Chapter 82

Melanchthon:“Christ was made sin for us, not only in respect to punishment, but primarily by being chargeable with guilt also (culpæ et reatus)”—quoted by Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 3:95, 102, 103, 107; also 1:307, 314sq.Thomasius says that“Christ bore the guilt of the race by imputation; but as in the case of the imputation of Adam's sin to us, imputation of our sins to Christ presupposes a real relationship. Christ appropriated our sin. He sank himself into our guilt.”Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:442 (Syst. Doct., 3:350, 351), agrees with Thomasius, that“Christ entered into our natural mortality, which for us is a penal condition, and into the state of collective guilt, so far as it is an evil, a burden to be borne; not that he had personal guilt, but rather that he entered into our guilt-laden common life, not as a stranger, but as one actually belonging to it—put under its law, according to the will of the Father and of his own love.”When, and how, did Christ take this guilt and this penalty upon him? With regard to penalty, we have no difficulty in answering that, as his whole life of suffering was propitiatory, so penalty rested upon him from the very beginning of his life. This penalty was inherited, and was the consequence of Christ's taking human nature (Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law”). But penalty and guilt are correlates; if Christ inherited penalty, it must have been because he inherited guilt. This subjection to the common guilt of the race was intimated in Jesus' circumcision (Luke 2:21); in his ritual purification (Luke 2:22—“their purification”—i. e., the purification of Mary and the babe; see Lange, Life of Christ; Commentaries of Alford, Webster and Wilkinson; and An. Par. Bible); in his legal redemption (Luke 2:23, 24;cf.Ex. 13:2, 13); and in his baptism (Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness”). The baptized person went[pg 762]down into the water, as one laden with sin and guilt, in order that this sin and guilt might be buried forever, and that he might rise from the typical grave to a new and holy life. (Ebrard:“Baptism = death.”) So Christ's submission to John's baptism of repentance was not only a consecration to death, but also a recognition and confession of his implication in that guilt of the race for which death was the appointed and inevitable penalty (cf.Mat. 10:38;Luke 12:50;Mat. 26:39); and, as his baptism was a prefiguration of his death, we may learn from his baptism something with regard to the meaning of his death. See further, under The Symbolism of Baptism.As one who had had guilt, Christ was“justified in the spirit”(1 Tim. 3:16); and this justification appears to have taken place after he“was manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16), and when“he was raised for our justification”(Rom. 4:25). CompareRom. 1:4—“declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead”;6:7-10—“he that hath died is justified from sin. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him; knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once; but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God”—here all Christians are conceived of as ideally justified in the justification of Christ, when Christ died for our sins and rose again.8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”—here Meyer says:“The sending does not precede the condemnation; but the condemnation is effected in and with the sending.”John 16:10—“of righteousness, because I go to the Father”;19:30—“It is finished.”On1 Tim. 3:16, see the Commentary of Bengel.If it be asked whether Jesus, then, before his death, was an unjustified person, we answer that, while personally pure and well-pleasing to God (Mat. 3:17), he himself was conscious of a race-responsibility and a race-guilt which must be atoned for (John 12:27—“Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour”); and that guilty human nature in him endured at the last the separation from God which constitutes the essence of death, sin's penalty (Mat. 27:46—“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”). We must remember that, as even the believer must“be judged according to man in the flesh”(1 Pet. 4:6), that is, must suffer the death which to unbelievers is the penalty of sin, although he“live according to God in the Spirit,”so Christ, in order that we might be delivered from both guilt and penalty, was“put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit”(3:18);—in other words, as Christ was man, the penalty due to human guilt belonged to him to bear; but, as he was God, he could exhaust that penalty, and could be a proper substitute for others.If it be asked whether he, who from the moment of the conception“sanctified himself”(John 17:19), did not from that moment also justify himself, we reply that although, through the retroactive efficacy of his atonement and upon the ground of it, human nature in him was purged of its depravity from the moment that he took that nature; and although, upon the ground of that atonement, believers before his advent were both sanctified and justified; yet his own justification could not have proceeded upon the ground of his atonement, and also his atonement have proceeded upon the ground of his justification. This would be a vicious circle; somewhere we must have a beginning. That beginning was in the cross, where guilt was first purged (Heb. 1:3—“when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high”;Mat. 27:42—“He saved others; himself he cannot save”;cf.Rev. 13:8—“the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world”).If it be said that guilt and depravity are practically inseparable, and that, if Christ had guilt, he must have had depravity also, we reply that in civil law we distinguish between them,—the conversion of a murderer would not remove his obligation to suffer upon the gallows; and we reply further, that in justification we distinguish between them,—depravity still remaining, though guilt is removed. So we may say that Christ takes guilt without depravity, in order that we may have depravity without guilt. See page 645; also Böhl, Incarnation des göttlichen Wortes; Pope, Higher Catechism, 118; A. H. Strong, on the Necessity of the Atonement, in Philosophy and Religion, 213-219.Per contra, see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:59 note, 82.Christ therefore, as incarnate, rather revealed the atonement than made it. The historical work of atonement was finished upon the Cross, but that historical work only revealed to men the atonement made both before and since by the extra-mundane Logos. The eternal Love of God suffering the necessary reaction of his own Holiness against the sin of his creatures and with a view to their salvation—this is the essence of the Atonement.[pg 763]Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 252, 253—“Christ, as God's atonement, is the revelation and discovery of the fact that sacrifice is as deep in God as his being. He is a holy Creator.... He must take upon himself the shame and pain of sin.”The earthly tabernacle and its sacrifices were only the shadow of those in the heavens, and Moses was bidden to make the earthly after the pattern which he saw in the mount. So the historical atonement was but the shadowing forth to dull and finite minds of an infinite demand of the divine holiness and an infinite satisfaction rendered by the divine love. Godet, S. S. Times, Oct. 16, 1886—“Christ so identified himself with the race he came to save, by sharing its life or its very blood, that when the race itself was redeemed from the curse of sin, his resurrection followed as the first fruits of that redemption”;Rom. 4:25—“delivered up for our trespasses ... raised for our justification.”Simon, Redemption of Man, 322—“If the Logos is generally the Mediator of the divine immanence in Creation, especially in man; if men are differentiations of the effluent divine energy; and if the Logos is the immanent controlling principle of all differentiation,i. e., the principle of allform—must not the self-perversion of these human differentiations necessarily react on him who is their constitutive principle? 339—Remember that men have not first to engraft themselves into Christ, the living whole.... They subsist naturally in him, and they have to separate themselves, cut themselves off from him, if they are to be separate. This is the mistake made in the‘Life in Christ’theory. Men are treated as in some sense out of Christ, and as having to get into connection with Christ.... It is not that we have to create the relation,—we have simply to accept, to recognize, to ratify it. Rejecting Christ is not so much refusal tobecomeone with Christ, as it is refusal toremainone with him, refusal to let him be our life.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 33, 172—“When God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, he communicated freedom, and made possible the creature's self-chosen alienation from himself, the giver of that life. While man could never break the natural bond which united him to God, he could break the spiritual bond, and could introduce even into the life of God a principle of discord and evil. Tie a cord tightly about your finger; you partially isolate the finger, diminish its nutrition, bring about atrophy and disease. Yet the life of the whole system rouses itself to put away the evil, to untie the cord, to free the diseased and suffering member. The illustration is far from adequate; but it helps at a single point. There has been given to each intelligent and moral agent the power, spiritually, to isolate himself from God, while yet he is naturally joined to God, and is wholly dependent upon God for the removal of the sin which has so separated him from his Maker. Sin is the act of the creature, but salvation is the act of the Creator.“If you could imagine a finger endowed with free will and trying to sunder its connection with the body by tying a string around itself, you would have a picture of man trying to sunder his connection with Christ. What is the result of such an attempt? Why, pain, decay; possible, nay, incipient death, to the finger. By what law? By the law of the organism, which is so constituted as to maintain itself against its own disruption by the revolt of the members. The pain and death of the finger is the reaction of the whole against the treason of the part. The finger suffers pain. But are there no results of pain to the body? Does not the body feel pain also? How plain it is that no such pain can be confined to the single part! The heart feels, aye, the whole organism feels, because all the parts are members one of another. It not only suffers, but that suffering tends to remedy the evil and to remove its cause. The body summons its forces, pours new tides of life into the dying member, strives to rid the finger of the ligature that binds it. So through all the course of history, Christ, the natural life of the race, has been afflicted in the affliction of humanity and has suffered for human sin. This suffering has been an atoning suffering, since it has been due to righteousness. If God had not been holy, if God had not made all nature express the holiness of his being, if God had not made pain and loss the necessary consequences of sin, then Christ would not have suffered. But since these things are sin's penalty and Christ is the life of the sinful race, it must needs be that Christ should suffer. There is nothing arbitrary in laying upon him the iniquities of us all. Original grace, like original sin, is only the ethical interpretation of biological facts.”See also Ames, on Biological Aspects of the Atonement, in Methodist Review, Nov. 1905:943-953.In favor of the Substitutionary or Ethical view of the atonement we may urge the following considerations:[pg 764](a) It rests upon correct philosophical principles with regard to the nature of will, law, sin, penalty, righteousness.This theory holds that there are permanent states, as well as transient acts, of the will; and that the will is not simply the faculty of volitions, but also the fundamental determination of the being to an ultimate end. It regards law as having its basis, not in arbitrary will or in governmental expediency, but rather in the nature of God, and as being a necessary transcript of God's holiness. It considers sin to consist not simply in acts, but in permanent evil states of the affections and will. It makes the object of penalty to be, not the reformation of the offender, or the prevention of evil doing, but the vindication of justice, outraged by violation of law. It teaches that righteousness is not benevolence or a form of benevolence, but a distinct and separate attribute of the divine nature which demands that sin should be visited with punishment, apart from any consideration of the useful results that will flow therefrom.(b) It combines in itself all the valuable elements in the theories before mentioned, while it avoids their inconsistencies, by showing the deeper principle upon which each of these elements is based.The Ethical theory admits the indispensableness of Christ's example, advocated by the Socinian theory; the moral influence of his suffering, urged by the Bushnellian theory; the securing of the safety of government, insisted on by the Grotian theory; the participation of the believer in Christ's new humanity, taught by the Irvingian theory; the satisfaction to God's majesty for the elect, made so much of by the Anselmic theory. But the Ethical theory claims that all these other theories require, as a presupposition for their effective working, that ethical satisfaction to the holiness of God which is rendered in guilty human nature by the Son of God who took that nature to redeem it.(c) It most fully meets the requirements of Scripture, by holding that the necessity of the atonement is absolute, since it rests upon the demands of immanent holiness, the fundamental attribute of God.Acts 17:3—“it behooved the Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead”—lit.:“it was necessary for the Christ to suffer”;Luke 24:26—“Behooved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into his glory?”—lit.:“Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things?”It is not enough to say that Christ must suffer in order that the prophecies might be fulfilled. Why was it prophesied that he should suffer? Why did God purpose that he should suffer? The ultimate necessity is a necessity in the nature of God.Plato, Republic, 2:361—“The righteous man who is thought to be unrighteous will be scourged, racked, bound; will have his eyes put out; and finally, having endured all sorts of evil, will be impaled.”This means that, as human society is at present constituted, even a righteous person must suffer for the sins of the world.“Mors mortis Morti mortem nisi morte dedisset, Æternæ vitæ janua clausa foret”—“Had not the Death-of-death to Death his death-blow given, Forever closed were the gate, the gate of life and heaven.”(d) It shows most satisfactorily how the demands of holiness are met; namely, by the propitiatory offering of one who is personally pure, but who by union with the human race has inherited its guilt and penalty.“Quo non ascendam?”—“Whither shall I not rise?”exclaimed the greatest minister of modern kings, in a moment of intoxication.“Whither shall I not stoop?”says the Lord Jesus. King Humbert, during the scourge of cholera in Italy:“In Castellammare they make merry; in Naples they die: I go to Naples.”Wrightnour:“The illustration of Powhatan raising his club to slay John Smith, while Pocahontas flings herself between the uplifted club and the victim, is not a good one. God is not an angry being, bound to strike something, no matter what. If Powhatan could have taken the blow himself, out of a desire to spare the victim, it would be better. The Father and the Son are one. Bronson Alcott, in his school at Concord, when punishment was necessary, sometimes placed the rod in the hand of the offender and bade him strike his (Alcott's) hand, rather than that the law of the school should be broken without punishment following. The result was that very few rules were[pg 765]broken. So God in Christ bore the sins of the world, and endured the penalty for man's violation of his law.”(e) It furnishes the only proper explanation of the sacrificial language of the New Testament, and of the sacrificial rites of the Old, considered as prophetic of Christ's atoning work.Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 207-211—“The imposition of hands on the head of the victim is entirely unexplained, except in the account of the great day of Atonement, when by the same gesture and by distinct confession the sins of the people were‘put upon the head of the goat’(Lev. 16:21) to be borne away into the wilderness. The blood was sacred and was to be poured out before the Lord, evidently in place of the forfeited life of the sinner which should have been rendered up.”Watts, New Apologetics, 205—“‘The Lord will provide’was the truth taught when Abraham found a ram provided by God which he‘offered up as a burnt offering in the stead of his son’(Gen. 22:13, 14). As the ram was not Abraham's ram, the sacrifice of it could not teach that all Abraham had belonged to God, and should, with entire faith in his goodness, be devoted to him; but it did teach that‘apart from shedding of blood there is no remission’(Heb. 9:22).”2 Chron. 29:27—“when the burnt offering began, the song of Jehovah began also.”(f) It alone gives proper place to the death of Christ as the central feature of his work,—set forth in the ordinances, and of chief power in Christian experience.Martin Luther, when he had realized the truth of the Atonement, was found sobbing before a crucifix and moaning:“Für mich! für mich!”—“For me! for me!”Elisha Kane, the Arctic explorer, while searching for signs of Sir John Franklin and his party, sent out eight or ten men to explore the surrounding region. After several days three returned, almost crazed with the cold—thermometer fifty degrees below zero—and reported that the other men were dying miles away. Dr. Kane organized a company of ten, and though suffering himself with an old heart-trouble, led them to the rescue. Three times he fainted during the eighteen hours of marching and suffering; but he found the men.“We knew you would come! we knew you would come, brother!”whispered one of them, hardly able to speak. Why was he sure Dr. Kane would come? Because he knew the stuff Dr. Kane was made of, and knew that he would risk his life for any one of them. It is a parable of Christ's relation to our salvation. He is our elder brother, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and he not only risks death, but he endures death, in order to save us.(g) It gives us the only means of understanding the sufferings of Christ in the garden and on the cross, or of reconciling them with the divine justice.Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre:“Man has a guilt that demands the punitive sufferings of a mediator. Christ shows a suffering that cannot be justified except by reference to some other guilt than his own. Combine these two facts, and you have the problem of the atonement solved.”J. G. Whittier:“Through all the depths of sin and loss Drops the plummet of the Cross; Never yet abyss was found Deeper than the Cross could sound.”Alcestis purchased life for Admetus her husband by dying in his stead; Marcus Curtius saved Rome by leaping into the yawning chasm; the Russian servant threw himself to the wolves to rescue his master. Berdoe, Robert Browning, 47—“To know God as the theist knows him may suffice for pure spirits, for those who have never sinned, suffered, nor felt the need of a Savior; but for fallen and sinful men the Christ of Christianity is an imperative necessity; and those who have never surrendered themselves to him have never known what it is to experience the rest he gives to the heavy-laden soul.”(h) As no other theory does, this view satisfies the ethical demand of human nature; pacifies the convicted conscience; assures the sinner that he may find instant salvation in Christ; and so makes possible a new life of holiness, while at the same time it furnishes the highest incentives to such a life.[pg 766]

When, and how, did Christ take this guilt and this penalty upon him? With regard to penalty, we have no difficulty in answering that, as his whole life of suffering was propitiatory, so penalty rested upon him from the very beginning of his life. This penalty was inherited, and was the consequence of Christ's taking human nature (Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law”). But penalty and guilt are correlates; if Christ inherited penalty, it must have been because he inherited guilt. This subjection to the common guilt of the race was intimated in Jesus' circumcision (Luke 2:21); in his ritual purification (Luke 2:22—“their purification”—i. e., the purification of Mary and the babe; see Lange, Life of Christ; Commentaries of Alford, Webster and Wilkinson; and An. Par. Bible); in his legal redemption (Luke 2:23, 24;cf.Ex. 13:2, 13); and in his baptism (Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness”). The baptized person went[pg 762]down into the water, as one laden with sin and guilt, in order that this sin and guilt might be buried forever, and that he might rise from the typical grave to a new and holy life. (Ebrard:“Baptism = death.”) So Christ's submission to John's baptism of repentance was not only a consecration to death, but also a recognition and confession of his implication in that guilt of the race for which death was the appointed and inevitable penalty (cf.Mat. 10:38;Luke 12:50;Mat. 26:39); and, as his baptism was a prefiguration of his death, we may learn from his baptism something with regard to the meaning of his death. See further, under The Symbolism of Baptism.

As one who had had guilt, Christ was“justified in the spirit”(1 Tim. 3:16); and this justification appears to have taken place after he“was manifested in the flesh”(1 Tim. 3:16), and when“he was raised for our justification”(Rom. 4:25). CompareRom. 1:4—“declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead”;6:7-10—“he that hath died is justified from sin. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him; knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once; but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God”—here all Christians are conceived of as ideally justified in the justification of Christ, when Christ died for our sins and rose again.8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”—here Meyer says:“The sending does not precede the condemnation; but the condemnation is effected in and with the sending.”John 16:10—“of righteousness, because I go to the Father”;19:30—“It is finished.”On1 Tim. 3:16, see the Commentary of Bengel.

If it be asked whether Jesus, then, before his death, was an unjustified person, we answer that, while personally pure and well-pleasing to God (Mat. 3:17), he himself was conscious of a race-responsibility and a race-guilt which must be atoned for (John 12:27—“Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this cause came I unto this hour”); and that guilty human nature in him endured at the last the separation from God which constitutes the essence of death, sin's penalty (Mat. 27:46—“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”). We must remember that, as even the believer must“be judged according to man in the flesh”(1 Pet. 4:6), that is, must suffer the death which to unbelievers is the penalty of sin, although he“live according to God in the Spirit,”so Christ, in order that we might be delivered from both guilt and penalty, was“put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit”(3:18);—in other words, as Christ was man, the penalty due to human guilt belonged to him to bear; but, as he was God, he could exhaust that penalty, and could be a proper substitute for others.

If it be asked whether he, who from the moment of the conception“sanctified himself”(John 17:19), did not from that moment also justify himself, we reply that although, through the retroactive efficacy of his atonement and upon the ground of it, human nature in him was purged of its depravity from the moment that he took that nature; and although, upon the ground of that atonement, believers before his advent were both sanctified and justified; yet his own justification could not have proceeded upon the ground of his atonement, and also his atonement have proceeded upon the ground of his justification. This would be a vicious circle; somewhere we must have a beginning. That beginning was in the cross, where guilt was first purged (Heb. 1:3—“when he had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high”;Mat. 27:42—“He saved others; himself he cannot save”;cf.Rev. 13:8—“the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world”).

If it be said that guilt and depravity are practically inseparable, and that, if Christ had guilt, he must have had depravity also, we reply that in civil law we distinguish between them,—the conversion of a murderer would not remove his obligation to suffer upon the gallows; and we reply further, that in justification we distinguish between them,—depravity still remaining, though guilt is removed. So we may say that Christ takes guilt without depravity, in order that we may have depravity without guilt. See page 645; also Böhl, Incarnation des göttlichen Wortes; Pope, Higher Catechism, 118; A. H. Strong, on the Necessity of the Atonement, in Philosophy and Religion, 213-219.Per contra, see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:59 note, 82.

Christ therefore, as incarnate, rather revealed the atonement than made it. The historical work of atonement was finished upon the Cross, but that historical work only revealed to men the atonement made both before and since by the extra-mundane Logos. The eternal Love of God suffering the necessary reaction of his own Holiness against the sin of his creatures and with a view to their salvation—this is the essence of the Atonement.

Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 252, 253—“Christ, as God's atonement, is the revelation and discovery of the fact that sacrifice is as deep in God as his being. He is a holy Creator.... He must take upon himself the shame and pain of sin.”The earthly tabernacle and its sacrifices were only the shadow of those in the heavens, and Moses was bidden to make the earthly after the pattern which he saw in the mount. So the historical atonement was but the shadowing forth to dull and finite minds of an infinite demand of the divine holiness and an infinite satisfaction rendered by the divine love. Godet, S. S. Times, Oct. 16, 1886—“Christ so identified himself with the race he came to save, by sharing its life or its very blood, that when the race itself was redeemed from the curse of sin, his resurrection followed as the first fruits of that redemption”;Rom. 4:25—“delivered up for our trespasses ... raised for our justification.”Simon, Redemption of Man, 322—“If the Logos is generally the Mediator of the divine immanence in Creation, especially in man; if men are differentiations of the effluent divine energy; and if the Logos is the immanent controlling principle of all differentiation,i. e., the principle of allform—must not the self-perversion of these human differentiations necessarily react on him who is their constitutive principle? 339—Remember that men have not first to engraft themselves into Christ, the living whole.... They subsist naturally in him, and they have to separate themselves, cut themselves off from him, if they are to be separate. This is the mistake made in the‘Life in Christ’theory. Men are treated as in some sense out of Christ, and as having to get into connection with Christ.... It is not that we have to create the relation,—we have simply to accept, to recognize, to ratify it. Rejecting Christ is not so much refusal tobecomeone with Christ, as it is refusal toremainone with him, refusal to let him be our life.”A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 33, 172—“When God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, he communicated freedom, and made possible the creature's self-chosen alienation from himself, the giver of that life. While man could never break the natural bond which united him to God, he could break the spiritual bond, and could introduce even into the life of God a principle of discord and evil. Tie a cord tightly about your finger; you partially isolate the finger, diminish its nutrition, bring about atrophy and disease. Yet the life of the whole system rouses itself to put away the evil, to untie the cord, to free the diseased and suffering member. The illustration is far from adequate; but it helps at a single point. There has been given to each intelligent and moral agent the power, spiritually, to isolate himself from God, while yet he is naturally joined to God, and is wholly dependent upon God for the removal of the sin which has so separated him from his Maker. Sin is the act of the creature, but salvation is the act of the Creator.“If you could imagine a finger endowed with free will and trying to sunder its connection with the body by tying a string around itself, you would have a picture of man trying to sunder his connection with Christ. What is the result of such an attempt? Why, pain, decay; possible, nay, incipient death, to the finger. By what law? By the law of the organism, which is so constituted as to maintain itself against its own disruption by the revolt of the members. The pain and death of the finger is the reaction of the whole against the treason of the part. The finger suffers pain. But are there no results of pain to the body? Does not the body feel pain also? How plain it is that no such pain can be confined to the single part! The heart feels, aye, the whole organism feels, because all the parts are members one of another. It not only suffers, but that suffering tends to remedy the evil and to remove its cause. The body summons its forces, pours new tides of life into the dying member, strives to rid the finger of the ligature that binds it. So through all the course of history, Christ, the natural life of the race, has been afflicted in the affliction of humanity and has suffered for human sin. This suffering has been an atoning suffering, since it has been due to righteousness. If God had not been holy, if God had not made all nature express the holiness of his being, if God had not made pain and loss the necessary consequences of sin, then Christ would not have suffered. But since these things are sin's penalty and Christ is the life of the sinful race, it must needs be that Christ should suffer. There is nothing arbitrary in laying upon him the iniquities of us all. Original grace, like original sin, is only the ethical interpretation of biological facts.”See also Ames, on Biological Aspects of the Atonement, in Methodist Review, Nov. 1905:943-953.

Simon, Redemption of Man, 322—“If the Logos is generally the Mediator of the divine immanence in Creation, especially in man; if men are differentiations of the effluent divine energy; and if the Logos is the immanent controlling principle of all differentiation,i. e., the principle of allform—must not the self-perversion of these human differentiations necessarily react on him who is their constitutive principle? 339—Remember that men have not first to engraft themselves into Christ, the living whole.... They subsist naturally in him, and they have to separate themselves, cut themselves off from him, if they are to be separate. This is the mistake made in the‘Life in Christ’theory. Men are treated as in some sense out of Christ, and as having to get into connection with Christ.... It is not that we have to create the relation,—we have simply to accept, to recognize, to ratify it. Rejecting Christ is not so much refusal tobecomeone with Christ, as it is refusal toremainone with him, refusal to let him be our life.”

A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 33, 172—“When God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, he communicated freedom, and made possible the creature's self-chosen alienation from himself, the giver of that life. While man could never break the natural bond which united him to God, he could break the spiritual bond, and could introduce even into the life of God a principle of discord and evil. Tie a cord tightly about your finger; you partially isolate the finger, diminish its nutrition, bring about atrophy and disease. Yet the life of the whole system rouses itself to put away the evil, to untie the cord, to free the diseased and suffering member. The illustration is far from adequate; but it helps at a single point. There has been given to each intelligent and moral agent the power, spiritually, to isolate himself from God, while yet he is naturally joined to God, and is wholly dependent upon God for the removal of the sin which has so separated him from his Maker. Sin is the act of the creature, but salvation is the act of the Creator.

“If you could imagine a finger endowed with free will and trying to sunder its connection with the body by tying a string around itself, you would have a picture of man trying to sunder his connection with Christ. What is the result of such an attempt? Why, pain, decay; possible, nay, incipient death, to the finger. By what law? By the law of the organism, which is so constituted as to maintain itself against its own disruption by the revolt of the members. The pain and death of the finger is the reaction of the whole against the treason of the part. The finger suffers pain. But are there no results of pain to the body? Does not the body feel pain also? How plain it is that no such pain can be confined to the single part! The heart feels, aye, the whole organism feels, because all the parts are members one of another. It not only suffers, but that suffering tends to remedy the evil and to remove its cause. The body summons its forces, pours new tides of life into the dying member, strives to rid the finger of the ligature that binds it. So through all the course of history, Christ, the natural life of the race, has been afflicted in the affliction of humanity and has suffered for human sin. This suffering has been an atoning suffering, since it has been due to righteousness. If God had not been holy, if God had not made all nature express the holiness of his being, if God had not made pain and loss the necessary consequences of sin, then Christ would not have suffered. But since these things are sin's penalty and Christ is the life of the sinful race, it must needs be that Christ should suffer. There is nothing arbitrary in laying upon him the iniquities of us all. Original grace, like original sin, is only the ethical interpretation of biological facts.”See also Ames, on Biological Aspects of the Atonement, in Methodist Review, Nov. 1905:943-953.

In favor of the Substitutionary or Ethical view of the atonement we may urge the following considerations:

(a) It rests upon correct philosophical principles with regard to the nature of will, law, sin, penalty, righteousness.

This theory holds that there are permanent states, as well as transient acts, of the will; and that the will is not simply the faculty of volitions, but also the fundamental determination of the being to an ultimate end. It regards law as having its basis, not in arbitrary will or in governmental expediency, but rather in the nature of God, and as being a necessary transcript of God's holiness. It considers sin to consist not simply in acts, but in permanent evil states of the affections and will. It makes the object of penalty to be, not the reformation of the offender, or the prevention of evil doing, but the vindication of justice, outraged by violation of law. It teaches that righteousness is not benevolence or a form of benevolence, but a distinct and separate attribute of the divine nature which demands that sin should be visited with punishment, apart from any consideration of the useful results that will flow therefrom.

(b) It combines in itself all the valuable elements in the theories before mentioned, while it avoids their inconsistencies, by showing the deeper principle upon which each of these elements is based.

The Ethical theory admits the indispensableness of Christ's example, advocated by the Socinian theory; the moral influence of his suffering, urged by the Bushnellian theory; the securing of the safety of government, insisted on by the Grotian theory; the participation of the believer in Christ's new humanity, taught by the Irvingian theory; the satisfaction to God's majesty for the elect, made so much of by the Anselmic theory. But the Ethical theory claims that all these other theories require, as a presupposition for their effective working, that ethical satisfaction to the holiness of God which is rendered in guilty human nature by the Son of God who took that nature to redeem it.

(c) It most fully meets the requirements of Scripture, by holding that the necessity of the atonement is absolute, since it rests upon the demands of immanent holiness, the fundamental attribute of God.

Acts 17:3—“it behooved the Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead”—lit.:“it was necessary for the Christ to suffer”;Luke 24:26—“Behooved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into his glory?”—lit.:“Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things?”It is not enough to say that Christ must suffer in order that the prophecies might be fulfilled. Why was it prophesied that he should suffer? Why did God purpose that he should suffer? The ultimate necessity is a necessity in the nature of God.Plato, Republic, 2:361—“The righteous man who is thought to be unrighteous will be scourged, racked, bound; will have his eyes put out; and finally, having endured all sorts of evil, will be impaled.”This means that, as human society is at present constituted, even a righteous person must suffer for the sins of the world.“Mors mortis Morti mortem nisi morte dedisset, Æternæ vitæ janua clausa foret”—“Had not the Death-of-death to Death his death-blow given, Forever closed were the gate, the gate of life and heaven.”

Plato, Republic, 2:361—“The righteous man who is thought to be unrighteous will be scourged, racked, bound; will have his eyes put out; and finally, having endured all sorts of evil, will be impaled.”This means that, as human society is at present constituted, even a righteous person must suffer for the sins of the world.“Mors mortis Morti mortem nisi morte dedisset, Æternæ vitæ janua clausa foret”—“Had not the Death-of-death to Death his death-blow given, Forever closed were the gate, the gate of life and heaven.”

(d) It shows most satisfactorily how the demands of holiness are met; namely, by the propitiatory offering of one who is personally pure, but who by union with the human race has inherited its guilt and penalty.

“Quo non ascendam?”—“Whither shall I not rise?”exclaimed the greatest minister of modern kings, in a moment of intoxication.“Whither shall I not stoop?”says the Lord Jesus. King Humbert, during the scourge of cholera in Italy:“In Castellammare they make merry; in Naples they die: I go to Naples.”Wrightnour:“The illustration of Powhatan raising his club to slay John Smith, while Pocahontas flings herself between the uplifted club and the victim, is not a good one. God is not an angry being, bound to strike something, no matter what. If Powhatan could have taken the blow himself, out of a desire to spare the victim, it would be better. The Father and the Son are one. Bronson Alcott, in his school at Concord, when punishment was necessary, sometimes placed the rod in the hand of the offender and bade him strike his (Alcott's) hand, rather than that the law of the school should be broken without punishment following. The result was that very few rules were[pg 765]broken. So God in Christ bore the sins of the world, and endured the penalty for man's violation of his law.”

Wrightnour:“The illustration of Powhatan raising his club to slay John Smith, while Pocahontas flings herself between the uplifted club and the victim, is not a good one. God is not an angry being, bound to strike something, no matter what. If Powhatan could have taken the blow himself, out of a desire to spare the victim, it would be better. The Father and the Son are one. Bronson Alcott, in his school at Concord, when punishment was necessary, sometimes placed the rod in the hand of the offender and bade him strike his (Alcott's) hand, rather than that the law of the school should be broken without punishment following. The result was that very few rules were[pg 765]broken. So God in Christ bore the sins of the world, and endured the penalty for man's violation of his law.”

(e) It furnishes the only proper explanation of the sacrificial language of the New Testament, and of the sacrificial rites of the Old, considered as prophetic of Christ's atoning work.

Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 207-211—“The imposition of hands on the head of the victim is entirely unexplained, except in the account of the great day of Atonement, when by the same gesture and by distinct confession the sins of the people were‘put upon the head of the goat’(Lev. 16:21) to be borne away into the wilderness. The blood was sacred and was to be poured out before the Lord, evidently in place of the forfeited life of the sinner which should have been rendered up.”Watts, New Apologetics, 205—“‘The Lord will provide’was the truth taught when Abraham found a ram provided by God which he‘offered up as a burnt offering in the stead of his son’(Gen. 22:13, 14). As the ram was not Abraham's ram, the sacrifice of it could not teach that all Abraham had belonged to God, and should, with entire faith in his goodness, be devoted to him; but it did teach that‘apart from shedding of blood there is no remission’(Heb. 9:22).”2 Chron. 29:27—“when the burnt offering began, the song of Jehovah began also.”

(f) It alone gives proper place to the death of Christ as the central feature of his work,—set forth in the ordinances, and of chief power in Christian experience.

Martin Luther, when he had realized the truth of the Atonement, was found sobbing before a crucifix and moaning:“Für mich! für mich!”—“For me! for me!”Elisha Kane, the Arctic explorer, while searching for signs of Sir John Franklin and his party, sent out eight or ten men to explore the surrounding region. After several days three returned, almost crazed with the cold—thermometer fifty degrees below zero—and reported that the other men were dying miles away. Dr. Kane organized a company of ten, and though suffering himself with an old heart-trouble, led them to the rescue. Three times he fainted during the eighteen hours of marching and suffering; but he found the men.“We knew you would come! we knew you would come, brother!”whispered one of them, hardly able to speak. Why was he sure Dr. Kane would come? Because he knew the stuff Dr. Kane was made of, and knew that he would risk his life for any one of them. It is a parable of Christ's relation to our salvation. He is our elder brother, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and he not only risks death, but he endures death, in order to save us.

(g) It gives us the only means of understanding the sufferings of Christ in the garden and on the cross, or of reconciling them with the divine justice.

Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre:“Man has a guilt that demands the punitive sufferings of a mediator. Christ shows a suffering that cannot be justified except by reference to some other guilt than his own. Combine these two facts, and you have the problem of the atonement solved.”J. G. Whittier:“Through all the depths of sin and loss Drops the plummet of the Cross; Never yet abyss was found Deeper than the Cross could sound.”Alcestis purchased life for Admetus her husband by dying in his stead; Marcus Curtius saved Rome by leaping into the yawning chasm; the Russian servant threw himself to the wolves to rescue his master. Berdoe, Robert Browning, 47—“To know God as the theist knows him may suffice for pure spirits, for those who have never sinned, suffered, nor felt the need of a Savior; but for fallen and sinful men the Christ of Christianity is an imperative necessity; and those who have never surrendered themselves to him have never known what it is to experience the rest he gives to the heavy-laden soul.”

(h) As no other theory does, this view satisfies the ethical demand of human nature; pacifies the convicted conscience; assures the sinner that he may find instant salvation in Christ; and so makes possible a new life of holiness, while at the same time it furnishes the highest incentives to such a life.

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