Page images
PDF
EPUB

of the common humanity could suffer that penalty, and did so suffer, to make atonement for that nature, though he who took it knew no sin." Dr. Curry, quoted in McClintock and Strong, Encyclopædia, 4:663, 664-"The Godhead came into vital union with humanity fallen and under the law. The last thought carried, to Irving's realistic mode of thinking, the notion of Christ's participation in the fallen character of humanity, which he designated by terms that implied a real sinfulness in Christ. He attempted to get rid of the odiousness of that idea, by saying that this was overborne, and at length wholly expelled, by the indwelling Godhead."

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

Irving's followers deny Christ's sinfulness, only by assuming that inborn infirmity and congenital tendencies to evil are not sin, — in other words, that not native depravity, but only actual trangression, is to be denominated sin. Irving, in our judgment, was rightly charged with asserting the sinfulness of Christ's human nature, and it was upon this charge that he was deposed from the ministry by the Presbytery in Scotland. Irving was of commanding stature, powerful voice, natural and graceful oratory. He loved the antique and the grand. For a time in London he was the great popular sensation. But shortly after the opening of his new church in Regent's Square in 1827, he found that fashion had taken its departure and that his church was no longer crowded. He concluded that the world was under the reign of Satan; he became a fanatical millennarian; he gave himself wholly to the study of prophecy. In 1830 he thought the apostolic gifts were revived, and he held to the hope of a restoration of the primitive church, although he himself was relegated to a comparatively subordinate position. He exhausted his energies, and died at the age of forty-two. "If I had married Irving," said Mrs. Thomas Carlyle, “there would have been no tongues."

To this theory we offer the following objections:

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

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

(b) It rests upon false fundamental principles,- as, that law is identical with the natural order of the universe, and as such, is an exhaustive expression of the will and nature of God; that sin is merely a power of moral evil within the soul, instead of also involving an objective guilt and desert of

punishment; that penalty is the mere reaction of law against the transgressor, instead of being also the revelation of a personal wrath against sin; that the evil taint of human nature can be extirpated by suffering its natural consequences,-penalty in this way reforming the transgressor.

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

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

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

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

Nicoll, Life of Christ, 183-“All others, as they grow in holiness, grow in their sense of sin. But when Christ is forsaken of the Father, he asks 'Why?' well knowing that the reason is not in his sin. He never makes confession of sin. In his longest prayer, the preface is an assertion of righteousness: 'I glorified thee' (John 17: 4). His last utterance from the cross is a quotation from Ps. 31: 5-Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit (Luke 23:46), but he does not add, as the Psalm does, 'thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth,' for he needed no redemption, being himself the Redeemer."

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

In Irving's theory there is no imputation, or representation, or substitution. His only idea of sacrifice is that sin itself shall be sacrificed, or annihilated. The many subjective theories of the atonement show that the offence of the cross has not ceased (Gal. 5:11"then hath the stumbling-block of the cross been done away"). Christ crucified is still a stumblingblock to modern speculation. Yet it is, as of old, "the power of God unto salvation" (Rom. 1: 16: cf. 1 Cor. 1: 23, 24-"we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling-block and unto Gentiles foolishness; but unte them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God").

As the ocean receives the impurities of the rivers and purges them, so Irving represented Christ as receiving into himself the impurities of humanity and purging the race from its sin. Here is the sense of defilement, but no sense of guilt; subjective pollution, but no objective condemnation. We take precisely opposite ground from that of Irving, namely, that Christ had, not hereditary depravity, but hereditary guilt; that he was under obligation to suffer for the sins of the race to which he had historically united himself, and of which he was the creator, the upholder, and the life. He was "made to be sir. on our behalf" (2 Cor. 5: 21), not in the sense of one defiled, as Irving thought, but in the sense of one condemned to bear our iniquities and to suffer their penal consequences. The test of a theory of the atonement, as the test of a religion, is its power to "cleanse that red right hand" of Lady Macbeth; in other words, its power to satisfy the divine justice of which our condemning conscience is only the reflection. The theory of Irving has no such power. Dr. E. G. Robinson verged toward Irving's view, when he claimed that "Christ cook human nature as he found it."

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

The

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

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

This theory holds that sin is a violation of the divine honor or majesty, and, as committed against an infinite being, deserves an infinite punishment; that the majesty of God requires him to execute punishment, while the love of God pleads for the sparing of the guilty; that this conflict of divine attributes is eternally reconciled by the voluntary sacrifice of the God-man, who bears in virtue of the dignity of his person the intensively infinite punishment of sin, which must otherwise have been suffered extensively and eternally by sinners; that this suffering of the God-man presents to the divine majesty an exact equivalent for the deserved sufferings of the elect; and that, as the result of this satisfaction of the divine claims, the elect sinners are pardoned and regenerated. This view was first broached by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1103) as a substitute for the earlier patristic view that Christ's death was a ransom paid to Satan, to deliver sinners from his power. It is held by many Scotch theologians, and, in this country, by the Princeton School.

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

These metaphors show this, at least, that no age of the church has believed in a merely subjective atonement. Nor was this relation to Satan the only aspect in which the atonement was regarded even by the early church. So early as the fourth century, we find a great church Father maintaining that the death of Christ was required by the

truth and goodness of God. See Crippen, History of Christian Doctrine, 129 —“ Athanasius (325-373) held that the death of Christ was the payment of a debt due to God. His argument is briefly this: God, having threatened death as the punishment of sin, would be untrue if he did not fulfill his threatening. But it would be equally unworthy of the divine goodness to permit rational beings, to whom he had imparted his own Spirit, to incur this death in consequence of an imposition practiced on them by the devil. Seeing then that nothing but death could solve this dilemma, the Word, who could not die, assumed a mortal body, and, offering his human nature a sacrifice for all, fulfilled the law by his death." Gregory Nazianzen (390) “retained the figure of a ransom, but, clearly perceiving that the analogy was incomplete, he explained the death of Christ as an expedient to reconcile the divine attributes."

...

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

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

To this theory we make the following objections:

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

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

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

Henry George, Progress and Poverty, 481-"In the days of feudalism, men thought of heaven as organized on a feudal basis, and ranked the first and second Persons of the Trinity as Suzerain and Tenant-in-Chief." William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 329, 830—“The monarchical type of sovereignty was, for example, so ineradicably planted in the mind of our forefathers, that a dose of cruelty and arbitrariness in their Deity seems positively to have been required by their imagination. They called

the cruelty 'retributive justice,' and a God without it would certainly not have struck them as sovereign enough. But to-day we abhor the very notion of eternal suffering inflicted; and that arbitrary dealing out of salvation and damnation to selected individuals, of which Jonathan Edwards could persuade himself that he had not only a conviction, but a ‘delightful conviction,' as of a doctrine 'exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet,' appears to us, if sovereignly anything, sovereignly irrational and mean."

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

...

Neither Christ's active obedience alone, nor Christ's obedient passion alone, can save us. As we shall see hereafter, in our examination of the doctrine of Justification, the latter was needed as the ground upon which our penalty could be remitted; the former as the ground upon which we might be admitted to the divine favor. Calvin has reflected the passive element in Anselm's view, in the following passages of his Institutes: II, 17:3-" God, to whom we were hateful through sin, was appeased by the death of his Son, and was made propitious to us."... II, 16:7—"It is necessary to consider how he substituted himself in order to pay the price of our redemption. Death held us under its yoke, but he, in our place, delivered himself into its power, that he might exempt us from it." . . . II, 16: 2-"Christ interposed and bore what, by the just judgment of God, was impending over sinners; with his own blood expiated the sin which rendered them hateful to God; by this expiation satisfied and duly propitiated the Father; by this interession appeased his anger; on this basis founded peace between God and men; and by this tie secured the divine benevolence toward them.” It has been said that Anselm regarded Christ's death not as a vicarious punishment, but as a voluntary sacrifice in compensation for which the guilty were released and justified. So Neander, Hist. Christ. Dogmas ( Bohn), 2: 517, understands Anselm to teach "the necessity of a satisfactio vicaria activa," and says: "We do not find in his writings the doctrine of a satisfactio passiva; he nowhere says that Christ had endured the punishment of men." Shedd, Hist. Christ. Doctrine, 2: 282, thinks this a misunderstanding of Anselm. The Encyclopædia Britannica takes the view of Shedd, when it speaks of Christ's sufferings as penalty: "The justice of man demands satisfaction; and as an insult to infinite honor is itself infinite, the satisfaction must be infinite, i. e., it must outweigh all that is not God. Such a penalty can only be paid by God himself, and, as a penalty for man, must be paid under the form of man. Satisfaction is only possible through the God-man. Now this God-man, as sinless, is exempt from the punishment of sin; his passion is therefore voluntary, not given as due. The merit of it is therefore infinite; God's justice is thus appeased, and his mercy may extend to man." The truth then appears to be that Anselm held Christ's obedience to be passive, in that he satisfied God's justice by enduring punishment which the sinner deserved; but that he held this same obedience of Christ to be active, in that he endured this penalty voluntarily, when there was no obligation upon him so to do.

...

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

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

Milton, Paradise Lost, 3: 209-212-" Die he, or justice must, unless for him Some other, able and as willing, pay The rigid satisfaction, death for death." The main text

« PreviousContinue »