The Principal Objections to the Church Doctrine Stated and Answered
My original scheme embraced the purpose of devoting a separate chapter to the discussion and solution of the various objections which have been brought against the Church doctrine of the Satisfaction rendered by Christ to divine justice, and another chapter to the discussion and refutation of the several erroneous views held in opposition to the truth. I have, however, found it to be impossible to avoid noticing and answering these objections, and stating, contrasting and refuting these rival theories, as they were severally brought to notice in the development of the true doctrine at the different points upon which they severally bear. I could not define the true doctrine without excluding the false doctrine coterminous with it at each several point. I could not prove the true doctrine without, eo ipso, dis proving the false alternative, and solving the objections which were made to the doctrine we advocate or to the evidences by which it is substantiated. I will in this place, consequently, do nothing more than repeat — for the sake of perspicuity and impression — very briefly, the principal objections made against the doctrine of Satisfaction, and the answers to them. I wish, however, in the first place to repeat, with emphasis, the second of the three conditions of argument which I laid down in the Introductory Chapter of this book: “Reasonable objections against the evidences by which a doctrine is established have force and should be duly considered. But rational objections to any principle fairly established by the language of Scripture have no force whatever unless they amount to a palpable contradiction to other principles certainly known. And whenever this can be shown, the reasonable inference is, not that the teaching of Scripture is to be modified in conformity thereto, but that the Scriptures themselves are to be rejected as false. Nothing is more senseless than the attempt to modify the results of the inspiration of JEHOVAH in conformity with human reason.”
We maintain that it is proved beyond gainsaying that the doctrine of the Christian Church as to the nature of the satisfaction of Christ is explicitly taught in Scripture. Our opponents have only one of three things to do: (a) show that the Scriptures do not teach our doctrine; (6) accept that doctrine themselves; or (c) reject the Scriptures. AVe notice their objections to the doctrine, not for the purpose of erecting the demonstration of its truth upon the demonstration of their insufficiency or total falsehood, but simply for the purpose of showing that the teachings of God’s word do not contradict the teachings of that reason with which he has endowed us.
1. All our opponents deny that justice in our strict and absolute sense of the word is a virtue. Hence they deny that it is a divine attribute. Hence they object that our doctrine revolts their moral sense by ascribing vindictiveness to God.
OBJECTIONS STATED AI^ D ANSWERED. 303
(1.) The advocates of the Moral Influence Theory deny that the disposition to punish every sin irrespective of any ulterior object is an absolute perfection of the divine nature. Socinus said, “If we could but get rid of this justice, even if we had no other proof, that fiction of Christ’s satisfaction would be thoroughly exposed and would vanish.”* Priestly says that “justice in the Deity can be no more than a modification of that goodness or benevolence which is his sole governing principle.”f Young! denies that there is any such thing as rectilineal justice in one sense in God at all. He admits that God is just in the sense of never defrauding any one of any good thing due to him, but he denies utterly that any moral excellence demands the infliction of evil upon a repentant sinner. In like manner Bushnell,§ through all his dishonouring caricatures of the faith of the Church, denies that there is any excellence in the divine nature determining him to treat sin according to its intrinsic ill-desert, and that the punishment which God inflicts upon sin is in any way different from paternal chastisement designed for the good of the offender.
(2.) All the advocates of the Governmental Theory of the Atonement, although they talk of justice in a manner very different from the class just referred to, yet hold an opinion which in its last analysis comes to the same thing. They both deny that the disposition to treat sin as it deserves, because of its own intrinsic evil, is an excellence, or that it belongs to God. They both
* De Servatore, iii., 1. f Theol. Rep., T., 417.
t “Life and Light of Men,” chap. 4.
$ Vicarious Sacrifice, Part III., chaps, i.-iii.
hold that the sole motive for the penal evils attached to the violations of the divine law is that simple benevolence “which/7 in the words of Priestly, “is God’s sole governing principle.” The only difference is that the advocate of the Moral Influence or Socinian view of the Atonement makes the good of the individual concerned, in every given case, the absolute end of the benevolence of God in his chastisement, while the Governmental Atonement Theory makes the good of the subjects of God’s moral government in general the the absolute end of that benevolence. Dr. N. W. Taylor says:* “Justice, on the part of a perfect moral Governor, is a benevolent disposition to maintain, by the requisite means, his authority as the necessary condition of the highest happiness of his kingdom.” “Justice always implies a correspondent right somewhere to some
good or benefit which is the object of the right
As punishment is in no respect a good to the transgressor, it can in no respect be the object of a right on his part, and therefore cannot, in this respect, be an act of justice to him, nor an act of justice to him in any sense, except that he, by his act of transgression, has created a right to his punishment on the part of the public;” that is, because his punishment will directly or indirectly contribute to the happiness of the public.
That is, both of these false theories of the Atonement resolve justice into benevolence. We hold this to be a metaphysical absurdity. We challenge the world either (a) to prove that mankind are destitute of the ideas of “right,” of “oughtnesr.,” of “justice,” &c., or (6) to trace the generation of either one or all of these ideas from * Moral Government, vol. ii., p. 280.
the ideas of benevolence or of happiness. We agree that benevolence respects the happiness of others, and that benevolence is a moral excellence which ornaments the divine nature, and which men ought to possess and to exercise. But the idea of oughtness is more elemental than the idea of benevolence, and it cannot be analyzed into anything more elemental. It is an independent and ultimate idea which stands by itself. But if the idea of moral obligation is ultimate and independent, it follows, from its very nature, that it is intrinsically supreme and absolute. Its dictates may coincide with those of benevolence, but if not, they must take precedence of them. The man would prove himself to be a moral idiot who could question whether that which is right ought to be done in preference to that which is the cause of happiness, no matter to whom. Besides this fact, that no metaphysician has ever been able to trace the genesis of the ideas of “rightness,” “oughtness,” “justice” out of either of the ideas of ’ benevolence” or “happiness,” every sane man in the spontaneous judgments of his life distinguishes between benevolence and justice as things generically distinct. Every human being judges practically of sin in himself and others that it is intrinsically ill-deserving. A repentant sinner would deserve punishment as much if he was the only creature in the universe as he would in a thronged world.
The form in which the principle upon which tins objection to our doctrine rests, as entertained by the advocates of the Governmental Theory, is bad enough, but it is much worse as it is pressed by the advocates of the Moral Influence Theory. Their sickly sentiments are in obvious contradiction to all the sacred and profane history of God’s providential dealings with men from the beginning until now, to all the moral judgments of men, to the principles of all human laws and religions, and to all the revealed principles of the Scriptures. That God does not do all within his power to save all men; that all the penal consequences with which he follows sin are not designed to benefit the offender; that God does punish some sinners eternally, and that eternal punishments cannot be designed to benefit the victims upon whom it is inflicted, are facts absolutely certain, and unquestionably inconsistent with the fundamental principles upon which Socinus, Priestly, and Young and Bushnell push their objections to the venerable faith of the Church. Vindictiveness is a miserable vice festering in the heart of a sinful creature, cherished against a fellow-creature because of a personal injury. But an inexorable determination to treat all sin according to its intrinsic ill-desert is a peerless excellence crowning all the other moral attributes of a wise, righteous and benevolent Ruler.
2. In the same spirit with the last objection our opponents insist that the theory of Satisfaction excludes the element of grace from having any share in the salvation of men. Socinus insisted that penal satisfaction and remission or forgiveness mutually exclude each other. If a sin is punished, it is not forgiven; if it is forgiven, it is not punished. This is evidently a miserable quibble, founded upon that very confusion of persons and things that they falsely charge upon us. The sin is never that which is forgiven, but the sinner is forgiven and the penalty lue his sin not executed upon him. As far as the sinner is personally concerned, his forgiveness is no less free and the remission of the penalty is none the less perfect because the penalty is executed upon a voluntary Substitute than if it was sovereignly abrogated altogether.
Our unfriendly critics are very much in the habit of charging us with regarding the Atonement as a mere commercial transaction, and then in their criticisms falling into the same miserable mistake themselves. Thus, they argue that if Christ by his obedience and sufferings fully satisfied all the federal demands of the law in the stead of his people, then there is no grace exercised in the forgiveness of men. They assert that our doctrine puts the Father and the Son in very opposite attitudes in respect to the salvation of mankind. The Father inexorably demands the payment of the uttermost farthing of the debt due to him, and will relax his claims not one iota in order to spare his helpless creatures or his suffering Son. The Son, in order to propitiate the inexorable Father in behalf of the helpless objects of his displeasure, takes pity upon them and pays their debt with his own blood.
This whole talk foolishly or wilfully confounds a pecuniary with a penal satisfaction. We did not owe God money. God is not vindictive, bent upon fining us for a personal injury. God is infinite in moral perfection and must do right. We are sinners and ought to be punished. The claim terminates not upon the thing done, but upon the person sinning. Vicarious satisfaction does not, ipso facto, liberate, but can be admitted, if at all, only as a matter of sovereign grace. Christ is not of a different nature from the Father, but is of one essence, nature, feeling, mind and purpose with him from all eternity. He did not die to make the Father cease to hate us, but was given because God so LOVED THE WORLD, in order to reconcile that infinite love with his infinite justice in their concurrent exercises with regard to their common objects — that is, those whom the Father had given the Son. God would of necessity have to sacrifice either his elect, or his Son, or moral principles. It is self-evident that God shows immeasurably more grace in saving his elect at the expense of his “BELOVED SON” than he could do either by a sacrifice of moral principle, or, in case it had been possible to save us, without any sacrifice at all. No exhibition of human depravity that has ever disgraced the earth is more amazing than this denial, that the self-assumption of the penalty of the broken law of God in the stead of his elect is an exercise of sovereign and disinterested love. Christ is the one satisfied as well as the one satisfying, the one punishing as well as the one punished; but he loves us enough to punish himself in our place. This is THE wonder of eternity. This is the inexhaustible theme of the heavenly song of adoration and gratitude for ever.
3. By far the most plausible objection that is brought to our doctrine is that the demands of justice for penal satisfaction are essentially personal. The Church argues that there is an immutable principle in the divine nature, lying back of, not determined by, but itself determining, the optional will of God demanding the just punishment of all sin, and hence the absolute necessity of a penal solution of the claims of the law in the case of every sinner But this demand is that the agent sinning, and not another person, shall si ffer therefor. If God is able, in the exercise of sovereign prerogative, to substitute person for person, the objectors urge, why is he not able, by the same prerogative, to dispense with the punishment altogether? It is asserted, that in the view of the moral sense of all men there is and can be no connection between the punishment of the sin of one man and the sufferings of a different person. That vicarious punishment, in the strict judicial sense of those terms, is a simple absurdity. How can the demands of the divine nature be satisfied by pains inflicted upon a person arbitrarily substituted in the place of the criminal by the divine will?
There is force in this objection, and, I think, it must be conceded by all that justice cannot demand and execute the punishment of a sin upon any party that is not truly and really responsible for it, and that the sin of one person cannot be really expiated by means of the sufferings of another, unless they be in such a sense legally one that in the judgment of the law the suffering of the one is the suffering of the other. The Realistic doctrine of the numerical oneness of the race, and the actual coagency of all the race in Adam and of all the elect in Christ, was excogitated to meet this difficulty. We object to it because it makes the oneness to be physical and not moral. Now, the eternal Logos, in council with the Father and Holy Ghost, assumed the responsibility of the federal relations of his elect to the law from all eternity. They were created and permitted to fall to the end of their redemption in Christ. All God’s dealing with them, from the very beginning, has had reference to their relation to Christ, and to Christ’s covenant responsibility for them. The conditions are all absolutely unique. The case is without parallel except in that of Adam, who was made the representative and agent of the whole race for their benefit in those transactions upon ‘which their eternal confirmation in holiness and happiness or everlasting loss depended. Surely in a case embracing conditions so unparalleled, it is absurd for human reason to decide that the God-man was not, in the eye of omniscient justice, really and truly penally responsible for the sins of his people, and in such a sense morally one with them; that is, his suffering the penalty due to their sins is in full legal effect equivalent to the execution of the penalty on them.
In the body of this book I have shown that if the Scriptures are true, then Christ does sustain this unique relation to his people. The negative decision of reason in the case ought to be very direct and certain if it is to be admitted as of sufficient force to balance reasonably all the external and internal, natural and supernatural, historical, moral and spiritual evidences of the Christian religion.
4. Socinus objected that the temporal sufferings of Christ were in no sense an equivalent for the execution of the penalty of the law in the persons of all sinners. Each and every sinner had incurred the penalty of eternal death for himself severally. But Christ did not suffer eternal death, and his temporal death is only one. For both reasons, therefore, because it was temporal, and because it was but the death of one man, it could not be intended to be a satisfaction to divine justice in the stead of the eternal death of an incalculable multitude. On this ground Socinus consistently rejected the atonement of Christ altogether. Duns Scotus (A. D. 1308), Grotius, the great author of the Governmental Atonement Theory, and the Arminian theologians Episcopius, Limborch and Curcellseus, all admitted the fact that the single and temporal death of Christ was no equivalent for the eternal death of all men severally, but they refused to admit the inevitable conclusion that therefore the forgiveness of sins was based ultimately upon a simple act of sovereign prerogative, and t&i justice was in no sense propitiated, because it was not in strict rigour satisfied. Scotus held that God graciously “accepted” the single and temporal death of Christ as a sufficient satisfaction. Grotius held that the demands of the law were so far sovereignly “relaxed” by God that the intrinsically inferior work of Christ was found sufficient. The Arminians said that God graciously “estimated” Christ’s work for more than its intrinsic value.
The principle upon which this objection proceeds is both rational and conclusive if the Socinian view of Christ’s person is true, but it is both preposterous and insuiferable from the mouth of any one professing to believe in the supreme divinity of our Lord. Christ suffered solely in his human nature. But his person is infinite and divine. All legal relations and obligations whatsoever, whether original or vicarious, are necessarily personal. We cannot of course explain psychologically the relation between the two natures and their concurrent experiences and interactions in the unity of the theanthropic Person. But this much we do know — (he humanity was necessarily impersonal. It began and continued to exist only within the eternal personality of the Logos. The eternal, august, supreme, second Person of the Godhead obeyed and suffered in the stead of sinners. The heavens darkened and the earth trembled in the presence of the amazing fact. Away with all blasphemous impertinence with respect to the “relaxation” of the law in order to lower it to the terms of such a satisfaction, or of the gracious “estimation” of such a satisfaction in order to raise it to equality with the demands of the law! On the contrary, the law is “magnified” by such an obedience and by such a penal suffering, as it could not be by the several eternal sufferings of all creatures actual or possible; and justice is not only satisfied, but glorified, borne aloft and set ablaze in the crown of God.
5. It is constantly objected by the advocates of the Governmental Atonement Theory that the Church doctrine necessarily involves an absurd theory of imputation. They insist that the “Satisfaction Theory,” as they call it, has always been associated with the doctrine that the personal, sinful character of his people was transferred to Christ, and that the personal good character of Christ was transferred -to them. This objection would be crushing indeed if it happened to contain a single grain of truth. But since it is utterly false as a matter of history, and absurd as a matter of criticism, its effect is to be seen only in its recoil upon its originators. The Church doctrine always has been simply that the legal responsibilities (penal and federal) of his people were by covenant transferred to Christ, and that he, as Mediator, was regarded and treated accordingly. The sinful act and the sinful nature are inalienable. The guilt or just liability to punishment is alienable, or no sinner can be saved. Our evil nature remains ina.lienably our own until we are changed by the Holy Ghost in regeneration and sanctification. The obligation to punishment, according to the terms of the eternal covenant, has been taken from the elect and fully discharged in the sufferings of our Substitute.
They object that although Christ did not owe punishment for himself, yet like every other created nature his humanity was conformed to the law of moral perfection as the condition of its own excellence, and hence that it was incapable of any works of supererogation, and hence he must have been incapable of rendering a vicarious obedience in the stead of his people.
These objectors should, however, remember that that obedience which Christ rendered in our stead was not that which the law demands of all moral agents, unchangeably and inalienably in its natural relation, but precisely that obedience which God, as Sovereign, moral Governor and Guardian of all human souls, required as the probationary condition of their being confirmed in a holy character for ever, and being endowed with “the adoption of sons.” Christ, in his divine nature, is from eternity the essential embodiment of this law of absolute moral perfection. In his human nature he was generated by the Holy Ghost into perfect conformity to this law, and ever since sustained therein. As to his person, however, he is absolutely divine and sovereign. The federal claims of law all necessarily terminate upon persons and not upon natures. The law can claim nothing of his divinity, because his nature is itself the fountain of all law, and his will its rule and expression to the entire creation. AVhon he, therefore, condescends to be “born of a woman, to be made under the law,” and under the conditions of human life thus “to fulfil all righteousness,” surely such obedience, performed with such design, is, as far as his divine Person is concerned, a work of supererogation; that is, demanded by no law, except the free-will law of electing love; and hence such an obedience may, by the terms of the covenant between the Father and the Son, be rende ed vicariously by him in the stead and for the benefit of his people.