The Church Doctrine of the Atonement Proved from the Fact That the Divine Law Is Absolutely Immutable
The second testimony as to the nature of the redemptive work of Christ which I will adduce is derived from the absolute immutability of the divine law. I propose to show (a) that God’s law is absolutely immutable; (6) that the penalty is an essential part of the law; (c) that as a matter of fact, Christ came to fulfil the law in our place, and not to relax its demands in accommodation to our lowered capacity.
1. The law of God is absolutely immutable. Grotius, the eminent jurisconsult and theologian of Holland, in the first half of the seventeenth century, was the first to give a systematic exposition to what has since been known as the Governmental Theory of the Atonement. In his great work — “De/ensio Fidei Catholicce De Satisfactione Christi” — he maintains that the law of God is a product of his will, and not a transcript of anything inherent in his immutable nature. It hence follows that the law being a simple creation of the optional will of the lawgiver, he must inalienably possess the power at all times either to execute, or to abrogate, or to relax it by sovereign prerogative, as far as his own nature is concerned.
It is true, indeed, that in respect to the conscience of the creature, every precept is binding because it is the will of God; but, on the other hand, in respect to the will of God itself, it is evident, since his will is holy, and his “commandment holy and just and good,” that he wills the precept because it is intrinsically right. If this were not so, there could be no meaning in predicat ing holiness, either of his will or of his law. There must be an absolute standard of righteousness. This absolute standard is the divine nature. The infallible judge of righteousness is the divine intelligence. And the all-perfect executor and rule of righteousness is the divine will.
It is true, also, that all duties spring out of relations, and every relation which a creature can sustain must be determined by the will of the Creator. For instance, there could have been no law of chastity unless God had sovereignly constituted man with a sexual nature. Nor could there have been a law forbidding murder unless man had been made mortal. But the instant the relation is constituted by the divine will, the duty necessarily springs up out of the relation from a principle inherent in the divine nature. All moral agents are, by the very constitution of their nature, immutably bound by all that is morally good. The essence of all that is moral is, that it ought to be. Every — even the least — discrepancy from all that ought to be, even to the uttermost, is of the nature of sin. This of course applies to every part of the moral law as well as to the whole; “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” James ii. 10. All involved in the preceptive part is commanded because it is intrinsically right and obligatory, and the penalty if? attached because all that is forbidden is intrinsically worthy of punishment. The law of God, therefore, as to its essential principle of absolute moral perfection, which is embodied in all positive statutes whatsoever, is not relaxable. Christ’s declaration is that, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fail.” Luke xvi. 17. If it be claimed that this applies to the ceremonial law, may we not argue, a fortiori, that it must hold all the more true of the moral law?
The Rev. Daniel T. Fiske, D.D., of Newburyport, Mass., in his able defence of the Governmental Theory of the Atonement, admits* (a) that the ultimate end of all God’s actions is within himself; and (b) that the divine law commands that which is intrinsically good, and because it is so, and forbids that which is intrinsically evil, and because it is so. At the same time lie maintains, as the fundamental principle of his doctrine, that “law as to its origin and end emanates from a divine purpose to promote by means of it the highest good of the universe.” But this is a manifest contradiction. For (a) if the ultimate end of God’s actions is in himself — that is, the manifestation of his excellence by the exercise of his attributes — the real end and origin of the law can only be the same. The good of the universe, though a true end, can only be subordinate to the former. And (b) if the thing commanded is intrinsically right, then the true reason for the commandment is in the nature of the thing itself, and not in its effects upon the universe. But if the real end and origin of the commandment is the good to be effected in the universe, then not the goodness intrinsic in the *Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1861.
thing commanded, but the goodness of its consequences, is the true reason of its being commanded.
The essential principles of righteousness, which are embodied in all divine laws, consequently have their ground in the eternal and unchangeable nature of God; but of course the forms in which the principles are embodied, varying endlessly with different times, circumstances and conditions of moral creatures, are determined by the infinitely wise, and righteous, and absolutely sovereign will of God. Hence there is no room for any puzzling distinctions, as far as concerns this discussion, between the ceremonial and the moral law. To the creature the revealed will of God is always an ultimate and absolute rule of right. Obedience is ahvays a moral obligation. Disobedience to positive precepts, the reason of which is withheld, is no less a sin than disobedience to so-called moral precepts, some of the reasons of which are known. The Mosaic Institute may be viewed in three different aspects.
(a.) As a national and political covenant, whereby, under his theocratic government, the Israelites became the people of Jehovah and he became their God, and in which Church and State were identical.
(b.) As a system of prophetic symbols or types of Christ and his glorious work of sacrifice and intercession, setting forth more clearly than was previously done the provisions of the Covenant of Grace.
(c.) In another aspect it was a legal covenant, because the moral law, obedience to which was the condition of life in the Adamic covenant, was now prominently set forth in the ten commandments, and made the basis of the new covenant of God with his people. Even the ceremonial system, in its merely literal aspect, ar,d apart from its symbolical, was also a rule of works; for “cursed was he that confirmed not all the words of the law to do them.” Deut. xxvii. 26.
Hence it is, that considered as commandments, the so-called ceremonial law was as much moral as any other, and just as absolutely immutable. Not one jot or tittle of it could pass away until the entire righteous purpose of God in it was fulfilled. The Jews, at the time of Christ, did not make the distinction between the ordinances of God as moral or ceremonial, as binding for their own sakes, or as binding only for God’s sake. The word law in Paul’s epistles stands for the entire genus “divine law.” The law of God, as a whole, condemns the sinner. Salvation by the law, as a whole, is impossible. By the whole law is the knowledge of sin. The whole law is a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ, and he is the end, the complete fulfilment of the whole law, for righteousness to every one that believeth. And the law (ceremonial as well as moral) is in its essential principles, and in respect to the divine purpose in the appointment of its variable forms, absolutely immutable.
2. The penalty is an essential element of the law. There can exist no law, or authoritative rule of conduct, for voluntary and morally accountable agents to which a penal sanction is not attached; and the reason of the penalty is just as intrinsic and immutable as the reason of the precept. As we have seen that the reason of the precept is the intrinsic rightness of the thing commanded, so the reason of the penalty is the intrinsic demerit of the thing forbidden. As the chief end of the precept is the glory of God, that is; the manifestation of his excellence through the exercise of his attributes as they are concerned in commanding, so the chief end of the penalty is his glory through the exercise of his attributes as they are concerned in punishing. As the moral principle involved in every precept cannot be compromised, so the divine judgment of the ill-desert of sin involved in all penalty cannot be relaxed. The precept and the penalty alike express the infallible judgment of the divine intelligence, on a question of moral obligation founded on the divine nature.
Fiske admits that the penalty is an essential part of the law, and he defines it as “suffering to be inflicted by the lawgiver upon the sinner, proportionate to the degree of his sinfulness, and to express the lawgiver’s hatred of sin and estimate of its intrinsic ill-desert.” At the same time he maintains that the ultimate end of God in ordaining or in executing the penalty, is the good of the universe, and that its “sole value is its efficacy to enforce the law and maintain its authority, and so ultimately help promote the great benevolent end of moral government.” This also is plainly self-contradictory. If the penalty expresses God’s judgment of the intrinsic ill-desert of sin, then the reason of punishment is the penalty itself, as an expression of immutable moral obligation. But if the sole value of the penalty is to enforce law, and thus benefit the universe, it is plain that the ill-desert of sin is not intrinsic or moral, but that it simply is a matter of policy resulting from the character of its consequences.
The advocates of the Governmental Theory of the Atonement maintain that Christ did not suffer the penalty of the law, but a substitute for the penalty. That his sufferings, in some way or other, avail to secure the same ends that the actual infliction of the penalty on the transgressors in person would have done. These parties agree in maintaining that it is essential to the penalty (a) that it should, in each case, consist in some precise, definite kind and degree of suffering; and (6) that it should be inflicted on the wrong-doer in person.
On the other hand, some orthodox divines — as, for instance, Owen, in his reply to Baxter’s strictures against parts of his work on Redemption — have maintained that Christ suffered the very same penalty legally due his people for whom he was substituted, and not merely a full equivalent for it; that is, an idem and not a tantundem. The motive for this apparently excessive precision of expression was commendable. Those who make such difficulty in admitting that Christ really suffered the penalty of the law are no more ready to admit that what he suffered was a full equivalent, in any strictly legal sense, for the punishment of his people in person. They mean that he did not suffer the penalty in any sense, and their views as to the connection between his death and our deliverance from condemnation are most vague and unsatisfactory.
Turretin, L. 14, Q. 10, § 10, says,” But here again the penalty itself, which the judge exacts, is to be accurately distinguished from the mode and circumstances of the penalty, for they have not the same reason. For as respects the penalty itself, in genere, the right of God is in this respect indispensable, because it is founded on the righteousness of God. But as to the mode and circumstances of this penalty, that it should be executed on such a person or in such a manner, is not
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equally a dictate of natural law, but ratbei of positive and free law; and therefore a certain dispensation from the most wise goodness of God may be admitted, either with respect to time by delay of the penalty, or as to degree by its mitigation, or as to person by substitution. For although the person sinning always deserves punishment, and may be justly punished, this is not so necessary and indispensable but that for sufficient reasons the penalty may be transferred to a substitute. And in this sense it is said by theologians that the penalty is necessarily to be inflicted on every sin impersonaliter, but not therefore as a matter of course upon every sinner personaliler.”
The following points, however, appear to be sufficiently certain. (1.) Christ did not suffer the same degree or duration of pain that his people would have suffered in person, nor in all respects sufferings of the same kind. Theirs would have been eternal, his were temporary. Theirs would have involved ever-increasing depravity of soul and self-accusing remorse, while, on the contrary, his were consistent with (a) the divinity of his person, (b) the perfection of his humanity, and (c) the fact that he was always the well-beloved Son in whom the Father was well pleased. (2.) On the other hand, it is no less certain that the identity of the penalty does not consist either in the precise kind, or degree, or duration of the suffering, nor in the personal identity of the sufferer with the sinner; but in the relation of the suffering to the guilt of some particular sin or sins, and to the demands of divine justice in the case. Duty in any case is what ever the moral law says ought to be done. Penalty, in any case of disobedience, is precisely that kind, degree and duration of suffering which the same law decides ought to be suffered. Of this obligation to suffering in all cases whatsoever the nature of God is the ground, and the reason of God is the judge. The execution of precisely the same sufferings, if it had been possible, in the person of the God-man, that would have been the proper penalty of the law if executed in the persons of the transgressors themselves, would have been an outrageous injustice. It would not consequently have been the penalty of the law, but an illegal violation of that absolute righteousness which is the principium essendi of the law. The substitution of a divine and all-perfect person in the stead of sinners necessarily involves, as a matter of justice, the substitution within the penalty of different kinds and degrees of suffering. Christ suffered precisely that kind, degree and duration of suffering that the infinitely wise justice or the absolutely just wisdom of God determined was a full equivalent for all that was demanded of elect sinners in person — equivalent, we mean, in respect to sin-expiating and justice-satisfying efficacy — and a full equivalent in being of equal efficacy in these respects in strict rigour of justice, according to the judgment of God. Consequently, what Christ suffered is by no means the same with what his people would have suffered, when considered as suffering, but is precisely the very same when considered as penalty.
3. The Scriptures clearly teach that, as a matter of fact, Christ came not to relax the law, but to fulfil it. He says of himself (Matt. v. 17, 18): “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.” The apostle declared (Rom. x. 4), that “Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that belie veth.” When discussing the great doctrine of justification by faith, Paul anticipates the objection (Rom. iii. 31): “Do we then make void the law through faith?” and answers, “God forbid; yea, we establish the law.” The law pronounced a curse upon the sinner, an<^ “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law,” not by waiving that curse, but by “being made a curse for us.”
If the penalty is an essential part of the law; if the whole law is immutable; if Christ actually came to fulfil the law and not to relax its demands; then it follows, without doubt, that he suffered the penalty of the law as our Substitute.
John Young, LL.D., of Edinburgh, in two chapters of his late work (Life and Light of Men), entitled severally “Spiritual Laws” and “Eternal Justice,” essays to overturn the entire conception -»f law and penalty upon which the faith of the whok Church, Greek and Roman, Lutheran, Reformed .md Arminian, has always reposed. His points are as follows: (1.) The spiritual laws of the universe have their ground independent of God in the essential and eternal nature of things. (2.) They are necessarily and instantly self-acting. The penalty of every sin is so connected with the sin itself, in the nature of things, that u it is impreventable. It lies in the essential nature of things that it must come down. Ever and ever justice inflicts an inevitable penalty, and exacts the completest satisfaction.” (3.) These laws are self-acting and independent of God; “the God of purity and love has no part in the punishment of sin.” Sin punishes itself instant y and adequately. “The doom of the lost, be it whatever it may, is simply and wholly their own work. It is all, from first to last, not only their own doing, bat their own doing in despite of God.” (4.) Sin continues to punish itself as long as it exists. It can cease to be punished only by being anninilated. And the instant sin ceases to exist in a sinner’s soul, that is, as soon as he is sanctified, he ceases to be punishable. (5.) God is not just in the rectilineal human sense at all. He is never less than just. He is never unjust. But he is always more than just, that is, better to men than their deserts. Goodness is his grand distinguishing attribute.
This appears to us a very low and material view of the case. It is incipient Positivism, and Positivism is infallibly gross materialism. It conceives of the laws of a spiritual society of persons, personal subjects living under the righteous administration of a personal God, acting upon them by the light of truth and the influence of motives, by commands, benefactions, authority, promises, threatenings, as nothing more nor less than the necessarily self-acting physical laws of the material world or of the human organism. It grounds these laws in the “nature of things,” independent of God. But what entity in the whole universe exists, except as the product of the divine will, but the uncreated essence of God himself? This uncreated essence is, as we have insisted above, the absolute norm of all spiritual laws. But this divine nature never expresses itself outwardly except through the acts of the divine will. This will, and not the “nature of things,” makes and executes the moral law of the universe. That God rewards and punishes, anf that he holds forth before men the prospect of future rewards and punishment for present conduct, is taught too clearly and universally in Scripture to need proof here. “The idea that the punishment of sin is only its natural consequences, and that remission is merely deliverance from the natural operations of moral evil in the soul, as freedom from the pain of a burn can be allayed only by allaying the inflammation, is so repugnant to Scripture and to common sense as to need no refutation. The expulsion of our first parents from Paradise; the deluge; raining fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah; the death of the first-born of the Egyptians; all the plagues brought on Pharaoh; drought, famine, pestilence threatened as the punishment of the Hebrews, were not the natural consequences of sin, but positive punitive inflictions. Indeed, almost all the judgments threatened in the Bible are of that character.”* “Taking vengeance” for sin is everywhere set forth as the personal, deliberate, volitional act of a righteous moral governor. Deut. xxxii. 35; Ps. cxlix. 7; Rom. iii. 5, and xii. 19. At his second coming, Christ is to be “revealed from heaven in flaming fire, taking vengeance upon them that know not God and that obey not the gospel.” 2 Thess. i. 8. This taking vengeance is a personal act executed for a purpose, at such times, and under such conditions, and in such modes as best serve the purpose intended.
That this world is not a scene of rewards and punishments; that sin may be forgiven entirely previous to, and as the condition of, the work of sanctification; and that a sin, long past and repented of, if not punished in the past, will continue to demand punishment through * Princeton Review, April, 1866.
all the future, are facts established by the teaching of Scripture as clearly as by the universal experience of the race. “It is not true that sanctifi cation and remission are ever confounded; nor are they related as cause and effect. The two things are distinct in their nature, and are always distinguished in the Bible and the common sense of men. There neither is nor can be any sanctification or destruction of the power of sin in the soul, until there has been antecedent remission of the penalty. Paul teaches clearly, in the sixth and seventh chapters of his Epistle to the Romans, that so long as the sinner is under condemnation he brings forth fruit unto death; that it is not until he is delivered from condemnation, by the body or sacrifice of Christ, that he brings forth fruit unto God.” *
That God does not do all he can to remedy sin when it has once entered upon his domain, is a fact as prominent in the history of the different races and families of men as the great stars are on the face of the sky. The blessed Saviour said, “I thank thee, O Father, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” That God, over and above being just, is also abundantly merciful, the Christian Church has always recognized as gratefully as Dr. Young. To us, certainly, he has been always good as well as just. But it is impossible that he should be unjust, and, as I showed above, justice is as essentially involved in the infliction of the penalty as it is in the imposition of the precept. God cannot be unjust, and it would be unjust not to punish sin. Sin can be ex purgated as a subjective condition of the soul only by * Princeton Review, April, 1866.
sanctification; but its penalty, which is always eternal death, can be removed only by expiation, that is, by punishment endured either personally or vicariously. For the proof of these positions, and consequently for the refutation of those assumed by Young, I refer the reader to the entire argument of this book.