Definition of Terms, and Specification of the Principal Points Involved in the Orthodox Doctrine of the Atonement
science has its tecnnical terms, and much JLJ depends, of course, upon their being accurately understood and consistently used. There is, moreover, a constant tendency in the language of theology — as is the case with all living human speech — to change, to admit new terms, to drop old ones, and to modify the sense of others. Advocates of different schools of theological opinions use common terms in different senses, and one main cause of the futility of theological controversy, and of the irritation with which it is accompanied, is due to the fact that they so inadequately understand each other’s speech. In order, therefore, to establish a common understanding with my readers, I shall in this chapter define the sense in which certain terms are used in the theological writings of the Reformed Churches, and then enumerate several points involved in the statement of the orthodox doctrine of the Atonement before given, to which I desire the attention of my readers directed throughout the subsequent discussion of that scriptural evidence by which they are established.
I. ATONEMENT. This word has been generally used in late years, both in England and in this country, to express the specific thing which Christ wrought in order to our salvation. The old term in use ever since the days of Anselm, and habitually used by all the Reformers in all the creeds and great classical theological writings of the seventeenth century, both Lutheran ajid Reformed, was SATISFACTION. We prefer the old term to the new one for the following reasons.
(1.) The word Atonement is ambiguous. It is used many times in the Old Testament to translate the Hebrew word “133 — to cover by making expiation. It appears but once in our English New Testament, and there (Rom. v. 11) as the equivalent of the Greek word xttra/Xa’, reconciliation. Its etymology is not known, and is claimed by many to be at-one-ment. This the Socinians regard as the full force of the word, and as thus fully expressing the exact nature of Christ’s wyork — that is, a reconciliation of God and man. Thus the word is sometimes understood to mean reconciliation, and sometimes that sin-expiating. God-propitiating work by which reconciliation was effected. When we say that we have “received the atonement,” we mean that we have been reconciled to God. But when it is said that Christ, after the analogy of the ancient sacrifices, has “made an atonement for us,” it means that he has done that which secures our reoonc iliation; i. e., has satisfied all the demands of law upon which the favour and fellowship of God were suspended. On the other hand, the word Satisfaction is not ambiguous. It always means precisely that which Christ did in order to save his people, as that work stands related to the nature of God and to his law.
(2.) The word Atonement, moreover, is too limited in its signification for the purpose assigned to it. It does not express all that Scripture declares that Christ did in order to satisfy all the demands of God’s law. It properly signifies the expiation of sin, and nothing more. It represents only that satisfaction which Christ rendered to the justice of God in vicariously bearing the penalty due to our sins, but it does not include that satisfaction which Christ rendered in his vicarious obedience to the law as a covenant of everlasting well-being. The word Satisfaction naturally includes both of these, while the use of the word Atonement to express the whole of Christ’s work has naturally led to confused and defective views as to the nature of that work.
The word SATISFACTION is neither ambiguous nor defective. The Reformed Churches mean by its use (1) that Christ fully satisfied all that the justice and law of God required, on the part of mankind, as the condition of their being admitted to divine favour and eternal happiness. (2.) As the demands of the law upon sinful men are both preceptive and penal — the condition of life being “do this and live,” while the penalty denounced upon disobedience is, “the soul that sinneth it shall die” — it follows that any work which shall fully satisfy the demands of the divine law in behalf of men must include (1) that obedience which the law demands as the condition of life, and (2) that suffering which it demands as the penalty of sin.*
II. The Difference biiwwn a penal and a pecuniary satisfaction. These differ precisely as do crime and debt, things and persons, and therefore the distinction is both * Dr. Charles Ilodsje.
obvious and important. Many, who either are incapable of understanding the question, are ignorant of its history, or who are unscrupulous as to the manner in which they conduct controversy, are continually charging our doctrine with the folly of representing the sacrifice of Christ as a purely commercial transaction, in which so much was given for so much, and in which God was in such a sense recompensed for his favours to us that however much gratitude we may owe to Christ, we owe on this behalf none to God. Long ago the doctrine of the Reformed Churches was unanswerably vindicated from such puerile charges by all its most authoritative expounders.” Here the twofold solution, concerning whicbjurists treat, should be accurately distinguished. The one, which ipso facto liberates the debtor or criminal because that very thing which was owed is paid, whether it was done by the debtor or by another in his name. The other, which ipso facto does not liberate, since not at all the very thing which was owed, but an equivalent, is paid, which, although it does not thoroughly and ipso facto discharge the obligation, yet having been accepted — since it might be refused — is regarded as a satisfaction. This distinction holds between a pecuniary and a penal indebtedness. For in a pecuniary debt the payment of the thing owed ipso facto liberates the debtor from all obligations whatsoever, because here the point is not who pays, but what is paid. Hence the creditor, the payment being accepted, is never said to extend toward the debtor any indulgence or remission, because he has received all that was owed him. But the case is different with respect to a penal debt, because in this case the obligation respects the person as well as the thing; the demand is upon the
3b THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
person who pays as well as the thing paid; i. e., that the penalty should be suffered by the person sinning; for a* the law demands personal and proper obedience, so itexacts personal enduring of the penalty. Therefore, in order that a criminal should be absolved — a vicarious satisfaction being rendered by another hand — it is necessary that there should intervene a sovereign act of the supreme law-giver, which, with respect to the law, is called relaxation, and with respect to the debtor is called remission, because the personal endurance of the penalty is remitted, and a vicarious endurance of it is accepted in its stead. Hence it clearly appears that in this work (of Redemption) remission and satisfaction are perfectly consistent with each other, because there is satisfaction in the endurance of the punishment which Christ bore, and there is remission in the acceptance of a vicarious victim. The satisfaction respects Christ, from whom God demanded the very same punishment, as to kind of punishment, though not as to the degree nor as to the nature of the sufferings which the law denounced upon us. The remission respects believers, to whom God remits the personal, while he admits the vicarious, punishment. And thus appears the admirable reconciliation of justice and mercy — -justice which executes itself upon the sin, and mercy which is exercised towards the sinner. Satisfaction is rendered to the justice of God by the Sponsor, and remission is granted to us by God.” *
Hence pecuniary satisfaction differs from penal thus:
(a.) In debt, the demand terminates upon the thing due.
In crime, the legal demand for punishment is upon the
person of the criminal. (6.) In debt, the demand is for
*Turretin, Locus XIV. Quaestio 10, I the precise thing due — the exact quid pro qaOj and nothing else. In crime, the demand is for that kind, degree and duration of suffering which the law — i. e., absolute and omniscient justice — demands in each specific case, the person suffering and the sin to be expiated both being considered, (c.) In debt, the payment of the thing due, by whomsoever it may be made, ipso facto liberates the debtor, and instantly extinguishes all the claims of the creditor, and his release of the debtor is no matter of grace. In crime, a vicarious suffering of the penalty is admissible only at the absolute discretion of the sovereign; remission is a matter of grace; the rights acquired by the vicarious endurance of penalty all accrue to the sponsor; and the claims of law upon the sinner are not ipso facto dissolved by such a satisfaction, but remission accrues to the designed beneficiaries only at such times and on such conditions as have been determined by the will of the sovereign, or agreed upon between the sovereign and the sponsor.
3. The significance of the term PENALTY, and the distinction between CALAMITIES, CHASTISEMENTS and PENAL EVILS. Calamities are sufferings viewed without any reference to a design or purpose in their infliction — that is, suffering considered simply as suffering. Chastisements are sufferings viewed as designed for the improvement of those who experience them. When viewed as designed to satisfy the claims of justice and law, they are Penal Evils. The sufferings of Christ were not mere objectless, characterless calamities. They could not have been chastisements designed for his personal improvement. They must therefore have been penal inflictions vicariously endured.*, * Dr. Charles Hodge.
Penalty is suffering exacted by the supreme law-making power of the breakers of law. The penalty in ease of any person and in view of any crime is precisely that kind, degree and duration of suffering which the supreme law-making power demands of that person under those conditions for that crime. Human law is necessarily generalized in an average adaptation to classes. But divine law with infinite accuracy adapts itself to the absolute rights of each individual case of crime and of punishment, the penalty in each case fulfilling all righteousness, both as respects the person punished and the crime for which it is inflicted. We say that Christ suffered the very penalty of the law, not because he suffered in the least the same kind, much less the same degree, of suffering as was penally due those for whom he acted, because that is not at all necessary to the idea of penalty. But we say that he suffered the very penalty of the law, because he suffered in our stead; our sins were punished in strict rigour of justice in him; the penal demands of the law upon his people were extinguished, because his sufferings sustained precisely the same legal relations that our sufferings in person would have done; and because he suffered precisely that kind, degree and duration of suffering that absolute justice demanded of his divine person, when found federally responsible for the guilt of all the sins of the elect. We believe that while the sufferer is substituted, the penalty as penalty, though never as suffering, is identical. We are willing to call it in accommodation a “substituted penalty,” though we believe the phrase inaccurate. But the phrase insisted upon by the advocates of the Governmental Atonement Theory — viz., “a substitute for a penalty” — we believe to be absurd. Sin is either punished or not punished. The penalty is either executed or re mitted. Justice is either exercised or relaxed. There can be no manifestation of penal righteousness without an exercise of penal justice.
4. The meaning of the words SUBSTITUTION and VICA RIOUS. These terms are admitted in a loose sense even by Socinians, and are paraded by Young, Maurice and Jowett, and very much in the same loose, indifferent sense by Barnes and the advocates of the Governmental Atonement Theory generally. When these parties say that Christ was substituted for us and his sufferings are vicarious, they mean nothing more than that he suffered in our behalf, for our benefit. We hold, on the other hand, that Christ was in a strict and exact gense the substitute of his people; i. e., by divine appointment, and of his own free will, he assumed all our legal responsibilities and thus assumed our law-place, binding himself to do in our stead all that the law demanded of him when lie suffered the penalty due us, and rendered the obedience upon which our well-being was made to depend. Vicarious sufferings and obedience are penal inflictions, and acts of obedience to law which are rendered in our place or stead (vice), as well as in our behalf by our substitute. An alien goes to the army in the place of a drafted subject. He is the substitute of the man in whose place he goes. His labours, Jus dangers, his wounds and his death are vicarious.
5. The distinction between the terms EXPIATION and PROPITIATION. Both these words represent the same Greek word, i/Aaxscrrif/.c. When construed, as it is constantly in the classics, with rov Szbv or rob Oso’jz, it means to propitiate by sacrificial expiation. In the New Testament it is construed with r«c <i//«/>r/«c, Heb. ii. 17, and is properly translated to expiate. Expiation removes the reatus or guilt of sin. Reatus is that obligation to suffer the penalty which is inherent in sin. Sanctification alone removes the pollution of sin. Propitiation removes the judicial displeasure of God. Expiation respects the bearing or effect which Satisfaction has upon sin or upon the sinner. Propitiation has respect to the bearing or effect which Satisfaction has upon God. Sacrificial expiation among heathens, Jews and Christians has always been regarded as a true pcena vicaria; it is of the genus penalty; its specific difference is vicariousness. Propitiation, as a theological term, means that peculiar method of rendering placable which affects the heart of a Deity, who at the same time hates the sin and is determined to punish it, yet loves the sinner; and which proceeds by means of expiation, or the vicarious suffering of the penalty by a substituted victim.
6. IMPETRATION and APPLICATION. Arminians and the Calvinistic advocates of a general Atonement are constantly insisting upon the distinction between the IMPE TRATION and the APPLICATION of salvation by Christ. By Impetration they mean the purchase, or meritorious procurement by sacrifice, of all of those objective conditions of salvation which are offered to all men in the gospel; that is, salvation made available on the condition of faith. By Application they mean the actual application of that salvation to individuals upon faith. The Impetration they hold to be general and indefinite; the Application they believe to be personal, definite and limited to believers. The Reformed Churches, on the other hand, teach that while the impetration of salvation is both logically and chronologically distinguishable from its application, nevertheless in the eternal and immutable design of God the impetration is personal and definite, and includes certainly arid meritoriously the subsequent application to the persons intended; for “fo ALL, for whom Christ hath purchased redemption he doth certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same”
7. REDEMPTION and ATONEMENT. The modern advocates of a general Atonement distinguish between the words REDEMPTION and ATONEMENT after this manner: Atonement they confine to the impetration of the objective conditions of salvation, which they maintain is general and indefinite. Redemption they use in a wider sense as including the actual personal application in addition to the general and all-sufficient impetration. Hence, while they speak of a general Atonement, they deny of course that there is a general Redemption. It must be carefully noted, however, that this distinction was not marked by this usage of the terms Atonement and Redemption by any of the controversialists, on either side of the question, during the seventeenth century, when the authoritative standards of the Reformed Churches were written. Baxter used the word Redemption as equivalent to Atonement in his work entitled “Universal Redemption of Mankind by the Lord Jesus Christ,” So also the Arminian Dr. Isaac Barrow, in his sermons entitled “The Doctrine of Universal Redemption Asserted and Explained.” In the Westminster Confession, let it be remembered, the word Redemption is used in the sense of
Atonement, or the sacrificial purchase of salvation for those for whom it was intended.*
There is, however, unquestionably a distinctio n to be carefully observed between these words in their biblical usage. The precise biblical sense of Atonement (cnsD — Wafffjtoz) is the expiation of sin by means of a pcena vicaria in order to the propitiation of God. The biblical usage with respect to Redemption (axoMTpwfftz, &c.,) is more comprehensive and less definite. It signifies deliverance from loss or from ruin by the payment for us of a ransom by our Substitute. Hence it may signify the act of our Substitute in paying that ransom. Or it may be used to express the completed deliverance itself, the consummation of which is of course future. To say that “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Gal. iii. 13), is precisely equivalent to saying that he lias made atonement for us. But when we speak of our “redemption drawing nigh’7 (Luke xxi. 28), of “the redemption of the purchased possession” (Eph. i. 14), of “the redemption of our body” (Rom. viii. 23), or of “the day of redemption” (Eph. iv. 30), it is plain that the word signifies the deliverance of our souls and bodies, and the attainment for us of a heavenly inheritance by means of the payment of a ransom for us by our Lord — a deliverance which, although commenced now, will be consummated at a future day. Redemption being deliverance by means of the substitution of a ransom, it follows that, although the ransom can only be paid to God, and to him cnly as
* See Dr. Cunningham’s Historical Theology, vol. ii., p. 327, and Dr. Henry B. Smith, in his edition of Hagenbach, vol. ii.. pp. 35*5,
PRINCIPAL POINTS INVOLVED. 4o
the moral Governor of the universe, we may still be said to be redeemed from all that we are delivered from by means of the ransom paid in the sacrifice of Christ. Thus we are said to be redeemed from our “vain conversation” (1 Pet. i. 18), “from death” (Hosea xiii. 14), “from the devil” (Col. ii. 15; Heb. ii. 14), from “all iniquity” (Titus ii. 14), and “from the curse of the law” (Gal. iii. 13, and iv. 5), while it is of course not meant that the ransom is paid to the devil, or to sin, or to death, or to the law. It is simply absurd to claim that these different representations are inconsistent. A captive is redeemed by a price paid only to him that holds him in bondage, but by the same act may be redeemed from labour, from disease, from death, from the persecution of his fellow-captives and from a slavish disposition.*
8. MERITUM and SATISFACTIO. Thomas Aquinas (1274) first signalized the distinction between the terms MERITUM and SATISFACTIO. By Satisfactio he intended the bearing of Christ’s work considered as penal suffering, which satisfies the penal claims of law for the demerit of sin. By Meritum he intended the bearing of Christ’s work considered as a holy obedience, fulfilling all the conditions of the original covenant of life upon which the eternal well-being of his people were suspended. These are in modern times both embraced under the one term Satisfaction (which see above), and the distinction intended by Aquinas is now expressed by the terms active and passive obedience. The whole earthly career of Christ, including his death, wis obedience in one aspect and suffering in another. Inasmuch as it was suffering, it expiated the sins of his people; inasmuch as it was * See the closing paragraph of Chapter XII.
obedience, it merited for them the covenanted reward of eternal life.
PRINCIPAL POINTS INVOLVED. I will now enumerate several points involved in the orthodox doctrine of the Atonement as above stated. It follows, of course, that every argument which tends to establish either one of the principles involved in our view, tends just so far forth to establish the truth of that view as a whole. I shall give a bare statement of these principles, in order to bring out as fully as I may the true nature of the question in debate, and also in order to enable the reader to see the intended bearing of all the scriptural testimony about to be submitted. It is not proposed to offer proof of each one of these points separately; but the reader is requested to keep them in mind, and to observe continually whether the unforced language of Scripture is in their favour or the reverse.
These points are as follows.
(1.) Did the effect of the sacrifices offered by the ancient typical priests terminate upon the offerer, upon the spectators, or upon God? Were those priests ordained to represent God before men, or men before God? Was Christ only a Medium through which divine influences reached man, or was he also and fundamentally the Mediator, opening the way for man to return to God in peace?
(2.) Are the actions of God determined by motives and principles originating wholly in the divine nature, or may they be properly referred to considerations originating in the creation? We maintain the former alternative. God’s immutable nature demands the punishment of sin, and therefore Christ, when made to occupy the place of sinners, suffered that punishment. The advocates of every other view of the nature of the Atonement must maintain the latter alternative, and refer the sacrifice of Christ to motives originating in the moral condition and necessities either of the individual sinner or of the moral universe in general.
(3.) May all virtue be resolved into disinterested benevolence, and all sin into selfishness? In other words, is there nothing else that ought to be except benevolence, and nothing else that ought not to be except selfishness? Is justice only a form or mode of benevolence — i. e., does God punish sin simply to prevent its recurrence or to limit its spread, and for the good of the universe as a salutary example? Is sin a relative evil only because it is the invariable cause of suffering to the sinner and to others? And is it punished simply to limit its influence? On all these points, the consistent advocates of the Governmental Theory must take the affirmative. On the contrary, we affirm that there are many virtues which cannot be included under the head of benevolence, and many sins which cannot be reduced to the category of selfishness; that virtue is that which ought to be for its own sake, as an absolute end in itself, and for no reason beyond; that sin is intrinsically evil, and deserves punishment because of its intrinsic evil, and for no reason beyond; that divine justice is an exalted perfection, determining God always to treat moral agents as they deserve, and that he punishes sin because this attribute of justice demands that sin shall be treated appropriately to its nature.
(4.) Supposing it to be the purpose of God to make provision for the salvation of sinners, were the sufferings of Christ absolutely necessary to that end, rendered so by the constitution of the divine nature; or was the necessity for them only contingent upon the optional will of God or upon the conditions of the creature?
(5.) What is the nature of the divine law? Is it £ product of the divine will, or a transcript of the divine nature? Hence is the law relaxable or immutable? Is penalty an essential or an unessential element of the law to which it is attached?
(6.) As a matter of fact, is Christ represented in Scripture as having come for the purpose of fulfilling the law, or of relaxing it?
(7.) Has God, as a matter of fact, established such a union between Christ and believers that they are legally one with him: that his death and his life, his Father and his inheritance, his standing and his rights, are theirs as matters of law?
(8.) Did Christ die not only for us, but in a strict sense as our Substitute, in our law-place and stead?
(9.) Was the guilt (legal obligation to punishment) of our sin imputed to Christ (justly charged to his account), because of that legal oneness which the divine will had constituted between him and us?
(10.) Thus bearing justly and legally the guilt of our sin, did he truly expiate that guilt, and thus satisfy justice?
(11.) Do the Scriptures teach that when the believer is justified, the righteousness or re wardableness of Christ’s perfect obedience to the divine law in our place is justly charged to our account; or is Justification mere pardon?
(12.) Do the Scriptures teach that the design and effect of Christ’s death is actually to save those for whom he died; or was it only to put all men in a salvable state? Did Redemption secure faith and repentance for those who are redeemed; or are all men redeemed, and then left to provide their own faith and repentance?
The central point to be kept always in view is represented by the question, Did Christ truly expiate the guilt of our sin?
An examination of all the scriptural evidence sub stantiating this doctrine would occupy us with the study of nearly every book both of the Old and the New Testaments; with an analysis of the nature and relations of every particular doctrine in the entire system of revealed truth; and with a detailed examination of innumerable words and passages. A bare outline of this argument is all that will be here attempted. The impression I wish to convey, in conformity with my own clear conviction, is, not that this or that text must mean what we suppose and nothing else, but that the whole of what Scripture says on this subject, when brought together, makes it impossible to doubt what the sacred writers meant us to believe.