Chapter XLII: Section IV: The Offices Of Christ (3)

If Christ merely supposed himself to be deserted by God, “not only
does Christ become an erring man, and, so far as the predicate
deity is applicable to him, an erring God; but, if he cherished
unfounded distrust of God, how can it be possible still to
maintain that his will was in abiding, perfect agreement and
identity with the will of God?” See Kant, Lotze, and Ritschl, by
Stählin, 219. Charles C. Everett, Gospel of Paul, says Jesus was
not crucified because he was accursed, but he was accursed because
he was crucified, so that, in wreaking vengeance upon him, Jewish
law abrogated itself. This interpretation however contradicts _2
Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our
behalf_”—where the divine identification of Christ with the race
of sinners antedates and explains his sufferings. _John
1:29_—“_the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the
world_”—does not refer to Jesus as a lamb for gentleness, but as a
lamb for sacrifice. Maclaren: “How does Christ’s death prove God’s
love? Only on one supposition, namely, that Christ is the
incarnate Son of God, sent by the Father’s love and being his
express image”; and, we may add, suffering vicariously for us and
removing the obstacle in God’s mind to our pardon.

(_e_) The influence of Christ’s example is neither declared in Scripture, nor found in Christian experience, to be the chief result secured by his death. Mere example is but a new preaching of the law, which repels and condemns. The cross has power to lead men to holiness, only as it first shows a satisfaction made for their sins. Accordingly, most of the passages which represent Christ as an example also contain references to his propitiatory work.

There is no virtue in simply setting an example. Christ did
nothing, simply for the sake of example. Even his baptism was the
symbol of his propitiatory death; see pages 761, 762. The
apostle’s exhortation is not “abstain from all _appearance_ of
evil” (_1 Thess. 5:22_, A. Vers.), but “_abstain from every form
of evil_” (Rev. Vers.). Christ’s death is the payment of a real
debt due to God; and the convicted sinner needs first to see the
debt which he owes to the divine justice paid by Christ, before he
can think hopefully of reforming his life. The hymns of the
church: “I lay my sins on Jesus,” and “Not all the blood of
beasts,” represent the view of Christ’s sufferings which
Christians have derived from the Scriptures. When the sinner sees
that the mortgage is cancelled, that the penalty has been borne,
he can devote himself freely to the service of his Redeemer. _Rev.
12:11_—“_they overcame him_ [Satan] _because of the blood of the
Lamb_”—as Christ overcame Satan by his propitiatory sacrifice, so
we overcome by appropriating to ourselves Christ’s atonement and
his Spirit; _cf._ _1 John 5:4_—“_this is the victory that hath
overcome the world, even our faith._” The very text upon which
Socinians most rely, when it is taken in connection with the
context, proves their theory to be a misrepresentation of
Scripture, _1 Pet. 2:21_—“_Christ also suffered for you, leaving
you an example, that ye should follow his steps_”—is succeeded by
_verse 24_—“_who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the
tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto
righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed_”—the latter words
being a direct quotation from Isaiah’s description of the
substitutionary sufferings of the Messiah (_Is. 53:5_).

When a deeply convicted sinner was told that God could cleanse his
heart and make him over anew, he replied with righteous
impatience: “That is not what I want,—I have a debt to pay first!”
A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 28, 89—“Nowhere in
tabernacle or temple shall we ever find the laver placed before
the altar. The altar is Calvary, and the laver is Pentecost,—one
stands for the sacrificial blood, the other for the sanctifying
Spirit.... So the oil which symbolised the sanctifying Spirit was
always put ‘_upon the blood of the trespass-offering_’ (_Lev.
14:17_).” The extremity of Christ’s suffering on the Cross was
coincident with the extremest manifestation of the guilt of the
race. The greatness of this he theoretically knew from the
beginning of his ministry. His baptism was not intended merely to
set an example. It was a recognition that sin deserved death; that
he was numbered with the transgressors; that he was sent to die
for the sin of the world. He was not so much a teacher, as he was
the subject of all teaching. In him the great suffering of the
holy God on account of sin is exhibited to the universe. The pain
of a few brief hours saves a world, only because it sets forth an
eternal fact in God’s being and opens to us God’s very heart.

Shakespeare, Henry V, 4:1—“There is some soul of goodness in
things evil. Would men observingly distil it out.” It is well to
preach on Christ as an example. Lyman Abbott says that Jesus’
blood purchases our pardon and redeems us to God, just as a
patriot’s blood redeems his country from servitude and purchases
its liberty. But even Ritschl, Just. and Recon., 2, goes beyond
this, when he says: “Those who advocate the example theory should
remember that Jesus withdraws himself from imitation when he sets
himself over against his disciples as the Author of forgiveness.
And they perceive that pardon must first be appropriated, before
it is possible for them to imitate his piety and moral
achievement.” This is a partial recognition of the truth that the
removal of objective guilt by Christ’s atonement must precede the
removal of subjective defilement by Christ’s regenerating and
sanctifying Spirit. Lidgett, Spir. Princ. of Atonement, 265-280,
shows that there is a fatherly demand for satisfaction, which must
be met by the filial response of the child. Thomas Chalmers at the
beginning of his ministry urged on his people the reformation of
their lives. But he confesses: “I never heard of any such
reformations being effected amongst them.” Only when he preached
the alienation of men from God, and forgiveness through the blood
of Christ, did he hear of their betterment.

Gordon, Christ of To-day, 129—“The consciousness of sin is largely
the creation of Christ.” Men like Paul, Luther, and Edwards show
this impressively. Foster, Christian life and Theology,
198-201—“There is of course a sense in which the Christian must
imitate Christ’s death, for he is to ‘_take up his cross daily_’
(_Luke 9:23_) and follow his Master; but in its highest meaning
and fullest scope the death of Christ is no more an object set for
our imitation than is the creation of the world.... Christ does
for man in his sacrifice what man could not do for himself. We see
in the Cross: 1. the magnitude of the guilt of sin; 2. our own
self-condemnation; 3. the adequate remedy,—for the object of law
is gained in the display of righteousness; 4. the objective ground
of forgiveness.” Maclaren: “Christianity without a dying Christ is
a dying Christianity.”

(_f_) This theory contradicts the whole tenor of the New Testament, in making the life, and not the death, of Christ the most significant and important feature of his work. The constant allusions to the death of Christ as the source of our salvation, as well as the symbolism of the ordinances, cannot be explained upon a theory which regards Christ as a mere example, and considers his sufferings as incidents, rather than essentials, of his work.

Dr. H. B. Hackett frequently called attention to the fact that the
recording in the gospels of only three years of Jesus’ life, and
the prominence given in the record to the closing scenes of that
life, are evidence that not his life, but his death, was the great
work of our Lord. Christ’s death, and not his life, is the central
truth of Christianity. The cross is _par excellence_ the Christian
symbol. In both the ordinances—in Baptism as well as in the Lord’s
Supper—it is the death of Christ that is primarily set forth.
Neither Christ’s example, nor his teaching, reveals God as does
his death. It is the death of Christ that links together all
Christian doctrines. The mark of Christ’s blood is upon them all,
as the scarlet thread running through every cord and rope of the
British navy gives sign that it is the property of the crown.

Did Jesus’ death have no other relation to our salvation than
Paul’s death had? Paul was a martyr, but his death is not even
recorded. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 92—“Paul does not dwell in any
way upon the life or work of our Lord, except as they are involved
in his death and resurrection.” What did Jesus’ words: “_It is
finished_” (_John 19:30_) mean? What was finished on the Socinian
theory? The Socinian salvation had not yet begun. Why did not
Jesus make the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper to be
memorials of his birth, rather than of his death? Why was not the
veil of the temple rent at his baptism, or at the Sermon on the
Mount? It was because only his death opened the way to God. In
talking with Nicodemus, Jesus brushed aside the complimentary:
“_we know that thou art a teacher come from God_” (_John 3:2_).
Recognizing Jesus as teacher is not enough. There must be a
renewal by the Spirit of God, so that one recognizes also the
lifting up of the Son of man as atoning Savior (_John 3:14, 15_).
And to Peter, Jesus said: “_If I wash thee not, thou hast no part
with me_” (_John 13:8_). One cannot have part with Christ as
Teacher, while one rejects him as Redeemer from sin. On the
Socinian doctrine of the Atonement, see Crawford, Atonement,
279-296; Shedd, History of Doctrine, 2:376-386; Doctrines of the
Early Socinians, in Princeton Essays, 1:194-211; Philippi,
Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:156-180; Fock, Socinianismus.

2nd. The Bushnellian, or Moral Influence Theory of the Atonement.

This holds, like the Socinian, that there is no principle of the divine nature which is propitiated by Christ’s death; but that this death is a manifestation of the love of God, suffering in and with the sins of his creatures. Christ’s atonement, therefore, is the merely natural consequence of his taking human nature upon him; and is a suffering, not of penalty in man’s stead, but of the combined woes and griefs which the living of a human life involves. This atonement has effect, not to satisfy divine justice, but so to reveal divine love as to soften human hearts and to lead them to repentance; in other words, Christ’s sufferings were necessary, not in order to remove an obstacle to the pardon of sinners which exists in the mind of God, but in order to convince sinners that there exists no such obstacle. This theory, for substance, has been advocated by Bushnell, in America; by Robertson, Maurice, Campbell, and Young, in Great Britain; by Schleiermacher and Ritschl, in Germany.

Origen and Abelard are earlier representatives of this view. It
may be found stated in Bushnell’s Vicarious Sacrifice. Bushnell’s
later work, Forgiveness and Law, contains a modification of his
earlier doctrine, to which he was driven by the criticisms upon
his Vicarious Sacrifice. In the later work, he acknowledges what
he had so strenuously denied in the earlier, namely, that Christ’s
death has effect upon God as well as upon man, and that God cannot
forgive without thus “making cost to himself.” He makes open
confession of the impotence of his former teaching to convert
sinners, and, as the only efficient homiletic, he recommends the
preaching of the very doctrine of propitiatory sacrifice which he
had written his book to supersede. Even in Forgiveness and Law,
however, there is no recognition of the true principle and ground
of the Atonement in God’s punitive holiness. Since the original
form of Bushnell’s doctrine is the only one which has met with
wide acceptance, we direct our objections mainly to this.

F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 1:163-178, holds that Christ’s
sufferings were the necessary result of the position in which he
had placed himself of conflict or collision with the evil that is
in the world. He came in contact with the whirling wheel, and was
crushed by it; he planted his heel upon the cockatrice’s den, and
was pierced by its fang. Maurice, on Sacrifice, 209, and Theol.
Essays, 141, 228, regards Christ’s sufferings as an illustration,
given by the ideal man, of the self-sacrifice due to God from the
humanity of which he is the root and head, all men being redeemed
in him, irrespective of their faith, and needing only to have
brought to them the news of this redemption. Young, Life and Light
of Men, holds a view essentially the same with Robertson’s.
Christ’s death is the necessary result of his collision with evil,
and his sufferings extirpate sin, simply by manifesting God’s
self-sacrificing love,

Campbell, Atonement, 129-191, quotes from Edwards, to show that
infinite justice might be satisfied in either one of two ways: (1)
by an infinite punishment; (2) by an adequate repentance. This
last, which Edwards passed by as impracticable, Campbell declares
to have been the real atonement offered by Christ, who stands as
the great Penitent, confessing the sin of the world. Mason, Faith
of the Gospel, 160-210, takes substantially the view of Campbell,
denying substitution, and emphasizing Christ’s oneness with the
race and his confession of human sin. He grants indeed that our
Lord bore penalty, but only in the sense that he realized how
great was the condemnation and penalty of the race.

Schleiermacher denies any satisfaction to God by substitution. He
puts in its place an influence of Christ’s personality on men, so
that they feel themselves reconciled and redeemed. The atonement
is purely subjective. Yet it is the work of Christ, in that only
_Christ’s_ oneness with God has taught men that _they_ can be one
with God. Christ’s consciousness of his being in God and knowing
God, and his power to impart this consciousness to others, make
him a Mediator and Savior. The idea of reparation, compensation,
satisfaction, substitution, is wholly Jewish. He regarded it as
possible only to a narrow-minded people. He tells us that he hates
in religion that kind of historic relation. He had no such sense
of the holiness of God, or of the guilt of man, as would make
necessary any suffering of punishment or offering to God for human
sin. He desires to replace external and historical Christianity by
a Christianity that is internal and subjective. See
Schleiermacher, Der Christliche Glaube, 2:94-161.

Ritschl however is the most recent and influential representative
of the Moral Influence theory in Germany. His view is to be found
in his Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung, or in English translation,
Justification and Reconciliation. Ritschl is anti-Hegelian and
libertarian, but like Schleiermacher he does not treat sin with
seriousness; he regards the sense of guilt as an illusion which it
is the part of Christ to dispel; there is an inadequate conception
of Christ’s person, a practical denial of his pre-existence and
work of objective atonement; indeed, the work of Christ is hardly
put into any precise relation to sin at all; see Denney, Studies
in Theology, 136-151. E. H. Johnson: “Many Ritschlians deny both
the miraculous conception and the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
Sin does not particularly concern God; Christ is Savior only as
Buddha was, achieving lordship over the world by indifference to
it; he is the Word of God, only as he reveals this divine
indifference to things. All this does not agree with the N. T.
teaching that Christ is the only begotten Son of God, that he was
with the Father before the world was, that he made expiation of
sins to God, and that sin is that abominable thing that God
hates.” For a general survey of the Ritschlian theology, see Orr,
Ritschlian Theology, 231-271; Presb. and Ref. Rev., July,
1891:443-458 (art. by Zahn), and Jan. 1892:1-21 (art. by C. M.
Mead); Andover Review, July, 1893:440-461; Am. Jour. Theology,
Jan. 1899:22-44 (art. by H. R. Mackintosh); Lidgett, Spir. Prin.
of Atonement, 190-207; Foster, Christ. Life and Theology; and the
work of Garvie on Ritschl. For statement and criticism of other
forms of the Moral Influence theory, see Crawford, Atonement,
297-366; Watts, New Apologetic, 210-247.

To this theory we object as follows:

(_a_) While it embraces a valuable element of truth, namely, the moral influence upon men _of_ the sufferings of the God-man, it is false by defect, in that it substitutes a subordinate effect of the atonement for its chief aim, and yet unfairly appropriates the name “vicarious,” which belongs only to the latter. Suffering _with_ the sinner is by no means suffering _in his stead_.

Dale, Atonement, 137, illustrates Bushnell’s view by the loyal
wife, who suffers exile or imprisonment with her husband; by the
philanthropist, who suffers the privations and hardships of a
savage people, whom he can civilize only by enduring the miseries
from which he would rescue them; by the Moravian missionary, who
enters for life the lepers’ enclosure, that he may convert its
inmates. So Potwin says that suffering and death are the cost of
the atonement, not the atonement _itself_.

But we reply that such sufferings as these do not make Christ’s
sacrifice _vicarious_. The word “vicarious” (from _vicis_) implies
substitution, which this theory denies. The vicar of a parish is
not necessarily one who performs service with, and in sympathy
with, the rector,—he is rather one who stands in the rector’s
place. A vice-president is one who acts in place of the president;
“A. B., appointed consul, _vice_ C. D., resigned,” implies that A.
B. is now to serve in the stead of C. D. If Christ is a “vicarious
sacrifice,” then he makes atonement to God _in the place and
stead_ of sinners. Christ’s suffering _in and with sinners_,
though it is a most important and affecting fact, is not the
suffering in their stead in which the atonement consists. Though
suffering in and with sinners may be in part the _medium_ through
which Christ was enabled to endure God’s wrath against sin, it is
not to be confounded with the _reason_ why God lays this suffering
upon him; nor should it blind us to the fact that this reason is
his standing in the sinner’s place to answer for sin to the
retributive holiness of God.

(_b_) It rests upon false philosophical principles,—as, that righteousness is identical with benevolence, instead of conditioning it; that God is subject to an eternal law of love, instead of being himself the source of all law; that the aim of penalty is the reformation of the offender.

Hovey, God with Us, 181-271, has given one of the best replies to
Bushnell. He shows that if God is subject to an eternal law of
love, then God is necessarily a Savior; that he must have created
man as soon as he could; that he makes men holy as fast as
possible; that he does all the good he can; that he is no better
than he should be. But this is to deny the transcendence of God,
and reduce omnipotence to a mere nature-power. The conception of
God as subject to law imperils God’s self-sufficiency and freedom.
For Bushnell’s statements with regard to the identity of
righteousness and love, and for criticisms upon them, see our
treatment of the attribute of Holiness, vol. I, pages 268-275.

Watts, New Apologetic, 277-280, points out that, upon Bushnell’s
principles, there must be an atonement for fallen angels. God was
bound to assume the angelic nature and to do for angels all that
he has done for us. There is also no reason for restricting either
the atonement or the offer of salvation to the present life. B. B.
Warfield, in Princeton Review, 1903:81-92, shows well that all the
forms of the Moral Influence theory rest upon the assumption that,
God is only love, and that all that is required as ground of the
sinner’s forgiveness is penitence, either Christ’s, or his own, or
both together.

Ignoring the divine holiness and minimizing the guilt of sin, many
modern writers make atonement to be a mere incident of Christ’s
incarnation. Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:350, 351—“Atonement by
suffering is the result of the Incarnation; atonement being the
necessary, and suffering the incidental element of that result.
But sacrifice is an essential element, for sacrifice truly
signifies here the consecration of human nature to its highest use
and utterance, and does not necessarily involve the thought of
pain. It is not the destruction but the fulfilment of human life.
Inasmuch as the human life thus consecrated and fulfilled is the
same in us as in Jesus, and inasmuch as his consecration and
fulfilment makes morally possible for us the same consecration and
fulfilment of it which he achieved, therefore his atonement and
his sacrifice, and incidentally his suffering, become vicarious.
It is not that they make unnecessary, but that they make possible
and successful in us, the same processes which were perfect in
him.”

(_c_) The theory furnishes no proper reason for Christ’s suffering. While it shows that the Savior necessarily suffers from his contact with human sin and sorrow, it gives no explanation of that constitution of the universe which makes suffering the consequence of sin, not only to the sinner, but also to the innocent being who comes into connection with sin. The holiness of God, which is manifested in this constitution of things and which requires this atonement, is entirely ignored.

B. W. Lockhart, in a recent statement of the doctrine of the
atonement, shows this defect of apprehension: “God in Christ
reconciled the world to himself; Christ did not reconcile God to
man, but man to God. Christ did not enable God to save men; God
enabled Christ to save men. The sufferings of Christ were
vicarious as the highest illustration of that spiritual law by
which the good soul is impelled to suffer that others may not
suffer, to die that others may not die. The vicarious sufferings
of Jesus were also the great revelation to man of the vicarious
nature of God; a revelation of the cross as eternal in his nature;
that it is in the heart of God to bear the sin and sorrow of his
creatures in his eternal love and pity; a revelation moreover that
the law which saves the lost through the vicarious labors of
godlike souls prevails wherever the godlike and the lost soul can
influence each other.”

While there is much in the above statement with which we agree, we
charge it with misapprehending the reason for Christ’s suffering.
That reason is to be found only in that holiness of God which
expresses itself in the very constitution of the universe. Not
love but holiness has made suffering invariably to follow sin, so
that penalty falls not only upon the transgressor but upon him who
is the life and sponsor of the transgressor. God’s holiness brings
suffering to God, and to Christ who manifests God. Love bears the
suffering, but it is holiness that necessitates it. The statement
of Lockhart above gives account of the effect—reconciliation; but
it fails to recognize the cause—propitiation. The words of E. G.
Robinson furnish the needed complement: “The work of Christ has
two sides, propitiatory and reconciling. Christ felt the pang of
association with a guilty race. The divine displeasure rested on
him as possessing the guilty nature. In his own person he redeems
this nature by bearing its penalty. Propitiation must precede
reconciliation. The Moral Influence theory recognizes the
necessity of a subjective change in man, but makes no provision of
an objective agency to secure it.”

(_d_) It contradicts the plain teachings of Scripture, that the atonement is necessary, not simply to reveal God’s love, but to satisfy his justice; that Christ’s sufferings are propitiatory and penal; and that the human conscience needs to be propitiated by Christ’s sacrifice, before it can feel the moral influence of his sufferings.

That the atonement is primarily an offering to God, and not to the
sinner, appears from _Eph. 5:2_—“_gave himself up for us, an
offering and a sacrifice to God_”; _Heb. 9:14,_—“_offered himself
without blemish unto God._” Conscience, the reflection of God’s
holiness, can be propitiated only by propitiating holiness itself.
Mere love and sympathy are maudlin, and powerless to move, unless
there is a background of righteousness. Spear: “An appeal to man,
without anything back of it to emphasize and enforce the appeal,
will never touch the heart. The mere _appearance_ of an atonement
has no moral influence.” Crawford, Atonement, 358-367—“Instead of
delivering us from penalty, in order to deliver us from sin, this
theory made Christ to deliver us from sin, in order that he may
deliver us from penalty. But this reverses the order of Scripture.
And Dr. Bushnell concedes, in the end, that the moral view of the
atonement is morally powerless; and that the Objective view he
condemns is, after all, indispensable to the salvation of
sinners.”

Some men are quite ready to forgive those whom they have offended.
The Ritschlian school sees no guilt to be atoned for, and no
propitiation to be necessary. Only man needs to be reconciled.
Ritschlians are quite ready to forgive God. The only atonement is
an atonement, made by repentance, to the human conscience. Shedd
says well: “All that is requisite in order to satisfaction and
peace of conscience in the sinful soul is also requisite in order
to the satisfaction of God himself.” Walter Besant: “It is not
enough to be forgiven,—one has also to forgive one’s self.” The
converse proposition is yet more true: It is not enough to forgive
one’s self,—one has also to be forgiven; indeed, one cannot
rightly forgive one’s self, unless one has been first forgiven; _1
John 3:20_—“_if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our
heart, and knoweth all things._” A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the
Spirit, 201—“As the high priest carried the blood into the Holy of
Holies under the old dispensation, so does the Spirit take the
blood of Christ into the inner sanctuary of our spirit in the new
dispensation, in order that he may ‘_cleanse your conscience from
dead works to serve the living God_’ (_Heb. 9:14_).”

(_e_) It can be maintained, only by wresting from their obvious meaning those passages of Scripture which speak of Christ as suffering for our sins; which represent his blood as accomplishing something for us in heaven, when presented there by our intercessor; which declare forgiveness to be a remitting of past offences upon the ground of Christ’s death; and which describe justification as a pronouncing, not a making, just.

We have seen that the forms in which the Scriptures describe
Christ’s death are mainly drawn from sacrifice. Notice Bushnell’s
acknowledgment that these “altar-forms” are the most vivid and
effective methods of presenting Christ’s work, and that the
preacher cannot dispense with them. Why he should not dispense
with them, if the meaning has gone out of them, is not so clear.

In his later work, entitled Forgiveness and Law, Bushnell appears
to recognize this inconsistency, and represents God as affected by
the atonement, after all; in other words, the atonement has an
objective as well as a subjective influence. God can forgive, only
by “making cost to himself.” He “works down his resentment, by
suffering for us.” This verges toward the true view, but it does
not recognize the demand of divine holiness for satisfaction; and
it attributes passion, weakness, and imperfection to God. Dorner,
Glaubenslehre, 2:591 (Syst. Doct., 4:59, 69), objects to this
modified Moral Influence theory, that the love that can do good to
an enemy is _already forgiving_ love; so that the benefit to the
enemy cannot be, as Bushnell supposes, a _condition of the
forgiveness_.

To Campbell’s view, that Christ is the great Penitent, and that
his atonement consists essentially in his confessing the sins of
the world, we reply, that no confession or penitence is possible
without responsibility. If Christ had no substitutionary office,
the ordering of his sufferings on the part of God was manifest
injustice. Such sufferings, moreover, are impossible upon grounds
of mere sympathy. The Scripture explains them by declaring that he
bore our curse, and became a ransom in our place. There was more
therefore in the sufferings of Christ than “a perfect Amen in
humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man.” Not Phinehas’s
zeal for God, but his execution of judgment, made an atonement
(_Ps. 106:30_—“_executed judgment_”—LXX.: ἐξιλάσατο, “_made
propitiation_”) and turned away the wrath of God. Observe here the
contrast between the _priestly_ atonement of Aaron, who stood
between the living and the dead, and the _judicial_ atonement of
Phinehas, who executed righteous judgment, and so turned away
wrath. In neither case did mere _confession_ suffice to take away
sin. On Campbell’s view see further, on page 760.

Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 98, has the great merit of
pointing out that Christ shares our sufferings in virtue of the
fact that our personality has its ground in him; but that this
sharing of our penalty was necessitated by God’s righteousness he
has failed to indicate. He tells us that “Christ sanctified the
present and cancels the past. He offers to God a living holiness
in human conditions and character; he makes the awful sacrifice in
humanity of a perfect contrition. The one is the offering of
obedience, the other the offering of atonement; the one the
offering of the life, the other the offering of the death.” This
modification of Campbell’s view can be rationally maintained only
by connecting with it a prior declaration that the fundamental
attribute of God is holiness; that holiness is self-affirming
righteousness; that this righteousness necessarily expresses
itself in the punishment of sin; that Christ’s relation to the
race as its upholder and life made him the bearer of its guilt and
justly responsible for its sin. Scripture declares the ultimate
aim of the atonement to be that God “_might himself be just_”
(_Rom. 3:26_), and no theory of the atonement will meet the
demands of either reason or conscience that does not ground its
necessity in God’s righteousness, rather than in his love.

E. Y. Mullins: “If Christ’s union with humanity made it possible
for him to be ‘the representative Penitent,’ and to be the Amen of
humanity to God’s just condemnation of sin, his union with God
made it also possible for him to be the representative of the
Judge, and to be the Amen of the divine nature to suffering, as
the expression of condemnation.” Denney, Studies in Theology, 102,
103—“The serious element in sin is not man’s dislike, suspicion,
alienation from God, nor the debilitating, corrupting effects of
vice in human nature, but rather God’s condemnation of man. This
Christ endured, and died that the condemnation might be removed.
‘Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned he stood;
Sealed my pardon with his blood; Hallelujah!’ ”

Bushnell regards _Mat. 8:17_—“_Himself took our infirmities, and
bare our diseases_”—as indicating the nature of Christ’s atoning
work. The meaning then would be, that he sympathized so fully with
all human ills that he made them his own. Hovey, however, has
given a more complete and correct explanation. The words mean
rather: “His deep sympathy with these effects of sin so moved him,
that it typified his final bearing of the sins themselves, or
constituted a preliminary and partial endurance of the suffering
which was to expiate the sins of men.” His sighing when he cured
the deaf man (_Mark 7:34_) and his weeping at the grave of Lazarus
(_John 11:35_) were caused by the anticipatory realization that he
was one with the humanity which was under the curse, and that he
too had “_become a curse for us_” (_Gal. 3:13_). The great error
of Bushnell is his denial of the objective necessity and effect of
Jesus’ death, and all Scripture which points to an influence of
the atonement outside of us is a refutation of his theory.

(_f_) This theory confounds God’s method of saving men with men’s experience of being saved. It makes the atonement itself consist of its effects in the believer’s union with Christ and the purifying influence of that union upon the character and life.

Stevens, in his Doctrine of Salvation, makes this mistake. He
says: “The old forms of the doctrine of the atonement—that the
suffering of Christ was necessary to appease the wrath of God and
induce him to forgive; or to satisfy the law of God and enable him
to forgive; or to move upon man’s heart to induce him to accept
forgiveness; have all proved inadequate. Yet to reject the passion
of Christ is to reject the chief element of power in
Christianity.... To me the words ‘eternal atonement’ denote the
dateless passion of God on account of sin; they mean that God is,
by his very nature, a sin-bearer—that sin grieves and wounds his
heart, and that he sorrows and suffers in consequence of it. It
results from the divine love—alike from its holiness and from its
sympathy—that ‘in our affliction he is afflicted.’ Atonement on
its ‘Godward side’ is a name for the grief and pain inflicted by
sin upon the paternal heart of God. Of this divine sorrow for sin,
the afflictions of Christ are a revelation. In the bitter grief
and anguish which he experienced on account of sin we see
reflected the pain and sorrow which sin brings to the divine
love.”

All this is well said, with the exception that holiness is
regarded as a form of love, and the primary offence of sin is
regarded as the grieving of the Father’s heart. Dr. Stevens fails
to consider that if love were supreme there would be nothing to
prevent unholy tolerance of sin. Because holiness is supreme, love
is conditioned thereby. It is holiness and not love that connects
suffering with sin, and requires that the Redeemer should suffer.
Dr. Stevens asserts that the theories hitherto current in
Protestant churches and the theory for which he pleads are
“forever irreconcilable”; they are “based on radically different
conceptions of God.” The British Weekly, Nov. 16, 1905—“The
doctrine of the atonement is not the doctrine that salvation is
deliverance from sin, and that this deliverance is the work of
God, a work the motive of which is God’s love for men; these are
truths which every one who writes on the Atonement assumes. The
doctrine of the Atonement has for its task to explain _how_ this
work is done.... Dr. Stevens makes no contribution whatever to its
fulfilment. He grants that we have in Paul ‘the theory of a
substitutionary expiation.’ But he finds something else in Paul
which he thinks a more adequate rendering of the apostle’s
Christian experience—the idea, namely, of dying with Christ and
rising with him; and on the strength of accepting this last he
feels at liberty to drop the substitutionary expiation overboard
as something to be explained from Paul’s controversial position,
or from his Pharisaic inheritance, something at all events which
has no permanent value for the Christian mind.... The experience
is dependent on the method. Paul did not die with Christ as an
alternative to having Christ die with him; he died with Christ
wholly and solely because Christ died for him. It was the meaning
carried by the last two words—the meaning unfolded in the theory
of substitutionary expiation—which had the moral motive in it to
draw Paul into union with his Lord in life and death.... On Dr.
Stevens’ own showing, Paul held the two ideas side by side; for
him the mystical union with Christ was only possible through the
acceptance of truths with which Dr. Stevens does not know what to
do.”

(_g_) This theory would confine the influence of the atonement to those who have heard of it,—thus excluding patriarchs and heathen. But the Scriptures represent Christ as being the Savior of all men, in the sense of securing them grace, which, but for his atoning work, could never have been bestowed consistently with the divine holiness.

Hovey: “The manward influence of the atonement is far more
extensive than the moral influence of it.” Christ is Advocate, not
with the sinner, but with the Father. While the Spirit’s work has
moral influence over the hearts of men, the Son secures, through
the presentation of his blood, in heaven, the pardon which can
come only from God (_1 John 2:1_—“_we have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for
our sins_”). Hence _1:9_—“_If we confess our sins, he_ [God] _is
faithful and righteous [faithful to his promise and righteous to
Christ] to forgive us our sins._” Hence the publican does not
first pray for change of heart, but for mercy upon the ground of
sacrifice (_Luke 18:13,_—“_God, be thou merciful to me a sinner,_”
but literally: “_God be propitiated toward me the sinner_”). See
Balfour, in Brit. and For. Ev. Rev., Apr. 1884:230-254; Martin,
Atonement, 216-237; Theol. Eclectic, 4:364-409.

Gravitation kept the universe stable, long before it was
discovered by man. So the atonement of Christ was inuring to the
salvation of men, long before they suspected its existence. The
“_Light of the world_” (_John 8:12_) has many “X rays,” beyond the
visible spectrum, but able to impress the image of Christ upon
patriarchs or heathen. This light has been shining through all the
ages, but “_the darkness apprehended it not_” (_John 1:5_). Its
rays register themselves only where there is a sensitive heart to
receive them. Let them shine through a man, and how much unknown
sin, and unknown possibilities of good, they reveal! The Moral
Influence theory does not take account of the preëxistent Christ
and of his atoning work before his manifestation in the flesh. It
therefore leads logically to belief in a second probation for the
many imbeciles, outcasts, and heathen who in this world do not
hear of Christ’s atonement. The doctrine of Bushnell in this way
undermines the doctrine of future retribution.

To Lyman Abbott, the atonement is the self-propitiation of God’s
love, and its influence is exerted through education. In his
Theology of an Evolutionist, 118, 190, he maintains that the
atonement is “a true reconciliation between God and man, making
them at one through the incarnation and passion of Jesus Christ,
who lived and suffered, not to redeem men from future torment, but
to purify and perfect them in God’s likeness by uniting them to
God.... Sacrifice is not a penalty borne by an innocent sufferer
for guilty men,—a doctrine for which there is no authority either
in Scripture or in life (_1 Peter 3:18?_)—but a laying down of
one’s life in love, that another may receive life.... Redemption
is not restoration to a lost state of innocence, impossible to be
restored, but a culmination of the long process when man shall be
presented before his Father ‘_not having spot or wrinkle or any
such thing_’ (_Eph. 5:27_).... We believe not in the propitiation
of an angry God by another suffering to appease the Father’s
wrath, but in the perpetual self-propitiation of the Father, whose
mercy, going forth to redeem from sin, satisfies as nothing else
could the divine indignation against sin, by abolishing it....
Mercy is hate pitying; it is the pity of wrath. The pity conquers
the hate only by lifting the sinner up from his degradation and
restoring him to purity.” And yet in all this there is no mention
of the divine righteousness as the source of the indignation and
the object of the propitiation!

It is interesting to note that some of the greatest advocates of
the Moral Influence theory have reverted to the older faith when
they came to die. In his dying moments, as L. W. Munhall tells us,
Horace Bushnell said: “I fear what I have written and said upon
the moral idea of the atonement is misleading and will do great
harm;” and, as he thought of it further, he cried: “Oh Lord Jesus,
I trust for mercy only in the shed blood that thou didst offer on
Calvary!” Schleiermacher, on his deathbed, assembled his family
and a few friends, and himself administered the Lord’s Supper.
After praying and blessing the bread, and after pronouncing the
words: “_This is my body, broken for you_,” he added: “This is our
foundation!” As he started to bless the cup, he cried: “Quick,
quick, bring the cup! I am so happy!” Then he sank quietly back,
and was no more; see life of Rothe, by Nippold, 2:53, 54. Ritschl,
in his History of Pietism, 2:65, had severely criticized Paul
Gerhardt’s hymn: “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,” as describing
physical suffering; but he begged his son to repeat the two last
verses of that hymn: “O sacred head now wounded!” when he came to
die. And in general, the convicted sinner finds peace most quickly
and surely when he is pointed to the Redeemer who died on the
Cross and endured the penalty of sin in his stead.

3d. The Grotian, or Governmental Theory of the Atonement.

This theory holds that the atonement is a satisfaction, not to any internal principle of the divine nature, but to the necessities of government. God’s government of the universe cannot be maintained, nor can the divine law preserve its authority over its subjects, unless the pardon of offenders is accompanied by some exhibition of the high estimate which God sets upon his law, and the heinous guilt of violating it. Such an exhibition of divine regard for the law is furnished in the sufferings and death of Christ. Christ does not suffer the precise penalty of the law, but God graciously accepts his suffering as a substitute for the penalty. This bearing of substituted suffering on the part of Christ gives the divine law such hold upon the consciences and hearts of men, that God can pardon the guilty upon their repentance, without detriment to the interests of his government. The author of this theory was Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist and theologian (1583-1645). The theory is characteristic of the New England theology, and is generally held by those who accept the New School view of sin.

Grotius was a precocious genius. He wrote good Latin verses at
nine years of age; was ripe for the University at twelve: edited
the encyclopædic work of Marcianus Capella at fifteen. Even thus
early he went with an embassy to the court of France, where he
spent a year. Returning home, he took the degree of doctor of
laws. In literature he edited the remains of Aratus, and wrote
three dramas in Latin. At twenty he was appointed historiographer
of the United Provinces; then advocate-general of the fisc for
Holland and Zealand. He wrote on international law; was appointed
deputy to England; was imprisoned for his theological opinions;
escaped to Paris; became ambassador of Sweden to France. He wrote
commentaries on Scripture, also history, theology, and poetry. He
was indifferent to dogma, a lover of peace, a compromiser, an
unpartisan believer, dealing with doctrine more as a statesman
than as a theologian. Of Grotius, Dr. E. G. Robinson used to say:
“It is ordained of almighty God that the man who dips into
everything never gets to the bottom of anything.”

Grotius, the jurist, conceived of law as a mere matter of
political expediency—a device to procure practical governmental
results. The text most frequently quoted in support of his theory,
is _Is. 42:21_—“_It pleased Jehovah, for his righteousness’ sake,
to magnify the law, and make it honorable._” Strangely enough, the
explanation is added: “even when its demands are unfulfilled.”
Park: “Christ satisfied the law, by making it desirable and
consistent for God not to come up to the demands of the law.
Christ suffers a divine chastisement in consequence of our sins.
Christ was cursed for Adam’s sin, just as the heavens and the
earth were cursed for Adam’s sin,—that is, he bore pains and
sufferings on account of it.”

Grotius used the word _acceptilatio_, by which he meant God’s
sovereign provision of a suffering which was not itself penalty,
but which he had determined to accept as a substitute for penalty.
Here we have a virtual denial that there is anything in God’s
nature that requires Christ to suffer; for if penalty may be
remitted in part, it may be remitted in whole, and the reason why
Christ suffers at all is to be found, not in any demand of God’s
holiness, but solely in the beneficial influence of these
sufferings upon man; so that in principle this theory is allied to
the Example theory and the Moral Influence theory, already
mentioned.

Notice the difference between holding to a _substitute for
penalty_, as Grotius did, and holding to an _equivalent
substituted penalty_, as the Scriptures do. Grotius’s own
statement of his view may be found in his Defensio Fidei Catholicæ
de Satisfactione (Works, 4:297-338). More modern statements of it
are those of Wardlaw, in his Systematic Theology, 2:358-395, and
of Albert Barnes, on the Atonement. The history of New England
thought upon the subject is given in Discourses and Treatises on
the Atonement, edited by Prof. Park, of Andover. President
Woolsey: “Christ’s suffering was due to a deep and awful sense of
responsibility, a conception of the supreme importance to man of
his standing firm at this crisis. He bore, not the wrath of God,
but suffering, as the only way of redemption so far as men’s own
feeling of sin was concerned, and so far as the government of God
was concerned.” This unites the Governmental and the Moral
Influence theories.

Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 226, 227—“Grotius emphasized
the idea of law rather than that of justice, and made the
sufferings of Christ a legal example and the occasion of the
relaxation of the law, and not the strict penalty demanded by
justice. But this view, however it may have been considered and
have served in the clarification of the thinking of the times, met
with no general reception, and left little trace of itself among
those theologians who maintained the line of evangelical
theological descent.”

To this theory we urge the following objections:

(_a_) While it contains a valuable element of truth, namely, that the sufferings and death of Christ secure the interests of God’s government, it is false by defect, in substituting for the chief aim of the atonement one which is only subordinate and incidental.

In our discussion of Penalty (pages 655, 656), we have seen that
the object of punishment is not primarily the security of
government. It is not right to punish a man for the beneficial
effect on society. Ill-desert must go before punishment, or the
punishment can have no beneficial effect on society. No punishment
can work good to society, that is not just and right in itself.

(_b_) It rests upon false philosophical principles,—as, that utility is the ground of moral obligation; that law is an expression of the will, rather than of the nature, of God; that the aim of penalty is to deter from the commission of offences; and that righteousness is resolvable into benevolence.

Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:573-581; 3:188, 189—“For God to take that
as satisfaction which is not really such, is to say that there is
no truth in anything. God may take a part for the whole, error for
truth, wrong for right. The theory really denies the necessity for
the work of Christ. If every created thing offered to God is worth
just so much as God accepts it for, then the blood of bulls and
goats might take away sins, and Christ is dead in vain.” Dorner,
Glaubenslehre, 2:570, 571 (Syst. Doct., 4:38-40)—“_Acceptilatio_
implies that nothing is good and right in itself. God is
indifferent to good or evil. Man is bound by authority and force
alone. There is no necessity of punishment or atonement. The
doctrine of indulgences and of supererogation logically follows.”

(_c_) It ignores and virtually denies that immanent holiness of God of which the law with its threatened penalties, and the human conscience with its demand for punishment, are only finite reflections. There is something back of government; if the atonement satisfies government, it must be by satisfying that justice of God of which government is an expression.

No deeply convicted sinner feels that his controversy is with
government. Undone and polluted, he feels himself in antagonism to
the purity of a personal God. Government is not greater than God,
but less. What satisfies God must satisfy government. Hence the
sinner prays: “_Against thee, thee only, have I sinned_” (_Ps.
51:4_); “_God be propitiated toward me the sinner_” (literal
translation of _Luke 18:13_),—propitiated through God’s own
appointed sacrifice whose smoke is ascending in his behalf even
while he prays.

In the divine government this theory recognizes no constitution,
but only legislative enactment; even this legislative enactment is
grounded in no necessity of God’s nature, but only in expediency
or in God’s arbitrary will; law may be abrogated for merely
economic reasons, if any incidental good may be gained thereby. J.
M. Campbell, Atonement, 81, 144—“No awakened sinner, into whose
spirit the terrors of the law have entered, ever thinks of
rectoral justice, but of absolute justice, and of absolute justice
only.... Rectoral justice so presupposes absolute justice, and so
throws the mind back on that absolute justice, that the idea of an
atonement that will satisfy the one, though it might not the
other, is a delusion.”

N. W. Taylor’s Theology was entitled: “Moral Government,” and C.
G. Finney’s Systematic Theology was a treatise on Moral
Government, although it called itself by another name. But because
New England ideas of government were not sufficiently grounded in
God’s holiness, but were rather based upon utility, expediency, or
happiness, the very idea of government has dropped out of the New
School theology, and its advocates with well-nigh one accord have
gone over to the Moral Influence theory of the atonement, which is
only a modified Socinianism. Both the Andover atonement and that
of Oberlin have become purely subjective. For this reason the
Grotian or Governmental theory has lost its hold upon the
theological world and needs to have no large amount of space
devoted to it.

(_d_) It makes that to be an exhibition of justice which is not an exercise of justice; the atonement being, according to this theory, not an execution of law, but an exhibition of regard for law, which will make it safe to pardon the violators of law. Such a merely scenic representation can inspire respect for law, only so long as the essential unreality of it is unsuspected.

To teach that sin will be punished, there must be punishment.
Potwin: “How the exhibition of what sin deserves, but does not
get, can satisfy justice, is hard to see.” The Socinian view of
Christ as an example of virtue is more intelligible than the
Grotian view of Christ as an example of chastisement. Lyman
Abbott: “If I thought that Jesus suffered and died to produce a
moral impression on me, it would not produce a moral impression on
me.” William Ashmore: “A stage tragedian commits a mock murder in
order to move people to tears. If Christ was in no sense a
substitute, or if he was not co-responsible with the sinner he
represents, then God and Christ are participants in a real tragedy
the most awful that ever darkened human history, simply for the
sake of its effect on men to move their callous sensibilities—a
stage-trick for the same effect.”

The mother pretends to cry in order to induce her child to obey.
But the child will obey only while it thinks the mother’s grief a
reality, and the last state of that child is worse than the first.
Christ’s atonement is no passion-play. Hell cannot be cured by
homœopathy. The sacrifice of Calvary is no dramatic exhibition of
suffering for the purpose of producing a moral impression on
awe-stricken spectators. It is an object-lesson, only because it
is a reality. All God’s justice and all God’s love are focused in
the Cross, so that it teaches more of God and his truth than all
space and time beside.

John Milton, Paradise Lost, book 5, speaks of “mist, the common
gloss of theologians.” Such mist is the legal fiction by which
Christ’s suffering is taken in place of legal penalty, while yet
it is not the legal penalty itself. B. G. Robinson: “Atonement is
not an arbitrary contrivance, so that if one person will endure a
certain amount of suffering, a certain number of others may go
scot-free.” Mercy never cheats justice. Yet the New School theory
of atonement admits that Christ cheated justice by a trick. It
substituted the penalty of Christ for the penalty of the redeemed,
and then substituted something else for the penalty of Christ.

(_e_) The intensity of Christ’s sufferings in the garden and on the cross is inexplicable upon the theory that the atonement was a histrionic exhibition of God’s regard for his government, and can be explained only upon the view that Christ actually endured the wrath of God against human sin.