish, a
possibility of bearing the burden of human guilt and wretchedness,
which lost and guilty humanity can never bear for itself.”
If Christ had been born into the world by ordinary generation, he too
would have had depravity, guilt, penalty. But he was not so born. In the
womb of the Virgin, the human nature which he took was purged from its
depravity. But this purging away of depravity did not take away guilt, or
penalty. There was still left the just exposure to the penalty of violated
law. Although Christ’s nature was purified, his obligation to suffer yet
remained. He might have declined to join himself to humanity, and then he
need not have suffered. He might have sundered his connection with the
race, and then he need not have suffered. But once born of the Virgin,
once possessed of the human nature that was under the curse, he was bound
to suffer. The whole mass and weight of God’s displeasure against the race
fell on him, when once he became a member of the race.
Because Christ is essential humanity, the universal man, the life
of the race, he is the central brain to which and through which
all ideas must pass. He is the central heart to which and through
which all pains must be communicated. You cannot telephone to your
friend across the town without first ringing up the central
office. You cannot injure your neighbor without first injuring
Christ. Each one of us can say of him: “_Against thee, thee only,
have I sinned_” (_Ps. 51:4_). Because of his central and
all-inclusive humanity, he must bear in his own person all the
burdens of humanity, and must be “_the Lamb of God, that_” taketh,
and so “_taketh away, the sin of the world_” (_John 1:29_). Simms
Reeves, the great English tenor, said that the passion-music was
too much for him; he was found completely overcome after singing
the prophet’s words in _Lam. 1:12_—“_Is it nothing to you, all ye
that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my
sorrow, which is brought upon me, Wherewith Jehovah hath afflicted
me in the day of his fierce anger._”
Father Damien gave his life in ministry to the lepers’ colony of
the Hawaiian Islands. Though free from the disease when he
entered, he was at last himself stricken with the leprosy, and
then wrote: “I must now stay with my own people.” Once a leper,
there was no release. When Christ once joined himself to humanity,
all the exposures and liabilities of humanity fell upon him.
Through himself personally without sin, he was made sin for us.
Christ inherited guilt and penalty. _Heb. 2:14, 15_—“_Since then
the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself in
like manner partook of the same; that through death he might bring
to naught him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and
might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their
life-time subject to bondage._”
Only God can forgive sin, because only God can feel it in its true
heinousness and rate it at its true worth. Christ could forgive
sin because he added to the divine feeling with regard to sin the
anguish of a pure humanity on account of it. Shelley, Julian and
Maddolo: “Me, whose heart a stranger’s tear might wear, As
water-drops the sandy fountain-stone; Me, who am as a nerve o’er
which do creep The Else unfelt oppressions of the earth.” S. W.
Culver: “We cannot be saved, as we are taught geometry, by lecture
and diagram. No person ever yet saved another from drowning by
standing coolly by and telling him the importance of rising to the
surface and the necessity of respiration. No, he must plunge into
the destructive element, and take upon himself the very condition
of the drowning man, and by the exertion of his own strength, by
the vigor of his own life, save him from the impending death. When
your child is encompassed by the flames that consume your
dwelling, you will not save him by calling to him from without.
You must make your way through the devouring flame, till you come
personally into the very conditions of his peril and danger, and,
thence returning, bear him forth to freedom and safety.”
Notice, however, that this guilt which Christ took upon himself by his
union with humanity was: (1) not the guilt of personal sin—such guilt as
belongs to every adult member of the race; (2) not even the guilt of
inherited depravity—such guilt as belongs to infants, and to those who
have not come to moral consciousness; but (3) solely the guilt of Adam’s
sin, which belongs, prior to personal transgression, and apart from
inherited depravity, to every member of the race who has derived his life
from Adam. This original sin and inherited guilt, but without the
depravity that ordinarily accompanies them, Christ takes, and so takes
away. He can justly bear penalty, because he inherits guilt. And since
this guilt is not his personal guilt, but the guilt of that one sin in
which “all sinned”—the guilt of the common transgression of the race in
Adam, the guilt of the root-sin from which all other sins have sprung—he
who is personally pure can vicariously bear the penalty due to the sin of
all.
Christ was conscious of innocence in his personal relations, but
not in his race relations. He gathered into himself all the
penalties of humanity, as Winkelried gathered into his own bosom
at Sempach the pikes of the Austrians and so made a way for the
victorious Swiss. Christ took to himself the shame of humanity, as
the mother takes upon her the daughter’s shame, repenting of it
and suffering on account of it. But this could not be in the case
of Christ unless there had been a tie uniting him to men far more
vital, organic, and profound than that which unites mother and
daughter. Christ is naturally the life of all men, before he
becomes spiritually the life of true believers. Matheson, Spir.
Devel. of St. Paul, 197-215, 244, speaks of Christ’s secular
priesthood, of an outer as well as an inner membership in the body
of Christ. He is sacrificial head of the world as well as
sacrificial head of the church. In Paul’s latest letters, he
declares of Christ that he is “_the Savior of all men, specially
of them that believe_” (_1 Tim. 4:10_). There is a grace that
“_hath appeared, bringing salvation to all men_” (_Tit. 2:11_). He
“_gave gifts unto men_” (_Eph. 4:8_), “_Yea, among the rebellious
also, that Jehovah God might dwell with them_” (_Ps. 68:18_).
“_Every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected_”
(_1 Tim. 4:4_).
Royce, World and Individual, 2:408—“Our sorrows are identically
God’s own sorrows.... I sorrow, but the sorrow is not only mine.
This same sorrow, just as it is for me, is God’s sorrow.... The
divine fulfilment can be won only through the sorrows of time....
Unless God knows sorrow, he knows not the highest good, which
consists in the overcoming of sorrow.” Godet, in The Atonement,
331-351—“Jesus condemned sin as God condemned it. When he felt
forsaken on the Cross, he performed that act by which the offender
himself condemns his sin, and by that condemnation, so far as it
depends on himself, makes it to disappear. There is but one
conscience in all moral beings. This echo in Christ of God’s
judgment against sin was to re-echo in all other human
consciences. This has transformed God’s love of compassion into a
love of satisfaction. Holiness joins suffering to sin. But the
element of reparation in the Cross was not in the suffering but in
the submission. The child who revolts against its punishment has
made no reparation at all. We appropriate Christ’s work when we by
faith ourselves condemn sin and accept him.”
If it be asked whether this is not simply a suffering for his own sin, or
rather for his own share of the sin of the race, we reply that his own
share in the sin of the race is not the sole reason why he suffers; it
furnishes only the subjective reason and ground for the proper laying upon
him of the sin of all. Christ’s union with the race in his incarnation is
only the outward and visible expression of a prior union with the race
which began when he created the race. As “in him were all things created,”
and as “in him all things consist,” or hold together (Col. 1:16, 17), it
follows that he who is the life of humanity must, though personally pure,
be involved in responsibility for all human sin, and “it was necessary
that the Christ should suffer” (Acts 17:3). This suffering was an enduring
of the reaction of the divine holiness against sin and so was a bearing of
penalty (Is. 53:6; Gal. 3:13), but it was also the voluntary execution of
a plan that antedated creation (Phil. 2:6, 7), and Christ’s sacrifice in
time showed what had been in the heart of God from eternity (Heb. 9:14;
Rev. 13:8).
Our treatment is intended to meet the chief modern objection to
the atonement. Greg, Creed of Christendom, 2:222, speaks of “the
strangely inconsistent doctrine that God is so _just_ that he
could not let sin go unpunished, yet so _unjust_ that he could
punish it in the person of the innocent.... It is for orthodox
dialectics to explain how the divine justice can be _impugned_ by
pardoning the guilty, and yet _vindicated_ by punishing the
innocent” (quoted in Lias, Atonement, 16). In order to meet this
difficulty, the following accounts of Christ’s identification with
humanity have been given:
1. That of Isaac Watts (see Bib. Sac., 1875:421). This holds that
the humanity of Christ, both in body and soul, preëxisted before
the incarnation, and was manifested to the patriarchs. We reply
that Christ’s human nature is declared to be derived from the
Virgin.
2. That of R. W. Dale (Atonement, 265-440). This holds that Christ
is responsible for human sin because, as the Upholder and Life of
all, he is naturally one with all men, and is spiritually one with
all believers (_Acts 17:28_—“_in him we live, and move, and have
our being_”; _Col. 1:17_—“_in him all things consist_”; _John
14:20_—“_I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you_”). If
Christ’s bearing our sins, however, is to be explained by the
union of the believer with Christ, the effect is made to explain
the cause, and Christ could have died only for the elect (see a
review of Dale, in Brit. Quar. Rev., Apr., 1876:221-225). The
union of Christ with the race by creation—a union which recognizes
Christ’s purity and man’s sin—still remains as a most valuable
element of truth in the theory of Dr. Dale.
3. That of Edward Irving. Christ has a corrupted nature, an inborn
infirmity and depravity, which he gradually overcomes. But the
Scriptures, on the contrary, assert his holiness and separateness
from sinners. (See references, on pages 744-747.)
4. That of John Miller, Theology, 114-128; also in his chapter:
Was Christ in Adam? in Questions Awakened by the Bible. Christ, as
to his human nature, although created pure, was yet, as one of
Adam’s posterity, conceived of as a sinner in Adam. To him
attached “the guilt of the act in which all men stood together in
a federal relation.... He was decreed to be guilty for the sins of
all mankind.” Although there is a truth contained in this
statement, it is vitiated by Miller’s federalism and creatianism.
Arbitrary imputation and legal fiction do not help us here. We
need such an actual union of Christ with humanity, and such a
derivation of the substance of his being, by natural generation
from Adam, as will make him not simply the constructive heir, but
the natural heir, of the guilt of the race. We come, therefore, to
what we regard as the true view, namely:
5. That the humanity of Christ was not a new creation, but was
derived from Adam, through Mary his mother; so that Christ, so far
as his humanity was concerned, was in Adam just as we were, and
had the same race-responsibility with ourselves. As Adam’s
descendant, he was responsible for Adam’s sin, like every other
member of the race; the chief difference being, that while we
inherit from Adam both guilt and depravity, he whom the Holy
Spirit purified, inherited not the depravity, but only the guilt.
Christ took to himself, not sin (depravity), but the consequences
of sin. In him there was abolition of sin, without abolition of
obligation to suffer for sin; while in the believer, there is
abolition of obligation to suffer, without abolition of sin
itself.
The justice of Christ’s sufferings has been imperfectly
illustrated by the obligation of the silent partner of a business
firm to pay debts of the firm which he did not personally
contract; or by the obligation of the husband to pay the debts of
his wife; or by the obligation of a purchasing country to assume
the debts of the province which it purchases (Wm. Ashmore). There
have been men who have spent the strength of a lifetime in
clearing off the indebtedness of an insolvent father, long since
deceased. They recognized an organic unity of the family, which
morally, if not legally, made their father’s liabilities their
own. So, it is said, Christ recognized the organic unity of the
race, and saw that, having become one of that sinning race, he had
involved himself in all its liabilities, even to the suffering of
death, the great penalty of sin.
The fault of all the analogies just mentioned is that they are
purely commercial. A transference of pecuniary obligation is
easier to understand than a transference of criminal liability. I
cannot justly bear another’s penalty, unless I can in some way
share his guilt. The theory we advocate shows how such a sharing
of our guilt on the part of Christ was possible. All believers in
substitution hold that Christ bore our guilt: “My soul looks back
to see The burdens thou didst bear When hanging on the accursed
tree, And hopes her guilt was there.” But we claim that, by virtue
of Christ’s union with humanity, that guilt was not only an
imputed, but also an imparted, guilt.
With Christ’s obligation to suffer, there were connected two
other, though minor, results of his assumption of humanity: first,
the longing to suffer; and secondly, the inevitableness of his
suffering. He felt the longing to suffer which perfect love to God
must feel, in view of the demands upon the race, of that holiness
of God which he loved more than he loved the race itself; which
perfect love to man must feel, in view of the fact that bearing
the penalty of man’s sin was the only way to save him. Hence we
see Christ pressing forward to the cross with such majestic
determination that the disciples were amazed and afraid (_Mark
10:32_). Hence we hear him saying: “_With desire have I desired to
eat this passover_” (_Luke 23:15_); “_I have a baptism to be
baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!_”
(_Luke 12:50_).
Here is the truth in Campbell’s theory of the atonement. Christ is
the great Penitent before God, making confession of the sin of the
race, which others of that race could neither see nor feel. But
the view we present is a larger and completer one than that of
Campbell, in that it makes this confession and reparation
obligatory upon Christ, as Campbell’s view does not, and
recognizes the penal nature of Christ’s sufferings, which
Campbell’s view denies. Lias, Atonement, 79—“The head of a clan,
himself intensely loyal to his king, finds that his clan have been
involved in rebellion. The more intense and perfect his loyalty,
the more thorough his nobleness of heart and affection for his
people, the more inexcusable and flagrant the rebellion of those
for whom he pleads,—the more acute would be his agony, as their
representative and head. Nothing would be more true to human
nature, in the best sense of those words, than that the conflict
between loyalty to his king and affection for his vassals should
induce him to offer his life for theirs, to ask that the
punishment they deserved should be inflicted on him.”
The second minor consequence of Christ’s assumption of humanity
was, that, being such as he was, he could not help suffering; in
other words, the obligatory and the desired were also the
inevitable. Since he was a being of perfect purity, contact with
the sin of the race, of which he was a member, necessarily
involved an actual suffering, of an intenser kind than we can
conceive. Sin is self-isolating, but love and righteousness have
in them the instinct of human unity. In Christ all the nerves and
sensibilities of humanity met. He was the only healthy member of
the race. When life returns to a frozen limb, there is pain. So
Christ, as the only sensitive member of a benumbed and stupefied
humanity, felt all the pangs of shame and suffering which
rightfully belonged to sinners; but which they could not feel,
simply because of the depth of their depravity. Because Christ was
pure, yet had united himself to a sinful and guilty race,
therefore “_it must needs be that Christ should suffer_” (A. V.)
or, “_it behooved the Christ to suffer_” (Rev. Vers., _Acts
17:3_); see also _John 3:14_—“_so must the Son of man be lifted
up_”—“The Incarnation, under the actual circumstances of humanity,
carried with it the necessity of the Passion” (Westcott, in Bib.
Com., _in loco_).
Compare John Woolman’s Journal, 4, 5—“O Lord, my God, the amazing
horrors of darkness were gathered about me, and covered me all
over, and I saw no way to go forth; I felt the depth and extent of
the misery of my fellow creatures, separated from the divine
harmony, and it was greater than I could bear, and I was crushed
down under it; I lifted up my head, I stretched out my arm, but
there was none to help me; I looked round about, and was amazed.
In the depths of misery, I remembered that thou art omnipotent and
that I had called thee Father.” He had vision of a “dull, gloomy
mass,” darkening half the heavens, and he was told that it was
“human beings, in as great misery as they could be and live; and
he was mixed with them, and henceforth he might not consider
himself a distinct and separate being.”
This suffering in and with the sins of men, which Dr. Bushnell
emphasized so strongly, though it is not, as he thought, the
principal element, is notwithstanding an indispensable element in
the atonement of Christ. Suffering in and with the sinner is one
way, though not the only way, in which Christ is enabled to bear
the wrath of God which constitutes the real penalty of sin.
EXPOSITION OF 2 COR. 5:21.—It remains for us to adduce the
Scriptural proof of this natural assumption of human guilt by
Christ. We find it in _2 Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew no sin he made
to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of
God in him._” “_Righteousness_” here cannot mean subjective
purity, for then “_made to be sin_” would mean that God made
Christ to be subjectively depraved. As Christ was not made
_unholy_, the meaning cannot be that we are made _holy_ persons in
him. Meyer calls attention to this parallel between
“_righteousness_” and “_sin_”:—“_That we might become the
righteousness of God in him_” = that we might become justified
persons. Correspondingly, “_made to be sin on our behalf_” must =
made to be a condemned person. “_Him who knew no sin_” = Christ
had no experience of sin—this was the necessary postulate of his
work of atonement. “_Made sin for us_,” therefore, is the abstract
for the concrete, and = made a sinner, in the sense that the
penalty of sin fell upon him. So Meyer, for substance.
We must, however, regard this interpretation of Meyer’s as coming
short of the full meaning of the apostle. As justification is not
simply remission of _actual_ punishment, but is also deliverance
from the _obligation_ to suffer punishment,—in other words, as
“_righteousness_” in the text = persons delivered from the _guilt_
as well as from the _penalty_ of sin,—so the contrasted term
“_sin_,” in the text,—a person not only _actually_ punished, but
also under _obligation_ to suffer punishment;—in other words,
Christ is “_made sin_,” not only in the sense of being put under
_penalty_, but also in the sense of being put under _guilt_.
(_Cf._ Symington, Atonement, 17.)
In a note to the last edition of Meyer, this is substantially
granted. “It is to be noted,” he says, “that ἁμαρτίαν, like κατάρα
in _Gal. 3:13_, necessarily includes in itself the notion of
guilt.” Meyer adds, however: “The guilt of which Christ appears as
bearer was not his own (μὴ γνόντα ἁμαρτίαν); hence the guilt of
men was transferred to him; consequently the justification of men
is imputative.” Here the implication that the guilt which Christ
bears is his simply by imputation seems to us contrary to the
analogy of faith. As Adam’s sin is ours only because we are
actually one with Adam, and as Christ’s righteousness is imputed
to us only as we are actually united to Christ, so our sins are
imputed to Christ only as Christ is actually one with the race. He
was “_made sin_” by being made one with the sinners; he took our
guilt by taking our nature. He who “_knew no sin_” came to be
“_sin for us_” by being born of a sinful stock; by inheritance the
common guilt of the race became his. Guilt was not simply
_imputed_ to Christ; it was _imparted_ also.
This exposition may be made more clear by putting the two
contrasted thoughts in parallel columns, as follows:
Made righteousness in him = Made sin for us =
righteous persons; a sinful person;
justified persons; a condemned person;
freed from guilt, or put under guilt, or obligation
obligation to suffer; to suffer;
by spiritual union with by natural union with the
Christ. race.
For a good exposition of _2 Cor. 5:21_, _Gal. 3:13_, and _Rom.
3:25, 26_, see Denney, Studies in Theology, 109-124.
The Atonement, then, on the part of God, has its ground (1) in the
holiness of God, which must visit sin with condemnation, even though this
condemnation brings death to his Son; and (2) in the love of God, which
itself provides the sacrifice, by suffering in and with his Son for the
sins of men, but through that suffering opening a way and means of
salvation.
The Atonement, on the part of man, is accomplished through (1) the
solidarity of the race; of which (2) Christ is the life, and so its
representative and surety; (3) justly yet voluntarily bearing its guilt
and shame and condemnation as his own.
Melanchthon: “Christ was made sin for us, not only in respect to
punishment, but primarily by being chargeable with guilt also
(_culpæ et reatus_)”—quoted by Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk,
3:95, 102, 103, 107; also 1:307, 314 _sq._ Thomasius says that
“Christ bore the guilt of the race by imputation; but as in the
case of the imputation of Adam’s sin to us, imputation of our sins
to Christ presupposes a real relationship. Christ appropriated our
sin. He sank himself into our guilt.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:442
(Syst. Doct., 3:350, 351), agrees with Thomasius, that “Christ
entered into our natural mortality, which for us is a penal
condition, and into the state of collective guilt, so far as it is
an evil, a burden to be borne; not that he had personal guilt, but
rather that he entered into our guilt-laden common life, not as a
stranger, but as one actually belonging to it—put under its law,
according to the will of the Father and of his own love.”
When, and how, did Christ take this guilt and this penalty upon
him? With regard to penalty, we have no difficulty in answering
that, as his whole life of suffering was propitiatory, so penalty
rested upon him from the very beginning of his life. This penalty
was inherited, and was the consequence of Christ’s taking human
nature (_Gal. 4:4, 5_—“_born of a woman, born under the law_”).
But penalty and guilt are correlates; if Christ inherited penalty,
it must have been because he inherited guilt. This subjection to
the common guilt of the race was intimated in Jesus’ circumcision
(_Luke 2:21_); in his ritual purification (_Luke 2:22_—“_their
purification_”—_i. e._, the purification of Mary and the babe; see
Lange, Life of Christ; Commentaries of Alford, Webster and
Wilkinson; and An. Par. Bible); in his legal redemption (_Luke
2:23, 24_; _cf._ _Ex. 13:2, 13_); and in his baptism (_Mat.
3:15_—“_thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness_”). The
baptized person went down into the water, as one laden with sin
and guilt, in order that this sin and guilt might be buried
forever, and that he might rise from the typical grave to a new
and holy life. (Ebrard: “Baptism = death.”) So Christ’s submission
to John’s baptism of repentance was not only a consecration to
death, but also a recognition and confession of his implication in
that guilt of the race for which death was the appointed and
inevitable penalty (_cf._ _Mat. 10:38_; _Luke 12:50_; _Mat.
26:39_); and, as his baptism was a prefiguration of his death, we
may learn from his baptism something with regard to the meaning of
his death. See further, under The Symbolism of Baptism.
As one who had had guilt, Christ was “_justified in the spirit_”
(_1 Tim. 3:16_); and this justification appears to have taken
place after he “_was manifested in the flesh_” (_1 Tim. 3:16_),
and when “_he was raised for our justification_” (_Rom. 4:25_).
Compare _Rom. 1:4_—“_declared to be the Son of God with power,
according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the
dead_”; _6:7-10_—“_he that hath died is justified from sin. But if
we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him;
knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more;
death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died,
he died unto sin once; but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto
God_”—here all Christians are conceived of as ideally justified in
the justification of Christ, when Christ died for our sins and
rose again. _8:3_—“_God, sending his own Son in the likeness of
sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh_”—here Meyer
says: “The sending does not precede the condemnation; but the
condemnation is effected in and with the sending.” _John
16:10_—“_of righteousness, because I go to the Father_”;
_19:30_—“_It is finished._” On _1 Tim. 3:16_, see the Commentary
of Bengel.
If it be asked whether Jesus, then, before his death, was an
unjustified person, we answer that, while personally pure and
well-pleasing to God (_Mat. 3:17_), he himself was conscious of a
race-responsibility and a race-guilt which must be atoned for
(_John 12:27_—“_Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?
Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto
this hour_”); and that guilty human nature in him endured at the
last the separation from God which constitutes the essence of
death, sin’s penalty (_Mat. 27:46_—“_My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?_”). We must remember that, as even the believer must
“_be judged according to man in the flesh_” (_1 Pet. 4:6_), that
is, must suffer the death which to unbelievers is the penalty of
sin, although he “_live according to God in the Spirit_,” so
Christ, in order that we might be delivered from both guilt and
penalty, was “_put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the
spirit_” (_3:18_);—in other words, as Christ was man, the penalty
due to human guilt belonged to him to bear; but, as he was God, he
could exhaust that penalty, and could be a proper substitute for
others.
If it be asked whether he, who from the moment of the conception
“_sanctified himself_” (_John 17:19_), did not from that moment
also justify himself, we reply that although, through the
retroactive efficacy of his atonement and upon the ground of it,
human nature in him was purged of its depravity from the moment
that he took that nature; and although, upon the ground of that
atonement, believers before his advent were both sanctified and
justified; yet his own justification could not have proceeded upon
the ground of his atonement, and also his atonement have proceeded
upon the ground of his justification. This would be a vicious
circle; somewhere we must have a beginning. That beginning was in
the cross, where guilt was first purged (_Heb. 1:3_—“_when he had
made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the
Majesty on high_”; _Mat. 27:42_—“_He saved others; himself he
cannot save_”; _cf._ _Rev. 13:8_—“_the Lamb that hath been slain
from the foundation of the world_”).
If it be said that guilt and depravity are practically
inseparable, and that, if Christ had guilt, he must have had
depravity also, we reply that in civil law we distinguish between
them,—the conversion of a murderer would not remove his obligation
to suffer upon the gallows; and we reply further, that in
justification we distinguish between them,—depravity still
remaining, though guilt is removed. So we may say that Christ
takes guilt without depravity, in order that we may have depravity
without guilt. See page 645; also Böhl, Incarnation des göttlichen
Wortes; Pope, Higher Catechism, 118; A. H. Strong, on the
Necessity of the Atonement, in Philosophy and Religion, 213-219.
_Per contra_, see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:59 note, 82.
Christ therefore, as incarnate, rather revealed the atonement than made
it. The historical work of atonement was finished upon the Cross, but that
historical work only revealed to men the atonement made both before and
since by the extra-mundane Logos. The eternal Love of God suffering the
necessary reaction of his own Holiness against the sin of his creatures
and with a view to their salvation—this is the essence of the Atonement.
Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 252, 253—“Christ, as God’s atonement,
is the revelation and discovery of the fact that sacrifice is as
deep in God as his being. He is a holy Creator.... He must take
upon himself the shame and pain of sin.” The earthly tabernacle
and its sacrifices were only the shadow of those in the heavens,
and Moses was bidden to make the earthly after the pattern which
he saw in the mount. So the historical atonement was but the
shadowing forth to dull and finite minds of an infinite demand of
the divine holiness and an infinite satisfaction rendered by the
divine love. Godet, S. S. Times, Oct. 16, 1886—“Christ so
identified himself with the race he came to save, by sharing its
life or its very blood, that when the race itself was redeemed
from the curse of sin, his resurrection followed as the first
fruits of that redemption”; _Rom. 4:25_—“_delivered up for our
trespasses ... raised for our justification._”
Simon, Redemption of Man, 322—“If the Logos is generally the
Mediator of the divine immanence in Creation, especially in man;
if men are differentiations of the effluent divine energy; and if
the Logos is the immanent controlling principle of all
differentiation, _i. e._, the principle of all _form_—must not the
self-perversion of these human differentiations necessarily react
on him who is their constitutive principle? 339—Remember that men
have not first to engraft themselves into Christ, the living
whole.... They subsist naturally in him, and they have to separate
themselves, cut themselves off from him, if they are to be
separate. This is the mistake made in the ‘Life in Christ’ theory.
Men are treated as in some sense out of Christ, and as having to
get into connection with Christ.... It is not that we have to
create the relation,—we have simply to accept, to recognize, to
ratify it. Rejecting Christ is not so much refusal to _become_ one
with Christ, as it is refusal to _remain_ one with him, refusal to
let him be our life.”
A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 33, 172—“When God breathed into
man’s nostrils the breath of life, he communicated freedom, and
made possible the creature’s self-chosen alienation from himself,
the giver of that life. While man could never break the natural
bond which united him to God, he could break the spiritual bond,
and could introduce even into the life of God a principle of
discord and evil. Tie a cord tightly about your finger; you
partially isolate the finger, diminish its nutrition, bring about
atrophy and disease. Yet the life of the whole system rouses
itself to put away the evil, to untie the cord, to free the
diseased and suffering member. The illustration is far from
adequate; but it helps at a single point. There has been given to
each intelligent and moral agent the power, spiritually, to
isolate himself from God, while yet he is naturally joined to God,
and is wholly dependent upon God for the removal of the sin which
has so separated him from his Maker. Sin is the act of the
creature, but salvation is the act of the Creator.
“If you could imagine a finger endowed with free will and trying
to sunder its connection with the body by tying a string around
itself, you would have a picture of man trying to sunder his
connection with Christ. What is the result of such an attempt?
Why, pain, decay; possible, nay, incipient death, to the finger.
By what law? By the law of the organism, which is so constituted
as to maintain itself against its own disruption by the revolt of
the members. The pain and death of the finger is the reaction of
the whole against the treason of the part. The finger suffers
pain. But are there no results of pain to the body? Does not the
body feel pain also? How plain it is that no such pain can be
confined to the single part! The heart feels, aye, the whole
organism feels, because all the parts are members one of another.
It not only suffers, but that suffering tends to remedy the evil
and to remove its cause. The body summons its forces, pours new
tides of life into the dying member, strives to rid the finger of
the ligature that binds it. So through all the course of history,
Christ, the natural life of the race, has been afflicted in the
affliction of humanity and has suffered for human sin. This
suffering has been an atoning suffering, since it has been due to
righteousness. If God had not been holy, if God had not made all
nature express the holiness of his being, if God had not made pain
and loss the necessary consequences of sin, then Christ would not
have suffered. But since these things are sin’s penalty and Christ
is the life of the sinful race, it must needs be that Christ
should suffer. There is nothing arbitrary in laying upon him the
iniquities of us all. Original grace, like original sin, is only
the ethical interpretation of biological facts.” See also Ames, on
Biological Aspects of the Atonement, in Methodist Review, Nov.
1905:943-953.
In favor of the Substitutionary or Ethical view of the atonement we may
urge the following considerations:
(_a_) It rests upon correct philosophical principles with regard to the
nature of will, law, sin, penalty, righteousness.
This theory holds that there are permanent states, as well as
transient acts, of the will; and that the will is not simply the
faculty of volitions, but also the fundamental determination of
the being to an ultimate end. It regards law as having its basis,
not in arbitrary will or in governmental expediency, but rather in
the nature of God, and as being a necessary transcript of God’s
holiness. It considers sin to consist not simply in acts, but in
permanent evil states of the affections and will. It makes the
object of penalty to be, not the reformation of the offender, or
the prevention of evil doing, but the vindication of justice,
outraged by violation of law. It teaches that righteousness is not
benevolence or a form of benevolence, but a distinct and separate
attribute of the divine nature which demands that sin should be
visited with punishment, apart from any consideration of the
useful results that will flow therefrom.
(_b_) It combines in itself all the valuable elements in the theories
before mentioned, while it avoids their inconsistencies, by showing the
deeper principle upon which each of these elements is based.
The Ethical theory admits the indispensableness of Christ’s
example, advocated by the Socinian theory; the moral influence of
his suffering, urged by the Bushnellian theory; the securing of
the safety of government, insisted on by the Grotian theory; the
participation of the believer in Christ’s new humanity, taught by
the Irvingian theory; the satisfaction to God’s majesty for the
elect, made so much of by the Anselmic theory. But the Ethical
theory claims that all these other theories require, as a
presupposition for their effective working, that ethical
satisfaction to the holiness of God which is rendered in guilty
human nature by the Son of God who took that nature to redeem it.
(_c_) It most fully meets the requirements of Scripture, by holding that
the necessity of the atonement is absolute, since it rests upon the
demands of immanent holiness, the fundamental attribute of God.
_Acts 17:3_—“_it behooved the Christ to suffer, and to rise again
from the dead_”—lit.: “_it was necessary for the Christ to
suffer_”; _Luke 24:26_—“_Behooved it not the Christ to suffer
these things, and to enter into his glory?_”—lit.: “_Was it not
necessary that the Christ should suffer these things?_” It is not
enough to say that Christ must suffer in order that the prophecies
might be fulfilled. Why was it prophesied that he should suffer?
Why did God purpose that he should suffer? The ultimate necessity
is a necessity in the nature of God.
Plato, Republic, 2:361—“The righteous man who is thought to be
unrighteous will be scourged, racked, bound; will have his eyes
put out; and finally, having endured all sorts of evil, will be
impaled.” This means that, as human society is at present
constituted, even a righteous person must suffer for the sins of
the world. “Mors mortis Morti mortem nisi morte dedisset, Æternæ
vitæ janua clausa foret”—“Had not the Death-of-death to Death his
death-blow given, Forever closed were the gate, the gate of life
and heaven.”
(_d_) It shows most satisfactorily how the demands of holiness are met;
namely, by the propitiatory offering of one who is personally pure, but
who by union with the human race has inherited its guilt and penalty.
“_Quo non ascendam?_”—“Whither shall I not rise?” exclaimed the
greatest minister of modern kings, in a moment of intoxication.
“Whither shall I not stoop?” says the Lord Jesus. King Humbert,
during the scourge of cholera in Italy: “In Castellammare they
make merry; in Naples they die: I go to Naples.”
Wrightnour: “The illustration of Powhatan raising his club to slay
John Smith, while Pocahontas flings herself between the uplifted
club and the victim, is not a good one. God is not an angry being,
bound to strike something, no matter what. If Powhatan could have
taken the blow himself, out of a desire to spare the victim, it
would be better. The Father and the Son are one. Bronson Alcott,
in his school at Concord, when punishment was necessary, sometimes
placed the rod in the hand of the offender and bade him strike his
(Alcott’s) hand, rather than that the law of the school should be
broken without punishment following. The result was that very few
rules were broken. So God in Christ bore the sins of the world,
and endured the penalty for man’s violation of his law.”
(_e_) It furnishes the only proper explanation of the sacrificial language
of the New Testament, and of the sacrificial rites of the Old, considered
as prophetic of Christ’s atoning work.
Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 207-211—“The imposition of
hands on the head of the victim is entirely unexplained, except in
the account of the great day of Atonement, when by the same
gesture and by distinct confession the sins of the people were
‘_put upon the head of the goat_’ (_Lev. 16:21_) to be borne away
into the wilderness. The blood was sacred and was to be poured out
before the Lord, evidently in place of the forfeited life of the
sinner which should have been rendered up.” Watts, New
Apologetics, 205—“ ‘_The Lord will provide_’ was the truth taught
when Abraham found a ram provided by God which he ‘_offered up as
a burnt offering in the stead of his son_’ (_Gen. 22:13, 14_). As
the ram was not Abraham’s ram, the sacrifice of it could not teach
that all Abraham had belonged to God, and should, with entire
faith in his goodness, be devoted to him; but it did teach that
‘_apart from shedding of blood there is no remission_’ (_Heb.
9:22_).” _2 Chron. 29:27_—“_when the burnt offering began, the
song of Jehovah began also._”
(_f_) It alone gives proper place to the death of Christ as the central
feature of his work,—set forth in the ordinances, and of chief power in
Christian experience.
Martin Luther, when he had realized the truth of the Atonement,
was found sobbing before a crucifix and moaning: “Für mich! für
mich!”—“For me! for me!” Elisha Kane, the Arctic explorer, while
searching for signs of Sir John Franklin and his party, sent out
eight or ten men to explore the surrounding region. After several
days three returned, almost crazed with the cold—thermometer fifty
degrees below zero—and reported that the other men were dying
miles away. Dr. Kane organized a company of ten, and though
suffering himself with an old heart-trouble, led them to the
rescue. Three times he fainted during the eighteen hours of
marching and suffering; but he found the men. “We knew you would
come! we knew you would come, brother!” whispered one of them,
hardly able to speak. Why was he sure Dr. Kane would come? Because
he knew the stuff Dr. Kane was made of, and knew that he would
risk his life for any one of them. It is a parable of Christ’s
relation to our salvation. He is our elder brother, bone of our
bone and flesh of our flesh, and he not only risks death, but he
endures death, in order to save us.
(_g_) It gives us the only means of understanding the sufferings of Christ
in the garden and on the cross, or of reconciling them with the divine
justice.
Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre: “Man has a guilt that demands the
punitive sufferings of a mediator. Christ shows a suffering that
cannot be justified except by reference to some other guilt than
his own. Combine these two facts, and you have the problem of the
atonement solved.” J. G. Whittier: “Through all the depths of sin
and loss Drops the plummet of the Cross; Never yet abyss was found
Deeper than the Cross could sound.” Alcestis purchased life for
Admetus her husband by dying in his stead; Marcus Curtius saved
Rome by leaping into the yawning chasm; the Russian servant threw
himself to the wolves to rescue his master. Berdoe, Robert
Browning, 47—“To know God as the theist knows him may suffice for
pure spirits, for those who have never sinned, suffered, nor felt
the need of a Savior; but for fallen and sinful men the Christ of
Christianity is an imperative necessity; and those who have never
surrendered themselves to him have never known what it is to
experience the rest he gives to the heavy-laden soul.”
(_h_) As no other theory does, this view satisfies the ethical demand of
human nature; pacifies the convicted conscience; assures the sinner that
he may find instant salvation in Christ; and so makes possible a new life
of holiness, while at the same time it furnishes the highest incentives to
such a life.
Shedd: “The offended party (1) permits a substitution; (2)
provides a substitute; (3) substitutes himself.” George Eliot:
“Justice is like the kingdom of God; it is not without us, as a
fact; it is ‘within us,’ as a great yearning.” But it is both
without and within, and the inward is only the reflection of the
outward; the subjective demands of conscience only reflect the
objective demands of holiness.
And yet, while this view of the atonement exalts the holiness of
God, it surpasses every other view in its moving exhibition of
God’s love—a love that is not satisfied with suffering in and with
the sinner, or with making that suffering a demonstration of God’s
regard for law; but a love that sinks itself into the sinner’s
guilt and bears his penalty,—comes down so low as to make itself
one with him in all but his depravity—makes every sacrifice but
the sacrifice of God’s holiness—a sacrifice which God could not
make, without ceasing to be God; see _1 John 4:10_—“_Herein is
love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his
Son to be the propitiation for our sins._” The soldier who had
been thought reprobate was moved to complete reform when he was
once forgiven. William Huntington, in his Autobiography, says that
one of his sharpest sensations of pain, after he had been
quickened by divine grace, was that he felt such pity for God.
Never was man abused as God has been. _Rom. 2:4_—“_the goodness of
God leadeth thee to repentance_”; _12:1_—“_the mercies of God_”
lead you “_to present your bodies a living sacrifice_”; _2 Cor.
5:14, 15_—“_the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus
judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and he died for
all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves,
but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again._” The effect
of Christ’s atonement on Christian character and life may be
illustrated from the proclamation of Garabaldi: “He that loves
Italy, let him follow me! I promise him hardship, I promise him
suffering, I promise him death. But he that loves Italy, let him
follow me!”
D. Objections to the Ethical Theory of the Atonement.
On the general subject of these objections, Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, iv, 2:156-180, remarks: (1) that it rests with God
alone to say whether he will pardon sin, and in what way he will
pardon it; (2) that human instincts are a very unsafe standard by
which to judge the procedure of the Governor of the universe; and
(3) that one plain declaration of God, with regard to the plan of
salvation, proves the fallacy and error of all reasonings against
it. We must correct our watches and clocks by astronomic
standards.
(_a_) That a God who does not pardon sin without atonement must lack
either omnipotence or love.—We answer, on the one hand, that God’s
omnipotence is the revelation of his nature, and not a matter of arbitrary
will; and, on the other hand, that God’s love is ever exercised
consistently with his fundamental attribute of holiness, so that while
holiness demands the sacrifice, love provides it. Mercy is shown, not by
trampling upon the claims of justice, but by vicariously satisfying them.
Because man does not need to avenge personal wrongs, it does not
follow that God must not. In fact, such avenging is forbidden to
us upon the ground that it belongs to God; _Rom. 12:19_—“_Avenge
not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto wrath: for it is
written, Vengeance belongeth unto me; I will recompense, saith the
Lord._” But there are limits even to our passing over of offences.
Even the father must sometimes chastise; and although this
chastisement is not properly punishment, it becomes punishment,
when the father becomes a teacher or a governor. Then, other than
personal interests come in. “Because a father can forgive without
atonement, it does not follow that the state can do the same”
(Shedd). But God is more than Father, more than Teacher, more than
Governor. In him, person and right are identical. For him to let
sin go unpunished is to approve of it; which is the same as a
denial of holiness.
Whatever pardon is granted, then, must be pardon through
punishment. Mere repentance never expiates crime, even under civil
government. The truly penitent man never feels that his repentance
constitutes a ground of acceptance; the more he repents, the more
he recognizes his need of reparation and expiation. Hence God
meets the demand of man’s conscience, as well as of his own
holiness, when he provides a substituted punishment. God shows his
love by meeting the demands of holiness, and by meeting them with
the sacrifice of himself. See Mozley on Predestination, 390.
The publican prays, not that God may be merciful without
sacrifice, but: “_God be propitiated toward me, the sinner!_”
(_Luke 18:13_); in other words, he asks for mercy only through and
upon the ground of, sacrifice. We cannot atone to others for the
wrong we have done them, nor can we even atone to our own souls. A
third party, and an infinite being, must make atonement, as we
cannot. It is only upon the ground that God himself has made
provision for satisfying the claims of justice, that we are bidden
to forgive others. Should Othello then forgive Iago? Yes, if Iago
repents; _Luke 17:3_—“_If thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he
repent, forgive him._” But if he does not repent? Yes, so far as
Othello’s own disposition is concerned. He must not hate Iago, but
must wish him well; _Luke 6:27_—“_Love your enemies, do good to
them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that
despitefully use you._” But he cannot receive Iago to his
fellowship till he repents. On the duty and ground of forgiving
one another, see Martineau, Seat of Authority, 613, 614; Straffen,
Hulsean Lectures on the Propitiation for Sin.
(_b_) That satisfaction and forgiveness are mutually exclusive.—We answer
that, since it is not a third party, but the Judge himself, who makes
satisfaction to his own violated holiness, forgiveness is still optional,
and may be offered upon terms agreeable to himself. Christ’s sacrifice is
not a pecuniary, but a penal, satisfaction. The objection is valid against
the merely commercial view of the atonement, not against the ethical view
of it.
Forgiveness is something beyond the mere taking away of penalty.
When a man bears the penalty of his crime, has the community no
right to be indignant with him? There is a distinction between
pecuniary and penal satisfaction. Pecuniary satisfaction has
respect only to the thing due; penal satisfaction has respect also
to the person of the offender. If pardon is a matter of justice in
God’s government, it is so only as respects Christ. To the
recipient it is only mercy. “_Faithful and righteous to forgive us
our sins_” (_1 John 1:9_)—faithful to his promise, and righteous
to Christ. Neither the atonement, nor the promise, gives the
offender any personal claim.
Philemon must forgive Onesimus the pecuniary _debt_, when Paul
pays it; not so with the personal _injury_ Onesimus has done to
Philemon; there is no forgiveness of this, until Onesimus repents
and asks pardon. An amnesty may be offered to all, but upon
conditions. Instance Amos Lawrence’s offering to the forger the
forged paper he had bought up, upon condition that he would
confess himself bankrupt, and put all his affairs into the hands
of his benefactor. So the fact that Christ has paid our debts does
not preclude his offering to us the benefit of what he has done,
upon condition of our repentance and faith. The equivalent is not
furnished by man, but by God. God may therefore offer the results
of it upon his own terms. Did then the entire race fairly pay its
penalty when one suffered, just as all incurred the penalty when
one sinned? Yes,—all who receive their life from each—Adam on the
one hand, and Christ on the other. See under Union with Christ—its
Consequences; see also Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 295 note,
321, and Dogm. Theol., 2:383-389; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:614-615
(Syst. Doct., 4:82, 83). _Versus_ Current Discussions in Theology,
5:281.
Hovey calls Christ’s relation to human sin a vice-penal one. Just
as vice-regal position carries with it all the responsibility,
care, and anxiety of regal authority, so does a vice-penal
relation to sin carry with it all the suffering and loss of the
original punishment. The person on whom it falls is different, but
his punishment is the same, at least in penal value. As vice-regal
authority may be superseded by regal, so vice-penal suffering, if
despised, may be superseded by the original penalty. Is there a
waste of vice-penal suffering when any are lost for whom it was
endured? On the same principle we might object to any suffering on
the part of Christ for those who refuse to be saved by him. Such
suffering may benefit others, if not those for whom it was in the
first instance endured.
If compensation is made, it is said, there is nothing to forgive;
if forgiveness is granted, no compensation can be required. This
reminds us of Narvaez, who saw no reason for forgiving his enemies
until he had shot them all. When the offended party furnishes the
compensation, he can offer its benefits upon his own terms. Dr.
Pentecost: “A prisoner in Scotland was brought before the Judge.
As the culprit entered the box, he looked into the face of the
Judge to see if he could discover mercy there. The Judge and the
prisoner exchanged glances, and then there came a mutual
recognition. The prisoner said to himself: ‘It is all right this
time,’ for the Judge had been his classmate in Edinburgh
University twenty-five years before. When sentence was pronounced,
it was five pounds sterling, the limit of the law for the
misdemeanor charged, and the culprit was sorely disappointed as he
was led away to prison. But the Judge went at once and paid the
fine, telling the clerk to write the man’s discharge. This the
Judge delivered in person, explaining that the demands of the law
must be met, and having been met, the man was free.”
(_c_) That there can be no real propitiation, since the judge and the
sacrifice are one.—We answer that this objection ignores the existence of
personal relations within the divine nature, and the fact that the God-man
is distinguishable from God. The satisfaction is grounded in the
distinction of persons in the Godhead; while the love in which it
originates belongs to the unity of the divine essence.
The satisfaction is not rendered to a _part_ of the Godhead, for
the whole Godhead is in the Father, in a certain manner; as
omnipresence = _totus in omni parte_. So the offering is perfect,
because the whole Godhead is also in Christ (_2 Cor. 5:19_—“_God
was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself_”). Lyman Abbott
says that the word “propitiate” is used in the New Testament only
in the middle voice, to show that God propitiates himself.
Lyttelton, in Lux Mundi, 302—“The Atonement is undoubtedly a
mystery, but all forgiveness is a mystery. It avails to lift the
load of guilt that presses upon an offender. A change passes over
him that can only be described as regenerative, life-giving; and
thus the assurance of pardon, however conveyed, may be said to
obliterate in some degree the consequences of the past. 310—Christ
bore sufferings, not that we might be freed from them, for we have
deserved them, but that we might be enabled to bear them, as he
did, victoriously and in unbroken union with God.”
(_d_) That the suffering of the innocent for the guilty is not an
execution of justice, but an act of manifest injustice.—We answer, that
this is true only upon the supposition that the Son bears the penalty of
our sins, not voluntarily, but compulsorily; or upon the supposition that
one who is personally innocent can in no way become involved in the guilt
and penalty of others,—both of them hypotheses contrary to Scripture and
to fact.
The mystery of the atonement lies in the fact of unmerited
sufferings on the part of Christ. Over against this stands the
corresponding mystery of unmerited pardon to believers. We have
attempted to show that, while Christ was personally innocent, he
was so involved with others in the consequences of the Fall, that
the guilt and penalty of the race belonged to him to bear. When we
discuss the doctrine of Justification, we shall see that, by a
similar union of the believer with Christ, Christ’s justification
becomes ours.
To one who believes in Christ as the immanent God, the life of
humanity, the Creator and Upholder of mankind, the bearing by
Christ of the just punishment of human sin seems inevitable. The
very laws of nature are only the manifestation of his holiness,
and he who thus reveals God is also subject to God’s law. The
historical process which culminated on Calvary was the
manifestation of an age-long suffering endured by Christ on
account of his connection with the race from the very first moment
of their sin. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 80-83—“A God of
love and holiness must be a God of suffering just so certainly as
there is sin. Paul declares that he fills up ‘_that which is
lacking of the afflictions of Christ ... for his body’s sake,
which is the church_’ (_Col. 1:24_); in other words, Christ still
suffers in the believers who are his body. The historical
suffering indeed is ended; the agony of Golgotha is finished; the
days when joy was swallowed up in sorrow are past; death has no
more dominion over our Lord. But sorrow for sin is not ended; it
still continues and will continue so long as sin exists. But it
does not now militate against Christ’s blessedness, because the
sorrow is overbalanced and overborne by the infinite knowledge and
glory of his divine nature. Bushnell and Beecher were right when
they maintained that suffering for sin was the natural consequence
of Christ’s relation to the sinning creation. They were wrong in
mistaking the nature of that suffering and in not seeing that the
constitution of things which necessitates it, since it is the
expression of God’s holiness, gives that suffering a penal
character and makes Christ a substitutionary offering for the sins
of the world.”
(_e_) That there can be no transfer of punishment or merit, since these
are personal.—We answer that the idea of representation and suretyship is
common in human society and government; and that such representation and
suretyship are inevitable, wherever there is community of life between the
innocent and the guilty. When Christ took our nature, he could not do
otherwise than take our responsibilities also.
Christ became responsible for the humanity with which he was
organically one. Both poets and historians have recognized the
propriety of one member of a house, or a race, answering for
another. Antigone expiates the crime of her house. Marcus Curtius
holds himself ready to die for his nation. Louis XVI has been
called a “sacrificial lamb,” offered up for the crimes of his
race. So Christ’s sacrifice is of benefit to the whole family of
man, because he is one with that family. But here is the
limitation also. It does not extend to angels, because he took not
on him the nature of angels (_Heb. 2:16_—“_For verily not of the
angels doth he take hold, but he taketh hold of the seed of
Abraham_”).
“A strange thing happened recently in one of our courts of
justice. A young man was asked why the extreme penalty should not
be passed upon him. At that moment, a gray-haired man, his face
furrowed with sorrow, stepped into the prisoner’s box unhindered,
placed his hand affectionately upon the culprit’s shoulder, and
said: ‘Your honor, we have nothing to say. The verdict which has
been found against us is just. We have only to ask for mercy.’
‘We!’ There was nothing against this old father. Yet, at that
moment he lost himself. He identified his very being with that of
his wayward boy. Do you not pity the criminal son because of your
pity for his aged and sorrowing father? Because he has so
suffered, is not your demand that the son suffer somewhat
mitigated? Will not the judge modify his sentence on that account?
Nature knows no forgiveness; but human nature does; and it is not
nature, but human nature, that is made in the image of God”; see
Prof. A. S. Coats, in The Examiner, Sept. 12, 1889.
(_f_) That remorse, as a part of the penalty of sin, could not have been
suffered by Christ.—We answer, on the one hand, that it may not be
essential to the idea of penalty that Christ should have borne the
identical pangs which the lost would have endured; and, on the other hand,
that we do not know how completely a perfectly holy being, possessed of
super-human knowledge and love, might have felt even the pangs of remorse
for the condition of that humanity of which he was the central conscience
and heart.
Instance the lawyer, mourning the fall of a star of his
profession; the woman, filled with shame by the degradation of one
of her own sex; the father, anguished by his daughter’s
waywardness; the Christian, crushed by the sins of the church and
the world. The self-isolating spirit cannot conceive how perfectly
love and holiness can make their own the sin of the race of which
they are a part.
Simon, Reconciliation, 366—“Inasmuch as the sin of the human race
culminated in the crucifixion which crowned Christ’s own
sufferings, clearly the life of humanity entering him
subconsciously must have been most completely laden with sin and
with the fear of death which is its fruit, at the very moment when
he himself was enduring death in its most terrible form. Of
necessity therefore he felt as if he were the sinner of sinners,
and cried out in agony: ‘_My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me?_’ (_Mat. 27:46_).”
Christ could realize our penal condition. Beings who have a like
spiritual nature can realize and bear the spiritual sufferings of
one another. David’s sorrow was not unjust, when he cried: “_Would
I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!_” (_2 Sam.
18:33_). Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 117—“Is penitence
possible in the personally sinless? We answer that only one who is
perfectly sinless can perfectly repent, and this identification of
the sinless with the sinner is vital to the gospel.” Lucy Larcom:
“There be sad women, sick and poor. And those who walk in garments
soiled; Their shame, their sorrow I endure; By their defeat my
hope is foiled; The blot they bear is on my name; Who sins, and I
am not to blame?”
(_g_) That the sufferings of Christ, as finite in time, do not constitute
a satisfaction to the infinite demands of the law.—We answer that the
infinite dignity of the sufferer constitutes his sufferings a full
equivalent, in the eye of infinite justice. Substitution excludes identity
of suffering; it does not exclude equivalence. Since justice aims its
penalties not so much at the person as at the sin, it may admit equivalent
suffering, when this is endured in the very nature that has sinned.
The sufferings of a dog, and of a man, have different values.
Death is the wages of sin; and Christ, in suffering death,
suffered our penalty. Eternity of suffering is unessential to the
idea of penalty. A finite being cannot exhaust an infinite curse;
but an infinite being can exhaust it, in a few brief hours. Shedd,
Discourses and Essays, 307—“A golden eagle is worth a thousand
copper cents. The penalty paid by Christ is strictly and literally
_equivalent_ to that which the sinner would have borne, although
it is not _identical_. The vicarious bearing of it excludes the
latter.” Andrew Fuller thought Christ would have had to suffer
just as much, if only one sinner were to have been saved thereby.
The atonement is a unique fact, only partially illustrated by debt
and penalty. Yet the terms “purchase” and “ransom” are Scriptural,
and mean simply that the justice of God punishes sin as it
deserves; and that, having determined what is deserved, God cannot
change. See Owen, quoted in Campbell on Atonement, 58, 59.
Christ’s sacrifice, since it is absolutely infinite, can have
nothing added to it. If Christ’s sacrifice satisfies the Judge of
all, it may well satisfy us.
(_h_) That if Christ’s passive obedience made satisfaction to the divine
justice, then his active obedience was superfluous.—We answer that the
active obedience and the passive obedience are inseparable. The latter is
essential to the former; and both are needed to secure for the sinner, on
the one hand, pardon, and, on the other hand, that which goes beyond
pardon, namely, restoration to the divine favor. The objection holds only
against a superficial and external view of the atonement.
For more full exposition of this point, see our treatment of
Justification; and also, Owen, in Works, 5:175-204. Both the
active and the passive obedience of Christ are insisted on by the
apostle Paul. Opposition to the Pauline theology is opposition to
the gospel of Christ. Charles Cuthbert Hall, Universal Elements of
the Christian Religion, 140—“The effects of this are already
appearing in the impoverished religious values of the sermons
produced by the younger generation of preachers, and the
deplorable decline of spiritual life and knowledge in many
churches. Results open to observation show that the movement to
simplify the Christian essence by discarding the theology of St.
Paul easily carries the teaching of the Christian pulpit to a
position where, for those who submit to that teaching, the
characteristic experiences of the Christian life became
practically impossible. The Christian sense of sin; Christian
penitence at the foot of the Cross; Christian faith in an atoning
Savior; Christian peace with God through the mediation of Jesus
Christ—these and other experiences, which were the very life of
apostles and apostolic souls, fade from the view of the ministry,
have no meaning for the younger generation.”
(_i_) That the doctrine is immoral in its practical tendencies, since
Christ’s obedience takes the place of ours, and renders ours
unnecessary.—We answer that the objection ignores not only the method by
which the benefits of the atonement are appropriated, namely, repentance
and faith, but also the regenerating and sanctifying power bestowed upon
all who believe. Faith in the atonement does not induce license, but
“works by love” (Gal. 5:6) and “cleanses the heart” (Acts 15:9).
Water is of little use to a thirsty man, if he will not drink. The
faith which accepts Christ ratifies all that Christ has done, and
takes Christ as a new principle of life. Paul bids Philemon
receive Onesimus as himself,—not the old Onesimus, but a new
Onesimus into whom the spirit of Paul has entered (_Philemon 17_).
So God receives us as new creatures in Christ. Though we cannot
earn salvation, we must take it; and this taking it involves a
surrender of heart and life which ensures union with Christ and
moral progress.
What shall be done to the convicted murderer who tears up the
pardon which his wife’s prayers and tears have secured from the
Governor? Nothing remains but to execute the sentence of the law.
Hon. George F. Danforth, Justice of the New York State Court of
Appeals, in a private letter says: “Although it may be stated in a
general way that a pardon reaches both the punishment prescribed
for the offence and the guilt of the offender, so that in the eye
of the law he is as innocent as if he had never committed the
offence, the pardon making him as it were a new man with a new
credit and capacity, yet a delivery of the pardon is essential to
its validity, and delivery is not complete without acceptance. It
cannot be forced upon him. In that respect it is like a deed. The
delivery may be in person to the offender or to his agent, and its
acceptance may be proved by circumstances like any other fact.”
(_j_) That if the atonement requires faith as its complement, then it does
not in itself furnish a complete satisfaction to God’s justice.—We answer
that faith is not the ground of our acceptance with God, as the atonement
is, and so is not a work at all; faith is only the medium of
appropriation. We are saved not by faith, or on account of faith, but only
through faith. It is not faith, but the atonement which faith accepts,
that satisfies the justice of God.
Illustrate by the amnesty granted to a city, upon conditions to be
accepted by each inhabitant. The acceptance is not the ground upon
which the amnesty is granted; it is the medium through which the
benefits of the amnesty are enjoyed. With regard to the
difficulties connected with the atonement, we may say, in
conclusion, with Bishop Butler: “If the Scripture has, as surely
it has, left this matter of the satisfaction of Christ mysterious,
left somewhat in it unrevealed, all conjectures about it must be,
if not evidently absurd, yet at least uncertain. Nor has any one
reason to complain for want of further information, unless he can
show his claim to it.” While we cannot say with President Stearns:
“Christ’s work removed the hindrances in the eternal justice of
the universe to the pardon of the sinner, but _how_ we cannot
tell”—cannot say this, because we believe the main outlines of the
plan of salvation to be revealed in Scripture—yet we grant that
many questions remain unsolved. But, as bread nourishes even those
who know nothing of its chemical constituents, or of the method of
its digestion and assimilation, so the atonement of Christ saves
those who accept it, even though they do not know _how_ it saves
them. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 264-267—“Heat was once
thought to be a form of matter; now it is regarded as a mode of
motion. We can get the good of it, whichever theory we adopt, or
even if we have no theory. So we may get the good of
reconciliation with God, even though we differ as to our theory of
the Atonement.”—“One of the Roman Emperors commanded his fleet to
bring from Alexandria sand for the arena, although his people at
Rome were visited with famine. But a certain shipmaster declared
that, whatever the emperor commanded, his ship should bring wheat.
So, whatever sand others may bring to starving human souls, let us
bring to them the wheat of the gospel—the substitutionary
atonement of Jesus Christ.” For answers to objections, see
Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv, 2:156-180; Crawford, Atonement,
384-468; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:526-543; Baird, Elohim Revealed,
623 sq.; Wm. Thomson, The Atoning Work of Christ; Hopkins, Works,
1:321.
E. The Extent of the Atonement.
The Scriptures represent the atonement as having been made for all men,
and as sufficient for the salvation of all. Not the _atonement_ therefore
is limited, but the _application_ of the atonement through the work of the
Holy Spirit.
Upon this principle of a universal atonement, but a special application of
it to the elect, we must interpret such passages as Eph. 1:4, 7; 2 Tim.
1:9, 10; John 17:9, 20, 24—asserting a special efficacy of the atonement
in the case of the elect; and also such passages as 2 Pet. 2:1; 1 John
2:2; Tim. 2:6; 4:10; Tit. 2:11—asserting that the death of Christ is for
all.
Passages asserting special efficacy of the atonement, in the case
of the elect, are the following: _Eph. 1:4_—“_chose us in him
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and
without __ blemish before him in love_”; _7_—“_in whom we have our
redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses,
according to the riches of his grace_”; _2 Tim. 1:9, 10_—God “_who
saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our
works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given
us in Christ Jesus before times eternal, but hath now been
manifested by the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who
abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through
the gospel_”; _John 17:9_—“_I pray for them: I pray not for the
world, but for those whom thou hast given me_”; _20_—“_Neither for
these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on me through
their word_”; _24_—“_Father, that which thou hast given me, I
desire that where I am, they also may be with me; that they may
beheld my glory, which thou hast given me._”
Passages asserting that the death of Christ is for all are the
following: _2 Pet 2:1_—“_false teachers, who shall privily bring
in destructive heresies, denying even the Master that bought
them_”; _1 John 2:2_—“_and he is the propitiation for our sins;
and not for ours only, but also for the whole world_”; _1 Tim.
2:6_—Christ Jesus “_who gave himself a ransom for all_”;
_4:10_—“_the living God, who is the Savior of all men, specially
of them that believe_”; _Tit. 2:11_—“_For the grace of God hath
appeared, bringing salvation to all men._” _Rom. 3:22_ (A.
V.)—“_unto all and upon all them that believe_”—has sometimes been
interpreted as meaning “unto all men, and upon all believers” (εἰς
= destination; ἐπί = extent). But the Rev. Vers. omits the words
“_and upon all_,” and Meyer, who retains the words, remarks that
τοῦς πιστεύοντας belongs to πάντας in both instances.
Unconscious participation in the atonement of Christ, by virtue of
our common humanity in him, makes us the heirs of much temporal
blessing. Conscious participation in the atonement of Christ, by
virtue of our faith in him and his work for us, gives us
justification and eternal life. Matthew Henry said that the
Atonement is “sufficient for all; effectual for many.” J. M.
Whiton, in The Outlook, Sept. 25, 1897—“It was Samuel Hopkins of
Rhode Island (1721-1803) who first declared that Christ had made
atonement for all men, not for the elect part alone, as Calvinists
affirmed.” We should say “as some Calvinists affirmed”; for, as we
shall see, John Calvin himself declared that “Christ suffered for
the sins of the whole world.” Alfred Tennyson once asked an old
Methodist woman what was the news. “Why, Mr. Tennyson, there’s
only one piece of news that I know,—that Christ died for all men.”
And he said to her; “That is old news, and good news, and new
news.”
If it be asked in what sense Christ is the Savior of all men, we reply:
(_a_) That the atonement of Christ secures for all men a delay in the
execution of the sentence against sin, and a space for repentance,
together with a continuance of the common blessings of life which have
been forfeited by transgression.
If strict justice had been executed, the race would have been cut
off at the first sin. That man lives after sinning, is due wholly
to the Cross. There is a pretermission, or “_passing over of the
sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God_” (_Rom. 3:25_),
the justification of which is found only in the sacrifice of
Calvary. This “_passing over_,” however, is limited in its
duration: see _Acts 17:30, 31_—“_The times of ignorance therefore
God overlooked; but now he commandeth men that they should all
everywhere repent: inasmuch as he hath appointed a day in which he
will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he hath
ordained._”
One may get the benefit of the law of gravitation without
understanding much about its nature, and patriarchs and heathen
have doubtless been saved through Christ’s atonement, although
they have never heard his name, but have only cast themselves as
helpless sinners upon the mercy of God. That mercy of God was
Christ, though they did not know it. Our modern pious Jews will
experience a strange surprise when they find that not only
forgiveness of sin but every other blessing of life has come to
them through the crucified Jesus. _Matt. 8:11_—“_many shall come
from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and
Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven._”
Dr. G.W. Northrop held that the work of Christ is universal in
three respects: 1. It reconciled God to the whole race, apart from
personal transgression; 2. It secured the bestowment upon all of
common grace, and the means of common grace; 3. It rendered
certain the bestowment of eternal life upon all who would so use
common grace and the means of common grace as to make it morally
possible for God as a wise and holy Governor to grant his special
and renewing grace.
(_b_) That the atonement of Christ has made objective provision for the
salvation of all, by removing from the divine mind every obstacle to the
pardon and restoration of sinners, except their wilful opposition to God
and refusal to turn to him.
Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 604—“On God’s side, all is now taken
away which could make a separation,—unless any should themselves
choose to remain separated from him.” The gospel message is not:
God will forgive if you return; but rather: God _has_ shown mercy;
only believe, and it is your portion in Christ.
Ashmore, The New Trial of the Sinner, in Christian Review,
26:245-264—“The atonement has come to all men and upon all men.
Its coëxtensiveness with the effects of Adam’s sin is seen in that
all creatures, such as infants and insane persons, incapable of
refusing it, are saved without their consent, just as they were
involved in the sin of Adam without their consent. The reason why
others are not saved is because when the atonement comes to them
and upon them, instead of consenting to be included in it, they
reject it. If they are born under the curse, so likewise they are
born under the atonement which is intended to remove that curse;
they remain under its shelter till they are old enough to
repudiate it; they shut out its influences as a man closes his
window-blind to shut out the beams of the sun; they ward them off
by direct opposition, as a man builds dykes around his field to
keep out the streams which would otherwise flow in and fertilize
the soil.”
(_c_) That the atonement of Christ has procured for all men the powerful
incentives to repentance presented in the Cross, and the combined agency
of the Christian church and of the Holy Spirit, by which these incentives
are brought to bear upon them.
Just as much sun and rain would be needed, if only one farmer on
earth were to be benefited. Christ would not need to suffer more,
if all were to be saved. His sufferings, as we have seen, were not
the payment of a pecuniary debt. Having endured the penalty of the
sinner, justice permits the sinner’s discharge, but does not
require it, except as the fulfilment of a promise to his
substitute, and then only upon the appointed condition of
repentance and faith. The _atonement_ is unlimited,—the whole
human race might be saved through it; the _application_ of the
atonement is limited,—only those who repent and believe are
actually saved by it.
Robert G. Farley: “The prospective mother prepares a complete and
beautiful outfit for her expected child. But the child is
still-born. Yet the outfit was prepared just the same as if it had
lived. And Christ’s work is completed as much for one man as for
another, as much for the unbeliever as for the believer.”
Christ is specially the Savior of those who believe, in that he exerts a
special power of his Spirit to procure their acceptance of his salvation.
This is not, however, a part of his work of atonement; it is the
application of the atonement, and as such is hereafter to be considered.
Among those who hold to a limited atonement is Owen. Campbell
quotes him as saying: “Christ did not die for all the sins of all
men; for if this were so, why are not all freed from the
punishment of all their sins? You will say, ‘Because of their
unbelief,—they will not believe.’ But this unbelief is a sin, and
Christ was punished for it. Why then does this, more than other
sins, hinder them from partaking of the fruits of his death?”
So also Turretin, loc. 4, quæs. 10 and 17; Symington, Atonement,
184-234; Candlish on the Atonement; Cunningham, Hist. Theol.,
2:323-370; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:464-489. For the view presented
in the text, see Andrew Fuller, Works, 2:373, 374; 689-698;
706-709; Wardlaw, Syst. Theol., 2:485-549; Jenkyn, Extent of the
Atonement; E. P. Griffin, Extent of the Atonement; Woods, Works,
2:490-521; Richards, Lectures on Theology, 302-327.
2. Christ’s Intercessory Work.
The Priesthood of Christ does not cease with his work of atonement, but
continues forever. In the presence of God he fulfils the second office of
the priest, namely that of intercession.
_Heb. 7:23-25_—“_priests many in number, because that by death
they are hindered from continuing: but he, because he abideth
forever, hath his priesthood unchangeable. Wherefore also he is
able to save to the uttermost them that draw near onto God through
him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them._” C. H.
M. on _Ex. 17:12_—“The hands of our great Intercessor never hang
down, as Moses’ did, nor does he need any one to hold them up. The
same rod of God’s power which was used by Moses to smite the rock
(Atonement) was in Moses’ hand on the hill (Intercession).”
Denney’s Studies in Theology, 166—“If we see nothing unnatural in
the fact that Christ prayed for Peter on earth, we need not make
any difficulty about his praying for us in heaven. The relation is
the same; the only difference is that Christ is now exalted, and
prays, not with strong crying and tears, but in the sovereignty
and prevailing power of one who has achieved eternal redemption
for his people.”
A. Nature of Christ’s Intercession.—This is not to be conceived of either
as an external and vocal petitioning, nor as a mere figure of speech for
the natural and continuous influence of his sacrifice; but rather as a
special activity of Christ in securing, upon the ground of that sacrifice,
whatever of blessing comes to men, whether that blessing be temporal or
spiritual.
_1 John 2:1_—“_if any man sin, we have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous_”; _Rom. 8:34_—“_It is Jesus
Christ that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who
is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for
us_”—here Meyer seems to favor the meaning of external and vocal
petitioning, as of the glorified God-man: _Heb. 7:25_—“_ever
liveth to make intercession for them._” On the ground of this
effectual intercession he can pronounce the true sacerdotal
_benediction_; and all the benedictions of his ministers and
apostles are but fruits and emblems of this (see the Aaronic
benediction in _Num. 6:24-26_, and the apostolic benedictions in
_1 Cor. 1:3_ and _2 Cor. 13:14_).
B. Objects of Christ’s Intercession.—We may distinguish (_a_) that general
intercession which secures to all men certain temporal benefits of his
atoning work, and (_b_) that special intercession which secures the divine
acceptance of the persons of believers and the divine bestowment of all
gifts needful for their salvation.
(_a_) General intercession for all men: _Is. 53:12_—“_he bare the
sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors_”; _Luke
23:34_—“_And Jesus said, Father, forgive them; for they know not
what they do_”—a beginning of his priestly intercession, even
while he was being nailed to the cross.
(_b_) Special intercession for his saints: _Mat. 18:19, 20_—“_if
two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they
shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in
heaven. For when two or three are gathered together in my name,
there am I in the midst of them_”; _Luke 22:31, 32_—“_Simon,
Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that he might sift you as
wheat: but I made supplication for thee, that thy faith fail
not_”; _John 14:16_—“_I will pray the Father, and he shall give
you another Comforter_”; _17:9_—“_I pray for them; I pray not for
the world, but for those whom thou hast given me_”; _Acts
2:33_—“_Being therefore by the right hand of God exalted, and
having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he
hath poured forth this, which ye see and hear_”; _Eph. 1:6_—“_the
glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the
Beloved_”; _2:18_—“_through him we both have our access in one
Spirit unto the Father_”; _3:12_—“_in whom we have boldness and
access in confidence through our faith in him_”; _Heb. 2:17,
18_—“_Wherefore it behooved him in all things to be made like unto
his brethren, that he might become a merciful and faithful high
priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the
sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being
tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted_”; _4:15,
16_—“_For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with
the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all
points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore
draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace, that we may
receive mercy, and may find grace to help as in time of need_”; _1
Pet 2:5_—“_a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices,
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ_”; _Rev. 5:6_—“_And I saw
in the midst of the throne ... a Lamb standing, as though it had
been slain, having seven horns, and seven eyes, which are the
seven Spirits of God, sent forth into all the earth_”; _7:16,
17_—“_They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither
shall the sun strike upon them, nor any heat: for the lamb that is
in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall
guide them unto fountains of waters of life: and God shall wipe
away every tear from their eyes._”
C. Relation of Christ’s Intercession to that of the Holy Spirit.—The Holy
Spirit is an advocate within us, teaching us how to pray as we ought;
Christ is an advocate in heaven, securing from the Father the answer of
our prayers. Thus the work of Christ and of the Holy Spirit are
complements to each other, and parts of one whole.
_John 14:26_—“_But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the
Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and
bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you_”; _Rom.
8:26_—“_And in like manner the Spirit __ also helpeth our
infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit
himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be
uttered_”; _27_—“_and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is
the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the
saints according to the will of God._”
The intercession of the Holy Spirit may be illustrated by the work
of the mother, who teaches her child to pray by putting words into
his mouth or by suggesting subjects for prayer. “The whole Trinity
is present in the Christian’s closet; the Father hears; the Son
advocates his cause at the Father’s right hand; the Holy Spirit
intercedes in the heart of the believer.” Therefore “When God
inclines the heart to pray, He hath an ear to hear.” The impulse
to prayer, within our hearts, is evidence that Christ is urging
our claims in heaven.
D. Relation of Christ’s Intercession to that of saints.—All true
intercession is either directly or indirectly the intercession of Christ.
Christians are organs of Christ’s Spirit. To suppose Christ in us to offer
prayer to one of his saints, instead of directly to the Father, is to
blaspheme Christ, and utterly misconceive the nature of prayer.
Saints on earth, by their union with Christ, the great high
priest, are themselves constituted intercessors; and as the high
priest of old bore upon his bosom the breastplate engraven with
the names of the tribes of Israel (_Ex. 28:9-12_), so the
Christian is to bear upon his heart in prayer before God the
interests of his family, the church, and the world (_1 Tim.
3:1_—“_I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications,
prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings be made for all men_”). See
Symington on Intercession, in Atonement and Intercession, 256-308;
Milligan, Ascension and Heavenly Priesthood of our Lord.
Luckock, After Death, finds evidence of belief in the intercession
of the saints in heaven as early as the second century. Invocation
of the saints he regards as beginning not earlier than the fourth
century. He approves the doctrine that the saints pray _for us_,
but rejects the doctrine that we are to pray _to them_. Prayers
_for_ the dead he strongly advocates. Bramhall, Works,
1:57—Invocation of the saints is “not necessary, for two reasons:
_first_, no saint doth love us so well as Christ: no saint hath
given us such assurance of his love, or done so much for us as
Christ; no saint is so willing to help us as Christ; and
_secondly_, we have no command from God to invocate them.” A. B.
Cave: “The system of human mediation falls away in the advent to
our souls of the living Christ. Who wants stars, or even the moon,
after the sun is up?”
III. The Kingly Office of Christ.
This is to be distinguished from the sovereignty which Christ originally
possessed in virtue of his divine nature. Christ’s kingship is the
sovereignty of the divine-human Redeemer, which belonged to him of right
from the moment of his birth, but which was fully exercised only from the
time of his entrance upon the state of exaltation. By virtue of this
kingly office, Christ rules all things in heaven and earth, for the glory
of God and the execution of God’s purpose of salvation.
(_a_) With respect to the universe at large, Christ’s kingdom is a kingdom
of power; he upholds, governs, and judges the world.
_Ps. 2:6-8_—“_I have set my king.... Thou art my son.... uttermost
parts of the earth for thy possession_”; _8:6_—“_madest him to
have dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all
things under his feet_”; _cf._ _Heb. 2:8, 9_—“_we see not yet all
things subjected to him. But we beheld ... Jesus ... crowned with
glory and honor_”; _Mat. 25:31, 32_—“_when the Son of man shall
come in his glory ... then shall he sit on the throne of his
glory: and before him shall be gathered all the nations_”;
_28:18_—“_All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on
earth_”; _Heb. 1:3_—“_upholding all things by the word of his
power_”; _Rev. 19:15, 16_—“_smite the nations ... rule them with a
rod of iron ... King of Kings, and Lord of Lords._”
Julius Müller, Proof-texts, 34, says incorrectly, as we think,
that “the _regnum naturæ_ of the old theology is
unsupported,—there are only the _regnum gratiæ_ and the _regnum
gloriæ_.” A. J. Gordon: “Christ is now creation’s sceptre-bearer,
as he was once creation’s burden-bearer.”
(_b_) With respect to his militant church, it is a kingdom of grace; he
founds, legislates for, administers, defends, and augments his church on
earth.
_Luke 2:11_—“_born to you ... a Savior, who is Christ the lord_”;
_19:38_—“_Blessed is the King that cometh in the name of the
Lord_”; _John 18:36, 37_—“_My kingdom is not of this world....
Thou sayest it, for I am a king.... Every one that is of the truth
heareth my voice_”; _Eph. 1:22_—“_he put all things in subjection
under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the
church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in
all_”; _Heb. 1:8_—“_of the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for
ever and ever._”
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:677 (Syst. Doct., 4:142, 143)—“All great
men can be said to have an after-influence (_Nachwirkung_) after
their death, but only of Christ can it be said that he has an
after-activity (_Fortwirkung_). The sending of the Spirit is part
of Christ’s work as King.” P. S. Moxom, Bap. Quar. Rev., Jan.
1886:25-36—“Preëminence of Christ, as source of the church’s
being; ground of the church’s unity; source of the church’s law;
mould of the church’s life.” A. J. Gordon: “As the church endures
hardness and humiliation as united to him who was on the cross, so
she should exhibit something of supernatural energy as united with
him who is on the throne.” Luther: “We tell our Lord God, that if
he will have his church, he must look after it himself. We cannot
sustain it, and, if we could, we should become the proudest asses
under heaven.... If it had been possible for pope, priest or
minister to destroy the church of Jesus Christ, it would have been
destroyed long ago.” Luther, watching the proceedings of the Diet
of Augsburg, made a noteworthy discovery. He saw the stars bestud
the canopy of the sky, and though there were no pillars to hold
them up they kept their place and the sky fell not. The business
of holding up the sky and its stars has been on the minds of men
in all ages. But we do not need to provide props to hold up the
sky. God will look after his church and after Christian doctrine.
For of Christ it has been written in _1 Cor. 15:25_—“_For he must
reign, till he hath put all his enemies under his feet._”
“Thrice blessed is he to whom is given The instinct that can tell
That God is in the field when he Is most invisible.” Since Christ
is King, it is a duty never to despair of church or of the world.
Dr. E. G. Robinson declared that Christian character was never
more complete than now, nor more nearly approaching the ideal man.
We may add that modern education, modern commerce, modern
invention, modern civilization, are to be regarded as the
revelations of Christ, the Light of the world, and the Ruler of
the nations. All progress of knowledge, government, society, is
progress of his truth, and a prophecy of the complete
establishment of his kingdom.
(_c_) With respect to his church triumphant, it is a kingdom of glory; he
rewards his redeemed people with the full revelation of himself, upon the
completion of his kingdom in the resurrection and the judgment.
_John 17:24_—“_Father, that which thou hast given me, I desire
that where I am, they also may be with me, that they may behold my
glory_”; _1 Pet. 3:21, 22_—“_Jesus Christ; who is on the right
hand of God, having gone into heaven; angels and authorities and
powers being made subject unto him_”; _2 Pet. 1:11_—“_thus shall
be richly supplied unto you the entrance into the eternal kingdom
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ._” See Andrew Murray, With
Christ in the School of Prayer, preface, vi—“_Rev. 1:6_—‘_made us
to be a kingdom, to be priests unto his God and Father._’ ” Both
in the king and the priest, the chief thing is power, influence,
blessing. In the king, it is the power coming downward; in the
priest, it is the power rising upward, prevailing with God. As in
Christ, so in us, the kingly power is founded on the priestly:
_Heb. 7:25_—“_able to save to the uttermost, ... seeing he ever
liveth to make intercession_”.
Watts, New Apologetic, preface, ix—“We cannot have Christ as King
without having him also as Priest. It is as the Lamb that he sits
upon the throne in the Apocalypse; as the Lamb that he conducts
his conflict with the kings of the earth; and it is from the
throne of God on which the Lamb appears that the water of life
flows forth that carries refreshing throughout the Paradise of
God.”
Luther: “Now Christ reigns, not in visible, public manner, but
through the word, just as we see the sun through a cloud. We see
the light, but not the sun itself. But when the clouds are gone,
then we see at the same time both light and sun.” We may close our
consideration of Christ’s Kingship with two practical remarks: 1.
We never can think too much of the cross, but we may think too
little of the throne. 2. We can not have Christ as our Prophet or
our Priest, unless we take him also as our King. On Christ’s
Kingship, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:342-351; Van
Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 586 sq.; Garbett, Christ as Prophet, Priest,
and King, 2:243-438; J. M. Mason, Sermon on Messiah’s Throne, in
Works, 3:241-275.
