Chapter XXXII: Section VI: Consequences Of Sin To Adam’s Posterity (2)

A. Sin of nature, and personal transgression.

Sin of nature involves guilt, yet there is greater guilt when this sin of nature reasserts itself in personal transgression; for, while this latter includes in itself the former, it also adds to the former a new element, namely, the conscious exercise of the individual and personal will, by virtue of which a new decision is made against God, special evil habit is induced, and the total condition of the soul is made more depraved. Although we have emphasized the guilt of inborn sin, because this truth is most contested, it is to be remembered that men reach a conviction of their native depravity only through a conviction of their personal transgressions. For this reason, by far the larger part of our preaching upon sin should consist in applications of the law of God to the acts and dispositions of men’s lives.

_Mat. 19:14_—“_to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven_”—relative
innocence of childhood; _23:32_—“_Fill ye up then the measure of
your fathers_”—personal transgression added to inherited
depravity. In preaching, we should first treat individual
transgressions, and thence proceed to heart-sin, and race-sin. Man
is not wholly a spontaneous development of inborn tendencies, a
manifestation of original sin. Motives do not _determine_ but they
_persuade_ the will, and every man is guilty of conscious personal
transgressions which may, with the help of the Holy Spirit, be
brought under the condemning judgment of conscience. Birks,
Difficulties of Belief, 169-174—“Original sin does not do away
with the significance of personal transgression. Adam was
pardoned: but some of his descendants are unpardonable. The second
death is referred, in Scripture, to our own personal guilt.”

This is not to say that original sin does not involve as great sin
as that of Adam in the first transgression, for original sin _is_
the sin of the first transgression; it is only to say that
personal transgression is original sin _plus_ the conscious
ratification of Adam’s act by the individual. “We are guilty for
what we _are_, as much as for what we _do_. Our _sin_ is not
simply the sum total of all our _sins_. There is a _sinfulness_
which is the common denominator of all our sins.” It is customary
to speak lightly of original sin, as if personal sins were all for
which man is accountable. But it is only in the light of original
sin that personal sins can be explained. _Prov. 14:9,
marg._—“_Fools make a mock at sin._” Simon, Reconciliation,
122—“The sinfulness of individual men varies; the sinfulness of
humanity is a constant quantity.” Robert Browning, Ferishtah’s
Fancies: “Man lumps his kind i’ the mass. God singles thence unit
by unit. Thou and God exist—So think! for certain: Think the
mass—mankind—Disparts, disperses, leaves thyself alone! Ask thy
lone soul what laws are plain to thee,—Thou and no other, stand or
fall by them! That is the part for thee.”

B. Sins of ignorance, and sins of knowledge.

Here guilt is measured by the degree of light possessed, or in other words, by the opportunities of knowledge men have enjoyed, and the powers with which they have been naturally endowed. Genius and privilege increase responsibility. The heathen are guilty, but those to whom the oracles of God have been committed are more guilty than they.

_Mat 10:15_—“_more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in
the day of judgment, than for that city_”; _Luke 12:47, 48_—“_that
servant, who knew his Lord’s will ... shall be beaten with many
stripes; but he that knew not ... shall be beaten with few
stripes_”; _23:34_—“_Father, forgive them; for they know not what
they do_”—complete knowledge would put them beyond the reach of
forgiveness. _John 19:11_—“_he that delivered me unto thee hath
greater sin_”; _Acts 17:30_—“_The times of ignorance therefore God
overlooked_”; _Rom. 1:32_—“_who, knowing the ordinance of God,
that they that practise such things are worthy of death, not only
do the same, but also consent with them that practise them_”;
_2:12_—“_For as many as have sinned without the law shall also
perish without the law: and as many as have sinned under the law
shall be judged by the law_”; _1 Tim. 1:13, 15, 16_—“_I obtained
mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief._”

_Is. 42:19_—“_Who is blind ... as Jehovah’s servant?_” It was the
Pharisees whom Jesus warned of the sin against the Holy Spirit.
The guilt of the crucifixion rested on Jews rather than on
Gentiles. Apostate Israel was more guilty than the pagans. The
greatest sinners of the present day may be in Christendom, not in
heathendom. Satan was an archangel; Judas was an apostle;
Alexander Borgia was a pope. Jackson, James Martineau,
362—“Corruptio optimi pessima est, as seen in a drunken Webster, a
treacherous Bacon, a licentious Goethe.” Sir Roger de Coverley
observed that none but men of fine parts deserve to be hanged.
Kaftan, Dogmatik, 317—“The greater sin often involves the lesser
guilt; the lesser sin the greater guilt.” Robert Browning, The
Ring and the Book, 227 (Pope, 1975)—“There’s a new tribunal now
Higher than God’s,—the educated man’s! Nice sense of honor in the
human breast Supersedes here the old coarse oracle!” Dr. H. E.
Robins holds that “palliation of guilt according to light is not
possible under a system of pure law, and is possible only because
the probation of the sinner is a probation of grace.”

C. Sins of infirmity, and sins of presumption.

Here the guilt is measured by the energy of the evil will. Sin may be known to be sin, yet may be committed in haste or weakness. Though haste and weakness constitute a palliation of the offence which springs therefrom, yet they are themselves sins, as revealing an unbelieving and disordered heart. But of far greater guilt are those presumptuous choices of evil in which not weakness, but strength of will, is manifest.

_Ps. 19:12, 13_—“_Clear thou me from hidden faults. Keep back thy
servant also from presumptuous sins_”; _Is. 5:18_—“_Woe unto them
that draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, and sin as it were
with a cart-rope_”—not led away insensibly by sin, but earnestly,
perseveringly, and wilfully working away at it; _Gal.
6:1_—“_overtaken in any trespass_”; _1 Tim. 5:24_—“_Some men’s
sins are evident, going before unto judgment; and some men also
they follow after_”—some men’s sins are so open, that they act as
officers to bring to justice those who commit them; whilst others
require after-proof (An. Par. Bible). Luther represents one of the
former class as saying to himself: “Esto peccator, et pecca
fortiter.” On sins of passion and of reflection, see Bittinger, in
Princeton Rev., 1873:219.

_Micah 7:3_, marg.—“_Both hands are put forth for evil, to do it
diligently._” So we ought to do good. “My art is my life,” said
Grisi, the prima donna of the opera, “I save myself all day for
that one bound upon the stage.” H. Bonar: “Sin worketh,—Let me
work too. Busy as sin, my work I ply, Till I rest in the rest of
eternity.” German criminal law distinguishes between intentional
homicide without deliberation, and intentional homicide with
deliberation. There are three grades of sin: 1. Sins of ignorance,
like Paul’s persecuting; 2. sins of infirmity, like Peter’s
denial; 3. sins of presumption, like David’s murder of Uriah. Sins
of presumption were unpardonable under the Jewish law; they are
not unpardonable under Christ.

D. Sin of incomplete, and sin of final, obduracy.

Here the guilt is measured, not by the objective sufficiency or insufficiency of divine grace, but by the degree of unreceptiveness into which sin has brought the soul. As the only sin unto death which is described in Scripture is the sin against the Holy Spirit, we here consider the nature of that sin.

_Mat 12:31_—“_Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men;
but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven_”;
_32_—“_And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it
shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy
Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor
in that which is to come_”; _Mark 3:29_—“_whosoever shall
blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is
guilty of an eternal sin_”; _1 John 5:16, 17_—“_If any man see his
brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and God will
give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin
into death: not concerning this do I say that he should make
request. All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto
death_”; _Heb. 10:26_—“_if we sin wilfully after that we have
received the knowledge of the truth, then remaineth no more a
sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment,
and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries._”

Ritschl holds all sin that comes short of definitive rejection of
Christ to be ignorance rather than sin, and to be the object of no
condemning sentence. This is to make the sin against the Holy
Spirit the only real sin. Conscience and Scripture alike
contradict this view. There is much incipient hardening of the
heart that precedes the sin of final obduracy. See Denney, Studies
in Theology, 80. The composure of the criminal is not always a
sign of innocence. S. S. Times, April 12, 1902:200—“Sensitiveness
of conscience and of feeling, and responsiveness of countenance
and bearing, are to be retained by purity of life and freedom from
transgression. On the other hand composure of countenance and
calmness under suspicion and accusation are likely to be a result
of continuance in wrong doing, with consequent hardening of the
whole moral nature.”

Weismann, Heredity, 2:8—“As soon as any organ falls into disuse,
it degenerates, and finally is lost altogether.... In parasites
the organs of sense degenerate.” Marconi’s wireless telegraphy
requires an attuned “receiver.” The “transmitter” sends out
countless rays into space: only one capable of corresponding
vibrations can understand them. The sinner may so destroy his
receptivity, that the whole universe may be uttering God’s truth,
yet he be unable to hear a word of it. The Outlook: “If a man
should put out his eyes, he could not see—nothing could make him
see. So if a man should by obstinate wickedness destroy his power
to believe in God’s forgiveness, he would be in a hopeless state.
Though God would still be gracious, the man could not see it, and
so could not take God’s forgiveness to himself.”

The sin against the Holy Spirit is not to be regarded simply as an isolated act, but also as the external symptom of a heart so radically and finally set against God that no power which God can consistently use will ever save it. This sin, therefore, can be only the culmination of a long course of self-hardening and self-depraving. He who has committed it must be either profoundly indifferent to his own condition, or actively and bitterly hostile to God; so that anxiety or fear on account of one’s condition is evidence that it has not been committed. The sin against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven, simply because the soul that has committed it has ceased to be receptive of divine influences, even when those influences are exerted in the utmost strength which God has seen fit to employ in his spiritual administration.

The commission of this sin is marked by a loss of spiritual sight;
the blind fish of the Mammoth Cave left light for darkness, and so
in time lost their eyes. It is marked by a loss of religious
sensibility; the sensitive-plant loses Its sensitiveness, in
proportion to the frequency with which it is touched. It is marked
by a loss of power to will the good; “the lava hardens after it
has broken from the crater, and in that state cannot return to its
source” (Van Oosterzee). The same writer also remarks (Dogmatics,
2:438): “Herod Antipas, after earlier doubt and slavishness,
reached such deadness as to be able to mock the Savior, at the
mention of whose name he had not long before trembled.” Julius
Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:425—“It is not that divine grace is
absolutely refused to any one who in true penitence asks
forgiveness of this sin; but he who commits it never fulfills the
subjective conditions upon which forgiveness is possible, because
the aggravation of sin to this ultimatum destroys in him all
susceptibility of repentance. The way of return to God is closed
against no one who does not close it against himself.” Drummond,
Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 97-120, illustrates the
downward progress of the sinner by the law of degeneration in the
vegetable and animal world: pigeons, roses, strawberries, all tend
to revert to the primitive and wild type. “_How shall we escape,
if we neglect so great a salvation?_” (_Heb.2:3_).

Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3:5—“You all know security Is mortals’
chiefest enemy.” Moulton, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist,
90-124—“Richard III is the ideal villain. Villainy has become an
end in itself. Richard is an artist in villainy. He lacks the
emotions naturally attending crime. He regards villainy with the
intellectual enthusiasm of the artist. His villainy is ideal in
its success. There is a fascination of irresistibility in him. He
is imperturbable in his crime. There is no effort, but rather
humor, in it; a recklessness which suggests boundless resources;
an inspiration which excludes calculation. Shakespeare relieves
the representation from the charge of monstrosity by turning all
this villainous history into the unconscious development of
Nemesis.” See also A. H. Strong, Great Poets, 188-193. Robert
Browning’s Guido, in The Ring and the Book, is an example of pure
hatred of the good. Guido hates Pompilia for her goodness, and
declares that, if he catches her in the next world, he will murder
her there, as he murdered her here.

Alexander VI, the father of Cæsar and Lucrezia Borgia, the pope of
cruelty and lust, wore yet to the day of his death the look of
unfailing joyousness and geniality, yes, of even retiring
sensitiveness and modesty. No fear or reproach of conscience
seemed to throw gloom over his life, as in the cases of Tiberius
and Louis XI. He believed himself under the special protection of
the Virgin, although he had her painted with the features of his
paramour, Julia Farnese. He never scrupled at false witness,
adultery, or murder. See Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia, 294, 295.
Jeremy Taylor thus describes the progress of sin in the sinner:
“First it startles him, then it becomes pleasing, then delightful,
then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed; then the man is
impenitent, then obstinate, then resolved never to repent, then
damned.”

There is a state of utter insensibility to emotions of love or
fear, and man by his sin may reach that state. The act of
blasphemy is only the expression of a hardened or a hateful heart.
B. H. Payne: “The calcium flame will char the steel wire so that
it is no longer affected by the magnet.... As the blazing cinders
and black curling smoke which the volcano spews from its rumbling
throat are the accumulation of months and years, so the sin
against the Holy Spirit is not a thoughtless expression in a
moment of passion or rage, but the giving vent to a state of heart
and mind abounding in the accumulations of weeks and months of
opposition to the gospel.”

Dr. J. P. Thompson: “The unpardonable sin is the knowing, wilful,
persistent, contemptuous, malignant spurning of divine truth and
grace, as manifested to the soul by the convincing and
illuminating power of the Holy Ghost.” Dorner says that “therefore
this sin does not belong to Old Testament times, or to the mere
revelation of law. It implies the full revelation of the grace in
Christ, and the conscious rejection of it by a soul to which the
Spirit has made it manifest (_Acts 17:30_—‘_The times of
ignorance, therefore, God overlooked_’; _Rom. 3:25_—‘_the passing
over of the sins done aforetime_’).” But was it not under the Old
Testament that God said: “_My Spirit shall not strive with man
forever_” (_Gen. 6:3_), and “_Ephraim is joined to idols; let him
alone_” (_Hosea 4:17_)? The sin against the Holy Ghost is a sin
against grace, but it does not appear to be limited to New
Testament times.

It is still true that the unpardonable sin is a sin committed
against the Holy Spirit rather than against Christ: _Mat.
12:32_—“_whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it
shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy
Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor
in that which is to come._” Jesus warns the Jews against it,—he
does not say they had already committed it. They would seem to
have committed it when, after Pentecost, they added to their
rejection of Christ the rejection of the Holy Spirit’s witness to
Christ’s resurrection. See Schaff, Sin against the Holy Ghost;
Lemme, Sünde wider den Heiligen Geist; Davis, in Bap. Rev.,
1862:317-326; Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine, 283-289. On the general
subject of kinds of sin and degrees of guilt, see Kahnis,
Dogmatik, 3:284, 298.

III. Penalty.

1. Idea of penalty.

By penalty, we mean that pain or loss which is directly or indirectly inflicted by the Lawgiver, in vindication of his justice outraged by the violation of law.

Turretin, 1:213—“Justice necessarily demands that all sin be
punished, but it does not equally demand that it be punished in
the very person that sinned, or in just such time and degree.” So
far as this statement of the great Federal theologian is intended
to explain our guilt in Adam and our justification in Christ, we
can assent to his words; but we must add that the reason, in each
case, why we suffer the penalty of Adam’s sin, and Christ suffers
the penalty of our sins, is not to be found in any
covenant-relation, but rather in the fact that the sinner is one
with Adam, and Christ is one with the believer,—in other words,
not covenant-unity, but life-unity. The word “penalty,” like
“pain,” is derived from pœna, ποινή, and it implies the
correlative notion of desert. As under the divine government there
can be no constructive _guilt_, so there can be no _penalty_
inflicted by legal fiction. Christ’s sufferings were penalty, not
arbitrarily inflicted, nor yet borne to expiate personal guilt,
but as the just due of the human nature with which he had united
himself, and a part of which he was. Prof. Wm. Adams Brown: “Loss,
not suffering, is the supreme penalty for Christians. The real
penalty is separation from God. If such separation involves
suffering, that is a sign of God’s mercy, for where there is life,
there is hope. Suffering is always to be interpreted as an appeal
from God to man.”

In this definition it is implied that:

A. The natural consequences of transgression, although they constitute a part of the penalty of sin, do not exhaust that penalty. In all penalty there is a personal element—the holy wrath of the Lawgiver,—which natural consequences but partially express.

We do not deny, but rather assert, that the natural consequences
of transgression are a part of the penalty of sin. Sensual sins
are punished, in the deterioration and corruption of the body;
mental and spiritual sins, in the deterioration and corruption of
the soul. _Prov. 5:22_—“_His own iniquities shall take the wicked,
And he shall be holden with the cords of his sin_”—as the hunter
is caught in the toils which he has devised for the wild beast.
Sin is self-detecting and self-tormenting. But this is only half
the truth. Those who would confine all penalty to the reaction of
natural laws are in danger of forgetting that God is not simply
immanent in the universe, but is also transcendent, and that “_to
fall into the hands of the living God_” (_Heb. 10:31_) is to fall
into the hands, not simply of the law, but also of the Lawgiver.
Natural law is only the regular expression of God’s mind and will.
We abhor a person who is foul in body and in speech. There is no
penalty of sin more dreadful than its being an object of
abhorrence to God. _Jer. 44:4_—“_Oh, do not this abominable thing
that I hate!_” Add to this the law of continuity which makes sin
reproduce itself, and the law of conscience which makes sin its
own detecter, judge, and tormentor, and we have sufficient
evidence of God’s wrath against it, apart from any external
inflictions. The divine feeling toward sin is seen in Jesus’
scourging the traffickers in the temple, his denunciation of the
Pharisees, his weeping over Jerusalem, his agony in Gethsemane.
Imagine the feeling of a father toward his daughter’s betrayer,
and God’s feeling toward sin may be faintly understood.

The deed returns to the doer, and character determines
destiny—this law is a revelation of the righteousness of God.
Penalty will vindicate the divine character in the long run,
though not always in time. This is recognized in all religions.
Buddhist priest in Japan: “The evil doer weaves a web around
himself, as the silkworm weaves its cocoon.” Socrates made Circe’s
turning of men into swine a mere parable of the self-brutalizing
influence of sin. In Dante’s Inferno, the punishments are all of
them the sins themselves; hence men are in hell before they die.
Hegel: “Penalty is the other half of crime.” R. W. Emerson:
“Punishment not follows, but accompanies, crime.” Sagebeer, The
Bible in Court, 59—“Corruption is destruction, and the sinner is a
suicide; penalty corresponds with transgression and is the outcome
of it; sin is death in the making; death is sin in the final
infliction.” J. B. Thomas, Baptist Congress, 1901:110—“What
matters it whether I wait by night for the poacher and
deliberately shoot him, or whether I set the pistol so that he
shall be shot by it when he commits the depredation?” Tennyson,
Sea Dreams: “His gain is loss; for he that wrongs his friend
Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about A silent court of
justice in his breast, Himself the judge and jury, and himself The
prisoner at the bar, ever condemn’d: And that drags down his life:
then comes what comes Hereafter.”

B. The object of penalty is not the reformation of the offender or the ensuring of social or governmental safety. These ends may be incidentally secured through its infliction, but the great end of penalty is the vindication of the character of the Lawgiver. Penalty is essentially a necessary reaction of the divine holiness against sin. Inasmuch, however, as wrong views of the object of penalty have so important a bearing upon our future studies of doctrine, we make fuller mention of the two erroneous theories which have greatest currency.

(_a_) Penalty is not essentially reformatory.—By this we mean that the reformation of the offender is not its primary design,—as penalty, it is not intended to reform. Penalty, in itself, proceeds not from the love and mercy of the Lawgiver, but from his justice. Whatever reforming influences may in any given instance be connected with it are not parts of the penalty, but are mitigations of it, and they are added not in justice but in grace. If reformation follows the infliction of penalty, it is not the effect of the penalty, but the effect of certain benevolent agencies which have been provided to turn into a means of good what naturally would be to the offender only a source of harm.

That the object of penalty is not reformation appears from Scripture, where punishment is often referred to God’s justice, but never to God’s love; from the intrinsic ill-desert of sin, to which penalty is correlative; from the fact that punishment must be vindicative, in order to be disciplinary, and just, in order to be reformatory; from the fact that upon this theory punishment would not be just when the sinner was already reformed or could not be reformed, so that the greater the sin the less the punishment must be.

Punishment is essentially different from chastisement. The latter
proceeds from love (_Jer. 10:24_—“_correct me, but in measure; not
in thine anger_”; _Heb. 12:6_—“_Whom the Lord loveth he
chasteneth_”). Punishment proceeds not from love but from
justice—see _Ez. 28:22_—“_I shall have executed judgments in her,
and shall be sanctified in her_”; _36:21, 22_—in judgment, “_I do
not this for your sake, but for my holy name_”; _Heb. 12:29_—“_our
God is a consuming fire_”; _Rev. 15:1, 4_—“_wrath of God ... thou
only art holy ... thy righteous acts have been made manifest_”;
_16:5_—“_Righteous art thou, ... thou Holy One, because thou didst
thus judge_”; _19:2_—“_true and righteous are his judgments; for
he hath judged the great harlot._” So untrue is the saying of Sir
Thomas More’s Utopia: “The end of all punishment is the
destruction of vice, and the saving of men.” Luther: “God has two
rods: one of mercy and goodness; another of anger and fury.”
Chastisement is the former; penalty the latter.

If the reform-theory of penalty is correct, then to punish crime,
without asking about reformation, makes the state the
transgressor; its punishments should be proportioned, not to the
greatness of the crime, but to the sinner’s state; the
death-penalty should be abolished, upon the ground that it will
preclude all hope of reformation. But the same theory would
abolish any final judgment, or eternal punishment; for, when the
soul becomes so wicked that there is no more hope of reform, there
is no longer any justice in punishing it. The greater the sin, the
less the punishment; and Satan, the greatest sinner, should have
no punishment at all.

Modern denunciations of capital punishment are often based upon
wrong conceptions of the object of penalty. Opposition to the
doctrine of future punishment would give way, if the opposers
realized what penalty is ordained to secure. Harris, God the
Creator, 2:447, 451—“Punishment is not primarily reformatory; it
educates conscience and vindicates the authority of law.” R. W.
Dale: “It is not necessary to prove that hanging is beneficial to
the person hanged. The theory that society has no right to send a
man to jail, to feed him on bread and water, to make him pick hemp
or work a treadmill, except to reform him, is utterly rotten. He
must deserve to be punished, or else the law has no right to
punish him.” A House of Refuge or a State Industrial School is
primarily a penal institution, for it deprives persons of their
liberty and compels them against their will to labor. This loss
and deprivation on their part cannot be justified except upon the
ground that it is the desert of their wrong doing. Whatever
gracious and philanthropic influences may accompany this
confinement and compulsion, they cannot of themselves explain the
penal element in the institution. If they could, a _habeas corpus_
decree could be sought, and obtained, from any competent court.

God’s treatment of men in this world also combines the elements of
penalty and of chastisement. Suffering is first of all deserved,
and this justifies its infliction. But it is at the beginning
accompanied with all manner of alleviating influences which tend
to draw men back to God. As these gracious influences are
resisted, the punitive element becomes preponderating, and penalty
reflects God’s holiness rather than his love. Moberly, Atonement
and Personality, 1-25—“Pain is not the immediate object of
punishment. It must be a means to an end, a moral end, namely,
penitence. But where the depraved man becomes a human tiger, there
punishment must reach its culmination. There is a punishment which
is not restorative. According to the spirit in which punishment is
received, it may be internal or external. All punishment begins as
discipline. It tends to repentance. Its triumph would be the
triumph within. It becomes retributive only as the sinner refuses
to repent. Punishment is only the development of sin. The ideal
penitent condemns himself, identifies himself with righteousness
by accepting penalty. In proportion as penalty fails in its
purpose to produce penitence, it acquires more and more a
retributive character, whose climax is not Calvary but Hell.”

Alexander, Moral Order and Progress, 327-333 (quoted in Ritchie,
Darwin, and Hegel, 67)—“Punishment has three characters: It is
retributive, in so far as it falls under the general law that
resistance to the dominant type recoils on the guilty or resistant
creature; it is preventive, in so far as, being a statutory
enactment, it aims at securing the maintenance of the law
irrespective of the individual’s character. But this latter
characteristic is secondary, and the former is comprehended in the
third idea, that of reformation, which is the superior form in
which retribution appears when the type is a mental ideal and is
affected by conscious persons.” Hyslop on Freedom, Responsibility,
and Punishment, in Mind, April, 1894:167-189—“In the Elmira
Reformatory, out of 2295 persons paroled between 1876 and 1889,
1907 or 83 per cent. represent a probably complete reformation.
Determinists say that this class of persons cannot do otherwise.
Something is wrong with their theory. We conclude that 1. Causal
responsibility justifies preventive punishment; 2. Potential moral
responsibility justifies corrective punishment; 3. Actual moral
responsibility justifies retributive punishment.” Here we need
only to point out the incorrect use of the word “punishment,”
which belongs only to the last class. In the two former cases the
word “chastisement” should have been used. See Julius Müller,
Lehre von der Sünde, 1:334; Thornton, Old Fashioned Ethics, 70-73;
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:238, 239 (Syst. Doct., 3:134,135);
Robertson’s Sermons, 4th Series, no. 18 (Harper’s ed., 752); see
also this Compendium, references on Holiness, A. (_d_), page 273.

(_b_) Penalty is not essentially deterrent and preventive.—By this we mean that its primary design is not to protect society, by deterring men from the commission of like offences. We grant that this end is often secured in connection with punishment, both in family and civil government and under the government of God. But we claim that this is a merely incidental result, which God’s wisdom and goodness have connected with the infliction of penalty,—it cannot be the reason and ground for penalty itself. Some of the objections to the preceding theory apply also to this. But in addition to what has been said, we urge:

Penalty cannot be primarily designed to secure social and governmental safety, for the reason that it is never right to punish the individual simply for the good of society. No punishment, moreover, will or can do good to others that is not just and right in itself. Punishment does good, only when the person punished deserves punishment; and that _desert_ of punishment, and not the good effects that will follow it, must be the ground and reason why it is inflicted. The contrary theory would imply that the criminal might go free but for the effect of his punishment on others, and that man might rightly commit crime if only he were willing to bear the penalty.

Kant, Praktische Vernunft, 151 (ed. Rosenkranz)—“The notion of
ill-desert and punishableness is necessarily implied in the idea
of voluntary transgression; and the idea of punishment excludes
that of happiness in all its forms. For though he who inflicts
punishment may, it is true, also have a benevolent purpose to
produce by the punishment some good effect upon the criminal, yet
the punishment must be justified first of all as pure and simple
requital and retribution.... In every punishment as such, justice
is the very first thing and constitutes the essence of it. A
benevolent purpose, it is true, may be conjoined with punishment;
but the criminal cannot claim this as his due, and he has no right
to reckon on it.” These utterances of Kant apply to the deterrent
theory as well as to the reformatory theory of penalty. The
element of desert or retribution is the basis of the other
elements in punishment. See James Seth, Ethical Principles,
333-338; Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:717; Hodge, Essays, 133.

A certain English judge, in sentencing a criminal, said that he
punished him, not for stealing sheep, but that sheep might not be
stolen. But it is the greatest injustice to punish a man for the
mere sake of example. Society cannot be benefited by such
injustice. The theory can give no reason why one should be
punished rather than another, nor why a second offence should be
punished more heavily than the first. On this theory, moreover, if
there were but one creature in the universe, and none existed
beside himself to be affected by his suffering, he could not
justly be punished, however great might be his sin. The only
principle that can explain punishment is the principle of
_desert_. See Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2:348.

“Crime is most prevented by the conviction that crime deserves
punishment; the greatest deterrent agency is conscience.” So in
the government of God “there is no hint that future punishment
works good to the lost or to the universe. The integrity of the
redeemed is not to be maintained by subjecting the lost to a
punishment they do not deserve. The wrong merits punishment, and
God is bound to punish it, whether good comes of it or not. Sin is
intrinsically ill-deserving. Impurity must be banished from God.
God must vindicate himself, or cease to be holy” (see art. on the
Philosophy of Punishment, by F. L. Patton, in Brit. and For.
Evang. Rev., Jan. 1878:126-139).

Bowne, Principles of Ethics, 186, 274—Those who maintain
punishment to be essentially deterrent and preventive “ignore the
metaphysics of responsibility and treat the problem ‘positively
and objectively’ on the basis of physiology, sociology, etc., and
in the interests of public safety. The question of guilt or
innocence is as irrelevant as the question concerning the guilt or
innocence of wasps and hornets. An ancient holder of this view set
forth the opinion that ‘_it was expedient that one man should die
for the people_’ (_John 18:14_), and so Jesus was put to death....
A mob in eastern Europe might be persuaded that a Jew had
slaughtered a Christian child as a sacrifice. The authorities
might be perfectly sure of the man’s innocence, and yet proceed to
punish him because of the mob’s clamor, and the danger of an
outbreak.” Men high up in the French government thought it was
better that Dreyfus should suffer for the sake of France, than
that a scandal affecting the honor of the French army should be
made public. In perfect consistency with this principle, McKim,
Heredity and Human Progress, 192, advocates infliction of painless
death upon idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, habitual drunkards,
insane criminals, murderers, nocturnal house breakers, and all
dangerous and incorrigible persons. He would change the place of
slaughter from our streets and homes to our penal institutions; in
other words, he would abandon punishment, but protect society.

Failure to recognize holiness as the fundamental attribute of God,
and the affirmation of that holiness as conditioning the exercise
of love, vitiates the discussion of penalty by A. H. Bradford, Age
of Faith, 243-250—“What is penal suffering designed to accomplish?
Is it to manifest the holiness of God? Is it to express the
sanctity of the moral law? Is it simply a natural consequence?
Does it manifest the divine Fatherhood? God does not inflict
penalty simply to satisfy himself or to manifest his holiness, any
more than an earthly father inflicts suffering on his child to
show his wrath against the wrongdoer or to manifest his own
goodness. The idea of punishment is essentially barbaric and
foreign to all that is known of the Deity. Penalty that is not
reformatory or protective is barbarism. In the home, punishment is
always discipline. Its object is the welfare of the child and the
family. Punishment as an expression of wrath or enmity, with no
remedial purpose beyond, is a relic of barbarism. It carries with
it the content of vengeance. It is the expression of anger, of
passion, or at best of cold justice. Penal suffering is
undoubtedly the divine holiness expressing its hatred of sin. But,
if it stops with such expression, it is not holiness, but
selfishness. If on the other hand that expression of holiness is
used or permitted in order that the sinner may be made to hate his
sin, then it is no more punishment, but chastisement. On any other
hypothesis, penal suffering has no justification except the
arbitrary will of the Almighty, and such a hypothesis is an
impeachment both of his justice and his love.” This view seems to
us to ignore the necessary reaction of divine holiness against
sin; to make holiness a mere form of love; a means to an end and
that end utilitarian; and so to deny to holiness any independent,
or even real, existence in the divine nature.

The wrath of God is calm and judicial, devoid of all passion or
caprice, but it is the expression of eternal and unchangeable
righteousness. It is vindicative but not vindictive. Without it
there could be no government, and God would not be God. F. W.
Robertson: “Does not the element of vengeance exist in all
punishment, and does not the feeling exist, not as a sinful, but
as an essential, part of human nature? If so, there must be wrath
in God.” Lord Bacon: “Revenge is a wild sort of justice.” Stephen:
“Criminal law provides legitimate satisfaction of the passions of
revenge.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:287. _Per contra_, see Bib.
Sac., Apr. 1881:286-302; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 46, 47;
Chitty’s ed. of Blackstone’s Commentaries, 4:7; Wharton, Criminal
Law, vol. 1, bk. 1, chap. 1.

2. The actual penalty of sin.

The one word in Scripture which designates the total penalty of sin is “death.” Death, however, is twofold:

A. Physical death,—or the separation of the soul from the body, including all those temporal evils and sufferings which result from disturbance of the original harmony between body and soul, and which are the working of death in us. That physical death is a part of the penalty of sin, appears:

(_a_) From Scripture.

This is the most obvious import of the threatening in Gen. 2:17—“thou shalt surely die”; _cf._ 3:19—“unto dust shalt thou return.” Allusions to this threat in the O. T. confirm this interpretation: Num. 16:29—“visited after the visitation of all men,” where פקד = judicial visitation, or punishment; 27:3 (LXX.—δι᾽ ἁμαρτίαν αὐτοῦ). The prayer of Moses in Ps. 90: 7-9, 11, and the prayer of Hezekiah in Is. 38:17, 18, recognize plainly the penal nature of death. The same doctrine is taught in the N. T., as for example, John 8:44; Rom. 5:12, 14, 16, 17, where the judicial phraseology is to be noted (_cf._ 1:32); see 6:23 also. In 1 Pet. 4:6, physical death is spoken of as God’s judgment against sin. In 1 Cor. 15:21, 22, the bodily resurrection of all believers, in Christ, is contrasted with the bodily death of all men, in Adam. Rom. 4:24, 25; 6:9, 10; 8:3, 10, 11; Gal. 3:13, show that Christ submitted to physical death as the penalty of sin, and by his resurrection from the grave gave proof that the penalty of sin was exhausted and that humanity in him was justified. “As the resurrection of the body is a part of the redemption, so the death of the body is a part of the penalty.”

_Ps. 90:7, 9_—“_we are consumed in thine anger ... all our days
are passed away in thy wrath_”; _Is. 38:17, 18_—“_thou hast in
love to my soul delivered it from the pit ... thou hast cast all
my sins behind thy back. For Sheol cannot praise thee_”; _John
8:44_—“_He_ [Satan] _was a murderer from the beginning_”;
_11:33_—Jesus “_groaned in the spirit_” = was moved with
indignation at what sin had wrought; _Rom. 5:12, 14, 16,
17_—“_death through sin ... death passed unto all men, for that
all sinned ... death reigned ... even over them that had not
sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression ... the judgment
came of one_ [trespass] _unto condemnation ... by the trespass of
the one, death reigned through the one_”; _cf._ the legal
phraseology in _1:32_—“_who, knowing the ordinance of God, that
they that practise such things are worthy of death._” _Rom.
6:23_—“_the wages of sin is death_” = death is sin’s just due. _1
Pet. 4:6_—“_that they might be judged indeed according to men in
the flesh_” = that they might suffer physical death, which to men
in general is the penalty of sin. _1 Cor. 15:21, 22_—“_as in Adam
all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive_”; _Rom. 4:24,
25_—“_raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up
for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification_”; _6:9,
10_—“_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_”;
_8:3, 10, 11_—“_God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh ... the body is dead
because of sin_” (= a corpse, on account of sin—Meyer; so Julius
Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:291) ... “_he that raised up Christ Jesus
from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies_”; _Gal.
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._”

On the relation between death and sin, see Griffith-Jones, Ascent
through Christ, 169-185—“They are not antagonistic, but
complementary to each other—the one spiritual and the other
biological. The natural fact is fitted to a moral use.” Savage,
Life after Death, 33—“Men did not at first believe in natural
death. If a man died, it was because some one had killed him. No
ethical reason was desired or needed. At last however they sought
some moral explanation, and came to look upon death as a
punishment for human sin.” If this has been the course of human
evolution, we should conclude that the later belief represents the
truth rather than the earlier. Scripture certainly affirms the
doctrine that death itself, and not the mere accompaniments of
death, is the consequence and penalty of sin. For this reason we
cannot accept the very attractive and plausible theory which we
have now to mention:

Newman Smyth, Place of Death in Evolution, holds that as the bow
in the cloud was appointed for a moral use, so death, which before
had been simply the natural law of the creation, was on occasion
of man’s sin appointed for a moral use. It is this _acquired_
moral character of death with which Biblical Genesis has to do.
Death becomes a curse, by being a fear and a torment. Animals have
not this fear. But in man death stirs up conscience. Redemption
takes away the fear, and death drops back into its natural aspect,
or even becomes a gateway to life. Death is a curse to no animal
but man. The retributive element to death is the effect of sin.
When man has become perfected, death will cease to be of use, and
will, as the last enemy, be destroyed. Death here is Nature’s
method of securing always fresh, young, thrifty life, and the
greatest possible exuberance and joy of it. It is God’s way of
securing the greatest possible number and variety of immortal
beings. There are many schoolrooms for eternity in God’s universe,
and a ceaseless succession of scholars through them. There are
many folds, but one flock. The reaper Death keeps making room.
Four or five generations are as many as we can individually love,
and get moral stimulus from.

Methuselahs too many would hold back the new generations. Bagehot
says that civilization needs first to form a cake of custom, and
secondly to break it up. Death, says Martineau, Study, 1:372-374,
is the provision for taking us abroad, before we have stayed too
long at home to lose our receptivity. Death is the liberator of
souls. The death of successive generations gives variety to
heaven. Death perfects love, reveals it to itself, unites as life
could not. As for Christ, so for us, it is expedient that we
should go away.

While we welcome this reasoning as showing how God has overruled
evil for good, we regard the explanation as unscriptural and
unsatisfactory, for the reason that it takes no account of the
ethics of natural law. The law of death is an expression of the
nature of God, and specially of his holy wrath against sin. Other
methods of propagating the race and reinforcing its life could
have been adopted than that which involves pain and suffering and
death. These do not exist in the future life,—they would not exist
here, if it were not for the fact of sin. Dr. Smyth shows how the
evil of death has been overruled,—he has not shown the reason for
the original existence of the evil. The Scriptures explain this as
the penalty and stigma which God has attached to sin: _Psalm 90:7,
8_ makes this plain: “_For we are consumed in thine anger, And in
thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before
thee, Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance._” The whole
psalm has for its theme: Death as the wages of sin. And this is
the teaching of Paul, in _Rom. 5:12_—“_through one man sin entered
into the world, and death through sin._”

(_b_) From reason.

The universal prevalence of suffering and death among rational creatures cannot be reconciled with the divine justice, except upon the supposition that it is a judicial infliction on account of a common sinfulness of nature belonging even to those who have not reached moral consciousness.

The objection that death existed in the animal creation before the Fall may be answered by saying that, but for the fact of man’s sin, it would not have existed. We may believe that God arranged even the geologic history to correspond with the foreseen fact of human apostasy (_cf._ Rom. 8:20-23—where the creation is said to have been made subject to vanity by reason of man’s sin).

On _Rom. 8:20-23_—“_the creation was subjected to vanity, not of
its own will_”—see Meyer’s Com., and Bap. Quar., 1:143; also _Gen.
3:17-19_—“_cursed is the ground for thy sake._” See also note on
the Relation of Creation to the Holiness and Benevolence of God,
and references, pages 402, 403. As the vertebral structure of the
first fish was an “anticipative consequence” of man, so the
suffering and death of fish pursued and devoured by other fish
were an “anticipative consequence” of man’s foreseen war with God
and with himself.

The translation of Enoch and Elijah, and of the saints that remain at Christ’s second coming, seems intended to teach us that death is not a necessary law of organized being, and to show what would have happened to Adam if he had been obedient. He was created a “natural,” “earthly” body, but might have attained a higher being, the “spiritual,” “heavenly” body, without the intervention of death. Sin, however, has turned the normal condition of things into the rare exception (_cf._ 1 Cor. 15:42-50). Since Christ endured death as the penalty of sin, death to the Christian becomes the gateway through which he enters into full communion with his Lord (see references below).

Through physical death all Christians will pass, except those few
who like Enoch and Elijah were translated, and those many who
shall be alive at Christ’s second coming. Enoch and Elijah were
possible types of those surviving saints. On _1 Cor. 15:51_—“_We
shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,_” see Edward
Irving, Works, 5:135. The apocryphal Assumption of Moses, verse 9,
tells us that Joshua, being carried in vision to the spot at the
moment of Moses’ decease, beheld a double Moses, one dropped into
the grave as belonging to the earth, the other mingling with the
angels. The belief in Moses’ immortality was not conditioned upon
any resuscitation of the earthly corpse; see Martineau, Seat of
Authority, 364. When Paul was caught up to the third heaven, it
may have been a temporary translation of the disembodied spirit.
Set free for a brief space from the prison house which confined
it, it may have passed within the veil and have seen and heard
what mortal tongue could not describe; see Luckock, Intermediate
State, 4. So Lazarus probably could not tell what he saw: “He told
it not; or something sealed The lips of that Evangelist”; see
Tennyson, In Memoriam, xxxi.

Nicoll, Life of Christ: “We have every one of us to face the last
enemy, death. Ever since the world began, all who have entered it
sooner or later have had this struggle, and the battle has always
ended in one way. Two indeed escaped, but they did not escape by
meeting and mastering their foe; they escaped by being taken away
from the battle.” But this physical death, for the Christian, has
been turned by Christ into a blessing. A pardoned prisoner may be
still kept in prison, as the best possible benefit to an exhausted
body; so the external fact of physical death may remain, although
it has ceased to be penalty. Macaulay: “The aged prisoner’s chains
are needed to support him; the darkness that has weakened his
sight is necessary to preserve it.” So spiritual death is not
wholly removed from the Christian; a part of it, namely,
depravity, still remains; yet it has ceased to be punishment,—it
is only chastisement. When the finger unties the ligature that
bound it, the body which previously had only chastised begins to
cure the trouble. There is still pain, but the pain is no longer
punitive,—it is now remedial. In the midst of the whipping, when
the boy repents, his punishment is changed to chastisement.

_John 14:3_—“_And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come
again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye
may be also_”; _1 Cor. 15:54-57_—“_Death is swallowed up in
victory ... O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is
sin; and the power of sin is the law_”—_i. e._, the law’s
condemnation, its penal infliction; _2 Cor. 5:1-9_—“_For we know
that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved we have a
building from God ... we are of good courage, I say, and are
willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with
the Lord_”; _Phil. 1:21, 23_—“_to die is gain ... having the
desire to depart and be with Christ; for it is very far better._”
In Christ and his bearing the penalty of sin, the Christian has
broken through the circle of natural race-connection, and is saved
from corporate evil so far as it is punishment. The Christian may
be chastised, but he is never punished: _Rom. 8:1_—“_There is
therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus._”
At the house of Jairus Jesus said: “_Why make ye a tumult, and
weep?_” and having reproved the doleful clamorists, “_he put them
all forth_” (_Mark 5:39, 40_). The wakes and requiems and masses
and vigils of the churches of Rome and of Russia are all heathen
relics, entirely foreign to Christianity.

Palmer, Theological Definition, 57—“Death feared and fought
against is terrible; but a welcome to death is the death of death
and the way to life.” The idea that punishment yet remains for the
Christian is “the bridge to the papal doctrine of purgatorial
fires.” Browning’s words, in The Ring and the Book, 2:60—“In His
face is light, but in his shadow healing too,” are applicable to
God’s fatherly chastenings, but not to his penal retributions. On
_Acts 7:60_—“_he fell asleep_”—Arnot remarks: “When death becomes
the property of the believer, it receives a new name, and is
called sleep.” Another has said: “Christ did not send, but came
himself to save; The ransom-price he did not lend, but gave;
Christ _died_, the shepherd for the sheep; We only _fall asleep_.”
_Per contra_, see Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre, 375, and
Hengstenberg, Ev. K.-Z., 1864:1065—“All suffering is punishment.”

B. Spiritual death,—or the separation of the soul from God, including all that pain of conscience, loss of peace, and sorrow of spirit, which result from disturbance of the normal relation between the soul and God.

(_a_) Although physical death is a part of the penalty of sin, it is by no means the chief part. The term “death” is frequently used in Scripture in a moral and spiritual sense, as denoting the absence of that which constitutes the true life of the soul, namely, the presence and favor of God.

_Mat. 8:22_—“_Follow me; and leave the_ [spiritually] _dead to
bury their own_ [physically] _dead_”; _Luke 15:32_—“_this thy
brother was dead, and is alive again_”; _John 5:24_—“_He that
heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal
life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death
into life_”; _8:51_—“_If a man keep my word, he shall never see
death_”; _Rom. 8:13_—“_if ye live after the flesh, ye must die;
but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye
shall live_”; _Eph. 2:1_—“_when ye were dead through your
trespasses and sins_”; _5:14_—“_Awake, thou that sleepest, and
arise from the dead_”; _1 Tim. 5:6_—“_she that giveth herself to
pleasure is dead while __ she liveth_”; _James 5:20_—“_he who
converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul
from death_”; _1 John 3:14_—“_He that loveth not abideth in
death_”; _Rev. 3:1_—“_thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou
art dead._”