Chapter XLIII: Section IV: The Offices Of Christ (4)

Christ refused the “_wine mingled with myrrh_” (_Mark 15:23_),
that he might to the last have full possession of his powers and
speak no words but words of truth and soberness. His cry of agony:
“_My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?_” (_Mat. 27:46_), was
not an ejaculation of thoughtless or delirious suffering. It
expressed the deepest meaning of the crucifixion. The darkening of
the heavens was only the outward symbol of the hiding of the
countenance of God from him who was “_made to be sin on our
behalf_” (_2 Cor. 5:21_). In the case of Christ, above that of all
others, _finis coronat_, and dying words are undying words. “The
tongues of dying men Enforce attention like deep harmony; When
words are scarce they’re seldom spent in vain, For they breathe
truth that breathe their words in pain.” _Versus_ Park,
Discourses, 328-355.

A pure woman needs to meet an infamous proposition with something
more than a mild refusal. She must flame up and be angry. _Ps.
97:10_—“_O ye that love Jehovah, hate evil_”; _Eph. 4:26_—“_Be ye
angry, and sin not._” So it belongs to the holiness of God not to
let sin go unchallenged. God not only _shows_ anger, but he _is_
angry. It is the wrath of God which sin must meet, and which
Christ must meet when he is numbered with the transgressors. Death
was the cup of which he was to drink (_Mat. 20:22_; _John 18:11_),
and which he drained to the dregs. Mason, Faith of the Gospel,
196—“Jesus alone of all men truly ‘_tasted death_’ (_Heb. 2:9_).
Some men are too stolid and unimaginative to taste it. To
Christians the bitterness of death is gone, just because Christ
died and rose again. But to Jesus its terrors were as yet
undiminished. He resolutely set all his faculties to sound to the
depths the dreadfulness of dying.”

We therefore cannot agree with either Wendt or Johnson in the
following quotations. Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:249, 250—“The
forsaking of the Father was not an absolute one, since Jesus still
called him ‘_My God_’ (_Mat. 27:46_). Jesus felt the failing of
that energy of spirit which had hitherto upheld him, and he
expresses simply his ardent desire and prayer that God would once
more grant him his power and assistance.” E. H. Johnson, The Holy
Spirit, 143, 144—“It is not even necessary to believe that God hid
his face from Christ at the last moment. It is necessary only to
admit that Christ no longer saw the Father’s face.... He felt that
it was so; but it was not so.” These explanations make Christ’s
sufferings and Christ’s words unreal, and to our mind they are
inconsistent with both his deity and his atonement.

(_f_) The actual power of the atonement over the human conscience and heart is due, not to its exhibiting God’s regard for law, but to its exhibiting an actual execution of law, and an actual satisfaction of violated holiness made by Christ in the sinner’s stead.

Whiton, Gloria Patri, 143, 144, claims that Christ is the
propitiation for our sins only by bringing peace to the conscience
and satisfying the divine demand that is felt therein. Whiton
regards the atonement not as a governmental work outside of us,
but as an educational work within. Aside from the objection that
this view merges God’s transcendence in his immanence, we urge the
words of Matthew Henry: “Nothing can satisfy an offended
conscience but that which satisfied an offended God.” C. J.
Baldwin: “The lake spread out has no moving power; it turns the
mill-wheel only when contracted into the narrow stream and pouring
over the fall. So the wide love of God moves men, only when it is
concentrated into the sacrifice of the cross.”

(_g_) The theory contradicts all those passages of Scripture which represent the atonement as necessary; as propitiating God himself; as being a revelation of God’s righteousness; as being an execution of the penalty of the law; as making salvation a matter of debt to the believer, on the ground of what Christ has done; as actually purging our sins, instead of making that purging possible; as not simply assuring the sinner that God may now pardon him on account of what Christ has done, but that Christ has actually wrought out a complete salvation, and will bestow it upon all who come to him.

John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, chapter vi—“Upon that place stood
a Cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a Sepulchre. So I saw
in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the Cross, his
burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back,
and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the
mouth of the Sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.
Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry
heart, He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death.
Then he stood still awhile to look and wonder; for it was very
surprising to him that the sight of the Cross should thus ease him
of his burden.”

John Bunyan’s story is truer to Christian experience than is the
Governmental theory. The sinner finds peace, not by coming to God
with a distant respect to Christ, but by coming directly to the
“_Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world_” (_John
1:29_). Christ’s words to every conscious sinner are simply:
“_Come unto me_” (_Mat. 11:28_). Upon the ground of what Christ
has done, salvation is a matter of debt to the believer. _1 John
1:9_—“_If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to
forgive us our sins_”—faithful to his promise, and righteous to
Christ. The Governmental theory, on the other hand, tends to
discourage the sinner’s direct access to Christ, and to render the
way to conscious acceptance with God more circuitous and less
certain.

When The Outlook says: “Not even to the Son of God must we come
instead of coming to God,” we can see only plain denial of the
validity of Christ’s demands and promises, for he demands
immediate submission when he bids the sinner follow him, and he
promises immediate salvation when he assures all who come to him
that he will not cast them out. The theory of Grotius is legal and
speculative, but it is not Scriptural, nor does it answer the
needs of human nature. For criticism of Albert Barnes’s doctrine,
see Watts, New Apologetic, 210-300. For criticism of the Grotian
theory in general, see Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:347-369; Crawford,
Atonement, 367; Cunningham, Hist. Theology, 2:355; Princeton
Essays, 1:259-292; Essay on Atonement, by Abp. Thomson, in Aids to
Faith; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 194-196; S. H. Tyng,
Christian Pastor; Charles Hodge, Essays, 129-184; Lidgett, Spir.
Prin. of Atonement, 151-154.

4th. The Irvingian Theory, or Theory of Gradually Extirpated Depravity.

This holds that, in his incarnation, Christ took human nature as it was in Adam, not before the Fall, but after the Fall,—human nature, therefore, with its inborn corruption and predisposition to moral evil; that, notwithstanding the possession of this tainted and depraved nature, Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, or of his divine nature, not only kept his human nature from manifesting itself in any actual or personal sin, but gradually purified it, through struggle and suffering, until in his death he completely extirpated its original depravity, and reunited it to God. This subjective purification of human nature in the person of Jesus Christ constitutes his atonement, and men are saved, not by any objective propitiation, but only by becoming through faith partakers of Christ’s new humanity. This theory was elaborated by Edward Irving, of London (1792-1834), and it has been held, in substance, by Menken and Dippel in Germany.

Irving was in this preceded by Felix of Urgella, in Spain († 818),
whom Alcuin opposed. Felix said that the Logos united with human
nature, without sanctifying it beforehand. Edward Irving, in his
early life colleague of Dr. Chalmers, at Glasgow, was in his later
years a preacher, in London, of the National Church of Scotland.
For his own statement of his view of the Atonement, see his
Collected Works, 5:9-398. See also Life of Irving, by Mrs.
Oliphant; Menken, Schriften, 3:279-404; 6:351 _sq._; Guericke, in
Studien und Kritiken, 1843: Heft 2; David Brown, in Expositor,
Oct. 1887:264 _sq._, and letter of Irving to Marcus Dods, in
British Weekly, Mch. 25, 1887. For other references, see
Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:496-498.

Irving’s followers differ in their representation of his views.
Says Miller, Hist. and Doct. of Irvingism, 1:85—“If indeed we made
Christ a sinner, then indeed all creeds are at an end and we are
worthy to die the death of blasphemers.... The miraculous
conception depriveth him of human personality, and it also
depriveth him of original sin and guilt needing to be atoned for
by another, but it doth not deprive him of the substance of sinful
flesh and blood,—that is, flesh and blood the same with the flesh
and blood of his brethren.” 2:14—Freer says: “So that, despite it
was fallen flesh he had assumed, he was, through the Eternal
Spirit, born into the world ‘the Holy Thing’.” 11-15,
282-305—“Unfallen humanity needed not redemption, therefore, Jesus
did not take it. He took fallen humanity, but purged it in the act
of taking it. The nature of which he took part was sinful in the
lump, but in his person most holy.”

So, says an Irvingian tract, “Being part of the very nature that
had incurred the penalty of sin, though in his person never having
committed or even thought it, part of the common humanity could
suffer that penalty, and did so suffer, to make atonement for that
nature, though he who took it knew no sin.” Dr. Curry, quoted in
McClintock and Strong, Encyclopædia, 4:663, 664—“The Godhead came
into vital union with humanity fallen and under the law. The last
thought carried, to Irving’s realistic mode of thinking, the
notion of Christ’s participation in the fallen character of
humanity, which he designated by terms that implied a real
sinfulness in Christ. He attempted to get rid of the odiousness of
that idea, by saying that this was overborne, and at length wholly
expelled, by the indwelling Godhead.”

We must regard the later expounders of Irvingian doctrine as
having softened down, if they have not wholly expunged, its most
characteristic feature, as the following notation from Irving’s
own words will show: Works, 5:115—“That Christ took our fallen
nature, is most manifest, because there was no other in existence
to take.” 123—“The human nature is thoroughly fallen; the mere
apprehension of it by the Son doth not make it holy.” 128—“His
soul did mourn and grieve and pray to God continually, that it
might be delivered from the mortality, corruption, and temptation
which it felt in its fleshly tabernacle.” 152—“These sufferings
came not by imputation merely, but by actual participation of the
sinful and cursed thing.” Irving frequently quoted _Heb.
2:10_—“_make the author of their salvation perfect through
sufferings._”

Irving’s followers deny Christ’s sinfulness, only by assuming that
inborn infirmity and congenital tendencies to evil are not sin,—in
other words, that not native depravity, but only actual
transgression, is to be denominated sin. Irving, in our judgment,
was rightly charged with asserting the sinfulness of Christ’s
human nature, and it was upon this charge that he was deposed from
the ministry by the Presbytery in Scotland.

Irving was of commanding stature, powerful voice, natural and
graceful oratory. He loved the antique and the grand. For a time
in London he was the great popular sensation. But shortly after
the opening of his new church in Regent’s Square in 1827, he found
that fashion had taken its departure and that his church was no
longer crowded. He concluded that the world was under the reign of
Satan; he became a fanatical millennarian; he gave himself wholly
to the study of prophecy. In 1830 he thought the apostolic gifts
were revived, and he held to the hope of a restoration of the
primitive church, although he himself was relegated to a
comparatively subordinate position. He exhausted his energies, and
died at the age of forty-two. “If I had married Irving,” said Mrs.
Thomas Carlyle, “there would have been no tongues.”

To this theory we offer the following objections:

(_a_) While it embraces an important element of truth, namely, the fact of a new humanity in Christ of which all believers become partakers, it is chargeable with serious error in denying the objective atonement which makes the subjective application possible.

Bruce, in his Humiliation of Christ, calls this a theory of
“redemption by sample.” It is a purely subjective atonement which
Irving has in mind. Deliverance from sin, in order to deliverance
from penalty, is an exact reversal of the Scripture order. Yet
this deliverance from sin, to Irving’s view, was to be secured in
an external and mechanical way. He held that it was the Old
Testament economy which should abide, while the New Testament
economy should pass away. This is Sacramentarianism, or dependence
upon the external rite, rather than upon the internal grace, as
essential to salvation. The followers of Irving are
Sacramentarians. The crucifix and candles, incense and gorgeous
vestments, a highly complicated and symbolic ritual, they regard
as a necessary accompaniment of religion. They feel the need of
external authority, visible and permanent, but one that rests upon
inspiration and continual supernatural help. They do not find this
authority, as the Romanists do, in the Pope,—they find it in their
new Apostles and Prophets. The church can never be renewed, as
they think, except by the restoration of all the ministering
orders mentioned in _Eph. 4:11_—“_apostles ... prophets ...
evangelists ... pastors ... teachers._” But the N. T. mark of an
apostle is that Christ has appeared to him. Irving’s apostles
cannot stand this test. See Luthardt, Erinnerungen aus vergangenen
Tagen, 237.

(_b_) It rests upon false fundamental principles,—as, that law is identical with the natural order of the universe, and as such, is an exhaustive expression of the will and nature of God; that sin is merely a power of moral evil within the soul, instead of also involving an objective guilt and desert of punishment; that penalty is the mere reaction of law against the transgressor, instead of being also the revelation of a personal wrath against sin; that the evil taint of human nature can be extirpated by suffering its natural consequences,—penalty in this way reforming the transgressor.

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:463 (Syst. Doct., 3:361, 362)—“On
Irving’s theory, evil inclinations are not sinful. Sinfulness
belongs only to evil acts. The loose connection between the Logos
and humanity savors of Nestorianism. It is the work of the
_person_ to rid itself of something in the humanity which does not
render it really sinful. If Jesus’ sinfulness of nature did not
render his person sinful, this must be true of us,—which is a
Pelagian element, revealed also in the denial that for our
redemption we need Christ as an atoning sacrifice. It is not
necessary to a complete incarnation for Christ to take a _sinful_
nature, unless sin is _essential_ to human nature. In Irving’s
view, the death of Christ’s body works the regeneration of his
sinful nature. But this is to make sin a merely physical thing,
and the body the only part of man needing redemption.” Penalty
would thus become a reformer, and death a Savior.

Irving held that there are two kinds of sin: 1. guiltless sin; 2.
guilty sin. Passive depravity is not guilty; it is a part of man’s
sensual nature; without it we would not be human. But the moment
this fallen nature expresses itself in action, it becomes guilty.
Irving near the close of his life claimed a sort of sinless
perfection; for so long as he could keep this sinful nature
inactive, and be guided by the Holy Spirit, he was free from sin
and guilt. Christ took this passive sin, that he might be like
unto his brethren, and that he might be able to suffer.

(_c_) It contradicts the express and implicit representations of Scripture, with regard to Christ’s freedom from all taint of hereditary depravity; misrepresents his life as a growing consciousness of the underlying corruption of his human nature, which culminated at Gethsemane and Calvary; and denies the truth of his own statements, when it declares that he must have died on account of his own depravity, even though none were to be saved thereby.

“I shall maintain until death,” said Irving, “that the flesh of
Christ was as rebellious as ours, as fallen as ours.... Human
nature was corrupt to the core and black as hell, and this is the
human nature the Son of God took upon himself and was clothed
with.” The Rescuer must stand as deep in the mire as the one he
rescues. There was no substitution. Christ waged war with the sin
of his own flesh and he expelled it. His glory was not in saving
others, but in saving himself, and so demonstrating the power of
man through the Holy Spirit to cast out sin from his heart and
life. Irving held that his theory was the only one taught in
Scripture and held from the first by the church.

Nicoll, Life of Christ, 183—“All others, as they grow in holiness,
grow in their sense of sin. But when Christ is forsaken of the
Father, he asks ‘Why?’ well knowing that the reason is not in his
sin. He never makes confession of sin. In his longest prayer, the
preface is an assertion of righteousness: ‘_I glorified thee_’
(_John 17:4_). His last utterance from the cross is a quotation
from _Ps. 31:5_—‘_Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit_’
(_Luke 23:46_), but he does not add, as the Psalm does, ‘_thou
hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth_,’ for he needed no
redemption, being himself the Redeemer.”

(_d_) It makes the active obedience of Christ, and the subjective purification of his human nature, to be the chief features of his work, while the Scriptures make his death and passive bearing of penalty the centre of all, and ever regard him as one who is personally pure and who vicariously bears the punishment of the guilty.

In Irving’s theory there is no imputation, or representation, or
substitution. His only idea of sacrifice is that sin itself shall
be sacrificed, or annihilated. The many subjective theories of the
atonement show that the offence of the cross has not ceased (_Gal.
5:11_—“_then hath the stumbling-block of the cross been done
away_”). Christ crucified is still a stumbling-block to modern
speculation. Yet it is, as of old, “_the power of God unto
salvation_” (_Rom. 1:16_; _cf._ _1 Cor. 1:23, 24_—“_we preach
Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling-block and unto Gentiles
foolishness; but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God_”).

As the ocean receives the impurities of the rivers and purges
them, so Irving represented Christ as receiving into himself the
impurities of humanity and purging the race from its sin. Here is
the sense of defilement, but no sense of guilt; subjective
pollution, but no objective condemnation. We take precisely
opposite ground from that of Irving, namely, that Christ had, not
hereditary depravity, but hereditary guilt; that he was under
obligation to suffer for the sins of the race to which he had
historically united himself, and of which he was the creator, the
upholder, and the life. He was “_made to be sin on our behalf_”
(_2 Cor. 5:21_), not in the sense of one defiled, as Irving
thought, but in the sense of one condemned to bear our iniquities
and to suffer their penal consequences. The test of a theory of
the atonement, as the test of a religion, is its power to “cleanse
that red right hand” of Lady Macbeth; in other words, its power to
satisfy the divine justice of which our condemning conscience is
only the reflection. The theory of Irving has no such power. Dr.
E. G. Robinson verged toward Irving’s view, when he claimed that
“Christ took human nature as he found it.”

(_e_) It necessitates the surrender of the doctrine of justification as a merely declaratory act of God; and requires such a view of the divine holiness, expressed only through the order of nature, as can be maintained only upon principles of pantheism.

Thomas Aquinas inquired whether Christ was slain by himself, or by
another. The question suggests a larger one—whether God has
constituted other forces than his own, personal and impersonal, in
the universe, over against which he stands in his transcendence;
or whether all his activity is merged in, and identical with, the
activity of the creature. The theory of a merely subjective
atonement is more consistent with the latter view than the former.
For criticism of Irvingian doctrine, see Studien und Kritiken.
1845:319; 1877:354-374; Princeton Rev., April 1863:207; Christian
Rev., 28:234 sq.; Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus, 219-232.

5th. The Anselmic, or Commercial Theory of the Atonement.

This theory holds that sin is a violation of the divine honor or majesty, and, as committed against an infinite being, deserves an infinite punishment; that the majesty of God requires him to execute punishment, while the love of God pleads for the sparing of the guilty; that this conflict of divine attributes is eternally reconciled by the voluntary sacrifice of the God-man, who bears in virtue of the dignity of his person the intensively infinite punishment of sin, which must otherwise have been suffered extensively and eternally by sinners; that this suffering of the God-man presents to the divine majesty an exact equivalent for the deserved sufferings of the elect; and that, as the result of this satisfaction of the divine claims, the elect sinners are pardoned and regenerated. This view was first broached by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) as a substitute for the earlier patristic view that Christ’s death was a ransom paid to Satan, to deliver sinners from his power. It is held by many Scotch theologians, and, in this country, by the Princeton School.

The old patristic theory, which the Anselmic view superseded, has
been called the Military theory of the Atonement. Satan, as a
captor in war, had a right to his captives, which could be bought
off only by ransom. It was Justin Martyr who first propounded this
view that Christ paid a ransom to Satan. Gregory of Nyssa added
that Christ’s humanity was the bait with which Satan was attracted
to the hidden hook of Christ’s deity, and so was caught by
artifice. Peter Lombard, Sent., 3:19—“What did the Redeemer to our
captor? He held out to him his cross as a mouse-trap; in it he
set, as a bait, his blood.” Even Luther compares Satan to the
crocodile which swallows the ichneumon, only to find that the
little animal eats its insides out.

These metaphors show this, at least, that no age of the church has
believed in a merely subjective atonement. Nor was this relation
to Satan the only aspect in which the atonement was regarded even
by the early church. So early as the fourth century, we find a
great church Father maintaining that the death of Christ was
required by the truth and goodness of God. See Crippen, History of
Christian Doctrine, 129—“Athanasius (325-373) held that the death
of Christ was the payment of a debt due to God. His argument is
briefly this: God, having threatened death as the punishment of
sin, would be untrue if he did not fulfil his threatening. But it
would be equally unworthy of the divine goodness to permit
rational beings, to whom he had imparted his own Spirit, to incur
this death in consequence of an imposition practiced on them by
the devil. Seeing then that nothing but death could solve this
dilemma, the Word, who could not die, assumed a mortal body, and,
offering his human nature a sacrifice for all, fulfilled the law
by his death.” Gregory Nazianzen (390) “retained the figure of a
ransom, but, clearly perceiving that the analogy was incomplete,
he explained the death of Christ as an expedient to reconcile the
divine attributes.”

But, although many theologians had recognized a relation of
atonement to God, none before Anselm had given any clear account
of the nature of this relation. Anselm’s acute, brief, and
beautiful treatise entitled “Cur Deus Homo” constitutes the
greatest single contribution to the discussion of this doctrine.
He shows that “whatever man owes, he owes to God, not to the
devil.... He who does not yield due honor to God, withholds from
him what is his, and dishonors him; and this is sin.... It is
necessary that either the stolen honor be restored, or that
punishment follow.” Man, because of original sin, cannot make
satisfaction for the dishonor done to God,—“a sinner cannot
justify a sinner.” Neither could an angel make this satisfaction.
None can make it but God. “If then none can make it but God, and
none owes it but man, it must needs be wrought out by God, made
man.” The God-man, to make satisfaction for the sins of all
mankind, must “give to God, of his own, something that is more
valuable than all that is under God.” Such a gift of infinite
value was his death. The reward of his sacrifice turns to the
advantage of man, and thus the justice and love of God are
reconciled.

The foregoing synopsis is mainly taken from Crippen, Hist. Christ.
Doct., 134, 135. The Cur Deus Homo of Anselm is translated in Bib.
Sac., 11:729; 12:52. A synopsis of it is given in Lichtenberger’s
Encyclopédie des Sciences Religieuses, vol. 1, art.: Anselm. The
treatises on the Atonement by Symington, Candlish, Martin,
Smeaton, in Great Britain, advocate for substance the view of
Anselm, as indeed it was held by Calvin before them. In America,
the theory is represented by Nathanael Emmons, A. Alexander, and
Charles Hodge (Syst. Theol., 2:470-540).

To this theory we make the following objections:

(_a_) While it contains a valuable element of truth, in its representation of the atonement as satisfying a principle of the divine nature, it conceives of this principle in too formal and external a manner,—making the idea of the divine honor or majesty more prominent than that of the divine holiness, in which the divine honor and majesty are grounded.

The theory has been called the “Criminal theory” of the Atonement,
as the old patristic theory of a ransom paid to Satan has been
called the “Military theory.” It had its origin in a time when
exaggerated ideas prevailed respecting the authority of popes and
emperors, and when dishonor done to their majesty (_crimen læsæ
majestatis_) was the highest offence known to law. See article by
Cramer, in Studien und Kritiken, 1880:7, on Wurzeln des
Anselm’schen Satisfactionsbegriffes.

Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 88, 89—“From the point of view of
Sovereignty, there could be no necessity for atonement. In
Mohammedanism, where sovereignty is the supreme and sole
theological principle, no need is felt for satisfying the divine
justice. God may pardon whom he will, on whatever grounds his
sovereign will may dictate. It therefore constituted a great
advance in Latin theology, as also an evidence of its immeasurable
superiority to Mohammedanism, when Anselm for the first time, in a
clear and emphatic manner, had asserted an inward necessity in the
being of God that his justice should receive satisfaction for the
affront which had been offered to it by human sinfulness.”

Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 481—“In the days of feudalism,
men thought of heaven as organized on a feudal basis, and ranked
the first and second Persons of the Trinity as Suzerain and
Tenant-in-Chief.” William James, Varieties of Religious
Experience, 329, 830—“The monarchical type of sovereignty was, for
example, so ineradicably planted in the mind of our forefathers,
that a dose of cruelty and arbitrariness in their Deity seems
positively to have been required by their imagination. They called
the cruelty ‘retributive justice,’ and a God without it would
certainly not have struck them as sovereign enough. But to-day we
abhor the very notion of eternal suffering inflicted; and that
arbitrary dealing out of salvation and damnation to selected
individuals, of which Jonathan Edwards could persuade himself that
he had not only a conviction, but a ‘delightful conviction,’ as of
a doctrine ‘exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet,’ appears to us,
if sovereignly anything, sovereignly irrational and mean.”

(_b_) In its eagerness to maintain the atoning efficacy of Christ’s passive obedience, the active obedience, quite as clearly expressed in Scripture, is insufficiently emphasized and well nigh lost sight of.

Neither Christ’s active obedience alone, nor Christ’s obedient
passion alone, can save us. As we shall see hereafter, in our
examination of the doctrine of Justification, the latter was
needed as the ground upon which our penalty could be remitted; the
former as the ground upon which we might be admitted to the divine
favor. Calvin has reflected the passive element in Anselm’s view,
in the following passages of his Institutes: II, 17:3—“God, to
whom we were hateful through sin, was appeased by the death of his
Son, and was made propitious to us.”... II, 16:7—“It is necessary
to consider how he substituted himself in order to pay the price
of our redemption. Death held us under its yoke, but he, in our
place, delivered himself into its power, that he might exempt us
from it.”... II, 16:2—“Christ interposed and bore what, by the
just judgment of God, was impending over sinners; with his own
blood expiated the sin which rendered them hateful to God; by this
expiation satisfied and duly propitiated the Father; by this
intercession appeased his anger; on this basis founded peace
between God and men; and by this tie secured the divine
benevolence toward them.”

It has been said that Anselm regarded Christ’s death not as a
vicarious punishment, but as a voluntary sacrifice in compensation
for which the guilty were released and justified. So Neander,
Hist. Christ. Dogmas (Bohn), 2:517, understands Anselm to teach
“the necessity of a satisfactio vicaria activa,” and says: “We do
not find in his writings the doctrine of a satisfactio passiva: he
nowhere says that Christ had endured the punishment of men.”
Shedd, Hist. Christ. Doctrine, 2:282, thinks this a
misunderstanding of Anselm. The Encyclopædia Britannica takes the
view of Shedd, when it speaks of Christ’s sufferings as penalty:
“The justice of man demands satisfaction; and as an insult to
infinite honor is itself infinite, the satisfaction must be
infinite, _i. e._, it must outweigh all that is not God. Such a
penalty can only be paid by God himself, and, as a penalty for
man, must be paid under the form of man. Satisfaction is only
possible through the God-man. Now this God-man, as sinless, is
exempt from the punishment of sin; his passion is therefore
voluntary, not given as due. The merit of it is therefore
infinite; God’s justice is thus appeased, and his mercy may extend
to man.” The truth then appears to be that Anselm held Christ’s
obedience to be passive, in that he satisfied God’s justice by
enduring punishment which the sinner deserved; but that he held
this same obedience of Christ to be active, in that he endured
this penalty voluntarily, when there was no obligation upon him so
to do.

Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 2:431, 461, 462—“Christ not only
suffered the penalty, but obeyed the precept, of the law. In this
case law and justice get their whole dues. But when lost man only
suffers the penalty, but does not obey the precept, the law is
defrauded of a part of its dues. No law is completely obeyed, if
only its penalty is endured.... Consequently, a sinner can never
completely and exhaustively satisfy the divine law, however much
or long he may suffer, because he cannot at one and the same time
endure the penalty and obey the precept. He owes ‘_ten thousand
talents_’ and has ‘_not wherewith to pay_’ (_Mat. 18:24, 25_), But
Christ did both, and therefore he ‘_magnified the law and made it
honorable_’ (_Is. 42:21_), in an infinitely higher degree than the
whole human family would have done, had they all personally
suffered for their sins.” _Cf._ Edwards, Works, 1:406.

(_c_) It allows disproportionate weight to those passages of Scripture which represent the atonement under commercial analogies, as the payment of a debt or ransom, to the exclusion of those which describe it as an ethical fact, whose value is to be estimated not quantitatively, but qualitatively.

Milton, Paradise Lost, 3:209-212—“Die he, or justice must, unless
for him Some other, able and as willing, pay The rigid
satisfaction, death for death.” The main text relied upon by the
advocates of the Commercial theory is _Mat. 20:28_—“_give his life
a ransom for many._” Pfleiderer, Philosophy of Religion,
1:257—“The work of Christ, as Anselm construed it, was in fact
nothing else than the prototype of the meritorious performances
and satisfactions of the ecclesiastical saints, and was therefore,
from the point of view of the mediæval church, thought out quite
logically. All the more remarkable is it that the churches of the
Reformation could be satisfied with this theory, notwithstanding
that it stood in complete contradiction to their deeper moral
consciousness. If, according to Protestant principles generally,
there are no supererogatory meritorious works, then one would
suppose that such cannot be accepted even in the case of Jesus.”

E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 258—“The Anselmic theory was
rejected by Abelard for grounding the atonement in justice instead
of benevolence, and for taking insufficient account of the power
of Christ’s sufferings and death in procuring a subjective change
in man.” Encyc. Brit., 2:93 (art.: Anselm)—“This theory has
exercised immense influence on the form of church doctrine. It is
certainly an advance on the older patristic theory, in so far as
it substitutes for a contest between God and Satan, a contest
between the goodness and justice of God; but it puts the whole
relation on a merely legal footing, gives it no ethical bearing,
and neglects altogether the consciousness of the individual to be
redeemed. In this respect it contrasts unfavorably with the later
theory of Abelard.”

(_d_) It represents the atonement as having reference only to the elect, and ignores the Scripture declarations that Christ died for all.

Anselm, like Augustine, limited the atonement to the elect. Yet
Leo the Great, in 461, had affirmed that “so precious is the
shedding of Christ’s blood for the unjust, that if the whole
universe of captives would believe in the Redeemer, no chain of
the devil could hold them” (Crippen, 132). Bishop Gailor, of the
Episcopal Church, heard General Booth at Memphis say in 1903:
“Friends, Jesus shed his blood to pay the price, and he bought
from God enough salvation to go round.” The Bishop says: “I felt
that his view of salvation was different from mine. Yet such
teaching, partial as it is, lifts men by the thousand from the
mire and vice of sin into the power and purity of a new life in
Jesus Christ.”

Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 221—“Anselm does not clearly
connect the death of Christ with the punishment of sin, since he
makes it a supererogatory work voluntarily done, in consequence of
which it is ‘fitting’ that forgiveness should be bestowed on
sinners.... Yet his theory served to hand down to later
theologians the great idea of the objective atonement.”

(_e_) It is defective in holding to a merely external transfer of the merit of Christ’s work, while it does not clearly state the internal ground of that transfer, in the union of the believer with Christ.

This needed supplement, namely, the doctrine of the Union of the
Believer with Christ, was furnished by Thomas Aquinas, Summa, pars
3, quæs. 8. The Anselmic theory is Romanist in its tendency, as
the theory next to be mentioned is Protestant in its tendency. P.
S. Moxom asserts that salvation is not by substitution, but by
incorporation. We prefer to say that salvation is by substitution,
but that the substitution is by incorporation. Incorporation
involves substitution, and another’s pain inures to my account.
Christ being incorporate with humanity, all the exposures and
liabilities of humanity fell upon him. Simon, Reconciliation by
Incarnation, is an attempt to unite the two elements of the
doctrine.

Lidgett, Spir. Prin. of Atonement, 182-189—“As Anselm represents
it, Christ’s death is not ours in any such sense that we can enter
into it. Bushnell justly charges that it leaves no moral dynamic
in the Cross.” For criticism of Anselm, see John Caird, Fund.
Ideas of Christianity, 2:172-193: Thomasius, Christi Person und
Werk, III, 2:230-241; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:70 sq.; Baur,
Dogmengeschichte, 2:416 _sq._; Shedd, Hist. Doct., 2:273-286;
Dale, Atonement, 279-292; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture,
196-199; Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre, 176-178.

6th. The Ethical Theory of the Atonement.

In propounding what we conceive to be the true theory of the atonement, it seems desirable to divide our treatment into two parts. No theory can be satisfactory which does not furnish a solution of the two problems: 1. What did the atonement accomplish? or, in other words, what was the object of Christ’s death? The answer to this question must be a description of the atonement in its relation to holiness in God. 2. What were the means used? or, in other words, how could Christ justly die? The answer to this question must be a description of the atonement as arising from Christ’s relation to humanity. We take up these two parts of the subject in order.

Edwards, Works, 1:609, says that two things make Christ’s
sufferings a satisfaction for human guilt: (1) their equality or
equivalence to the punishment that the sinner deserves; (2) the
union between him and them, or the propriety of his being
accepted, in suffering, as the representative of the sinner.
Christ bore God’s wrath: (1) by the sight of sin and punishment;
(2) by enduring the effects of wrath ordered by God. See also
Edwards, Sermon on the Satisfaction of Christ. These statements of
Edwards suggest the two points of view from which we regard the
atonement; but they come short of the Scriptural declarations, in
that they do not distinctly assert Christ’s endurance of penalty
itself. Thus they leave the way open for the New School theories
of the atonement, propounded by the successors of Edwards.

Adolphe Monod said well: “Save first the holy law of my God,—after
that you shall save me.” Edwards felt the first of these needs,
for he says, in his Mysteries of Scripture, Works, 3:542—“The
necessity of Christ’s satisfaction to divine justice is, as it
were, the centre and hinge of all doctrines of pure revelation.
Other doctrines are comparatively of little importance, except as
they have respect to this.” And in his Work of Redemption, Works,
1:412—“Christ was born to the end that he might die; and therefore
he did, as it were, begin to die as soon as he was born.” See
_John 12:32_—“_And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw
all men unto myself. But this he said, signifying by what manner
of death he should die._” Christ was “_lifted up_”: 1. as a
propitiation to the holiness of God, which makes suffering to
follow sin, so affording the only ground for pardon without and
peace within; 2. as a power to purify the hearts and lives of men,
Jesus being as “_the serpent lifted up in the wilderness_” (_John
3:14_), and we overcoming “_because of the blood of the Lamb_”
(_Rev. 12:11_).

_First_,—the Atonement as related to Holiness in God.

The Ethical theory holds that the necessity of the atonement is grounded in the holiness of God, of which conscience in man is a finite reflection. There is an ethical principle in the divine nature, which demands that sin shall be punished. Aside from its results, sin is essentially ill-deserving. As we who are made in God’s image mark our growth in purity by the increasing quickness with which we detect impurity, and the increasing hatred which we feel toward it, so infinite purity is a consuming fire to all iniquity. As there is an ethical demand in our natures that not only others’ wickedness, but our own wickedness, be visited with punishment, and a keen conscience cannot rest till it has made satisfaction to justice for its misdeeds, so there is an ethical demand of God’s nature that penalty follow sin.

The holiness of God has conscience and penalty for its correlates
and consequences. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 216—“In old Athens,
the rock on whose top sat the Court of the Areopagus, representing
the highest reason and the best character of the Athenian state,
had underneath it the Cave of the Furies.” Shakespeare knew human
nature and he bears witness to its need of atonement. In his last
Will and Testament he writes: “First, I commend my soul into the
hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through
the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of
life everlasting.” Richard III, 1:4—“I charge you, as you hope to
have redemption By Christ’s dear blood shed for our grievous sins,
That you depart and lay no hands on me.” Richard II, 4:1—“The
world’s Ransom, blessed Mary’s Son.” Henry VI, 2d part, 3:2—“That
dread King took our state upon him, To free us from his Father’s
wrathful curse.” Henry IV, 1st part, 1:1—“Those holy fields, Over
whose acres walked those blessed feet, Which fourteen hundred
years ago were nailed For our advantage on the bitter Cross.”
Measure for Measure, 2:2—“Why, all the souls that are were forfeit
once; And he that might the vantage best have took Found out the
remedy.” Henry VI, 2d part, 1:1—“Now, by the death of him that
died for all!” All’s Well that Ends Well, 3:4—“What angel shall
Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive Unless her prayers,
whom heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from
the wrath Of greatest justice.” See a good statement of the
Ethical theory of the Atonement in its relation to God’s holiness,
in Denney, Studies in Theology, 100-124.

Punishment is the constitutional reaction of God’s being against moral evil—the self-assertion of infinite holiness against its antagonist and would-be destroyer. In God this demand is devoid of all passion, and is consistent with infinite benevolence. It is a demand that cannot be evaded, since the holiness from which it springs is unchanging. The atonement is therefore a satisfaction of the ethical demand of the divine nature, by the substitution of Christ’s penal sufferings for the punishment of the guilty.

John Wessel, a Reformer before the Reformation (1419-1489): “Ipse
deus, ipse sacerdos, ipse hostia, pro se, de se, sibi
satisfecit”—“Himself being at the same time God, priest, and
sacrificial victim, he made satisfaction to himself, for himself
[_i. e._, for the sins of men to whom he had united himself], and
by himself [by his own sinless sufferings].” Quarles’s Emblems: “O
groundless deeps! O love beyond degree! The Offended dies, to set
the offender free!”

Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:98—“When I was in the hand of the Holy
Spirit, under conviction of sin, I had a clear and sharp sense of
the justice of God. Sin, whatever it might be to other people,
became to me an intolerable burden. It was not so much that I
feared hell, as that I feared sin; and all the while I had upon my
mind a deep concern for the honor of God’s name and the integrity
of his moral government. I felt that it would not satisfy my
conscience if I could be forgiven unjustly. But then there came
the question: ‘How could God be just, and yet justify me who had
been so guilty?’... The doctrine of the atonement is to my mind
one of the surest proofs of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. Who
would or could have thought of the just Ruler dying for the unjust
rebel?”

This substitution is unknown to mere law, and above and beyond the powers of law. It is an operation of grace. Grace, however, does not violate or suspend law, but takes it up into itself and fulfils it. The righteousness of law is maintained, in that the source of all law, the judge and punisher, himself voluntarily submits to bear the penalty, and bears it in the human nature that has sinned.

Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 221—“In conscience, man condemns
and is condemned. Christ was God in the flesh, both priest and
sacrificial victim (_Heb. 9:12_). He is ‘_full of
grace_’—forgiving grace—but he is ‘_full of truth_’ also, and so
‘_the only-begotten from the Father_’ (_John 1:14_). Not
forgiveness that ignores sin, not justice that has no mercy. He
forgave the sinner, because he bore the sin.” Kaftan, referring to
some modern theologians who have returned to the old doctrine but
who have said that the basis of the atonement is, not the
juridical idea of punishment, but the ethical idea of
propitiation, affirms as follows: “On the contrary the highest
ethical idea of propitiation is just that of punishment. Take this
away, and propitiation becomes nothing but the inferior and
unworthy idea of appeasing the wrath of an incensed deity.
Precisely the idea of the vicarious suffering of punishment is the
idea which must in some way be brought to a full expression for
the sake of the ethical consciousness.

“The conscience awakened by God can accept no forgiveness which is
not experienced as at the same time a condemnation of sin....
Jesus, though he was without sin and deserved no punishment, took
upon himself all the evils which have come into the world as the
consequence and punishment of sin, even to the shameful death on
the Cross at the hand of sinners.... Consequently for the good of
man he bore all that which man had deserved, and thereby has man
escaped the final eternal punishment and has become a child of
God.... This is not merely a subjective conclusion upon the
related facts, but it is as objective and real as anything which
faith recognizes and knows.”

Thus the atonement answers the ethical demand of the divine nature that sin be punished if the offender is to go free. The interests of the divine government are secured as a first subordinate result of this satisfaction to God himself, of whose nature the government is an expression; while, as a second subordinate result, provision is made for the needs of human nature,—on the one hand the need of an objective satisfaction to its ethical demand of punishment for sin, and on the other the need of a manifestation of divine love and mercy that will affect the heart and move it to repentance.

The great classical passage with reference to the atonement is
_Rom. 3:25, 26_—“_whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through
faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the
passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of
God; for the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present
season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him
that hath faith is Jesus._” Or, somewhat more freely translated,
the passage would read:—“_whom God hath set forth in his blood as
a propitiatory sacrifice, through faith, to show forth his
righteousness on account of the pretermission of past offenses in
the forbearance of God; to declare his righteousness in the time
now present, so that he may be just and yet may justify him who
believeth in Jesus_.”

EXPOSITION OF ROM. 3:25, 26.—These verses are an expanded
statement of the subject of the epistle—the revelation of the
“_righteousness of God_” (= the righteousness which God provides
and which God accepts)—which had been mentioned in _1:17_, but
which now has new light thrown upon it by the demonstration, in
_1:18-3:20_, that both Gentiles and Jews are under condemnation,
and are alike shut up for salvation to some other method than that
of works. We subjoin the substance of Meyer’s comments upon this
passage.

“_Verse 25._ ‘_God has set forth Christ as an effectual
propitiatory offering, through faith, by means of his blood_,’ _i.
e._, in that he caused him to shed his blood. ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ αἵματι
belongs to προέθετο, not to πίστεως. The purpose of this setting
forth in his blood is εἰς ἔνδειξιν τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ, ‘_for
the display of his_ [judicial and punitive] _righteousness_,’
which received its satisfaction in the death of Christ as a
propitiatory offering, and was thereby practically demonstrated
and exhibited. ‘_On account of the passing-by of sins that had
previously taken place_,’ _i. e._, because he had allowed the
pre-Christian sins to go without punishment, whereby his
righteousness had been lost sight of and obscured, and had come to
need an ἔνδειξις, or exhibition to men. Omittance is not
acquittance. πάρεσις, passing-by, is intermediate between pardon
and punishment. ‘_In virtue of the forbearance of God_’ expresses
the motive of the πάρεσις. Before Christ’s sacrifice, God’s
administration was a scandal,—it needed vindication. The atonement
is God’s answer to the charge of freeing the guilty.

“_Verse 26._ εἰς τὸ εἶναι is not epexegetical of εἰς ἔνδειξιν, but
presents the teleology of the ἱλαστήριον, the final aim of the
whole affirmation from ὂν προέθετο to καιρῷ—namely, first, God’s
_being just_, and secondly, his _appearing just_ in consequence of
this. _Justus et justificans_, instead of _justus et condemnans_,
this is the _summum paradoxon evangelicum_. Of this revelation of
righteousness, not through condemnation, but through atonement,
grace is the determining ground.”

We repeat what was said on pages 719, 720, with regard to the
teaching of the passage, namely, that it shows: (1) that Christ’s
death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main
effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute in God which
demands the atonement in his justice, or holiness; (4) that the
satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God’s
justifying the believer. It is only incidentally and subordinately
that the atonement is a necessity to man; Paul speaks of it here
mainly as a necessity to God. Christ suffers, indeed, that God may
_appear_ righteous; but behind the appearance lies the reality;
the main object of Christ’s suffering is that God may _be_
righteous, while he pardons the believing sinner; in other words,
the ground of the atonement is something internal to God himself.
See _Heb. 2:10_—it “_became_” God = it was morally fitting in God,
to make Christ suffer; _cf._ _Zech. 6:8_—“_they that go toward the
north country have quieted my spirit in the north country_”—the
judgments inflicted on Babylon have satisfied my justice.

Charnock: “He who once ‘_quenched the violence of fire_’ for those
Hebrew children, has also quenched the fires of God’s anger
against the sinner, hotter than furnace heated seven times.” The
same God who is a God of holiness, and who in virtue of his
holiness must punish human sin, is also a God of mercy, and in
virtue of his mercy himself bears the punishment of human sin.
Dorner, Gesch. prot. Theologie, 98—“Christ is not only mediator
between God and man, but between the just God and the merciful
God”—_cf._ _Ps. 85:10_—“_Mercy and truth are met together;
righteousness and peace have kissed each other,_” “Conscience
demands vicariousness, for conscience declares that a gratuitous
pardon would not be just”; see Knight, Colloquia Peripatetica, 88.

Lidgett, Spir. Principle of the Atonement, 219, 304—“The Atonement
1. has Godward significance; 2. consists in our Lord’s endurance
of death on our behalf; 3. the spirit in which he endured death is
of vital importance to the efficacy of his sacrifice, namely,
obedience.... God gives repentance, yet requires it; he gives
atonement, yet requires it. ‘_Thanks be to God for his unspeakable
gift_’ (_2 Cor. 9:15_).” Simon, in Expositor, 6:321-334 (for
substance)—“As in prayer we ask God to energize us and enable us
to obey his law, and he answers by entering our hearts and obeying
in us and for us: as we pray for strength in affliction, and find
him helping us by putting his Spirit into us, and suffering in us
and for us; so in atonement, Christ, the manifested God, obeys and
suffers in our stead. Even the moral theory implies substitution
also. God in us obeys his own law and bears the sorrows that sin
has caused. Why can he not, in human nature, also endure the
penalty of sin? The possibility of this cannot be consistently
denied by any who believe in divine help granted in answer to
prayer. The doctrine of the atonement and the doctrine of prayer
stand or fall together.”

See on the whole subject, Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 272-324,
Philosophy of History, 65-69, and Dogmatic Theology, 2:401-463;
Magee, Atonement and Sacrifice, 27, 53, 258; Edwards’s Works,
4:140 sq.; Weber, Vom Zorne Gottes, 214-334; Owen, on Divine
Justice, in Works, 10:500-512; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV,
2:27-114; Hopkins, Works, 1:319-368; Schöberlein, in Studien und
Kritiken, 1845:267-318, and 1847:7-70, also in Herzog,
Encyclopädie, art.: Versöhnung; Jahrbuch f. d. Theol., 3:713, and
8:213; Macdonnell, Atonement, 115-214; Luthardt, Saving Truths,
114-138; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 605-637; Lawrence, in Bib. Sac.,
20:332-339; Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre; Waffle, in Bap. Rev.,
1882:263-286; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:641-662 (Syst. Doct.,
4:107-124); Remensnyder, The Atonement and Modern Thought.

_Secondly_,—the Atonement as related to Humanity in Christ.