Chapter XLI: Section IV: The Offices Of Christ (2)

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._”