The Moral Influence and the Governmental Theories of the Atonement

All the theories of the Atonement which men in this age of the world have any interest to consider may, as I have already several times declared, be grouped under one or other of the following heads, (a) Those which regard the sufferings and death of Christ as designed solely to produce an effect terminating as a moral impression in the subjective condition of the individual sinner, (b) Those which, while including the preceding idea, regard them as chiefly designed to produce an effect terminating as a moral impression in the public mind of the subjects of the moral government of God. (c) Those which, while including both of the preceding ideas in their order, regard Christ’s sufferings and death as a vicarious penalty, designed to produce a justice-propitiating effect, terminating upon God. The last of these views is that taught in Scripture, professed by the Church of Christ in all its branches, and advo cated in this volume. The other two I will now very briefly discuss in their order.

I. The general view that the great end of the death of Christ was to produce a moral impression upon the hearts of sinners, a id thus lead to their moral and spiritual reformation, has been taught in various forms by many successive teachers, and has been uniformly rejected as a heresy by the Church. Hagenbach* say a that “Sociuus denned the object of Christ’s death positi’/ely as follows: (1.) The death of Christ was an example set before men for their imitation. (2.) It was designed to confirm the promises made by God, thus giving assurance of the forgiveness of sins. (3.) It was the necessary means, preparatory to his resurrection, by which he entered into glory. ‘Christ died that through death he might attain to resurrection, from which arises the strongest confirmation of the divine will and the most certain persuasion of our own resurrection and attainment to eternal life.’ “f Thus, according to Socinus, the designed effect of Christ’s death is wholly a subjective impression upon the minds of sinners, to stimulate them to emulate his heroic virtue; to prove and to illustrate the love of God and his willingness to forgive sin upon the repentance of the sinner; to confirm the truth of all the doctrines he had taught and of the promises which God had made through the prophets or through himself; and by giving opportunity for his resurrection from the dead to demonstrate the fact of a future life, and to prove and illustrate the future resurrection of his people. The modern theories of Jowett, Maurice, Bushnell, Young, &c., differ from that of Socinus only in being rhetorical where his is logical, confused where his is clear, and narrow and partial where his is comprehensive. The lines between truth and error with regard to this central doctrine of the gospel were already definitely drawn in the first half Vol. ii., p. 360 f Cat. Kacov., p. 265.

of the twelfth century, at the very opening of the Scholastic era. As to the entire essence of the doctrine, Anselm then stood precisely where the whole Church of Christ in all its branches has ever since stood; and the infamous Abelard taught in every essential respect the doctrine maintained by Socinus, and by Maurice, Bushnell, and Young, in our own day, Baur, as quoted by Hagenbach,* says: “Thus the two representatives of Scholasticism in its first period, when it developed itself in all its youthful vigor, Anselm and Abelard, were directly opposed to each other with respect to the doctrines of redemption and atonement. The one considered the last ground of it to be the divine justice, requiring an infinite equivalent for the infinite guilt of sin; that is, a necessity founded in the nature of God. The other held it to be the free grace of God, which, by kindling love in the breast of man, blots out sin, and with sin its guilt.”

To the same effect Bushnell says: “The true and simple account of his (Christ’s) sufferings is, that he had such a heart as would not suffer him to be turned away from us, and that he suffered for us even as love must willingly suffer for its enemy. “f “Vicarious sacrifice was in no way peculiar to Christ save in degree. “J “The Holy Spirit works in love as Christ did, and suffers all the incidents of love — compassion, wounded feeling, sorrow, concern, burdened sympathy, violated patience — taking men upon him, to bear them and their sins, precisely as Christ himself did in his sacrifice.“§ He “simply came into the corporate state of evil (sum

* Vol. ii., pp. 47, 48. J Ibid., p. 107.

f Vicarious Sacrifice, p. 108. g Ibid., p. 74.

total of natural consequences of sin), and bore it witl: us — faithful unto death for our recovery.“* He “came simply to be the manifested love of God.“f” Christ became incarnate to obtain moral power” (that which belongs to a developed character). i The understanding is to obtain through him, and the facts and processes of his life, a new kind of power; viz., moral power — the same that is obtained by human conduct under human methods. It will be divine power still, only it will not be attribute power. That is the power of his idea (that is original power, intrinsic to the divine nature). This new power is to be the power cumulative, gained by him among men as truly as they gain it with each other. Only it will turn out in the end to be the grandest, closest to feeling, most impressive, most soul-renovating, and spiritually sublime power that was ever obtained in this or any other world. “J

To the same effect, also, Young writes over and over again in many passages exquisitely beautiful, and true also when accepted as an expression of one side of the truth — an inestimably precious side too. “The infinite Father in boundless pity looked down upon his undutiful children, and yearned to rescue them by re gaining their hearts and drawing them back to allegiance and to peace. With God-like mercy he unveiled all that was possible of divine purity, and truth, and beauty, and sweetness, and lovingness, and compassion. He humbled himself, descended to the level of his creatures, walked among them, spoke with them face to face, and appealed, as he still continues to appeal, to their hearts through the gentleness, the tenderness, the * Vicarious Sacrifice, p. 514. f Ibid., p. HI. J Ibid., p. 188.

wisdcm, the meekness, the patience, the sufferings, the tears, the blood and the death of Jesus Christ.

“The distinction here is radical and fundamental. The sacrifice was not offered up by men at all or by a substitute in their room; and it was not required to appease God’s anger, or to satisfy his justice, or to render him propitious. The sacrifice was not offered by mn to God, but was made by God for men and for sin, in order that sin might be for ever put down and rooted out of human nature. This stupendous act of divine sacrifice was God’s instrument of reconciliation and redemption, God’s method of conquering the human heart, and of subduing a revolted world and attaching it to his throne — pure love, self-sacrificing love, crucified, dying love.”*

The objections to this view are conclusive.

1. The precious truth which it undeniably contains has always been held by the Church as an integral part of the orthodox doctrine of the piacular sacrifice of Christ. All that is negative in the Moral Influence Theory is refuted by the overwhelming evidence we have recited m establishing the Church doctrine as to divine justic and vicarious punishment, while all that is positive in that theory is maintained with far greater consistency and illustrated with far greater force on our view of the nature, necessity, and design of his sacrifice than on theirs. We believe that God could have changed man’s subjective moral condition by the direct action of his Holy Spirit upon the human soul, without the objective exhibition of his love by means of such a sacrifice as that made in the person of his Son. The

* “Life and Light of Men,” pp. 301, 302.

position that this is impossible is unreasonably presumptuous and entirely unsusceptible of proof. If, then, there remains the conceivable hypothesis that God might have attained his end in the moral regeneration of human souls in some other and less expensive way than the one chosen, it follows that the infinite love of God for man is less luminously exhibited, upon the supposition that the necessity of his dying was only as one of two or more alternative instrumentalities to subdue the distrust and alienation of the human heart, than it is upon the supposition that he died because his death was the absolutely necessary means of removing obstacles to the salvation of men posited in the unchangeable nature of God. It is all the greater love, because the sacrifice was absolutely necessary to attain its object. It is all the sweeter and holier love, because, while making such entire sacrifice of self, it refuses all sacrifice of principle. As a matter of practical experience, that view of the sacrifice of Christ which maintains its strictly piacular character has inspired all the hymns of the Church and has melted the hearts of all the multitudes either in Christian or in heathen lands who have been won by the story of redeeming love to the discipleship of Christ. It is the Church doctrine, and not the Moral Influence understanding of the character of Christ’s death, which has been preached in all revivals and been carried forth by all missionaries, and which has kindled the flame in the hearts of the Lollards and Vallenses, Lutherans, Puritans, Moravians, and Methodists; while it is the boasted Moral Influence Theory which has just claim to whatever of moral regeneration and spiritual life distinguish the history of Abelard and his disciples, of Socinians, Unitarians, Rationalists, and what ever other of this sort Young and Bushnell may please. Bushnell, with singular simplicity, after having written a volume to prove that the doctrine of piacular sacrifice as held by the Church is revoking to the moral sense and dishonoring to God; after insisting through five hundred pages that Christ’s death was a simple martyrdom, and its sole effect a moral one on the hearts of men, concludes by acknowledging that the Moral Influence Theory is unable of itself to produce a moral influence result, and hence the Church doctrine must in idea be substituted in its place. That is, he confesses that his doctrine, on its own ground of subjective moral influence, is not only no more effective than the repudiated doctrine of Christ’s Church, nor merely that it is less effective, but that it is in fact, when brought to the test, absolutely impotent, and must be practically sup planted by the other. “In the facts, outwardly regarded, there is no sacrifice, or oblation, or atonement, or propitiation, but simply a living and dying thus and thus. The facts are impressive; the person is clad in a wonderful dignity and beauty; the agony is eloquent of love, and the cross is a very shocking murder triumphantly met; and if then the question rises how we are to use such a history so as to be reconciled by it, we hardly know in what way to begin. How shall we come unto God by help of this martyrdom? How shall we turn it or turn ourselves under it so as to be justified and set at peace with God? Plainly, there is a want. here, and this want is met by giving a thought-form to the facts which are not in the facts themselves. They are put directly into the moulds of the altar, and we are called to accept the crucified God-man as our Sacrifice, an offering or oblation for us, our Propitiation; so to be sprinkled from our evil conscience, washed, purged, purified, cleansed from sin. Instead of leaving the matter of the facts just as they occurred, &c.... And so

much is there in this that, without these forms of the altar, we should be utterly at a loss in making any use of the Christian facts that would set us in a condition of practical reconciliation with God.... “We want, in short, to use these altar- terms just as freely as they are used by those who accept the formula of expiation or judicial satisfaction for sin; in just their manner, too, when they are using them most practically. We cannot afford to lose these sacred forms of the altar.”*

Our first argument, then, is that according to the confession of its ablest expounders, that moral effect which the theory in question maintains is the sole aim of the redemptive work of Christ is at least as well produced by our view of the work of Christ as by theirs.

2. We go further in our second argument, and affirm that upon their conception of its nature the work of Christ is in no sense adapted to accomplish even that effect which they represent to be its sole design. Upon their theory there is utter incongruity between the attempt to produce such effects by such means and the ordinary and unchangeable principles of human nature. This can be shown to be true both with respect to the ^ork itself objectively considered and with respect to the process whereby the mind of the individual sinner must appropriate that work in the aspect presented, for the sake of the noral impression it was designed to effect. * Vicarious Sacrifice, pp. 533, 535.

(1.) With respect to the nature of the work itself, it is unquestionably a law of human nature that while tragic suffering voluntarily incurred in fidelity to high principle and out of unquenchable love for us, in order to remove obstacles to our well-being exterior to ourselves, has more power over the depths of the heart than any other conceivable thing; on the other hand, such suffering, intentionally gotten up with the design of producing a pathetic effect upon us, not as a necessary incident to a work /or us, but as a calculated part of a work upon us, necessarily defeats itself and excites disgust. If Christ had come, as Socinus was wise enough to insist he did, solely in the character of a prophet to reveal the will of God to man, and to afford an example of eminent virtue, and if his painful martyrdom was an undesigned end incidental solely to his persistence in his labour of love, in spite of the fierce opposition of his enemies, then indeed that heroic exhibition of truth and love would have been effective in making a deep moral impression on every susceptible heart. But the Scriptures explicitly assert that Christ came into the world for the purpose of suffering and dying. The fact, the time, many of the detailed circumstances and horrors of his death, were not only foreseen, but were foreordained. Matt. xxvi. 24, 54, 56, and xxvii. 9, 10, 35. The death of Christ was God’s act: “Him, being delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.” Acts ii. 23. “But those things, which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, lie hath so fulfilled.” Acts iii. 18. “For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thoa hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before (npoafptffs) to be done.” Act iv. 27 and 28. If the sole design of the redemptive work of Christ is to produce a moral effect upon the sinner, as these men insist, the glorious transactions of Gethsemane and Calvary, which the Church has always regarded as infinitely real, intense with divine attributes in action, are reduced to the poor level of scenes deliberately contrived for effect, finding their sole end in their effect as scenes. If the Moral view of the Atonement should prove true, our astonishment and indignation in view of the stolid indifference of men to the moral power of the cross would need to be materially abated.

(2.) The utter inappropriateness of the work of Christ upon hypothesis of the truth of the Moral Theory to effect the end for which it was designed is made more clear when we come to consider the process by which, upon that view of the case, the sinner must proceed to appropriate that work for his own benefit. This difficulty is very effectively exhibited by Bushnell, to whom the Church is thus indebted for the most conclusive refutation of his own theory which this age has produced.” The principal reason for setting forth the matter of Christ’s life and death as an oblation (piacular sacrifice) remains to be stated, viz., the necessity of somehow preventing an over-conscious state in the receiver. It was going to be a great fault in the use, that the disciple, looking for a power on his character, would keep himself too entirely in this attitude of consciousness or voluntary self-application. He would be hanging around each fact and scene to get some eloquent moving effect from it. And he would not only study how to get impressions, but, almost before he was aware of it, to make them. Just here accordingly it was that the Scripture symbols, and especially those of the altarservice, were to oorne to our aid, putting us into a use of the gospel so entirely objective as to scarcely suffer a

recoil on our consciousness at all Doubtless there

will be a power in it — all the greater power that I am not looking after power, and that nothing puts me thinking of effects upon myself.... Our subjective applications of Christ get confused and grow inefficacious,”* Thus we see that it is confessedly the Moral Influence Theory of the death of Christ which fails utterly to produce a moral impression, and that it must be disguised under the ideal forms of the opposite and inconsistent theory of sin-expiating, God-propitiating sacrifice before any corresponding effect can be attained. It is a singular case, indeed, if a false view of the Atonement can produce a better moral effect than a true view, and if a divine provision for the salvation of men can attain the end God designed it to effect only by means of a practical and voluntary misconception as to its nature.

3. Our third argument is that this view of the nature of Christ’s work necessarily proceeds upon the denial of those great fundamental principles as to law and justice, as to the nature and effect of the Jewish sacrifices, as to the nature of justification, &c., which we have so fully established from Scripture in the preceding chapter of this volume. The establishment of the doctrine

* Vicarious Sacrifice, pp. 535, 536.

of the Christian Church is, of course, the virtual refutation of all inconsistent theories.

4. The Scriptures explicitly declare that Christ wa& the Saviour of those who died before his advent in the flesh as well as those who came afterward. If Christ did suffer the penalty due to his people, and so expiate their sins, it is clear what is meant when he is called “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” Rev. xiii. 8, and when he is declared to be set forth by God to be a propitiation, through faith in his blood, to declare his (God’s) righteousness in respect to the passing over the sins that were past (previous to his advent) through the forbearance of God. Rom. iii. 25. The eternal God assuredly may as well act upon a future as upon a present or a past expiation. But upon the hypothesis that the sufferings of Christ were designed simply for a moral effect upon men, it is self-evident that he could be a Saviour only after his advent and the fulfilment of his tragedy to those who witnessed it, or at best to those to whom an adequately graphic account of it had been reported. It will not be pretended that a man can be saved by a moral influence before it is exerted, nor that the influence can be exerted before that exists which is to exert it. Hence it follows, if the Moral Hypothesis be true, that all who died before the passion of Christ perished, or were saved in some other way.

5. This theory of Young and Bushnell is no novelty — in no sense, even if true, “an improvement in theology.” It has appeared again and again. It has been rejected uniformly in every age by the immense majority of nominal Christians. It has always been associated with

Pelagian and Socinian heresies and incipient infidelity. It has never been associated among a single body of men for a measurable period of time with a respectable degree of spiritual life and fruitfulness. The principles which it denies have, on the contrary, been in vital connection with the entiiv current of spiritual life issuing from the person of Christ along its entire course. Its history condemns it, and ought to put its abettors to shame.

II. The Governmental Theory “places the necessity of the Atonement of Christ in the exigencies of God’s moral government; not in the demands of an involuntary organic emotion of retributive justice, common to God and man. The Atonement was necessary for the same reason, precisely, that the penalty annexed to the divine law was necessary; it takes the place of that penalty, in respect to those who repent and are forgiven; answers the same end as would have been answered by the infliction of the penalty; viz., it maintains the law and authority of God, and by maintaining that law and authority promotes those great interests for which moral government exists. Hugo Grotius was, probably, the first man who distinctly stated and defended the fundamental principle of this theory. His design was to defend the Satisfaction Theory against the Socinians, his work being entitled ‘Defensio fidei Catholicce, de Satisfactions Christi.’ The result, however, was that he actually rejected the foundation principle of that theory, and argued that the satisfaction of Christ was rendered, not to the distributive but to the governmental justice of God.... He did not develop a complete and consistent Governmental Theory of the Atonement; nor, after him, does there appear to have been any material progress made towards the full development of such a theory for more than a century and a half. The Catholic view upon the one hand, and the Socinian view on the other, generally prevailed. It was reserved for certain New England divines of the last century, first clearly to state and defend as a whole what has been variously called the New School Theory, the Edwardean, the Hopkinsian Theory, the Consistent Theory, or more commonly and appropriately the Governmental Theory. To Jonathan Edwards, Jr., more than to any other man, belongs the honour of giving to the world this new theory of the Atonement. His three celebrated sermons on the subject, published in 1785, which marked an era in the history of this doctrine, contain, perhaps, the most thorough exposition and defence of this doctrine which has yet been made. The elder Edwards, and his intimate friends Bellamy and Hopkins, by their suggestive discussions of the subject, while retaining the general features of the old view, yet contributed not a little to the development of the new view. Among those eminent divines who early accepted the Governmental Theory, and helped give it currency, were Smalley, Maxey, Burge, Dwight, Emmons and Spring, who, while differing on minor points, were yet agreed in holding and advocating the essential principles on which the theory rests. It now holds a recognized place in that doctrinal system which is distinctively called the ‘New England Theology.7’7*

The main points of this theory are, 1. All moral excellence is ultimately reducible to benevolence.” ‘The

* Kev. Paniel T. Fiske, D.D. Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1861.

GOVERNMENTAL THEORY (. F ATONEMENT. 3t!9

attributes of God are not so mmiy distinct qualities, but one perfection of excellence, diversified in our conceptions by the diversity of the objects towards which it is manifested.7 This is a felicitous statement of the truth, provided that LOVE OR BENEVOLENCE be that ‘one perfection of excellence, “*” All the moral perfections of the Deity are comprised in the pure love of benevolence.“f 2. God is a wise and benevolent ruler. The origin and end of the moral law lie in the divine purpose to promote by means of it the good of the universe. The ultimate ground of the divine government as a whole, and of both the precept and the penalty of the law therefore, is to be found in the benevolence of God. The law is a product of pure benevolence, designed to effect the highest good of all its subjects regarded as a whole. The annexed penalty is for the purpose of vindicating and maintaining the law. Hence it follows (a) That the motive and end of the law is also the motive and end of the penalty; that is, the penalty also is a product of benevolence, designed to effect the highest good of the subjects of moral law as a whole; and (b) that “the sole function of penalty is that of a legal sanction;” that is, a violent motive addressed to the intelligent self-love of all the subjects of the law, inducing them to observe it for the general good. 3.” That the sufferings of Christ (the atonement) were not, literally and strictly, the penalty of the law, but a substitute for it, and an equivalent; that is, had the

‘••~ Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. xviii., p. 314.

f Dr. Eintnons in Dr. Edwards A. Park’s volume of Discourses and Treatises on the Atonement, by Edwards, Smalley, Muxey, Emmon.*, Griffin, Bnrge, and VVeeks, with an introductory Essav by the Editor, p. 116. same efficacy in respect to the divine law and government that the penalty was designed to have, and would Lave if inflicted in cases where it is remitted.” 4. The atonement renders the salvation of all men possible, and it bears, from its very nature, precisely the same relation to the non-elect that it does to the elect. Its sole design and effect is to remove legal obstacles out of the way of the salvation of all men indifferently. It secures nothing more than this for any man. The principles which secure its actual application to individual men, whether these lie ultimately in the free-will of men or in the sovereign election of God, in either case have no place in the atonement itself. Emmons* strives to prove that the only thing Christ purchases for mankind is pardon on condition of faith, and that after we believe we are rewarded for our own goodness, on the same principle that Adam would have been if he had continued obedient.

This theory has, upon the whole, many practical advantages over the Socinian view, (a.) Because it includes and exhibits with far more practical effect all the elements of truth which the Socinian view embraces. (6.) Because in addition to those elements, the positive principles signalized in the Governmental Theory with respect to the bearing of the atonement upon the administrative righteousness of God and the general interests of his moral government are unquestionably truths of the very highest importance, (c.) Because this theory, although when viewed in reference to a better standard, it is itself deplorably defective in these respects, yet

* Second Sermon on the Atonement, in the volume of Discourses and Treatises on the Atonement, edited by Dr. Park, pp. 127-136.

much excels the Moral view in taking high ground with regard to the ill-desert of sin, the punitive justice of God, and of the necessity of the atonement a parte Dei in order to the remission of sin. (cL) Because it yields a far more natural interpretation of Scripture upon this subject, recognizing the objective bearing of the atonement as the one to which its subjective bearing is necessarily subordinate and incidental.

On the other hand, the objections to this theory are very many and very conclusive.

1. All the positive truth which this theory signalize? is far more profoundly taught and effectively presenter’ in the general doctrine of the Church. According to the Governmental Theory, penalty is merely a sanction of the law, designed to act as a violent motive upon the minds of the subjects of the divine government, inclining them to obey the law. According to this theory, the Atonement is a substitute for the penalty, designed to take the place of the penalty, and to produce the very same effect as the penalty would do if executed in the case of those whose sins are forgiven, and whose punishment is remitted. Now, it is self-evident that nothing can possibly so exactly take the place of the penalty and effect the precise end for which the penalty was designed as the penalty itself. Nothing in the universe can so express God’s hatred of sin as the veritable visible exercise of his just wrath upon the sinner’s Substitute. Nothing else possible <,an so effectively demonstrate the inflexibility of the law as its literal fulfilment in precept. and penalty. Nothing can so act as a sin-deterring motive as the demonstration that sin shall be punished in every case without exception; and nothing can so thoroughly demonstrate that sin shall be punished exception as its actual and vicarious punishment in the person of the eternal Son. As we showed that the orthodox doctrine far excelled the Moral Influence view in producing the very moral influence sought, so now we show that the orthodox doctrine just as far surpasses the Governmental Atonement view in effecting, as a governmental expedient, the law-vindicating and sin-deterring impression sought to be effected.

2. It is utterly impossible for the advocates of this theory to show the connection between the sufferings of Christ and the effects which, they say, flow from it. They insist that it is of the essence of penalty that it be inflicted upon the sinner in person. Fiske insists that (rod’s justice can no more be satisfied by the vicarious suffering of another than the sinful agent, than a man’s thirst can be slaked by another man’s vicariously drinking water for him. We have admitted that this is the precise point in which the scriptural doctrine of the Atonement transcends human reason. But the whole difficulty lies in our inability to discern fully the grounds upon which the legal oneness of Christ and his people depends. But the advocates of the Governmental Theory deny that the sacrifice of Christ is a pcena vicaria. They say it is a substitute for a penalty — something in the place of the penalty to effect the same purpose. But (a) how can anything that is not of the nature of penalty effect the same purpose as penalty? And (b) how can sufferings of one person sustain any relation to the sins of another person if the legal relations and responsibilities of the two persons are not identical? Suffering has relation to sin or it has not. If it has relation to sin, it must either be designed as chastisement or as penalty. The sufferings of Christ had relation to sin, and they were not personal chastisement; they must, therefore, have been penalty; of the genus penalty and of the species vicarious penalty. If this be denied, let some one state definitely what they were, and let it be shown precisely how his suffering, which by hypothesis is not penalty, takes the place and secures the end of the literal punishment of persons whor identical legal obligations do not rest upon the person suffering. How in the name of reason is it possible that the undeserved sufferings of Christ, which were not the penalty which the law demanded, should make it consistent with God’s rectoral justice to relax the law, and omit the penalty altogether in the case of repentant sinners? If God’s abhorrence of sin is really and adequately expressed in the sufferings of Christ, how is it that his distributive justice is not strictly satisfied therein? and how could he truly and really express his abhorrence of our sins by means of the sufferings of Christ, unless the real legal responsibility for our sins were first laid upon Christ, and they were then strictly punished in him?

The truth is, that this Governmental Theory is an invention designed to escape the pressure of Socinian objections levelled against the true doctrine of the Atonement. The point at which rational objections to the true doctrine of the Atonement are irost efficient is that which concerns the satisfaction of strict justice in the person substituted in the place of the actual criminal. In order to avoid this objection, the advocates of the Governmental Hypothesis admit its force, deny that Christ was punished in th ’ place of sinners, or that he satisfies the demands of distributive justice at all, and claim that the death of Christ was a contrivance to take the place of the penalty of the law, and to make it consistent with God’s rectoral righteousness to omit the penalty in the case of believers altogether. But Jowett says truly: “This second theory has no advantage over the preceding (orthodox), except that which the more shadowy statement must ever have in rendering difficulties themselves more shadowy”* Whenever they attempt a precise statement, in opposition t the Socinians, of their positive belief as to the manner in which the sufferings of Christ are related to the sins of his people, and of the manner in which his sufferings, which are no penalty, avail to express God’s abhorrence of sin, or to make it consistent with his rectoral justice to omit the penalty altogether, they always necessarily fall back upon the fundamental principles of the Satisfaction Doctrine. And again, the very moment they turn to distinguish their position from that Church doctrine which includes their special theory as one of its provinces, they always necessarily fall back in their negations upon Socinian ground. They thus ceaselessly oscillate between the two — orthodox in all they affirm, and Socinian in all they deny. Their champions put one in mind of a landless laird straddling the line-fence between two farms. He is always found standing upon that leg which is the other side of the fence.

3. The fundamental principle which distinguishes this

theory, namely, that in its last analysis, all virtue may

be resolved into benevolence, is both false and pernicious.

To resolve all colour into sound would be theoretically

* S/. Paul’s Epistles, vol. ii., p. 473.

to annihilate colour, anil so to resolve all virtue into benevolence is theoretically to annihilate virtue. The idea of moral obligation is simple, unresolvable, ultimate, because it is utterly impossible analytically to resolve it into any elements more simple, or synthetically to compose it out of such elements. It is plain that neither a desire for our own well-being springing out of self-love, nor a disinterested desire for the well-being of others by itself, yields the idea of moral obligation. It is true that these states of mind are obligatory, but the moral obligation which attaches to them is something which is independent of the self-love or the benevolence. If the question be asked why we ought to do right, no other answer can be given than that moral obligation is an ultimate fact of consciousness, having its own reason in itself, and from its very nature necessarily supreme.

Taylor, Fiske, and the advocates of their theory generally, maintain: (1.) That the orthodox view represents the justice of God as pursuing its gratification blindly like a physical appetite. Their doctrine is that divine justice demands the punishment of the sinner only as a means to an end; that is, in order to maintain divine government, the sole end and purpose of which is the attainment of the best interests of the subjects of that government. But it is very plain that their view only removes the ultimate end in which justice “blindly” terminates one step further. We say that God punishes sin, because it is an ultimate fact that moral excellence demands that sin must be punished; because it is an ultimate fact that sin is intrinsically in obligation to punishment. They say that sin must be punished in order to maintain moral government, and moral government is necessary in order to the best interests of the moral universe; and it is an ultimate fact that the best interests of the moral universe ought to be sought as a paramount end. The fact is, that intelligence, moral and personal agency are inconceivable without ultimate, unresolvable principles of action and of thought for which no reason can be given. It is just as certain and as intelligent and self-luminous a proposition that right is intrinsically binding, and that sin must be punished because of its intrinsic ill-desert, as that the best interests of the universe ought to be secured at any cost. If benevolence is the sum of all virtue, this benevolence must regard either the happiness or the excellence of its objects as its ultimate end. Hence it follows necessarily that either happiness or moral excellence must be the ultimate end, and hence the ultimate motive, of moral action. If the last is true, it must be because virtue is for its own sake intrinsically the highest good and vice intrinsically evil. Virtue must have, therefore, the ultimate reason of its attracting divine approbation, and vice the ultimate reason of its attracting divine displeasure in itself. In that case the orthodox theory of the Atonement follows. But if the first is true, and ultimately there is “nothing good,” as Taylor says, “but happiness and the means of happiness, and nothing evil but misery and the means of misery,”* then the distinction between men and swine is only one of degree.

(2.) Feeling the force of this infallible result of their system, these gentlemen are very fond of covering its nakedness with the comely terms proper to the funda

* Lectures on the Moral Government of God, by Nathaniel W. Taylor, D.D., voL i., pp. 31-35.

mental principles of the Church doctrine, and of insist ing that they also maintain that virtue is intrinsically a good for its own sake, and that sin deserves punishment as an ultimate fact. Fiske says: “Sin is intrinsically hateful and ill-deserving; it is an evil per se, and not merely on account of its tendencies and consequences. This we hold to be a fundamental point in all our ethical and theological inquiries.” “The preceptive part of the law must require of all creatures perfect holiness, forbidding all sin; because perfect holiness is inherently right and excellent; and being inherently right and excellent is indispensable to the highest good; and because sin is inherently wrong and evil, and being inherently wrong and evil, tends to interfere with the highest good of the universe.” “The sole function of penalty is that of a legal sanction. Its sole value is its efficacy to enforce the law and maintain its authority, and so ultimately help promote the great benevolent ends of moral government.” This theory “harmonizes with a just conception of the origin and end of law (including precept and penalty), as emanating from a divine purpose to promote, by means of it, the highest good of the universe.”* This is very astonishing. It seems that the ultimate, that is, real end of commanding at all is certain consequences to be secured by the commands, and yet that virtue is commanded because it is intrinsically good, and it is intrinsically good because certain of its consequences are good. The real end of forbidding is. to attain certain consequences, and yet vice is forbidden because it is intrinsically wrong, and it is intrinsically wrong because some of its consequences are injurious.

* Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. xviii., pp. 295-318.

Vice is punished because it is intrinsically ill-deserving, and yet the ultimate end of all punishment is to be found in certain consequences it is designed to effect.

The ultimate end of law, precept and penalty is the good of the moral universe. The sole function of punishment is, as a sanction to law, to promote the benevolent ends of moral government. All virtue is benevolence; that is, a desire that all others shall be happy and virtuous — that is, be happy and wish all others happy. Punishment, therefore, is a violent motive addressed to the self-love of the subjects of law to induce them to wish all others to be happy. Atonement is a substitute for the penalty, to take its place and to produce precisely the same effect. Therefore it follows, according to this boasted Governmental Theory, the highest lesson of the crucifixion of the eternal Son of God is that “honesty is the best policy !!!”

4. This theory is utterly intolerable, because it represents the sacred tragedy of Gethsemane and Calvary as an illusive example of punishment where there was no real punishment — an “expression” of divine attributes which were not really exercised in the case. The orthodox doctrine is that Christ really satisfied the justice of God by really suffering the penalty of sin in our stead. The Governmental Theory is that the sufferings of Christ were not the punishment of sin, not the exercise of- divine justice upon Christ, but an example of punishment and an expression of God’s just wrath. “Grotius, as well as Socinus, attached principal importance to the moral impression which the death of Christ is calculated to produce, with this difference only, that Grotius takes this principle negatively, Socinus positively; for in the opinion of Grotius, the moral effect of Christ’s death consists in the exhibition of the punishment due to sin; according to Socinus, in the moral courage which Christ manifested in his death.” It is very grievous that the sacred death of our Lord should be thus characterized as an attempt upon God’s part, unveiled and rendered for ever impossible by these very theorists, to impose upon the moral universe an “expression” of attributes not actually in exercise, an “exhibition of punishment” where there is no punishment, and to make an example in which sin is dealt with without punishment an emphatic demonstration of his purpose always to punish it. Jowett says truly: “This doctrine (Governmental) is the surface or shadow of the preceding, with the substance or foundation cut away.” “If this scheme avoids the difficulty of offering an unworthy satisfaction to God, and so doing violence to his attributes, we can scarcely free it from the equal difficulty of interposing a painful fiction between God and man. Was the spectacle real which was presented before God and the angels on Mount Calvary? This theory avoids the physical illusion of the old heretics, and introduces a moral illusion of a worse kind.”*

“There is certainly no manifestation of the excellence and perfection of the divine law, or of the necessity of maintaining and honouring it, if, in the provision made for pardoning sinners, it was relaxed and set aside — if its penalty was not inflicted, if there was no fulfilment of its exactions, no compliance with its demands. “f The

* St. Paul’s Epistles, vol. ii., pp. 272-275.

Cunningham’s Histcry of Theology, vol. ii., pp. 355, 356.

law was either literally fulfilled or relaxed. Sin wafe either really punished or the punishment was remitted. God either poured out his wrath really and truly upon Christ as a vicarious victim, or he did not. And we may be most sure that if there was no exercise of justice, there was no expression of it; if there was no punishment, there was no example of it; if there was no wrath felt, there was no manifestation of it. Whatever it may not have been, we know that it was the most intensely real transaction this earth has ever witnessed.

5. This doctrine is false, because it involves the denial of those scriptural principles as to the nature of divine justice, as to the immutability of the law and the absolute necessity of the Atonement, as to the nature and design of the typical sacrifices and priesthood, as to the full force of the language which teaches that Christ came in our stead,, as our Ransom, and that he bore our sins, &c., which have been so fully proved in the previous chapters of this volume.

6. This theory is untrue, because it teaches necessarily that Christ died indifferently for all men, and that the only effect of his death was to remove legal obstacles out of the way of the gratuitous forgiveness of all men on condition of repentance. It necessarily teaches that all which Christ purchased for any was that pardon which he purchased conditionally for all, while the application ci the benefits of his work to the individual is left unletermined by the Atonement itself. This is, of course, disproved by all those scriptural arguments by which we have proved that Christ purchased for those for whom he died faith and repentance, the adoption of sons, and an eternal inheritance.

7. It is false, because it is essential to it that justification should be mere pardon and that faith should be the divinely-accepted condition upon which the pardon proceeds for Christ’s sake, while all other spiritual gifts are given us as the gracious rewards of oar own holy obedience. This leads to that theory of co-operative justification which is the fundamental vice of the Romish system and it is disproved very plainly by all that we have proved from Scripture as to the nature of justification, of faith and of union with Christ.

8. If not disproved it is greatly discredited by the fact, not only confessed but paraded, that it is the “New Theory” of the Atonement. We have proved sufficiently (a) that the doctrine which maintains that the sufferings of Christ were a true poena vicaria has been at the heart of the faith of the Church from the beginning; and (6) that this Governmental Theory is in no intelligible sense a development or improvement of the other. It is a different faith. If then it is “new” in this day, it must withstand the tremendous weight of the presumption that all God’s dear children could not have continued under a delusion with regard to the meaning of Christ’s death and the nature of the gospel, which they believed and preached for seventeen hundred years.

9. This theory is discredited by the fact that it is not developed in the first instance by a careful exposition of and strict induction from Scripture. Its advocates do not pretend that they generate it out of Scripture; the most they claim is, that having developed it as a product of speculation, they are able to show that it harmonize* with all the facts of Scripture. The argument i.s, of course, treated very variously by different writers. But upon the whole, it may be fairly said that the main sources from which they attempt to draw the materials of which to construct a theory as to the nature, the design and the effects of the atonement fall as a general fact under these two classes. (1.) A priori ideas as to the nature of God, of his essential attributes, and of the nature and ends of his moral government, founded upon original, moral and spiritual intuitions and feelings. This is supposed to afford us an adequate ground for determining a priori what God will do and what he will not do — what he ought to do and what he ought not to do under given conditions. (2.) Analogies drawn (a) from our observations of the course of providential dealings with individuals and communities, general and special; and (6) from the principles upon which and the methods by which human governments are administered and society con served. On the other hand, I have aimed to show what the Church has always believed, that the true theory of the Atonement is inseparable from the facts of Scripture, and therefore just as much in Scripture as the facts themselves — -just as much as the Copernican system has always been with the stars in the sky. Intelligent observation and accurate interpretation is the limit of legitimate human agency in both cases. The Atonement can be known by us only as it is revealed. The humble, patient induction of the law from all the data given in Scripture is the only method which in such investigations can for one moment be allowed. And the pursuit of such a method certainly never issued in the Governmental Theory of the Atonement.

10. There is no doubt whatever that in the great majority of instances the real predisposing cause, giving force and currency to this view of the Atonement, is s prejudice, not unnatural, but certainly not enlightened, against what is often though erroneously called a limited Atonement. “The last objection we will here urge against this theory (Satisfaction) is, that it leads, by a logical necessity, either to the doctrine of a limited Atonement, on the one hand, or to the doctrine of universal salvation, on the other.”*

Now, as will be seen in the following chapters, I show that, when thoroughly analyzed and accurately defined, the true doctrine, that Christ satisfied the retributive justice of God by bearing the very penalty of the law, does not logically lead to any consequences which can be accurately expressed by the phrase limited Atonement. The expiatory work of Christ is (a) exactly adapted indifferently to each and every man; (6) is sufficient for all; (c) is offered in good faith to each man to whom the gospel comes; (d) it removes all legal obstacles out of God’s way to the salvation of any one indifferently whom he pleases; (e) it makes salvation in an objective sense possible to every one to whom it is offered, if he has, or as soon as he obtains, the necessary subjective condition, faith. But God’s pleasure is eternal; therefore he pleases to save now precisely those whom he pleased to save when he gave Christ; therefore he gave Christ with the design of saving those whom he does save, in other words, the elect; and therefore the expiatory work of Christ was, not in respect to the sufferings in thetn-

* Fiske, Bibliotheca Sacra, vol xviii., p. 305.

selves considered, but in respect to Christ’s intention in suffering, definite and not indefinite in its relation to persons. The question concerning the personal bearing of the Atonement, when analyzed, yields but five elements: (a.) Its adaptibility — which is unlimited; (6) its sufficiency — which is unlimited; (c) its offer — which is unlimited; (d) its intended application — which every Calvinist must admit is peculiar to the elect; (e) its actual application — which is peculiar to those who are not lost. If any Calvinist disagrees with the above statement, let him either state wherein it fails to exhaust the whole case, or let him show how the denial that the “intended application” of the Atonement relates only to the elect is consistent with the doctrine of unconditional election.

It is very plain, therefore, (1) that the doctrine of the definite design of the Atonement is not so revolting as its opponents imagine. I have shown that the doctrine presented in the little work entitled “Gethsemane”* never was the accepted doctrine of the Reformed Churches. And it is precisely against this perversion or caricature of the old Calvinism that the objections in question are directed. (2.) That the doctrine of the definite design of the Atonement is far more inseparably inlocked with the fundamental doctrine of Calvinism, viz., the unconditional eternal election of individuals to eternal life, founded upon the sovereign good pleasure of God, than it is with any peculiar views as to the strict vicarious and penal character of Christ’s sufferings. (3.) That it is not necessary for men to adopt false views

“x P irt ii., chapter iii.

as to the nature of the Atonemei t in order to support them in their prejudiced preference for confused views as its extent. Let them prefer to occupy the ground of the Lutherans — an honourable company of scholars and saints, who hold at once the strictest views as to the sin-expiating, justice-satisfying nature of the Atonement, and the broadest views as to its indefinite and universal design.

11. The origin, history and logical development of this doctrine demonstrate that it is radically and necessarily inconsistent with the system of Calvinism. The idea of an integral element of Calvinism being generated out of the speculative development of Arminianism is as absurd as that of looking for figs from thistles, or, if you please, for thistles from figs. The germ of the Governmental Theory was furnished by Hugo Grotius. Coleridge says of what is called Arminianism that, “taken as a complete and explicit scheme of belief, it would be both historically and theologically more accurate to call it Grotianism, or Christianity according to Grotius.”*

We have shown that this theory leads to essentially Arminian views; (1) as to the nature of justification in chapters xiv. and xviii.; and (2) as to an indefinite and general Atonement in Part II., chapter iii. It is sufficiently plain that the adoption of Arminianism on these points involves logically the definite adoption of Arminianism as a whole, as the immediate tendency and ultimate result. We are glad to believe that the conviction is becoming very general among those who have been foremost in testing the “improvements” that the ‘x Coleridge’s Works, Shedd’s Edition, vol. i., p. 208.

Calvinism of the Reformed Churches is a self-contained system which must be either received or rejected as a whole. The doctrines of Satisfaction, Imputation, &c., are found not to be excrescences, but in such a sense integral and inseparable that the system becomes untenable to those who will not admit them.