A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.We may classify the Scripture representations according as they conform to moral, commercial, legal or sacrificial analogies.(a)Moral.—The atonement is described asAprovision originating in God's love, and manifesting this love to the universe; but also as anexample of disinterested love, to secure our deliverance from selfishness.—In these latter passages, Christ's death is referred to as a source of moral stimulus to men.A provision:John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”;Rom. 5:8—“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 John 4:9—“Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him”;Heb. 2:9—“Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man”—redemption originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the Son.—An example:Luke 9:22-24—“The Son of man must suffer ... and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it”;2 Cor. 5:15—“he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves”;Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present[pg 717]evil world”;Eph. 5:25-27—“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it”;Col. 1:22—“reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy”;Titus 2:14—“gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify”;1 Pet. 2:21-24—“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.”Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious cottager, on hearing the text,‘God so loved the world,’exclaimed:‘Ah, thatwaslove! I could have given myself, but I could never have given my son.’”There was a wounding of the Father through the heart of the Son:“they shall look unto me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son”(Zech. 12:10).(b)Commercial.—The atonement is described asAransom, paid to free us from the bondage of sin (note in these passages the use of ἀντί, the preposition of price, bargain, exchange).—In these passages, Christ's death is represented as the price of our deliverance from sin and death.Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45—“to give his life a ransom for many”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν.1 Tim. 2:6—“who gave himself a ransom for all”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“for,”in the sense of“instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“for,”in the sense of“in behalf of,”“for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. SeeMat. 2:22—“Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of[ἀντί]his father Herod”;Luke 11:11—“shall his son ask ... a fish, and he for[ἀντί]a fish give him a serpent?”Heb. 12:2—“Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for[ἀντί = as the price of]the joy that was set before him endured the cross”;16—“Esau, who for[ἀντί = in exchange for]one mess of meat sold his own birthright.”See alsoMat. 16:26—“what shall a man give in exchange for(ἀντάλλαγμα)his life”= how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it? Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in1 Tim. 2:6requires that ὑπέρ should mean“instead of.”We should interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί inMat. 20:28.“Something befell Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall sinners”(E. Y. Mullins).Meyer, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many”—“The ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”See also1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23—“ye were bought with a price”; and2 Pet. 2:1—“denying even the Master that bought them.”The word“redemption,”indeed, means simply“repurchase,”or“the state of being repurchased”—i. e., delivered by the payment of a price.Rev. 5:9—“thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe.”Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.”Buttmann, N. T. Grammar, 321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of, for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.”See Grimm's Wilke, Lexicon Græco-Lat.:“ἀντί,in vicem,anstatt”; Thayer, Lexicon N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received, endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase)Mat. 20:28”; also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever really uttered the words“give his life a ransom for many”(Mat. 20:28). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel, but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate the apostolic conception of Jesus' teaching, a conception which Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his apostles and should guide them into all the truth (John 14:26;16:13). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.(c)Legal.—The atonement is described asAn act ofobedienceto the law which sinners had violated; apenalty, borne in order to rescue the guilty; and anexhibitionof God's righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is represented as demanded by God's law and government.Obedience:Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law”;Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”—Christ's baptism prefigured[pg 718]his death, and was a consecration to death;cf.Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”Luke 12:50—“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”Mat. 26:39—“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt”;5:17—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil”;Phil. 2:8—“becoming obedient even unto death”;Rom. 5:19—“through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;10:4—“Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.”—Penalty:Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”;2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf”—here“sin”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer);Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins”;3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”;cf.Deut 21:23—“he that is hanged is accursed of God.”Heb. 9:28—“Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many”;cf.Lev. 5:17—“if any one sin ... yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity”;Num. 14:34—“for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years”;Lam. 5:7—“Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.”—Exhibition:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God”;cf.Heb. 9:15—“a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant.”On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes Ritschl's evasion of their natural force and declares Paul's teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor Paine's view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect.“God was in Christ”(2 Cor. 5:19) and God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16) are the keynote of Paul's teaching, and this is identical with John's doctrine of the Logos:“the Word was God,”and“the Word became flesh”(John 1:1, 14)The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness, in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any more than the presence of man's spirit in all he thinks and does proves that man's spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3. God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of God's feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity of Christ and no objective atonement.(d)Sacrificial.—The atonement is described asA work ofpriestly mediation, which reconciles God to men,—notice here that the term“reconciliation”has its usual sense of removing enmity, not from the offending, but from the offended party;—asin-offering, presented on behalf of transgressors;—apropitiation, which satisfies the demands of violated holiness;—and asubstitution, of Christ's obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show that Christ's death is demanded by God's attribute of justice, or holiness, if sinners are to be saved.Priestly mediation:Heb. 9:11, 12—“Christ having come a high priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption”;[pg 719]Rom. 5:10—“while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son”;2 Cor. 5:18, 19—“all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses”;Eph. 2:16—“might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby”;cf.12, 13, 19—“strangers from the covenants of the promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God”;Col. 1:20—“through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.”On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the apostle to be, that“we were‘enemies,’not actively, as hostile to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.”The epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against Gentile and Jew alike (Rom. 1:18).“While we were enemies”(Rom. 5:10)—“when God was hostile to us.”“Reconciliation”is therefore the removal of God's wrath toward man. Meyer, on this last passage, says that Christ's death does not remove man's wrath toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself. See Denney, Com. onRom. 5:9-11, in Expositor's Gk. Test.Cf.Num. 25:13, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to have“made atonement for the children of Israel.”Surely, the“atonement”here cannot be a reconciliation ofIsrael. The action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So,1 Sam. 29:4—“wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?”Mat. 5:23, 24—“If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother[i. e., remove his enmity, not thine own],and then come and offer thy gift.”See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:387-398.Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (Rom. 5:10) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part, but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.”Paul was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it from Christ himself (Gal. 1:12). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it was before.”The old hymn expressed the truth:“My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child; I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And‘Father, Abba, Father’cry.”A sin-offering:John 1:29—“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world”—here αἴρων means to take away by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion to the sin-offering ofIsaiah 53:6-12—“when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”Mat. 26:28—“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins”;cf.Ps. 50:5—“made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”1 John 1:7—“the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”—not sanctification, but justification;1 Cor. 5:7—“our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ”;cf.Deut. 16:2-6—“thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God.”Eph. 5:2—“gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell”(see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor's Greek Testament);Heb. 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God”;22, 26—“apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”;1 Pet. 1:18, 19—“redeemed ... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.”See Expos. Gk. Test., onEph. 1:7.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out thatJohn 6:52-59—“eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood”—is Christ's reference to his death in terms ofsacrifice. So, as we shall see below, it is apropitiation(1 John 2:2). We therefore strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement, 64—“Christ's death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of substitution or expiation.”Wilson forgets that this necessity of suffering arises from God's righteousness; that without this suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnationconstitutedthe Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated. Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words:“Incarnation in order to Atonement.”We regard as still better the words:“Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”A propitiation:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”A full and critical exposition of this passage will be found under the Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ's death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute[pg 720]in God which demands the atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God's justifying the believer.CompareLuke 18:13, marg.—“God, be thou merciful unto me the sinner”; lit.:“God be propitiated toward me the sinner”—by the sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even while he prayed.Heb. 2:17—“a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people”;1 John 2:2—“and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”;4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”;cf.Gen. 32:20,lxx.—“I will appease[ἐξιλάσομαι,“propitiate”]him with the present that goeth before me”;Prov. 16:14,lxx.—“The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise man will pacify it”[ἐξιλάσεται,“propitiate it”].On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In fact, it was he himself who‘set forth’Jesus as‘a propitiation’(Rom. 3:25, 26).”Paul never merges the objective atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for Christinus by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75, 89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul's representation of Christ as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews:“The priest says: Man's return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man's sin. This is Paul's doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a divine provision for sacrifice. Man's return to God is the thing wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who comes in to perfect man's imperfect work. This is the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews.”This recognition of expiation in Paul's teaching, together with denial of its validity and interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still further and affirms:“In the N. T. God is never said to be propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God or satisfies God's wrath.”Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T. God is represented as self-propitiated:“Christianity is distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of his own love.”This self-propitiation however must not be thought of as a bearing of penalty:“Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled with purification—‘with his stripes we are healed’(Is. 53:5). And in the N. T.,‘the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the world’(John 1:29);‘the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth’(1 John 1:7).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the penalty, but removal of the sin.”This seems to us a distinct contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an essential of Christian doctrine (seeRom. 3:25;1 John 2:2), while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man, but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:734-756.A substitution:Luke 22:37—“he was reckoned with transgressors”;cf.Lev. 16:21, 22—“and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land”;Is. 53:5, 6—“he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”John 10:11—“the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep”;Rom. 5:6-8—“while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 Pet. 3:18—“Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (b) above, in which Christ's death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer's comment, there quoted, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many,”λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says:“ἀντί denotes substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of, is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is paid] are[pg 721]redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of their sins were expiated.”Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that“in both the N. T. texts,Mat. 16:26andMark 8:37, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin to the conception of atonement:cf.Is. 43:3, 4;51:11;Amos 5:12. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.”Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“Mat. 20:28contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it, Christ's death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a ransom.”The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol. 2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution, but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί inMat. 20:28means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in Jesus himself.Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ's vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr. Clarke's Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed, for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God, is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.”Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that“substitution means simply that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken, but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man's redemption.”On the Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale, Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342; Smeaton, Our Lord's and the Apostles' Doctrine of Atonement.An examination of the passages referred to shows that, while the forms in which the atoning work of Christ is described are in part derived from moral, commercial, and legal relations, the prevailing language is that of sacrifice. A correct view of the atonement must therefore be grounded upon a proper interpretation of the institution of sacrifice, especially as found in the Mosaic system.The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus' own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not tospeakabout it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles to the gospels.[pg 722]The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of salvation, but for the redeemed.“None of the ransomed ever knew.”The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.Harnack:“There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is possible.”We regard this confession as a demonstration of the psychological correctness of Paul's doctrine of a vicarious atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience, which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only indications of the higher verdicts of God:1 John 3:20—“if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely out of existence.”So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic, but moral.”Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the creature. A more correct view of God's righteousness as the fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.
A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.We may classify the Scripture representations according as they conform to moral, commercial, legal or sacrificial analogies.(a)Moral.—The atonement is described asAprovision originating in God's love, and manifesting this love to the universe; but also as anexample of disinterested love, to secure our deliverance from selfishness.—In these latter passages, Christ's death is referred to as a source of moral stimulus to men.A provision:John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”;Rom. 5:8—“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 John 4:9—“Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him”;Heb. 2:9—“Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man”—redemption originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the Son.—An example:Luke 9:22-24—“The Son of man must suffer ... and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it”;2 Cor. 5:15—“he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves”;Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present[pg 717]evil world”;Eph. 5:25-27—“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it”;Col. 1:22—“reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy”;Titus 2:14—“gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify”;1 Pet. 2:21-24—“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.”Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious cottager, on hearing the text,‘God so loved the world,’exclaimed:‘Ah, thatwaslove! I could have given myself, but I could never have given my son.’”There was a wounding of the Father through the heart of the Son:“they shall look unto me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son”(Zech. 12:10).(b)Commercial.—The atonement is described asAransom, paid to free us from the bondage of sin (note in these passages the use of ἀντί, the preposition of price, bargain, exchange).—In these passages, Christ's death is represented as the price of our deliverance from sin and death.Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45—“to give his life a ransom for many”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν.1 Tim. 2:6—“who gave himself a ransom for all”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“for,”in the sense of“instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“for,”in the sense of“in behalf of,”“for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. SeeMat. 2:22—“Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of[ἀντί]his father Herod”;Luke 11:11—“shall his son ask ... a fish, and he for[ἀντί]a fish give him a serpent?”Heb. 12:2—“Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for[ἀντί = as the price of]the joy that was set before him endured the cross”;16—“Esau, who for[ἀντί = in exchange for]one mess of meat sold his own birthright.”See alsoMat. 16:26—“what shall a man give in exchange for(ἀντάλλαγμα)his life”= how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it? Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in1 Tim. 2:6requires that ὑπέρ should mean“instead of.”We should interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί inMat. 20:28.“Something befell Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall sinners”(E. Y. Mullins).Meyer, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many”—“The ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”See also1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23—“ye were bought with a price”; and2 Pet. 2:1—“denying even the Master that bought them.”The word“redemption,”indeed, means simply“repurchase,”or“the state of being repurchased”—i. e., delivered by the payment of a price.Rev. 5:9—“thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe.”Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.”Buttmann, N. T. Grammar, 321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of, for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.”See Grimm's Wilke, Lexicon Græco-Lat.:“ἀντί,in vicem,anstatt”; Thayer, Lexicon N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received, endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase)Mat. 20:28”; also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever really uttered the words“give his life a ransom for many”(Mat. 20:28). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel, but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate the apostolic conception of Jesus' teaching, a conception which Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his apostles and should guide them into all the truth (John 14:26;16:13). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.(c)Legal.—The atonement is described asAn act ofobedienceto the law which sinners had violated; apenalty, borne in order to rescue the guilty; and anexhibitionof God's righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is represented as demanded by God's law and government.Obedience:Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law”;Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”—Christ's baptism prefigured[pg 718]his death, and was a consecration to death;cf.Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”Luke 12:50—“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”Mat. 26:39—“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt”;5:17—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil”;Phil. 2:8—“becoming obedient even unto death”;Rom. 5:19—“through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;10:4—“Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.”—Penalty:Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”;2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf”—here“sin”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer);Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins”;3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”;cf.Deut 21:23—“he that is hanged is accursed of God.”Heb. 9:28—“Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many”;cf.Lev. 5:17—“if any one sin ... yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity”;Num. 14:34—“for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years”;Lam. 5:7—“Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.”—Exhibition:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God”;cf.Heb. 9:15—“a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant.”On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes Ritschl's evasion of their natural force and declares Paul's teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor Paine's view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect.“God was in Christ”(2 Cor. 5:19) and God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16) are the keynote of Paul's teaching, and this is identical with John's doctrine of the Logos:“the Word was God,”and“the Word became flesh”(John 1:1, 14)The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness, in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any more than the presence of man's spirit in all he thinks and does proves that man's spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3. God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of God's feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity of Christ and no objective atonement.(d)Sacrificial.—The atonement is described asA work ofpriestly mediation, which reconciles God to men,—notice here that the term“reconciliation”has its usual sense of removing enmity, not from the offending, but from the offended party;—asin-offering, presented on behalf of transgressors;—apropitiation, which satisfies the demands of violated holiness;—and asubstitution, of Christ's obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show that Christ's death is demanded by God's attribute of justice, or holiness, if sinners are to be saved.Priestly mediation:Heb. 9:11, 12—“Christ having come a high priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption”;[pg 719]Rom. 5:10—“while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son”;2 Cor. 5:18, 19—“all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses”;Eph. 2:16—“might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby”;cf.12, 13, 19—“strangers from the covenants of the promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God”;Col. 1:20—“through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.”On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the apostle to be, that“we were‘enemies,’not actively, as hostile to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.”The epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against Gentile and Jew alike (Rom. 1:18).“While we were enemies”(Rom. 5:10)—“when God was hostile to us.”“Reconciliation”is therefore the removal of God's wrath toward man. Meyer, on this last passage, says that Christ's death does not remove man's wrath toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself. See Denney, Com. onRom. 5:9-11, in Expositor's Gk. Test.Cf.Num. 25:13, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to have“made atonement for the children of Israel.”Surely, the“atonement”here cannot be a reconciliation ofIsrael. The action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So,1 Sam. 29:4—“wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?”Mat. 5:23, 24—“If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother[i. e., remove his enmity, not thine own],and then come and offer thy gift.”See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:387-398.Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (Rom. 5:10) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part, but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.”Paul was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it from Christ himself (Gal. 1:12). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it was before.”The old hymn expressed the truth:“My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child; I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And‘Father, Abba, Father’cry.”A sin-offering:John 1:29—“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world”—here αἴρων means to take away by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion to the sin-offering ofIsaiah 53:6-12—“when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”Mat. 26:28—“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins”;cf.Ps. 50:5—“made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”1 John 1:7—“the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”—not sanctification, but justification;1 Cor. 5:7—“our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ”;cf.Deut. 16:2-6—“thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God.”Eph. 5:2—“gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell”(see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor's Greek Testament);Heb. 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God”;22, 26—“apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”;1 Pet. 1:18, 19—“redeemed ... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.”See Expos. Gk. Test., onEph. 1:7.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out thatJohn 6:52-59—“eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood”—is Christ's reference to his death in terms ofsacrifice. So, as we shall see below, it is apropitiation(1 John 2:2). We therefore strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement, 64—“Christ's death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of substitution or expiation.”Wilson forgets that this necessity of suffering arises from God's righteousness; that without this suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnationconstitutedthe Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated. Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words:“Incarnation in order to Atonement.”We regard as still better the words:“Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”A propitiation:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”A full and critical exposition of this passage will be found under the Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ's death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute[pg 720]in God which demands the atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God's justifying the believer.CompareLuke 18:13, marg.—“God, be thou merciful unto me the sinner”; lit.:“God be propitiated toward me the sinner”—by the sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even while he prayed.Heb. 2:17—“a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people”;1 John 2:2—“and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”;4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”;cf.Gen. 32:20,lxx.—“I will appease[ἐξιλάσομαι,“propitiate”]him with the present that goeth before me”;Prov. 16:14,lxx.—“The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise man will pacify it”[ἐξιλάσεται,“propitiate it”].On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In fact, it was he himself who‘set forth’Jesus as‘a propitiation’(Rom. 3:25, 26).”Paul never merges the objective atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for Christinus by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75, 89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul's representation of Christ as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews:“The priest says: Man's return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man's sin. This is Paul's doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a divine provision for sacrifice. Man's return to God is the thing wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who comes in to perfect man's imperfect work. This is the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews.”This recognition of expiation in Paul's teaching, together with denial of its validity and interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still further and affirms:“In the N. T. God is never said to be propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God or satisfies God's wrath.”Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T. God is represented as self-propitiated:“Christianity is distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of his own love.”This self-propitiation however must not be thought of as a bearing of penalty:“Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled with purification—‘with his stripes we are healed’(Is. 53:5). And in the N. T.,‘the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the world’(John 1:29);‘the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth’(1 John 1:7).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the penalty, but removal of the sin.”This seems to us a distinct contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an essential of Christian doctrine (seeRom. 3:25;1 John 2:2), while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man, but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:734-756.A substitution:Luke 22:37—“he was reckoned with transgressors”;cf.Lev. 16:21, 22—“and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land”;Is. 53:5, 6—“he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”John 10:11—“the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep”;Rom. 5:6-8—“while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 Pet. 3:18—“Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (b) above, in which Christ's death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer's comment, there quoted, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many,”λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says:“ἀντί denotes substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of, is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is paid] are[pg 721]redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of their sins were expiated.”Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that“in both the N. T. texts,Mat. 16:26andMark 8:37, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin to the conception of atonement:cf.Is. 43:3, 4;51:11;Amos 5:12. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.”Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“Mat. 20:28contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it, Christ's death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a ransom.”The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol. 2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution, but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί inMat. 20:28means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in Jesus himself.Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ's vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr. Clarke's Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed, for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God, is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.”Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that“substitution means simply that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken, but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man's redemption.”On the Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale, Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342; Smeaton, Our Lord's and the Apostles' Doctrine of Atonement.An examination of the passages referred to shows that, while the forms in which the atoning work of Christ is described are in part derived from moral, commercial, and legal relations, the prevailing language is that of sacrifice. A correct view of the atonement must therefore be grounded upon a proper interpretation of the institution of sacrifice, especially as found in the Mosaic system.The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus' own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not tospeakabout it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles to the gospels.[pg 722]The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of salvation, but for the redeemed.“None of the ransomed ever knew.”The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.Harnack:“There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is possible.”We regard this confession as a demonstration of the psychological correctness of Paul's doctrine of a vicarious atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience, which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only indications of the higher verdicts of God:1 John 3:20—“if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely out of existence.”So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic, but moral.”Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the creature. A more correct view of God's righteousness as the fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.
A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.We may classify the Scripture representations according as they conform to moral, commercial, legal or sacrificial analogies.(a)Moral.—The atonement is described asAprovision originating in God's love, and manifesting this love to the universe; but also as anexample of disinterested love, to secure our deliverance from selfishness.—In these latter passages, Christ's death is referred to as a source of moral stimulus to men.A provision:John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”;Rom. 5:8—“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 John 4:9—“Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him”;Heb. 2:9—“Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man”—redemption originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the Son.—An example:Luke 9:22-24—“The Son of man must suffer ... and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it”;2 Cor. 5:15—“he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves”;Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present[pg 717]evil world”;Eph. 5:25-27—“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it”;Col. 1:22—“reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy”;Titus 2:14—“gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify”;1 Pet. 2:21-24—“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.”Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious cottager, on hearing the text,‘God so loved the world,’exclaimed:‘Ah, thatwaslove! I could have given myself, but I could never have given my son.’”There was a wounding of the Father through the heart of the Son:“they shall look unto me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son”(Zech. 12:10).(b)Commercial.—The atonement is described asAransom, paid to free us from the bondage of sin (note in these passages the use of ἀντί, the preposition of price, bargain, exchange).—In these passages, Christ's death is represented as the price of our deliverance from sin and death.Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45—“to give his life a ransom for many”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν.1 Tim. 2:6—“who gave himself a ransom for all”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“for,”in the sense of“instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“for,”in the sense of“in behalf of,”“for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. SeeMat. 2:22—“Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of[ἀντί]his father Herod”;Luke 11:11—“shall his son ask ... a fish, and he for[ἀντί]a fish give him a serpent?”Heb. 12:2—“Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for[ἀντί = as the price of]the joy that was set before him endured the cross”;16—“Esau, who for[ἀντί = in exchange for]one mess of meat sold his own birthright.”See alsoMat. 16:26—“what shall a man give in exchange for(ἀντάλλαγμα)his life”= how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it? Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in1 Tim. 2:6requires that ὑπέρ should mean“instead of.”We should interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί inMat. 20:28.“Something befell Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall sinners”(E. Y. Mullins).Meyer, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many”—“The ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”See also1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23—“ye were bought with a price”; and2 Pet. 2:1—“denying even the Master that bought them.”The word“redemption,”indeed, means simply“repurchase,”or“the state of being repurchased”—i. e., delivered by the payment of a price.Rev. 5:9—“thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe.”Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.”Buttmann, N. T. Grammar, 321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of, for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.”See Grimm's Wilke, Lexicon Græco-Lat.:“ἀντί,in vicem,anstatt”; Thayer, Lexicon N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received, endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase)Mat. 20:28”; also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever really uttered the words“give his life a ransom for many”(Mat. 20:28). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel, but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate the apostolic conception of Jesus' teaching, a conception which Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his apostles and should guide them into all the truth (John 14:26;16:13). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.(c)Legal.—The atonement is described asAn act ofobedienceto the law which sinners had violated; apenalty, borne in order to rescue the guilty; and anexhibitionof God's righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is represented as demanded by God's law and government.Obedience:Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law”;Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”—Christ's baptism prefigured[pg 718]his death, and was a consecration to death;cf.Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”Luke 12:50—“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”Mat. 26:39—“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt”;5:17—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil”;Phil. 2:8—“becoming obedient even unto death”;Rom. 5:19—“through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;10:4—“Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.”—Penalty:Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”;2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf”—here“sin”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer);Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins”;3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”;cf.Deut 21:23—“he that is hanged is accursed of God.”Heb. 9:28—“Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many”;cf.Lev. 5:17—“if any one sin ... yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity”;Num. 14:34—“for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years”;Lam. 5:7—“Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.”—Exhibition:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God”;cf.Heb. 9:15—“a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant.”On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes Ritschl's evasion of their natural force and declares Paul's teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor Paine's view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect.“God was in Christ”(2 Cor. 5:19) and God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16) are the keynote of Paul's teaching, and this is identical with John's doctrine of the Logos:“the Word was God,”and“the Word became flesh”(John 1:1, 14)The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness, in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any more than the presence of man's spirit in all he thinks and does proves that man's spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3. God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of God's feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity of Christ and no objective atonement.(d)Sacrificial.—The atonement is described asA work ofpriestly mediation, which reconciles God to men,—notice here that the term“reconciliation”has its usual sense of removing enmity, not from the offending, but from the offended party;—asin-offering, presented on behalf of transgressors;—apropitiation, which satisfies the demands of violated holiness;—and asubstitution, of Christ's obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show that Christ's death is demanded by God's attribute of justice, or holiness, if sinners are to be saved.Priestly mediation:Heb. 9:11, 12—“Christ having come a high priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption”;[pg 719]Rom. 5:10—“while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son”;2 Cor. 5:18, 19—“all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses”;Eph. 2:16—“might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby”;cf.12, 13, 19—“strangers from the covenants of the promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God”;Col. 1:20—“through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.”On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the apostle to be, that“we were‘enemies,’not actively, as hostile to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.”The epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against Gentile and Jew alike (Rom. 1:18).“While we were enemies”(Rom. 5:10)—“when God was hostile to us.”“Reconciliation”is therefore the removal of God's wrath toward man. Meyer, on this last passage, says that Christ's death does not remove man's wrath toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself. See Denney, Com. onRom. 5:9-11, in Expositor's Gk. Test.Cf.Num. 25:13, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to have“made atonement for the children of Israel.”Surely, the“atonement”here cannot be a reconciliation ofIsrael. The action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So,1 Sam. 29:4—“wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?”Mat. 5:23, 24—“If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother[i. e., remove his enmity, not thine own],and then come and offer thy gift.”See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:387-398.Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (Rom. 5:10) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part, but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.”Paul was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it from Christ himself (Gal. 1:12). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it was before.”The old hymn expressed the truth:“My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child; I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And‘Father, Abba, Father’cry.”A sin-offering:John 1:29—“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world”—here αἴρων means to take away by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion to the sin-offering ofIsaiah 53:6-12—“when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”Mat. 26:28—“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins”;cf.Ps. 50:5—“made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”1 John 1:7—“the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”—not sanctification, but justification;1 Cor. 5:7—“our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ”;cf.Deut. 16:2-6—“thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God.”Eph. 5:2—“gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell”(see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor's Greek Testament);Heb. 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God”;22, 26—“apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”;1 Pet. 1:18, 19—“redeemed ... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.”See Expos. Gk. Test., onEph. 1:7.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out thatJohn 6:52-59—“eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood”—is Christ's reference to his death in terms ofsacrifice. So, as we shall see below, it is apropitiation(1 John 2:2). We therefore strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement, 64—“Christ's death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of substitution or expiation.”Wilson forgets that this necessity of suffering arises from God's righteousness; that without this suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnationconstitutedthe Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated. Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words:“Incarnation in order to Atonement.”We regard as still better the words:“Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”A propitiation:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”A full and critical exposition of this passage will be found under the Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ's death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute[pg 720]in God which demands the atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God's justifying the believer.CompareLuke 18:13, marg.—“God, be thou merciful unto me the sinner”; lit.:“God be propitiated toward me the sinner”—by the sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even while he prayed.Heb. 2:17—“a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people”;1 John 2:2—“and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”;4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”;cf.Gen. 32:20,lxx.—“I will appease[ἐξιλάσομαι,“propitiate”]him with the present that goeth before me”;Prov. 16:14,lxx.—“The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise man will pacify it”[ἐξιλάσεται,“propitiate it”].On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In fact, it was he himself who‘set forth’Jesus as‘a propitiation’(Rom. 3:25, 26).”Paul never merges the objective atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for Christinus by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75, 89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul's representation of Christ as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews:“The priest says: Man's return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man's sin. This is Paul's doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a divine provision for sacrifice. Man's return to God is the thing wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who comes in to perfect man's imperfect work. This is the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews.”This recognition of expiation in Paul's teaching, together with denial of its validity and interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still further and affirms:“In the N. T. God is never said to be propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God or satisfies God's wrath.”Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T. God is represented as self-propitiated:“Christianity is distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of his own love.”This self-propitiation however must not be thought of as a bearing of penalty:“Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled with purification—‘with his stripes we are healed’(Is. 53:5). And in the N. T.,‘the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the world’(John 1:29);‘the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth’(1 John 1:7).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the penalty, but removal of the sin.”This seems to us a distinct contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an essential of Christian doctrine (seeRom. 3:25;1 John 2:2), while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man, but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:734-756.A substitution:Luke 22:37—“he was reckoned with transgressors”;cf.Lev. 16:21, 22—“and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land”;Is. 53:5, 6—“he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”John 10:11—“the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep”;Rom. 5:6-8—“while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 Pet. 3:18—“Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (b) above, in which Christ's death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer's comment, there quoted, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many,”λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says:“ἀντί denotes substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of, is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is paid] are[pg 721]redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of their sins were expiated.”Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that“in both the N. T. texts,Mat. 16:26andMark 8:37, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin to the conception of atonement:cf.Is. 43:3, 4;51:11;Amos 5:12. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.”Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“Mat. 20:28contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it, Christ's death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a ransom.”The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol. 2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution, but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί inMat. 20:28means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in Jesus himself.Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ's vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr. Clarke's Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed, for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God, is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.”Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that“substitution means simply that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken, but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man's redemption.”On the Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale, Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342; Smeaton, Our Lord's and the Apostles' Doctrine of Atonement.An examination of the passages referred to shows that, while the forms in which the atoning work of Christ is described are in part derived from moral, commercial, and legal relations, the prevailing language is that of sacrifice. A correct view of the atonement must therefore be grounded upon a proper interpretation of the institution of sacrifice, especially as found in the Mosaic system.The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus' own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not tospeakabout it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles to the gospels.[pg 722]The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of salvation, but for the redeemed.“None of the ransomed ever knew.”The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.Harnack:“There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is possible.”We regard this confession as a demonstration of the psychological correctness of Paul's doctrine of a vicarious atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience, which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only indications of the higher verdicts of God:1 John 3:20—“if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely out of existence.”So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic, but moral.”Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the creature. A more correct view of God's righteousness as the fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.
A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.We may classify the Scripture representations according as they conform to moral, commercial, legal or sacrificial analogies.(a)Moral.—The atonement is described asAprovision originating in God's love, and manifesting this love to the universe; but also as anexample of disinterested love, to secure our deliverance from selfishness.—In these latter passages, Christ's death is referred to as a source of moral stimulus to men.A provision:John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”;Rom. 5:8—“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 John 4:9—“Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him”;Heb. 2:9—“Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man”—redemption originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the Son.—An example:Luke 9:22-24—“The Son of man must suffer ... and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it”;2 Cor. 5:15—“he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves”;Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present[pg 717]evil world”;Eph. 5:25-27—“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it”;Col. 1:22—“reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy”;Titus 2:14—“gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify”;1 Pet. 2:21-24—“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.”Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious cottager, on hearing the text,‘God so loved the world,’exclaimed:‘Ah, thatwaslove! I could have given myself, but I could never have given my son.’”There was a wounding of the Father through the heart of the Son:“they shall look unto me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son”(Zech. 12:10).(b)Commercial.—The atonement is described asAransom, paid to free us from the bondage of sin (note in these passages the use of ἀντί, the preposition of price, bargain, exchange).—In these passages, Christ's death is represented as the price of our deliverance from sin and death.Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45—“to give his life a ransom for many”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν.1 Tim. 2:6—“who gave himself a ransom for all”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“for,”in the sense of“instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“for,”in the sense of“in behalf of,”“for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. SeeMat. 2:22—“Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of[ἀντί]his father Herod”;Luke 11:11—“shall his son ask ... a fish, and he for[ἀντί]a fish give him a serpent?”Heb. 12:2—“Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for[ἀντί = as the price of]the joy that was set before him endured the cross”;16—“Esau, who for[ἀντί = in exchange for]one mess of meat sold his own birthright.”See alsoMat. 16:26—“what shall a man give in exchange for(ἀντάλλαγμα)his life”= how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it? Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in1 Tim. 2:6requires that ὑπέρ should mean“instead of.”We should interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί inMat. 20:28.“Something befell Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall sinners”(E. Y. Mullins).Meyer, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many”—“The ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”See also1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23—“ye were bought with a price”; and2 Pet. 2:1—“denying even the Master that bought them.”The word“redemption,”indeed, means simply“repurchase,”or“the state of being repurchased”—i. e., delivered by the payment of a price.Rev. 5:9—“thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe.”Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.”Buttmann, N. T. Grammar, 321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of, for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.”See Grimm's Wilke, Lexicon Græco-Lat.:“ἀντί,in vicem,anstatt”; Thayer, Lexicon N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received, endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase)Mat. 20:28”; also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever really uttered the words“give his life a ransom for many”(Mat. 20:28). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel, but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate the apostolic conception of Jesus' teaching, a conception which Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his apostles and should guide them into all the truth (John 14:26;16:13). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.(c)Legal.—The atonement is described asAn act ofobedienceto the law which sinners had violated; apenalty, borne in order to rescue the guilty; and anexhibitionof God's righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is represented as demanded by God's law and government.Obedience:Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law”;Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”—Christ's baptism prefigured[pg 718]his death, and was a consecration to death;cf.Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”Luke 12:50—“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”Mat. 26:39—“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt”;5:17—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil”;Phil. 2:8—“becoming obedient even unto death”;Rom. 5:19—“through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;10:4—“Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.”—Penalty:Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”;2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf”—here“sin”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer);Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins”;3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”;cf.Deut 21:23—“he that is hanged is accursed of God.”Heb. 9:28—“Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many”;cf.Lev. 5:17—“if any one sin ... yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity”;Num. 14:34—“for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years”;Lam. 5:7—“Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.”—Exhibition:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God”;cf.Heb. 9:15—“a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant.”On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes Ritschl's evasion of their natural force and declares Paul's teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor Paine's view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect.“God was in Christ”(2 Cor. 5:19) and God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16) are the keynote of Paul's teaching, and this is identical with John's doctrine of the Logos:“the Word was God,”and“the Word became flesh”(John 1:1, 14)The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness, in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any more than the presence of man's spirit in all he thinks and does proves that man's spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3. God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of God's feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity of Christ and no objective atonement.(d)Sacrificial.—The atonement is described asA work ofpriestly mediation, which reconciles God to men,—notice here that the term“reconciliation”has its usual sense of removing enmity, not from the offending, but from the offended party;—asin-offering, presented on behalf of transgressors;—apropitiation, which satisfies the demands of violated holiness;—and asubstitution, of Christ's obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show that Christ's death is demanded by God's attribute of justice, or holiness, if sinners are to be saved.Priestly mediation:Heb. 9:11, 12—“Christ having come a high priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption”;[pg 719]Rom. 5:10—“while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son”;2 Cor. 5:18, 19—“all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses”;Eph. 2:16—“might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby”;cf.12, 13, 19—“strangers from the covenants of the promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God”;Col. 1:20—“through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.”On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the apostle to be, that“we were‘enemies,’not actively, as hostile to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.”The epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against Gentile and Jew alike (Rom. 1:18).“While we were enemies”(Rom. 5:10)—“when God was hostile to us.”“Reconciliation”is therefore the removal of God's wrath toward man. Meyer, on this last passage, says that Christ's death does not remove man's wrath toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself. See Denney, Com. onRom. 5:9-11, in Expositor's Gk. Test.Cf.Num. 25:13, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to have“made atonement for the children of Israel.”Surely, the“atonement”here cannot be a reconciliation ofIsrael. The action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So,1 Sam. 29:4—“wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?”Mat. 5:23, 24—“If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother[i. e., remove his enmity, not thine own],and then come and offer thy gift.”See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:387-398.Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (Rom. 5:10) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part, but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.”Paul was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it from Christ himself (Gal. 1:12). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it was before.”The old hymn expressed the truth:“My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child; I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And‘Father, Abba, Father’cry.”A sin-offering:John 1:29—“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world”—here αἴρων means to take away by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion to the sin-offering ofIsaiah 53:6-12—“when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”Mat. 26:28—“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins”;cf.Ps. 50:5—“made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”1 John 1:7—“the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”—not sanctification, but justification;1 Cor. 5:7—“our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ”;cf.Deut. 16:2-6—“thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God.”Eph. 5:2—“gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell”(see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor's Greek Testament);Heb. 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God”;22, 26—“apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”;1 Pet. 1:18, 19—“redeemed ... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.”See Expos. Gk. Test., onEph. 1:7.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out thatJohn 6:52-59—“eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood”—is Christ's reference to his death in terms ofsacrifice. So, as we shall see below, it is apropitiation(1 John 2:2). We therefore strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement, 64—“Christ's death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of substitution or expiation.”Wilson forgets that this necessity of suffering arises from God's righteousness; that without this suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnationconstitutedthe Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated. Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words:“Incarnation in order to Atonement.”We regard as still better the words:“Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”A propitiation:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”A full and critical exposition of this passage will be found under the Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ's death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute[pg 720]in God which demands the atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God's justifying the believer.CompareLuke 18:13, marg.—“God, be thou merciful unto me the sinner”; lit.:“God be propitiated toward me the sinner”—by the sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even while he prayed.Heb. 2:17—“a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people”;1 John 2:2—“and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”;4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”;cf.Gen. 32:20,lxx.—“I will appease[ἐξιλάσομαι,“propitiate”]him with the present that goeth before me”;Prov. 16:14,lxx.—“The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise man will pacify it”[ἐξιλάσεται,“propitiate it”].On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In fact, it was he himself who‘set forth’Jesus as‘a propitiation’(Rom. 3:25, 26).”Paul never merges the objective atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for Christinus by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75, 89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul's representation of Christ as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews:“The priest says: Man's return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man's sin. This is Paul's doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a divine provision for sacrifice. Man's return to God is the thing wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who comes in to perfect man's imperfect work. This is the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews.”This recognition of expiation in Paul's teaching, together with denial of its validity and interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still further and affirms:“In the N. T. God is never said to be propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God or satisfies God's wrath.”Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T. God is represented as self-propitiated:“Christianity is distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of his own love.”This self-propitiation however must not be thought of as a bearing of penalty:“Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled with purification—‘with his stripes we are healed’(Is. 53:5). And in the N. T.,‘the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the world’(John 1:29);‘the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth’(1 John 1:7).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the penalty, but removal of the sin.”This seems to us a distinct contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an essential of Christian doctrine (seeRom. 3:25;1 John 2:2), while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man, but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:734-756.A substitution:Luke 22:37—“he was reckoned with transgressors”;cf.Lev. 16:21, 22—“and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land”;Is. 53:5, 6—“he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”John 10:11—“the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep”;Rom. 5:6-8—“while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 Pet. 3:18—“Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (b) above, in which Christ's death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer's comment, there quoted, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many,”λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says:“ἀντί denotes substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of, is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is paid] are[pg 721]redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of their sins were expiated.”Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that“in both the N. T. texts,Mat. 16:26andMark 8:37, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin to the conception of atonement:cf.Is. 43:3, 4;51:11;Amos 5:12. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.”Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“Mat. 20:28contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it, Christ's death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a ransom.”The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol. 2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution, but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί inMat. 20:28means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in Jesus himself.Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ's vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr. Clarke's Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed, for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God, is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.”Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that“substitution means simply that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken, but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man's redemption.”On the Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale, Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342; Smeaton, Our Lord's and the Apostles' Doctrine of Atonement.An examination of the passages referred to shows that, while the forms in which the atoning work of Christ is described are in part derived from moral, commercial, and legal relations, the prevailing language is that of sacrifice. A correct view of the atonement must therefore be grounded upon a proper interpretation of the institution of sacrifice, especially as found in the Mosaic system.The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus' own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not tospeakabout it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles to the gospels.[pg 722]The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of salvation, but for the redeemed.“None of the ransomed ever knew.”The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.Harnack:“There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is possible.”We regard this confession as a demonstration of the psychological correctness of Paul's doctrine of a vicarious atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience, which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only indications of the higher verdicts of God:1 John 3:20—“if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely out of existence.”So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic, but moral.”Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the creature. A more correct view of God's righteousness as the fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.
A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.We may classify the Scripture representations according as they conform to moral, commercial, legal or sacrificial analogies.(a)Moral.—The atonement is described asAprovision originating in God's love, and manifesting this love to the universe; but also as anexample of disinterested love, to secure our deliverance from selfishness.—In these latter passages, Christ's death is referred to as a source of moral stimulus to men.A provision:John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”;Rom. 5:8—“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 John 4:9—“Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him”;Heb. 2:9—“Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man”—redemption originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the Son.—An example:Luke 9:22-24—“The Son of man must suffer ... and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it”;2 Cor. 5:15—“he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves”;Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present[pg 717]evil world”;Eph. 5:25-27—“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it”;Col. 1:22—“reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy”;Titus 2:14—“gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify”;1 Pet. 2:21-24—“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.”Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious cottager, on hearing the text,‘God so loved the world,’exclaimed:‘Ah, thatwaslove! I could have given myself, but I could never have given my son.’”There was a wounding of the Father through the heart of the Son:“they shall look unto me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son”(Zech. 12:10).(b)Commercial.—The atonement is described asAransom, paid to free us from the bondage of sin (note in these passages the use of ἀντί, the preposition of price, bargain, exchange).—In these passages, Christ's death is represented as the price of our deliverance from sin and death.Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45—“to give his life a ransom for many”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν.1 Tim. 2:6—“who gave himself a ransom for all”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“for,”in the sense of“instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“for,”in the sense of“in behalf of,”“for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. SeeMat. 2:22—“Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of[ἀντί]his father Herod”;Luke 11:11—“shall his son ask ... a fish, and he for[ἀντί]a fish give him a serpent?”Heb. 12:2—“Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for[ἀντί = as the price of]the joy that was set before him endured the cross”;16—“Esau, who for[ἀντί = in exchange for]one mess of meat sold his own birthright.”See alsoMat. 16:26—“what shall a man give in exchange for(ἀντάλλαγμα)his life”= how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it? Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in1 Tim. 2:6requires that ὑπέρ should mean“instead of.”We should interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί inMat. 20:28.“Something befell Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall sinners”(E. Y. Mullins).Meyer, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many”—“The ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”See also1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23—“ye were bought with a price”; and2 Pet. 2:1—“denying even the Master that bought them.”The word“redemption,”indeed, means simply“repurchase,”or“the state of being repurchased”—i. e., delivered by the payment of a price.Rev. 5:9—“thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe.”Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.”Buttmann, N. T. Grammar, 321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of, for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.”See Grimm's Wilke, Lexicon Græco-Lat.:“ἀντί,in vicem,anstatt”; Thayer, Lexicon N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received, endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase)Mat. 20:28”; also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever really uttered the words“give his life a ransom for many”(Mat. 20:28). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel, but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate the apostolic conception of Jesus' teaching, a conception which Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his apostles and should guide them into all the truth (John 14:26;16:13). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.(c)Legal.—The atonement is described asAn act ofobedienceto the law which sinners had violated; apenalty, borne in order to rescue the guilty; and anexhibitionof God's righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is represented as demanded by God's law and government.Obedience:Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law”;Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”—Christ's baptism prefigured[pg 718]his death, and was a consecration to death;cf.Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”Luke 12:50—“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”Mat. 26:39—“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt”;5:17—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil”;Phil. 2:8—“becoming obedient even unto death”;Rom. 5:19—“through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;10:4—“Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.”—Penalty:Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”;2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf”—here“sin”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer);Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins”;3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”;cf.Deut 21:23—“he that is hanged is accursed of God.”Heb. 9:28—“Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many”;cf.Lev. 5:17—“if any one sin ... yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity”;Num. 14:34—“for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years”;Lam. 5:7—“Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.”—Exhibition:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God”;cf.Heb. 9:15—“a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant.”On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes Ritschl's evasion of their natural force and declares Paul's teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor Paine's view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect.“God was in Christ”(2 Cor. 5:19) and God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16) are the keynote of Paul's teaching, and this is identical with John's doctrine of the Logos:“the Word was God,”and“the Word became flesh”(John 1:1, 14)The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness, in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any more than the presence of man's spirit in all he thinks and does proves that man's spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3. God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of God's feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity of Christ and no objective atonement.(d)Sacrificial.—The atonement is described asA work ofpriestly mediation, which reconciles God to men,—notice here that the term“reconciliation”has its usual sense of removing enmity, not from the offending, but from the offended party;—asin-offering, presented on behalf of transgressors;—apropitiation, which satisfies the demands of violated holiness;—and asubstitution, of Christ's obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show that Christ's death is demanded by God's attribute of justice, or holiness, if sinners are to be saved.Priestly mediation:Heb. 9:11, 12—“Christ having come a high priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption”;[pg 719]Rom. 5:10—“while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son”;2 Cor. 5:18, 19—“all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses”;Eph. 2:16—“might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby”;cf.12, 13, 19—“strangers from the covenants of the promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God”;Col. 1:20—“through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.”On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the apostle to be, that“we were‘enemies,’not actively, as hostile to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.”The epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against Gentile and Jew alike (Rom. 1:18).“While we were enemies”(Rom. 5:10)—“when God was hostile to us.”“Reconciliation”is therefore the removal of God's wrath toward man. Meyer, on this last passage, says that Christ's death does not remove man's wrath toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself. See Denney, Com. onRom. 5:9-11, in Expositor's Gk. Test.Cf.Num. 25:13, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to have“made atonement for the children of Israel.”Surely, the“atonement”here cannot be a reconciliation ofIsrael. The action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So,1 Sam. 29:4—“wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?”Mat. 5:23, 24—“If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother[i. e., remove his enmity, not thine own],and then come and offer thy gift.”See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:387-398.Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (Rom. 5:10) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part, but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.”Paul was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it from Christ himself (Gal. 1:12). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it was before.”The old hymn expressed the truth:“My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child; I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And‘Father, Abba, Father’cry.”A sin-offering:John 1:29—“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world”—here αἴρων means to take away by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion to the sin-offering ofIsaiah 53:6-12—“when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”Mat. 26:28—“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins”;cf.Ps. 50:5—“made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”1 John 1:7—“the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”—not sanctification, but justification;1 Cor. 5:7—“our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ”;cf.Deut. 16:2-6—“thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God.”Eph. 5:2—“gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell”(see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor's Greek Testament);Heb. 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God”;22, 26—“apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”;1 Pet. 1:18, 19—“redeemed ... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.”See Expos. Gk. Test., onEph. 1:7.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out thatJohn 6:52-59—“eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood”—is Christ's reference to his death in terms ofsacrifice. So, as we shall see below, it is apropitiation(1 John 2:2). We therefore strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement, 64—“Christ's death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of substitution or expiation.”Wilson forgets that this necessity of suffering arises from God's righteousness; that without this suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnationconstitutedthe Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated. Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words:“Incarnation in order to Atonement.”We regard as still better the words:“Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”A propitiation:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”A full and critical exposition of this passage will be found under the Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ's death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute[pg 720]in God which demands the atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God's justifying the believer.CompareLuke 18:13, marg.—“God, be thou merciful unto me the sinner”; lit.:“God be propitiated toward me the sinner”—by the sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even while he prayed.Heb. 2:17—“a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people”;1 John 2:2—“and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”;4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”;cf.Gen. 32:20,lxx.—“I will appease[ἐξιλάσομαι,“propitiate”]him with the present that goeth before me”;Prov. 16:14,lxx.—“The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise man will pacify it”[ἐξιλάσεται,“propitiate it”].On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In fact, it was he himself who‘set forth’Jesus as‘a propitiation’(Rom. 3:25, 26).”Paul never merges the objective atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for Christinus by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75, 89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul's representation of Christ as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews:“The priest says: Man's return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man's sin. This is Paul's doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a divine provision for sacrifice. Man's return to God is the thing wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who comes in to perfect man's imperfect work. This is the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews.”This recognition of expiation in Paul's teaching, together with denial of its validity and interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still further and affirms:“In the N. T. God is never said to be propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God or satisfies God's wrath.”Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T. God is represented as self-propitiated:“Christianity is distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of his own love.”This self-propitiation however must not be thought of as a bearing of penalty:“Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled with purification—‘with his stripes we are healed’(Is. 53:5). And in the N. T.,‘the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the world’(John 1:29);‘the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth’(1 John 1:7).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the penalty, but removal of the sin.”This seems to us a distinct contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an essential of Christian doctrine (seeRom. 3:25;1 John 2:2), while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man, but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:734-756.A substitution:Luke 22:37—“he was reckoned with transgressors”;cf.Lev. 16:21, 22—“and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land”;Is. 53:5, 6—“he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”John 10:11—“the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep”;Rom. 5:6-8—“while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 Pet. 3:18—“Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (b) above, in which Christ's death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer's comment, there quoted, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many,”λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says:“ἀντί denotes substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of, is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is paid] are[pg 721]redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of their sins were expiated.”Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that“in both the N. T. texts,Mat. 16:26andMark 8:37, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin to the conception of atonement:cf.Is. 43:3, 4;51:11;Amos 5:12. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.”Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“Mat. 20:28contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it, Christ's death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a ransom.”The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol. 2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution, but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί inMat. 20:28means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in Jesus himself.Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ's vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr. Clarke's Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed, for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God, is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.”Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that“substitution means simply that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken, but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man's redemption.”On the Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale, Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342; Smeaton, Our Lord's and the Apostles' Doctrine of Atonement.An examination of the passages referred to shows that, while the forms in which the atoning work of Christ is described are in part derived from moral, commercial, and legal relations, the prevailing language is that of sacrifice. A correct view of the atonement must therefore be grounded upon a proper interpretation of the institution of sacrifice, especially as found in the Mosaic system.The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus' own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not tospeakabout it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles to the gospels.[pg 722]The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of salvation, but for the redeemed.“None of the ransomed ever knew.”The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.Harnack:“There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is possible.”We regard this confession as a demonstration of the psychological correctness of Paul's doctrine of a vicarious atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience, which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only indications of the higher verdicts of God:1 John 3:20—“if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely out of existence.”So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic, but moral.”Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the creature. A more correct view of God's righteousness as the fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.
A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.We may classify the Scripture representations according as they conform to moral, commercial, legal or sacrificial analogies.(a)Moral.—The atonement is described asAprovision originating in God's love, and manifesting this love to the universe; but also as anexample of disinterested love, to secure our deliverance from selfishness.—In these latter passages, Christ's death is referred to as a source of moral stimulus to men.A provision:John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”;Rom. 5:8—“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 John 4:9—“Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him”;Heb. 2:9—“Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man”—redemption originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the Son.—An example:Luke 9:22-24—“The Son of man must suffer ... and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it”;2 Cor. 5:15—“he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves”;Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present[pg 717]evil world”;Eph. 5:25-27—“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it”;Col. 1:22—“reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy”;Titus 2:14—“gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify”;1 Pet. 2:21-24—“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.”Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious cottager, on hearing the text,‘God so loved the world,’exclaimed:‘Ah, thatwaslove! I could have given myself, but I could never have given my son.’”There was a wounding of the Father through the heart of the Son:“they shall look unto me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son”(Zech. 12:10).(b)Commercial.—The atonement is described asAransom, paid to free us from the bondage of sin (note in these passages the use of ἀντί, the preposition of price, bargain, exchange).—In these passages, Christ's death is represented as the price of our deliverance from sin and death.Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45—“to give his life a ransom for many”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν.1 Tim. 2:6—“who gave himself a ransom for all”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“for,”in the sense of“instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“for,”in the sense of“in behalf of,”“for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. SeeMat. 2:22—“Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of[ἀντί]his father Herod”;Luke 11:11—“shall his son ask ... a fish, and he for[ἀντί]a fish give him a serpent?”Heb. 12:2—“Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for[ἀντί = as the price of]the joy that was set before him endured the cross”;16—“Esau, who for[ἀντί = in exchange for]one mess of meat sold his own birthright.”See alsoMat. 16:26—“what shall a man give in exchange for(ἀντάλλαγμα)his life”= how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it? Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in1 Tim. 2:6requires that ὑπέρ should mean“instead of.”We should interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί inMat. 20:28.“Something befell Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall sinners”(E. Y. Mullins).Meyer, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many”—“The ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”See also1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23—“ye were bought with a price”; and2 Pet. 2:1—“denying even the Master that bought them.”The word“redemption,”indeed, means simply“repurchase,”or“the state of being repurchased”—i. e., delivered by the payment of a price.Rev. 5:9—“thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe.”Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.”Buttmann, N. T. Grammar, 321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of, for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.”See Grimm's Wilke, Lexicon Græco-Lat.:“ἀντί,in vicem,anstatt”; Thayer, Lexicon N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received, endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase)Mat. 20:28”; also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever really uttered the words“give his life a ransom for many”(Mat. 20:28). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel, but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate the apostolic conception of Jesus' teaching, a conception which Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his apostles and should guide them into all the truth (John 14:26;16:13). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.(c)Legal.—The atonement is described asAn act ofobedienceto the law which sinners had violated; apenalty, borne in order to rescue the guilty; and anexhibitionof God's righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is represented as demanded by God's law and government.Obedience:Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law”;Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”—Christ's baptism prefigured[pg 718]his death, and was a consecration to death;cf.Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”Luke 12:50—“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”Mat. 26:39—“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt”;5:17—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil”;Phil. 2:8—“becoming obedient even unto death”;Rom. 5:19—“through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;10:4—“Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.”—Penalty:Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”;2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf”—here“sin”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer);Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins”;3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”;cf.Deut 21:23—“he that is hanged is accursed of God.”Heb. 9:28—“Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many”;cf.Lev. 5:17—“if any one sin ... yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity”;Num. 14:34—“for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years”;Lam. 5:7—“Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.”—Exhibition:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God”;cf.Heb. 9:15—“a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant.”On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes Ritschl's evasion of their natural force and declares Paul's teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor Paine's view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect.“God was in Christ”(2 Cor. 5:19) and God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16) are the keynote of Paul's teaching, and this is identical with John's doctrine of the Logos:“the Word was God,”and“the Word became flesh”(John 1:1, 14)The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness, in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any more than the presence of man's spirit in all he thinks and does proves that man's spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3. God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of God's feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity of Christ and no objective atonement.(d)Sacrificial.—The atonement is described asA work ofpriestly mediation, which reconciles God to men,—notice here that the term“reconciliation”has its usual sense of removing enmity, not from the offending, but from the offended party;—asin-offering, presented on behalf of transgressors;—apropitiation, which satisfies the demands of violated holiness;—and asubstitution, of Christ's obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show that Christ's death is demanded by God's attribute of justice, or holiness, if sinners are to be saved.Priestly mediation:Heb. 9:11, 12—“Christ having come a high priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption”;[pg 719]Rom. 5:10—“while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son”;2 Cor. 5:18, 19—“all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses”;Eph. 2:16—“might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby”;cf.12, 13, 19—“strangers from the covenants of the promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God”;Col. 1:20—“through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.”On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the apostle to be, that“we were‘enemies,’not actively, as hostile to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.”The epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against Gentile and Jew alike (Rom. 1:18).“While we were enemies”(Rom. 5:10)—“when God was hostile to us.”“Reconciliation”is therefore the removal of God's wrath toward man. Meyer, on this last passage, says that Christ's death does not remove man's wrath toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself. See Denney, Com. onRom. 5:9-11, in Expositor's Gk. Test.Cf.Num. 25:13, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to have“made atonement for the children of Israel.”Surely, the“atonement”here cannot be a reconciliation ofIsrael. The action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So,1 Sam. 29:4—“wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?”Mat. 5:23, 24—“If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother[i. e., remove his enmity, not thine own],and then come and offer thy gift.”See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:387-398.Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (Rom. 5:10) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part, but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.”Paul was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it from Christ himself (Gal. 1:12). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it was before.”The old hymn expressed the truth:“My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child; I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And‘Father, Abba, Father’cry.”A sin-offering:John 1:29—“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world”—here αἴρων means to take away by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion to the sin-offering ofIsaiah 53:6-12—“when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”Mat. 26:28—“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins”;cf.Ps. 50:5—“made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”1 John 1:7—“the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”—not sanctification, but justification;1 Cor. 5:7—“our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ”;cf.Deut. 16:2-6—“thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God.”Eph. 5:2—“gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell”(see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor's Greek Testament);Heb. 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God”;22, 26—“apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”;1 Pet. 1:18, 19—“redeemed ... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.”See Expos. Gk. Test., onEph. 1:7.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out thatJohn 6:52-59—“eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood”—is Christ's reference to his death in terms ofsacrifice. So, as we shall see below, it is apropitiation(1 John 2:2). We therefore strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement, 64—“Christ's death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of substitution or expiation.”Wilson forgets that this necessity of suffering arises from God's righteousness; that without this suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnationconstitutedthe Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated. Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words:“Incarnation in order to Atonement.”We regard as still better the words:“Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”A propitiation:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”A full and critical exposition of this passage will be found under the Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ's death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute[pg 720]in God which demands the atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God's justifying the believer.CompareLuke 18:13, marg.—“God, be thou merciful unto me the sinner”; lit.:“God be propitiated toward me the sinner”—by the sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even while he prayed.Heb. 2:17—“a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people”;1 John 2:2—“and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”;4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”;cf.Gen. 32:20,lxx.—“I will appease[ἐξιλάσομαι,“propitiate”]him with the present that goeth before me”;Prov. 16:14,lxx.—“The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise man will pacify it”[ἐξιλάσεται,“propitiate it”].On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In fact, it was he himself who‘set forth’Jesus as‘a propitiation’(Rom. 3:25, 26).”Paul never merges the objective atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for Christinus by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75, 89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul's representation of Christ as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews:“The priest says: Man's return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man's sin. This is Paul's doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a divine provision for sacrifice. Man's return to God is the thing wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who comes in to perfect man's imperfect work. This is the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews.”This recognition of expiation in Paul's teaching, together with denial of its validity and interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still further and affirms:“In the N. T. God is never said to be propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God or satisfies God's wrath.”Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T. God is represented as self-propitiated:“Christianity is distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of his own love.”This self-propitiation however must not be thought of as a bearing of penalty:“Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled with purification—‘with his stripes we are healed’(Is. 53:5). And in the N. T.,‘the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the world’(John 1:29);‘the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth’(1 John 1:7).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the penalty, but removal of the sin.”This seems to us a distinct contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an essential of Christian doctrine (seeRom. 3:25;1 John 2:2), while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man, but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:734-756.A substitution:Luke 22:37—“he was reckoned with transgressors”;cf.Lev. 16:21, 22—“and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land”;Is. 53:5, 6—“he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”John 10:11—“the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep”;Rom. 5:6-8—“while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 Pet. 3:18—“Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (b) above, in which Christ's death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer's comment, there quoted, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many,”λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says:“ἀντί denotes substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of, is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is paid] are[pg 721]redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of their sins were expiated.”Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that“in both the N. T. texts,Mat. 16:26andMark 8:37, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin to the conception of atonement:cf.Is. 43:3, 4;51:11;Amos 5:12. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.”Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“Mat. 20:28contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it, Christ's death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a ransom.”The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol. 2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution, but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί inMat. 20:28means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in Jesus himself.Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ's vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr. Clarke's Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed, for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God, is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.”Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that“substitution means simply that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken, but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man's redemption.”On the Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale, Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342; Smeaton, Our Lord's and the Apostles' Doctrine of Atonement.An examination of the passages referred to shows that, while the forms in which the atoning work of Christ is described are in part derived from moral, commercial, and legal relations, the prevailing language is that of sacrifice. A correct view of the atonement must therefore be grounded upon a proper interpretation of the institution of sacrifice, especially as found in the Mosaic system.The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus' own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not tospeakabout it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles to the gospels.[pg 722]The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of salvation, but for the redeemed.“None of the ransomed ever knew.”The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.Harnack:“There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is possible.”We regard this confession as a demonstration of the psychological correctness of Paul's doctrine of a vicarious atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience, which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only indications of the higher verdicts of God:1 John 3:20—“if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely out of existence.”So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic, but moral.”Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the creature. A more correct view of God's righteousness as the fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.
A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.We may classify the Scripture representations according as they conform to moral, commercial, legal or sacrificial analogies.(a)Moral.—The atonement is described asAprovision originating in God's love, and manifesting this love to the universe; but also as anexample of disinterested love, to secure our deliverance from selfishness.—In these latter passages, Christ's death is referred to as a source of moral stimulus to men.A provision:John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”;Rom. 5:8—“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 John 4:9—“Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him”;Heb. 2:9—“Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man”—redemption originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the Son.—An example:Luke 9:22-24—“The Son of man must suffer ... and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it”;2 Cor. 5:15—“he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves”;Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present[pg 717]evil world”;Eph. 5:25-27—“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it”;Col. 1:22—“reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy”;Titus 2:14—“gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify”;1 Pet. 2:21-24—“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.”Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious cottager, on hearing the text,‘God so loved the world,’exclaimed:‘Ah, thatwaslove! I could have given myself, but I could never have given my son.’”There was a wounding of the Father through the heart of the Son:“they shall look unto me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son”(Zech. 12:10).(b)Commercial.—The atonement is described asAransom, paid to free us from the bondage of sin (note in these passages the use of ἀντί, the preposition of price, bargain, exchange).—In these passages, Christ's death is represented as the price of our deliverance from sin and death.Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45—“to give his life a ransom for many”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν.1 Tim. 2:6—“who gave himself a ransom for all”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“for,”in the sense of“instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“for,”in the sense of“in behalf of,”“for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. SeeMat. 2:22—“Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of[ἀντί]his father Herod”;Luke 11:11—“shall his son ask ... a fish, and he for[ἀντί]a fish give him a serpent?”Heb. 12:2—“Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for[ἀντί = as the price of]the joy that was set before him endured the cross”;16—“Esau, who for[ἀντί = in exchange for]one mess of meat sold his own birthright.”See alsoMat. 16:26—“what shall a man give in exchange for(ἀντάλλαγμα)his life”= how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it? Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in1 Tim. 2:6requires that ὑπέρ should mean“instead of.”We should interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί inMat. 20:28.“Something befell Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall sinners”(E. Y. Mullins).Meyer, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many”—“The ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”See also1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23—“ye were bought with a price”; and2 Pet. 2:1—“denying even the Master that bought them.”The word“redemption,”indeed, means simply“repurchase,”or“the state of being repurchased”—i. e., delivered by the payment of a price.Rev. 5:9—“thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe.”Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.”Buttmann, N. T. Grammar, 321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of, for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.”See Grimm's Wilke, Lexicon Græco-Lat.:“ἀντί,in vicem,anstatt”; Thayer, Lexicon N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received, endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase)Mat. 20:28”; also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever really uttered the words“give his life a ransom for many”(Mat. 20:28). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel, but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate the apostolic conception of Jesus' teaching, a conception which Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his apostles and should guide them into all the truth (John 14:26;16:13). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.(c)Legal.—The atonement is described asAn act ofobedienceto the law which sinners had violated; apenalty, borne in order to rescue the guilty; and anexhibitionof God's righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is represented as demanded by God's law and government.Obedience:Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law”;Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”—Christ's baptism prefigured[pg 718]his death, and was a consecration to death;cf.Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”Luke 12:50—“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”Mat. 26:39—“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt”;5:17—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil”;Phil. 2:8—“becoming obedient even unto death”;Rom. 5:19—“through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;10:4—“Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.”—Penalty:Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”;2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf”—here“sin”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer);Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins”;3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”;cf.Deut 21:23—“he that is hanged is accursed of God.”Heb. 9:28—“Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many”;cf.Lev. 5:17—“if any one sin ... yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity”;Num. 14:34—“for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years”;Lam. 5:7—“Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.”—Exhibition:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God”;cf.Heb. 9:15—“a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant.”On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes Ritschl's evasion of their natural force and declares Paul's teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor Paine's view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect.“God was in Christ”(2 Cor. 5:19) and God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16) are the keynote of Paul's teaching, and this is identical with John's doctrine of the Logos:“the Word was God,”and“the Word became flesh”(John 1:1, 14)The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness, in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any more than the presence of man's spirit in all he thinks and does proves that man's spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3. God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of God's feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity of Christ and no objective atonement.(d)Sacrificial.—The atonement is described asA work ofpriestly mediation, which reconciles God to men,—notice here that the term“reconciliation”has its usual sense of removing enmity, not from the offending, but from the offended party;—asin-offering, presented on behalf of transgressors;—apropitiation, which satisfies the demands of violated holiness;—and asubstitution, of Christ's obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show that Christ's death is demanded by God's attribute of justice, or holiness, if sinners are to be saved.Priestly mediation:Heb. 9:11, 12—“Christ having come a high priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption”;[pg 719]Rom. 5:10—“while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son”;2 Cor. 5:18, 19—“all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses”;Eph. 2:16—“might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby”;cf.12, 13, 19—“strangers from the covenants of the promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God”;Col. 1:20—“through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.”On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the apostle to be, that“we were‘enemies,’not actively, as hostile to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.”The epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against Gentile and Jew alike (Rom. 1:18).“While we were enemies”(Rom. 5:10)—“when God was hostile to us.”“Reconciliation”is therefore the removal of God's wrath toward man. Meyer, on this last passage, says that Christ's death does not remove man's wrath toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself. See Denney, Com. onRom. 5:9-11, in Expositor's Gk. Test.Cf.Num. 25:13, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to have“made atonement for the children of Israel.”Surely, the“atonement”here cannot be a reconciliation ofIsrael. The action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So,1 Sam. 29:4—“wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?”Mat. 5:23, 24—“If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother[i. e., remove his enmity, not thine own],and then come and offer thy gift.”See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:387-398.Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (Rom. 5:10) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part, but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.”Paul was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it from Christ himself (Gal. 1:12). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it was before.”The old hymn expressed the truth:“My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child; I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And‘Father, Abba, Father’cry.”A sin-offering:John 1:29—“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world”—here αἴρων means to take away by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion to the sin-offering ofIsaiah 53:6-12—“when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”Mat. 26:28—“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins”;cf.Ps. 50:5—“made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”1 John 1:7—“the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”—not sanctification, but justification;1 Cor. 5:7—“our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ”;cf.Deut. 16:2-6—“thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God.”Eph. 5:2—“gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell”(see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor's Greek Testament);Heb. 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God”;22, 26—“apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”;1 Pet. 1:18, 19—“redeemed ... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.”See Expos. Gk. Test., onEph. 1:7.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out thatJohn 6:52-59—“eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood”—is Christ's reference to his death in terms ofsacrifice. So, as we shall see below, it is apropitiation(1 John 2:2). We therefore strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement, 64—“Christ's death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of substitution or expiation.”Wilson forgets that this necessity of suffering arises from God's righteousness; that without this suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnationconstitutedthe Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated. Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words:“Incarnation in order to Atonement.”We regard as still better the words:“Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”A propitiation:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”A full and critical exposition of this passage will be found under the Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ's death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute[pg 720]in God which demands the atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God's justifying the believer.CompareLuke 18:13, marg.—“God, be thou merciful unto me the sinner”; lit.:“God be propitiated toward me the sinner”—by the sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even while he prayed.Heb. 2:17—“a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people”;1 John 2:2—“and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”;4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”;cf.Gen. 32:20,lxx.—“I will appease[ἐξιλάσομαι,“propitiate”]him with the present that goeth before me”;Prov. 16:14,lxx.—“The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise man will pacify it”[ἐξιλάσεται,“propitiate it”].On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In fact, it was he himself who‘set forth’Jesus as‘a propitiation’(Rom. 3:25, 26).”Paul never merges the objective atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for Christinus by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75, 89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul's representation of Christ as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews:“The priest says: Man's return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man's sin. This is Paul's doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a divine provision for sacrifice. Man's return to God is the thing wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who comes in to perfect man's imperfect work. This is the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews.”This recognition of expiation in Paul's teaching, together with denial of its validity and interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still further and affirms:“In the N. T. God is never said to be propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God or satisfies God's wrath.”Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T. God is represented as self-propitiated:“Christianity is distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of his own love.”This self-propitiation however must not be thought of as a bearing of penalty:“Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled with purification—‘with his stripes we are healed’(Is. 53:5). And in the N. T.,‘the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the world’(John 1:29);‘the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth’(1 John 1:7).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the penalty, but removal of the sin.”This seems to us a distinct contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an essential of Christian doctrine (seeRom. 3:25;1 John 2:2), while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man, but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:734-756.A substitution:Luke 22:37—“he was reckoned with transgressors”;cf.Lev. 16:21, 22—“and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land”;Is. 53:5, 6—“he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”John 10:11—“the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep”;Rom. 5:6-8—“while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 Pet. 3:18—“Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (b) above, in which Christ's death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer's comment, there quoted, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many,”λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says:“ἀντί denotes substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of, is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is paid] are[pg 721]redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of their sins were expiated.”Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that“in both the N. T. texts,Mat. 16:26andMark 8:37, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin to the conception of atonement:cf.Is. 43:3, 4;51:11;Amos 5:12. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.”Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“Mat. 20:28contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it, Christ's death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a ransom.”The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol. 2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution, but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί inMat. 20:28means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in Jesus himself.Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ's vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr. Clarke's Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed, for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God, is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.”Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that“substitution means simply that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken, but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man's redemption.”On the Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale, Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342; Smeaton, Our Lord's and the Apostles' Doctrine of Atonement.An examination of the passages referred to shows that, while the forms in which the atoning work of Christ is described are in part derived from moral, commercial, and legal relations, the prevailing language is that of sacrifice. A correct view of the atonement must therefore be grounded upon a proper interpretation of the institution of sacrifice, especially as found in the Mosaic system.The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus' own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not tospeakabout it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles to the gospels.[pg 722]The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of salvation, but for the redeemed.“None of the ransomed ever knew.”The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.Harnack:“There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is possible.”We regard this confession as a demonstration of the psychological correctness of Paul's doctrine of a vicarious atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience, which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only indications of the higher verdicts of God:1 John 3:20—“if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely out of existence.”So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic, but moral.”Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the creature. A more correct view of God's righteousness as the fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.
A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.We may classify the Scripture representations according as they conform to moral, commercial, legal or sacrificial analogies.(a)Moral.—The atonement is described asAprovision originating in God's love, and manifesting this love to the universe; but also as anexample of disinterested love, to secure our deliverance from selfishness.—In these latter passages, Christ's death is referred to as a source of moral stimulus to men.A provision:John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”;Rom. 5:8—“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 John 4:9—“Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him”;Heb. 2:9—“Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man”—redemption originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the Son.—An example:Luke 9:22-24—“The Son of man must suffer ... and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it”;2 Cor. 5:15—“he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves”;Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present[pg 717]evil world”;Eph. 5:25-27—“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it”;Col. 1:22—“reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy”;Titus 2:14—“gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify”;1 Pet. 2:21-24—“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.”Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious cottager, on hearing the text,‘God so loved the world,’exclaimed:‘Ah, thatwaslove! I could have given myself, but I could never have given my son.’”There was a wounding of the Father through the heart of the Son:“they shall look unto me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son”(Zech. 12:10).(b)Commercial.—The atonement is described asAransom, paid to free us from the bondage of sin (note in these passages the use of ἀντί, the preposition of price, bargain, exchange).—In these passages, Christ's death is represented as the price of our deliverance from sin and death.Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45—“to give his life a ransom for many”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν.1 Tim. 2:6—“who gave himself a ransom for all”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“for,”in the sense of“instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“for,”in the sense of“in behalf of,”“for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. SeeMat. 2:22—“Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of[ἀντί]his father Herod”;Luke 11:11—“shall his son ask ... a fish, and he for[ἀντί]a fish give him a serpent?”Heb. 12:2—“Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for[ἀντί = as the price of]the joy that was set before him endured the cross”;16—“Esau, who for[ἀντί = in exchange for]one mess of meat sold his own birthright.”See alsoMat. 16:26—“what shall a man give in exchange for(ἀντάλλαγμα)his life”= how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it? Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in1 Tim. 2:6requires that ὑπέρ should mean“instead of.”We should interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί inMat. 20:28.“Something befell Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall sinners”(E. Y. Mullins).Meyer, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many”—“The ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”See also1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23—“ye were bought with a price”; and2 Pet. 2:1—“denying even the Master that bought them.”The word“redemption,”indeed, means simply“repurchase,”or“the state of being repurchased”—i. e., delivered by the payment of a price.Rev. 5:9—“thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe.”Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.”Buttmann, N. T. Grammar, 321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of, for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.”See Grimm's Wilke, Lexicon Græco-Lat.:“ἀντί,in vicem,anstatt”; Thayer, Lexicon N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received, endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase)Mat. 20:28”; also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever really uttered the words“give his life a ransom for many”(Mat. 20:28). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel, but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate the apostolic conception of Jesus' teaching, a conception which Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his apostles and should guide them into all the truth (John 14:26;16:13). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.(c)Legal.—The atonement is described asAn act ofobedienceto the law which sinners had violated; apenalty, borne in order to rescue the guilty; and anexhibitionof God's righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is represented as demanded by God's law and government.Obedience:Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law”;Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”—Christ's baptism prefigured[pg 718]his death, and was a consecration to death;cf.Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”Luke 12:50—“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”Mat. 26:39—“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt”;5:17—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil”;Phil. 2:8—“becoming obedient even unto death”;Rom. 5:19—“through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;10:4—“Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.”—Penalty:Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”;2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf”—here“sin”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer);Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins”;3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”;cf.Deut 21:23—“he that is hanged is accursed of God.”Heb. 9:28—“Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many”;cf.Lev. 5:17—“if any one sin ... yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity”;Num. 14:34—“for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years”;Lam. 5:7—“Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.”—Exhibition:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God”;cf.Heb. 9:15—“a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant.”On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes Ritschl's evasion of their natural force and declares Paul's teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor Paine's view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect.“God was in Christ”(2 Cor. 5:19) and God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16) are the keynote of Paul's teaching, and this is identical with John's doctrine of the Logos:“the Word was God,”and“the Word became flesh”(John 1:1, 14)The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness, in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any more than the presence of man's spirit in all he thinks and does proves that man's spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3. God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of God's feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity of Christ and no objective atonement.(d)Sacrificial.—The atonement is described asA work ofpriestly mediation, which reconciles God to men,—notice here that the term“reconciliation”has its usual sense of removing enmity, not from the offending, but from the offended party;—asin-offering, presented on behalf of transgressors;—apropitiation, which satisfies the demands of violated holiness;—and asubstitution, of Christ's obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show that Christ's death is demanded by God's attribute of justice, or holiness, if sinners are to be saved.Priestly mediation:Heb. 9:11, 12—“Christ having come a high priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption”;[pg 719]Rom. 5:10—“while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son”;2 Cor. 5:18, 19—“all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses”;Eph. 2:16—“might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby”;cf.12, 13, 19—“strangers from the covenants of the promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God”;Col. 1:20—“through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.”On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the apostle to be, that“we were‘enemies,’not actively, as hostile to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.”The epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against Gentile and Jew alike (Rom. 1:18).“While we were enemies”(Rom. 5:10)—“when God was hostile to us.”“Reconciliation”is therefore the removal of God's wrath toward man. Meyer, on this last passage, says that Christ's death does not remove man's wrath toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself. See Denney, Com. onRom. 5:9-11, in Expositor's Gk. Test.Cf.Num. 25:13, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to have“made atonement for the children of Israel.”Surely, the“atonement”here cannot be a reconciliation ofIsrael. The action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So,1 Sam. 29:4—“wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?”Mat. 5:23, 24—“If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother[i. e., remove his enmity, not thine own],and then come and offer thy gift.”See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:387-398.Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (Rom. 5:10) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part, but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.”Paul was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it from Christ himself (Gal. 1:12). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it was before.”The old hymn expressed the truth:“My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child; I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And‘Father, Abba, Father’cry.”A sin-offering:John 1:29—“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world”—here αἴρων means to take away by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion to the sin-offering ofIsaiah 53:6-12—“when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”Mat. 26:28—“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins”;cf.Ps. 50:5—“made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”1 John 1:7—“the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”—not sanctification, but justification;1 Cor. 5:7—“our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ”;cf.Deut. 16:2-6—“thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God.”Eph. 5:2—“gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell”(see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor's Greek Testament);Heb. 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God”;22, 26—“apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”;1 Pet. 1:18, 19—“redeemed ... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.”See Expos. Gk. Test., onEph. 1:7.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out thatJohn 6:52-59—“eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood”—is Christ's reference to his death in terms ofsacrifice. So, as we shall see below, it is apropitiation(1 John 2:2). We therefore strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement, 64—“Christ's death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of substitution or expiation.”Wilson forgets that this necessity of suffering arises from God's righteousness; that without this suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnationconstitutedthe Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated. Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words:“Incarnation in order to Atonement.”We regard as still better the words:“Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”A propitiation:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”A full and critical exposition of this passage will be found under the Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ's death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute[pg 720]in God which demands the atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God's justifying the believer.CompareLuke 18:13, marg.—“God, be thou merciful unto me the sinner”; lit.:“God be propitiated toward me the sinner”—by the sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even while he prayed.Heb. 2:17—“a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people”;1 John 2:2—“and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”;4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”;cf.Gen. 32:20,lxx.—“I will appease[ἐξιλάσομαι,“propitiate”]him with the present that goeth before me”;Prov. 16:14,lxx.—“The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise man will pacify it”[ἐξιλάσεται,“propitiate it”].On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In fact, it was he himself who‘set forth’Jesus as‘a propitiation’(Rom. 3:25, 26).”Paul never merges the objective atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for Christinus by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75, 89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul's representation of Christ as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews:“The priest says: Man's return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man's sin. This is Paul's doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a divine provision for sacrifice. Man's return to God is the thing wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who comes in to perfect man's imperfect work. This is the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews.”This recognition of expiation in Paul's teaching, together with denial of its validity and interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still further and affirms:“In the N. T. God is never said to be propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God or satisfies God's wrath.”Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T. God is represented as self-propitiated:“Christianity is distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of his own love.”This self-propitiation however must not be thought of as a bearing of penalty:“Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled with purification—‘with his stripes we are healed’(Is. 53:5). And in the N. T.,‘the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the world’(John 1:29);‘the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth’(1 John 1:7).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the penalty, but removal of the sin.”This seems to us a distinct contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an essential of Christian doctrine (seeRom. 3:25;1 John 2:2), while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man, but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:734-756.A substitution:Luke 22:37—“he was reckoned with transgressors”;cf.Lev. 16:21, 22—“and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land”;Is. 53:5, 6—“he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”John 10:11—“the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep”;Rom. 5:6-8—“while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 Pet. 3:18—“Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (b) above, in which Christ's death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer's comment, there quoted, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many,”λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says:“ἀντί denotes substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of, is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is paid] are[pg 721]redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of their sins were expiated.”Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that“in both the N. T. texts,Mat. 16:26andMark 8:37, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin to the conception of atonement:cf.Is. 43:3, 4;51:11;Amos 5:12. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.”Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“Mat. 20:28contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it, Christ's death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a ransom.”The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol. 2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution, but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί inMat. 20:28means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in Jesus himself.Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ's vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr. Clarke's Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed, for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God, is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.”Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that“substitution means simply that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken, but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man's redemption.”On the Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale, Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342; Smeaton, Our Lord's and the Apostles' Doctrine of Atonement.An examination of the passages referred to shows that, while the forms in which the atoning work of Christ is described are in part derived from moral, commercial, and legal relations, the prevailing language is that of sacrifice. A correct view of the atonement must therefore be grounded upon a proper interpretation of the institution of sacrifice, especially as found in the Mosaic system.The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus' own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not tospeakabout it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles to the gospels.[pg 722]The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of salvation, but for the redeemed.“None of the ransomed ever knew.”The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.Harnack:“There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is possible.”We regard this confession as a demonstration of the psychological correctness of Paul's doctrine of a vicarious atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience, which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only indications of the higher verdicts of God:1 John 3:20—“if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely out of existence.”So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic, but moral.”Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the creature. A more correct view of God's righteousness as the fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.
We may classify the Scripture representations according as they conform to moral, commercial, legal or sacrificial analogies.
(a)Moral.—The atonement is described as
Aprovision originating in God's love, and manifesting this love to the universe; but also as anexample of disinterested love, to secure our deliverance from selfishness.—In these latter passages, Christ's death is referred to as a source of moral stimulus to men.
A provision:John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”;Rom. 5:8—“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 John 4:9—“Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him”;Heb. 2:9—“Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man”—redemption originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the Son.—An example:Luke 9:22-24—“The Son of man must suffer ... and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it”;2 Cor. 5:15—“he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves”;Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present[pg 717]evil world”;Eph. 5:25-27—“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it”;Col. 1:22—“reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy”;Titus 2:14—“gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify”;1 Pet. 2:21-24—“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.”Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious cottager, on hearing the text,‘God so loved the world,’exclaimed:‘Ah, thatwaslove! I could have given myself, but I could never have given my son.’”There was a wounding of the Father through the heart of the Son:“they shall look unto me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son”(Zech. 12:10).
A provision:John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”;Rom. 5:8—“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 John 4:9—“Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him”;Heb. 2:9—“Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man”—redemption originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the Son.—An example:Luke 9:22-24—“The Son of man must suffer ... and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it”;2 Cor. 5:15—“he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves”;Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present[pg 717]evil world”;Eph. 5:25-27—“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it”;Col. 1:22—“reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy”;Titus 2:14—“gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify”;1 Pet. 2:21-24—“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.”Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious cottager, on hearing the text,‘God so loved the world,’exclaimed:‘Ah, thatwaslove! I could have given myself, but I could never have given my son.’”There was a wounding of the Father through the heart of the Son:“they shall look unto me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son”(Zech. 12:10).
(b)Commercial.—The atonement is described as
Aransom, paid to free us from the bondage of sin (note in these passages the use of ἀντί, the preposition of price, bargain, exchange).—In these passages, Christ's death is represented as the price of our deliverance from sin and death.
Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45—“to give his life a ransom for many”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν.1 Tim. 2:6—“who gave himself a ransom for all”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“for,”in the sense of“instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“for,”in the sense of“in behalf of,”“for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. SeeMat. 2:22—“Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of[ἀντί]his father Herod”;Luke 11:11—“shall his son ask ... a fish, and he for[ἀντί]a fish give him a serpent?”Heb. 12:2—“Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for[ἀντί = as the price of]the joy that was set before him endured the cross”;16—“Esau, who for[ἀντί = in exchange for]one mess of meat sold his own birthright.”See alsoMat. 16:26—“what shall a man give in exchange for(ἀντάλλαγμα)his life”= how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it? Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in1 Tim. 2:6requires that ὑπέρ should mean“instead of.”We should interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί inMat. 20:28.“Something befell Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall sinners”(E. Y. Mullins).Meyer, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many”—“The ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”See also1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23—“ye were bought with a price”; and2 Pet. 2:1—“denying even the Master that bought them.”The word“redemption,”indeed, means simply“repurchase,”or“the state of being repurchased”—i. e., delivered by the payment of a price.Rev. 5:9—“thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe.”Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.”Buttmann, N. T. Grammar, 321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of, for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.”See Grimm's Wilke, Lexicon Græco-Lat.:“ἀντί,in vicem,anstatt”; Thayer, Lexicon N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received, endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase)Mat. 20:28”; also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever really uttered the words“give his life a ransom for many”(Mat. 20:28). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel, but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate the apostolic conception of Jesus' teaching, a conception which Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his apostles and should guide them into all the truth (John 14:26;16:13). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.
Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45—“to give his life a ransom for many”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν.1 Tim. 2:6—“who gave himself a ransom for all”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“for,”in the sense of“instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“for,”in the sense of“in behalf of,”“for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. SeeMat. 2:22—“Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of[ἀντί]his father Herod”;Luke 11:11—“shall his son ask ... a fish, and he for[ἀντί]a fish give him a serpent?”Heb. 12:2—“Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for[ἀντί = as the price of]the joy that was set before him endured the cross”;16—“Esau, who for[ἀντί = in exchange for]one mess of meat sold his own birthright.”See alsoMat. 16:26—“what shall a man give in exchange for(ἀντάλλαγμα)his life”= how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it? Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in1 Tim. 2:6requires that ὑπέρ should mean“instead of.”We should interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί inMat. 20:28.“Something befell Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall sinners”(E. Y. Mullins).
Meyer, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many”—“The ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”See also1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23—“ye were bought with a price”; and2 Pet. 2:1—“denying even the Master that bought them.”The word“redemption,”indeed, means simply“repurchase,”or“the state of being repurchased”—i. e., delivered by the payment of a price.Rev. 5:9—“thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe.”Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.”Buttmann, N. T. Grammar, 321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of, for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.”See Grimm's Wilke, Lexicon Græco-Lat.:“ἀντί,in vicem,anstatt”; Thayer, Lexicon N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received, endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase)Mat. 20:28”; also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.
Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever really uttered the words“give his life a ransom for many”(Mat. 20:28). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel, but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate the apostolic conception of Jesus' teaching, a conception which Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his apostles and should guide them into all the truth (John 14:26;16:13). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.
(c)Legal.—The atonement is described as
An act ofobedienceto the law which sinners had violated; apenalty, borne in order to rescue the guilty; and anexhibitionof God's righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is represented as demanded by God's law and government.
Obedience:Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law”;Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”—Christ's baptism prefigured[pg 718]his death, and was a consecration to death;cf.Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”Luke 12:50—“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”Mat. 26:39—“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt”;5:17—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil”;Phil. 2:8—“becoming obedient even unto death”;Rom. 5:19—“through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;10:4—“Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.”—Penalty:Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”;2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf”—here“sin”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer);Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins”;3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”;cf.Deut 21:23—“he that is hanged is accursed of God.”Heb. 9:28—“Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many”;cf.Lev. 5:17—“if any one sin ... yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity”;Num. 14:34—“for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years”;Lam. 5:7—“Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.”—Exhibition:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God”;cf.Heb. 9:15—“a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant.”On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes Ritschl's evasion of their natural force and declares Paul's teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor Paine's view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect.“God was in Christ”(2 Cor. 5:19) and God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16) are the keynote of Paul's teaching, and this is identical with John's doctrine of the Logos:“the Word was God,”and“the Word became flesh”(John 1:1, 14)The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness, in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any more than the presence of man's spirit in all he thinks and does proves that man's spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3. God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of God's feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity of Christ and no objective atonement.
Obedience:Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law”;Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”—Christ's baptism prefigured[pg 718]his death, and was a consecration to death;cf.Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?”Luke 12:50—“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”Mat. 26:39—“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt”;5:17—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil”;Phil. 2:8—“becoming obedient even unto death”;Rom. 5:19—“through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”;10:4—“Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.”—Penalty:Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”;8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”;2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf”—here“sin”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer);Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins”;3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”;cf.Deut 21:23—“he that is hanged is accursed of God.”Heb. 9:28—“Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many”;cf.Lev. 5:17—“if any one sin ... yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity”;Num. 14:34—“for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years”;Lam. 5:7—“Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.”—Exhibition:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God”;cf.Heb. 9:15—“a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant.”
On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes Ritschl's evasion of their natural force and declares Paul's teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor Paine's view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect.“God was in Christ”(2 Cor. 5:19) and God“manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16) are the keynote of Paul's teaching, and this is identical with John's doctrine of the Logos:“the Word was God,”and“the Word became flesh”(John 1:1, 14)
The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness, in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any more than the presence of man's spirit in all he thinks and does proves that man's spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3. God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of God's feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity of Christ and no objective atonement.
(d)Sacrificial.—The atonement is described as
A work ofpriestly mediation, which reconciles God to men,—notice here that the term“reconciliation”has its usual sense of removing enmity, not from the offending, but from the offended party;—asin-offering, presented on behalf of transgressors;—apropitiation, which satisfies the demands of violated holiness;—and asubstitution, of Christ's obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show that Christ's death is demanded by God's attribute of justice, or holiness, if sinners are to be saved.
Priestly mediation:Heb. 9:11, 12—“Christ having come a high priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption”;[pg 719]Rom. 5:10—“while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son”;2 Cor. 5:18, 19—“all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses”;Eph. 2:16—“might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby”;cf.12, 13, 19—“strangers from the covenants of the promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God”;Col. 1:20—“through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.”On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the apostle to be, that“we were‘enemies,’not actively, as hostile to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.”The epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against Gentile and Jew alike (Rom. 1:18).“While we were enemies”(Rom. 5:10)—“when God was hostile to us.”“Reconciliation”is therefore the removal of God's wrath toward man. Meyer, on this last passage, says that Christ's death does not remove man's wrath toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself. See Denney, Com. onRom. 5:9-11, in Expositor's Gk. Test.Cf.Num. 25:13, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to have“made atonement for the children of Israel.”Surely, the“atonement”here cannot be a reconciliation ofIsrael. The action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So,1 Sam. 29:4—“wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?”Mat. 5:23, 24—“If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother[i. e., remove his enmity, not thine own],and then come and offer thy gift.”See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:387-398.Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (Rom. 5:10) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part, but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.”Paul was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it from Christ himself (Gal. 1:12). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it was before.”The old hymn expressed the truth:“My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child; I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And‘Father, Abba, Father’cry.”A sin-offering:John 1:29—“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world”—here αἴρων means to take away by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion to the sin-offering ofIsaiah 53:6-12—“when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”Mat. 26:28—“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins”;cf.Ps. 50:5—“made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”1 John 1:7—“the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”—not sanctification, but justification;1 Cor. 5:7—“our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ”;cf.Deut. 16:2-6—“thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God.”Eph. 5:2—“gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell”(see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor's Greek Testament);Heb. 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God”;22, 26—“apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”;1 Pet. 1:18, 19—“redeemed ... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.”See Expos. Gk. Test., onEph. 1:7.Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out thatJohn 6:52-59—“eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood”—is Christ's reference to his death in terms ofsacrifice. So, as we shall see below, it is apropitiation(1 John 2:2). We therefore strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement, 64—“Christ's death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of substitution or expiation.”Wilson forgets that this necessity of suffering arises from God's righteousness; that without this suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnationconstitutedthe Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated. Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words:“Incarnation in order to Atonement.”We regard as still better the words:“Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”A propitiation:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”A full and critical exposition of this passage will be found under the Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ's death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute[pg 720]in God which demands the atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God's justifying the believer.CompareLuke 18:13, marg.—“God, be thou merciful unto me the sinner”; lit.:“God be propitiated toward me the sinner”—by the sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even while he prayed.Heb. 2:17—“a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people”;1 John 2:2—“and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”;4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”;cf.Gen. 32:20,lxx.—“I will appease[ἐξιλάσομαι,“propitiate”]him with the present that goeth before me”;Prov. 16:14,lxx.—“The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise man will pacify it”[ἐξιλάσεται,“propitiate it”].On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In fact, it was he himself who‘set forth’Jesus as‘a propitiation’(Rom. 3:25, 26).”Paul never merges the objective atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for Christinus by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75, 89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul's representation of Christ as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews:“The priest says: Man's return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man's sin. This is Paul's doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a divine provision for sacrifice. Man's return to God is the thing wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who comes in to perfect man's imperfect work. This is the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews.”This recognition of expiation in Paul's teaching, together with denial of its validity and interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still further and affirms:“In the N. T. God is never said to be propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God or satisfies God's wrath.”Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T. God is represented as self-propitiated:“Christianity is distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of his own love.”This self-propitiation however must not be thought of as a bearing of penalty:“Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled with purification—‘with his stripes we are healed’(Is. 53:5). And in the N. T.,‘the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the world’(John 1:29);‘the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth’(1 John 1:7).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the penalty, but removal of the sin.”This seems to us a distinct contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an essential of Christian doctrine (seeRom. 3:25;1 John 2:2), while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man, but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:734-756.A substitution:Luke 22:37—“he was reckoned with transgressors”;cf.Lev. 16:21, 22—“and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land”;Is. 53:5, 6—“he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”John 10:11—“the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep”;Rom. 5:6-8—“while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 Pet. 3:18—“Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (b) above, in which Christ's death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer's comment, there quoted, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many,”λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says:“ἀντί denotes substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of, is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is paid] are[pg 721]redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of their sins were expiated.”Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that“in both the N. T. texts,Mat. 16:26andMark 8:37, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin to the conception of atonement:cf.Is. 43:3, 4;51:11;Amos 5:12. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.”Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“Mat. 20:28contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it, Christ's death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a ransom.”The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol. 2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution, but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί inMat. 20:28means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in Jesus himself.Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ's vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr. Clarke's Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed, for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God, is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.”Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that“substitution means simply that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken, but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man's redemption.”On the Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale, Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342; Smeaton, Our Lord's and the Apostles' Doctrine of Atonement.
Priestly mediation:Heb. 9:11, 12—“Christ having come a high priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption”;[pg 719]Rom. 5:10—“while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son”;2 Cor. 5:18, 19—“all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses”;Eph. 2:16—“might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby”;cf.12, 13, 19—“strangers from the covenants of the promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God”;Col. 1:20—“through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.”
On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the apostle to be, that“we were‘enemies,’not actively, as hostile to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.”The epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against Gentile and Jew alike (Rom. 1:18).“While we were enemies”(Rom. 5:10)—“when God was hostile to us.”“Reconciliation”is therefore the removal of God's wrath toward man. Meyer, on this last passage, says that Christ's death does not remove man's wrath toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself. See Denney, Com. onRom. 5:9-11, in Expositor's Gk. Test.
Cf.Num. 25:13, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to have“made atonement for the children of Israel.”Surely, the“atonement”here cannot be a reconciliation ofIsrael. The action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So,1 Sam. 29:4—“wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?”Mat. 5:23, 24—“If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother[i. e., remove his enmity, not thine own],and then come and offer thy gift.”See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:387-398.
Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (Rom. 5:10) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part, but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.”Paul was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it from Christ himself (Gal. 1:12). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it was before.”The old hymn expressed the truth:“My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child; I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And‘Father, Abba, Father’cry.”
A sin-offering:John 1:29—“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world”—here αἴρων means to take away by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion to the sin-offering ofIsaiah 53:6-12—“when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”Mat. 26:28—“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins”;cf.Ps. 50:5—“made a covenant with me by sacrifice.”1 John 1:7—“the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”—not sanctification, but justification;1 Cor. 5:7—“our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ”;cf.Deut. 16:2-6—“thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God.”Eph. 5:2—“gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell”(see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor's Greek Testament);Heb. 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God”;22, 26—“apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”;1 Pet. 1:18, 19—“redeemed ... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.”See Expos. Gk. Test., onEph. 1:7.
Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out thatJohn 6:52-59—“eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood”—is Christ's reference to his death in terms ofsacrifice. So, as we shall see below, it is apropitiation(1 John 2:2). We therefore strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement, 64—“Christ's death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of substitution or expiation.”Wilson forgets that this necessity of suffering arises from God's righteousness; that without this suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnationconstitutedthe Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated. Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words:“Incarnation in order to Atonement.”We regard as still better the words:“Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”
A propitiation:Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.”A full and critical exposition of this passage will be found under the Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ's death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute[pg 720]in God which demands the atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God's justifying the believer.
CompareLuke 18:13, marg.—“God, be thou merciful unto me the sinner”; lit.:“God be propitiated toward me the sinner”—by the sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even while he prayed.Heb. 2:17—“a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people”;1 John 2:2—“and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”;4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”;cf.Gen. 32:20,lxx.—“I will appease[ἐξιλάσομαι,“propitiate”]him with the present that goeth before me”;Prov. 16:14,lxx.—“The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise man will pacify it”[ἐξιλάσεται,“propitiate it”].
On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In fact, it was he himself who‘set forth’Jesus as‘a propitiation’(Rom. 3:25, 26).”Paul never merges the objective atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for Christinus by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75, 89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul's representation of Christ as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews:“The priest says: Man's return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man's sin. This is Paul's doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a divine provision for sacrifice. Man's return to God is the thing wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who comes in to perfect man's imperfect work. This is the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews.”This recognition of expiation in Paul's teaching, together with denial of its validity and interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.
Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still further and affirms:“In the N. T. God is never said to be propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God or satisfies God's wrath.”Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T. God is represented as self-propitiated:“Christianity is distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of his own love.”This self-propitiation however must not be thought of as a bearing of penalty:“Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled with purification—‘with his stripes we are healed’(Is. 53:5). And in the N. T.,‘the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the world’(John 1:29);‘the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth’(1 John 1:7).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the penalty, but removal of the sin.”This seems to us a distinct contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an essential of Christian doctrine (seeRom. 3:25;1 John 2:2), while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man, but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:734-756.
A substitution:Luke 22:37—“he was reckoned with transgressors”;cf.Lev. 16:21, 22—“and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land”;Is. 53:5, 6—“he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”John 10:11—“the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep”;Rom. 5:6-8—“while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”;1 Pet. 3:18—“Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”
To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (b) above, in which Christ's death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer's comment, there quoted, onMat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many,”λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says:“ἀντί denotes substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of, is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is paid] are[pg 721]redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of their sins were expiated.”
Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that“in both the N. T. texts,Mat. 16:26andMark 8:37, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin to the conception of atonement:cf.Is. 43:3, 4;51:11;Amos 5:12. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.”Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“Mat. 20:28contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it, Christ's death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a ransom.”
The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol. 2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution, but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί inMat. 20:28means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in Jesus himself.
Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ's vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr. Clarke's Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed, for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God, is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.”Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that“substitution means simply that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken, but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man's redemption.”On the Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale, Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342; Smeaton, Our Lord's and the Apostles' Doctrine of Atonement.
An examination of the passages referred to shows that, while the forms in which the atoning work of Christ is described are in part derived from moral, commercial, and legal relations, the prevailing language is that of sacrifice. A correct view of the atonement must therefore be grounded upon a proper interpretation of the institution of sacrifice, especially as found in the Mosaic system.
The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus' own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not tospeakabout it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles to the gospels.[pg 722]The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of salvation, but for the redeemed.“None of the ransomed ever knew.”The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.Harnack:“There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is possible.”We regard this confession as a demonstration of the psychological correctness of Paul's doctrine of a vicarious atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience, which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only indications of the higher verdicts of God:1 John 3:20—“if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely out of existence.”So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic, but moral.”Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the creature. A more correct view of God's righteousness as the fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.
The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus' own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not tospeakabout it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles to the gospels.[pg 722]The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of salvation, but for the redeemed.“None of the ransomed ever knew.”The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.
Harnack:“There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is possible.”We regard this confession as a demonstration of the psychological correctness of Paul's doctrine of a vicarious atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience, which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only indications of the higher verdicts of God:1 John 3:20—“if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.”Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely out of existence.”So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic, but moral.”Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the creature. A more correct view of God's righteousness as the fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.