D. Objections to the Ethical Theory of the Atonement

On the general subject of these objections, Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:156–180, remarks: (1) that it rests with God alone to say whether he will pardon sin, and in what way he will pardon it; (2) that human instincts are a very unsafe standard by which to judge the procedure of the Governor of the universe; and (3) that one plain declaration of God, with regard to the plan of salvation, proves the fallacy and error of all reasonings against it. We must correct our watches and clocks by astronomic standards.

(a) That a God who does not pardon sin without atonement must lack either omnipotence or love.—We answer, on the one hand, that God’s omnipotence is the revelation of his nature, and not a matter of arbitrary will; and, on the other hand, that God’s love is ever exercised consistently with his fundamental attribute of holiness, so that while holiness demands the sacrifice, love provides it. Mercy is shown, not by trampling upon the claims of justice, but by vicariously satisfying them.

Because man does not need to avenge personal wrongs, it does not follow that God must not. In fact, such avenging is forbidden to us upon the ground that it belongs to God; Rom. 12:19—“avenge not yourselves, beloved, but give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance belongeth unto me; I will recompense, saith the Lord.” But there are limits even to our passing over of offences. Even the father must sometimes chastise; and although this chastisement is not properly punishment, it becomes punishment, when the father becomes a teacher or a governor. Then, other than personal interests come in. “Because a father can forgive without atonement, it does not follow that the state can do the same” (Shedd). But God is more than Father, more than Teacher, more than Governor. In him, person and right are identical. For him to let sin go unpunished is to approve of it; which is the same as a denial of holiness.

Whatever pardon is granted, then, must be pardon through punishment. Mere repentance never expiates crime, even under civil government. The truly penitent man never feels that his repentance constitutes a ground of acceptance; the more he repents, the more he recognizes his need of reparation and expiation. Hence God meets the demand of man’s conscience, as well as of his own holiness, when he provides a substituted punishment. God shows his love by meeting the demands of holiness, and by meeting them with the sacrifice of himself. See Mozley on Pedestination, 390.

The publican prays, not that God may be merciful without sacrifice, but: “God be propitiated toward me, the sinner!” (Luke 18:13); in other words, he asks for mercy only through and upon the ground of, sacrifice. We cannot atone to others for the wrong we have done them, nor can we even atone to our own souls. A third party, and an infinite being, must make atonement, as we cannot. It is only upon the ground that God himself has made provision for satisfying the claims of justice, that we are bidden to forgive others. Should Othello then forgive Iago? Yes, if Iago repents; Luke 17:3—“If thy brother sin, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.” But if he does not repent? Yes, so far as Othello’s own disposition is concerned. He must not hate Iago, but must wish him well; Luke 6:27—“Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.” But he cannot receive Iago to his fellowship till he repents. On the duty and ground of forgiving one another, see Martineau, Seat of Authority, 613, 614; Straffen, Hulsean Lectures on the Propitiation for Sin.

(b) That satisfaction and forgiveness are mutually exclusive.—We answer that, since it is not a third party, but the Judge himself, who makes satisfaction to his own violated holiness, forgiveness is still optional, and may be offered upon terms agreeable to himself. Christ’s sacrifice is not a pecuniary, but a penal, satisfaction. The objection is valid against the merely commercial view of the atonement, not against the ethical view of it.

Forgiveness is something beyond the mere taking away of penalty. When a man bears the penalty of his crime, has the community no right to be indignant with him? There is a distinction between pecuniary and penal satisfaction. Pecuniary satisfaction has respect only to the thing due; penal satisfaction has respect also to the person of the offender. If pardon is a matter of justice in God’s government, it is so only as respects Christ. To the recipient it is only mercy. “Faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9) = faithful to his promise, and righteous to Christ. Neither the atonement, nor the promise, gives the offender any personal claim.

Philemon must forgive Onesimus the pecuniary debt, when Paul pays it; not so with the personal injury Onesimus has done to Philemon; there is no forgiveness of this, until Onesimus repents and asks pardon. An amnesty may be offered to all, but upon conditions. Instance Amos Lawrence’s offering to the forger the forged paper he had bought up, upon condition that he would confess himself bankrupt, and put all his affairs into the hands of his benefactor. So the fact that Christ has paid our debts does not preclude his offering to us the benefit of what he has done, upon condition of our repentance and faith. The equivalent is not furnished by man, but by God. God may therefore offer the results of it upon his own terms. Did then the entire race fairly pay its penalty when one suffered, just as all incurred the penalty when one sinned? Yes,—all who receive their life from each—Adam on the one hand, and Christ on the other. See under Union with Christ—its Consequences; see also Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 295 note, 321, and Dogm. Theol., 2:383–389; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:614–615 (Syst. Doct., 4:82, 83). Versus Current Discussions in Theology, 5:281.

Hovey calls Christ’s relation to human sin a vice-penal one. Just as vice-regal position carries with it all the responsibility, care, and anxiety of regal authority, so does a vice-penal relation to sin carry with it all the suffering and loss of the original punishment. The person on whom it falls is different, but his punishment is the same, at least in penal value. As vice-regal authority may be superseded by regal, so vice-penal suffering, if despised, may be superseded by the original penalty. Is there a waste of vice-penal suffering when any are lost for whom it was endured? On the same principle we might object to any suffering on the part of Christ for those who refuse to be saved by him. Such suffering may benefit others, if not those for whom it was in the first instance endured.

If compensation is made, it is said, there is nothing to forgive; if forgiveness is granted, no compensation can be required. This reminds us of Narvaez, who saw no reason for forgiving his enemies until he had shot them all. When the offended party furnishes the compensation, he can offer its benefits upon his own terms. Dr. Pentecost: “A prisoner in Scotland was brought before the Judge. As the culprit entered the box, he looked into the face of the Judge to see if he could discover mercy there. The Judge and the prisoner exchanged glances, and then there came a mutual recognition. The prisoner said to himself: ‘It is all right this time,’ for the Judge had been his classmate in Edinburgh University twenty-five years before. When sentence was pronounced, it was five pounds sterling, the limit of the law for the misdemeanor charged, and the culprit was sorely disappointed as he was led away to prison. But the Judge went at once and paid the fine, telling the clerk to write the man’s discharge. This the Judge delivered in person, explaining that the demands of the law must be met, and having been met, the man was free.”

(c) That there can be no real propitiation, since the judge and the sacrifice are one.—We answer that this objection ignores the existence of personal relations within the divine nature, and the fact that the God-man is distinguishable from God. The satisfaction is grounded in the distinction of persons in the Godhead; while the love in which it originates belongs to the unity of the divine essence.

The satisfaction is not rendered to a part of the Godhead, for the whole Godhead is in the Father, in a certain manner; as omnipresence = totus in omni parte. So the offering is perfect, because the whole Godhead is also in Christ (2 Cor. 5:19—“God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself”). Lyman Abbott says that the word “propitiate” is used in the New Testament only in the middle voice, to show that God propitiates himself. Lyttelton, in Lux Mundi, 302—“The Atonement is undoubtedly a mystery, but all forgiveness is a mystery. It avails to lift the load of guilt that presses upon an offender. A change passes over him that can only be described as regenerative, life-giving; and thus the assurance of pardon, however conveyed, may be said to obliterate in some degree the consequences of the past. 310—Christ bore sufferings, not that we might be freed from them, for we have deserved them, but that we might be enabled to bear them, as he did, victoriously and in unbroken union with God.”

(d) That the suffering of the innocent for the guilty is not an execution of justice, but an act of manifest injustice.—We answer, that this is true only upon the supposition that the Son bears the penalty of our sins, not voluntarily, but compulsorily; or upon the supposition that one who is personally innocent can in no way become involved in the guilt and penalty of others,—both of them hypotheses contrary to Scripture and to fact.

The mystery of the atonement lies in the fact of unmerited sufferings on the part of Christ. Over against this stands the corresponding mystery of unmerited pardon to believers. We have attempted to show that, while Christ was personally innocent, he was so involved with others in the consequences of the Fall, that the guilt and penalty of the race belonged to him to bear. When we discuss the doctrine of Justification, we shall see that, by a similar union of the believer with Christ, Christ’s justification becomes ours.

To one who believes in Christ as the immanent God, the life of humanity, the Creator and Upholder of mankind, the bearing by Christ of the just punishment of human sin seems inevitable. The very laws of nature are only the manifestation of his holiness, and he who thus reveals God is also subject to God’s law. The historical process which culminated on Calvary was the manifestation of an age-long suffering endured by Christ on account of his connection with the race from the very first moment of their sin. A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 80–83—“A God of love and holiness must be a God of suffering just so certainly as there is sin. Paul declares that he fills up “that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ.… for his body’s sake, which is the church” (Col. 1:24); in other words, Christ still suffers in the believers who are his body. The historical suffering indeed is ended; the agony of Golgotha is finished; the days when joy was swallowed up in sorrow are past; death has no more dominion over our Lord. But sorrow for sin is not ended; it still continues and will continue so long as sin exists. But it does not now militate against Christ’s blessedness, because the sorrow is overbalanced and overborne by the infinite knowledge and glory of his divine nature. Bushnell and Beecher were right when they maintained that suffering for sin was the natural consequence of Christ’s relation to the sinning creation. They were wrong in mistaking the nature of that suffering and in not seeing that the constitution of things which necessitates it, since it is the expression of God’s holiness, gives that suffering a penal character and makes Christ a substitutionary offering for the sins of the world.”

(e) That there can be no transfer of punishment or merit, since these are personal.—We answer that the idea of representation and suretyship is common in human society and government; and that such representation and suretyship are inevitable, wherever there is community of life between the innocent and the guilty. When Christ took our nature, he could not do otherwise than take our responsibilities also.

Christ became responsible for the humanity with which he was organically one. Both poets and historians have recognized the propriety of one member of a house, or a race, answering for another. Antigone expiates the crime of her house. Marcus Curtius holds himself ready to die for his nation. Louis XVI has been called a “sacrificial lamb,” offered up for the crimes of his race. So Christ’s sacrifice is of benefit to the whole family of man, because he is one with that family. But here is the limitation also. It does not extend to angels, because he took not on him the nature of angels (Heb. 2:16—“For verily not of the angels doth he take hold, but he taketh hold of the seed of Abraham”).

“A strange thing happened recently in one of our courts of justice. A young man was asked why the extreme penalty should not be passed upon him. At that moment, a gray-haired man, his face furrowed with sorrow, stepped into the prisoner’s box unhindered, placed his hand affectionately upon the culprit’s shoulder, and said: ‘Your honor, we have nothing to say. The verdict which has been found against us is just. We have only to ask for mercy.’ ‘We!’ There was nothing against this old father. Yet, at that moment he lost himself. He identified his very being with that of his wayward boy. Do you not pity the criminal son because of your pity for his aged and sorrowing father? Because he has so suffered, is not your demand that the son suffer somewhat mitigated? Will not the judge modify his sentence on that account? Nature knows no forgiveness; but human nature does; and it is not nature, but human nature, that is made in the image of God”; see Prof. A. S. Coats, in The Examiner, Sept. 12, 1889.

(f) That remorse, as a part of the penalty of sin, could not have been suffered by Christ.—We answer, on the one hand, that it may not be essential to the idea of penalty that Christ should have borne the identical pangs which the lost would have endured; and, on the other hand, that we do not know how completely a perfectly holy being, possessed of superhuman knowledge and love, might have felt even the pangs of remorse for the condition of that humanity of which he was the central conscience and heart.

Instance the lawyer, mourning the fall of a star of his profession; the woman, filled with shame by the degradation of one of her own sex; the father, anguished by his daughter’s waywardness; the Christian, crushed by the sins of the church and the world. The self-isolating spirit cannot conceive how perfectly love and holiness can make their own the sin of the race of which they are a part.

Simon, Reconciliation, 366—“Inasmuch as the sin of the human race culminated in the crucifixion which crowned Christ’s own sufferings, clearly the life of humanity entering him subconsciously must have been most completely laden with sin and with the fear of death which is its fruit, at the very moment when he himself was enduring death in its most terrible form. Of necessity therefore he felt as if he were the sinner of sinners, and cried out in agony: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ (Mat. 27:46).”

Christ could realize our penal condition. Beings who have a like spiritual nature can realize and bear the spiritual sufferings of one another. David’s sorrow was not unjust, when he cried: “Would I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Sam. 18:33). Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 117—“Is penitence possible in the personally sinless? We answer that only one who is perfectly sinless can perfectly repent, and this identification of the sinless with the sinner is vital to the gospel.” Lucy Larcom: “There be sad women, sick and poor, And those who walk in garments soiled; Their shame, their sorrow I endure; By their defeat my hope is foiled; The blot they bear is on my name; Who sins, and I am not to blame?”

(g) That the sufferings of Christ, as finite in time, do not constitute a satisfaction to the infinite demands of the law.—We answer that the infinite dignity of the sufferer constitutes his sufferings a full equivalent, in the eye of infinite justice. Substitution excludes identity of suffering; it does not exclude equivalence. Since justice aims its penalties not so much at the person as at the sin, it may admit equivalent suffering, when this is endured in the very nature that has sinned.

The sufferings of a dog, and of a man, have different values. Death is the wages of sin; and Christ, in suffering death, suffered our penalty. Eternity of suffering is unessential to the idea of penalty. A finite being cannot exhaust an infinite curse; but an infinite being can exhaust it, in a few brief hours. Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 307—“A golden eagle is worth a thousand copper cents. The penalty paid by Christ is strictly and literally equivalent to that which the sinner would have borne, although it is not identical. The vicarious bearing of it excludes the latter.” Andrew Fuller thought Christ would have had to suffer just as much, if only one sinner were to have been saved thereby.

The atonement is a unique fact, only partially illustrated by debt and penalty. Yet the terms ‘purchase’ and ‘ransom’ are Scriptural, and mean simply that the justice of God punishes sin as it deserves; and that, having determined what is deserved, God cannot change. See Owen, quoted in Campbell on Atonement, 58, 59. Christ’s sacrifice, since it is absolutely infinite, can have nothing added to it. If Christ’s sacrifice satisfies the Judge of all, it may well satisfy us.

(h) That if Christ’s passive obedience made satisfaction to the divine justice, then his active obedience was superfluous.—We answer that the active obedience and the passive obedience are inseparable. The latter is essential to the former; and both are needed to secure for the sinner, on the one hand, pardon, and, on the other hand, that which goes beyond pardon, namely, restoration to the divine favor. The objection holds only against a superficial and external view of the atonement.

For more full exposition of this point, see our treatment of Justification; and also, Owen, in Works, 5:175–204. Both the active and the passive obedience of Christ are insisted on by the apostle Paul. Opposition to the Pauline theology is opposition to the gospel of Christ. Charles Cuthbert Hall, Universal Elements of the Christian Religion, 140—“The effects of this are already appearing in the impoverished religious values of the sermons produced by the younger generation of preachers, and the deplorable decline of spiritual life and knowledge in many churches. Results open to observation show that the movement to simplify the Christian essence by discarding the theology of St. Paul easily carries the teaching of the Christian pulpit to a position where, for those who submit to that teaching, the characteristic experiences of the Christian life became practically impossible. The Christian sense of sin; Christian penitence at the foot of the Cross; Christian faith in an atoning Savior; Christian peace with God through the mediation of Jesus Christ—these and other experiences, which were the very life of apostles and apostolic souls, fade from the view of the ministry, have no meaning for the younger generation.”

(i) That the doctrine is immoral in its practical tendencies, since Christ’s obedience takes the place of ours, and renders ours unnecessary.—We answer that the objection ignores not only the method by which the benefits of the atonement are appropriated, namely, repentance and faith, but also the regenerating and sanctifying power bestowed upon all who believe. Faith in the atonement does not induce license, but “works by love” (Gal. 5:6) and “cleanses the heart” (Acts 15:9).

Water is of little use to a thirsty man, if he will not drink. The faith which accepts Christ ratifies all that Christ has done, and takes Christ as a new principle of life. Paul bids Philemon receive Onesimus as himself,—not the old Onesimus, but a new Onesimus into whom the spirit of Paul has entered (Philemon 17). So God receives us as new creatures in Christ. Though we cannot earn salvation, we must take it; and this taking it involves a surrender of heart and life which ensures union with Christ and moral progress.

What shall be done to the convicted murderer who tears up the pardon which his wife’s prayers and tears have secured from the Governor? Nothing remains but to execute the sentence of the law. Hon. George F. Danforth, Justice of the New York State Court of Appeals, in a private letter says: “Although it may be stated in a general way that a pardon reaches both the punishment prescribed for the offence and the guilt of the offender, so that in the eye of the law he is as innocent as if he had never committed the offence, the pardon making him as it were a new man with a new credit and capacity, yet a delivery of the pardon is essential to its validity, and delivery is not complete without acceptance. It cannot be forced upon him. In that respect it is like a deed. The delivery may be in person to the offender or to his agent, and its acceptance may be proved by circumstances like any other fact.”

(j) That if the atonement requires faith as its complement, then it does not in itself furnish a complete satisfaction to God’s justice.—We answer that faith is not the ground of our acceptance with God, as the atonement is, and so is not a work at all; faith is only the medium of appropriation. We are saved not by faith, or on account of faith, but only through faith. It is not faith, but the atonement which faith accepts, that satisfies the justice of God.

Illustrate by the amnesty granted to a city, upon conditions to be accepted by each inhabitant. The acceptance is not the ground upon which the amnesty is granted; it is the medium through which the benefits of the amnesty are enjoyed. With regard to the difficulties connected with the atonement, we may say, in conclusion, with Bishop Butler: “If the Scripture has, as surely it has, left this matter of the satisfaction of Christ mysterious, left somewhat in it unrevealed, all conjectures about it must be, if not evidently absurd, yet at least uncertain. Nor has any one reason to complain for want of further information, unless he can show his claim to it.” While we cannot say with President Stearns: “Christ’s work removed the hindrances in the eternal justice of the universe to the pardon of the sinner, but how we cannot tell”—cannot say this, because we believe the main outlines of the plan of salvation to be revealed in Scripture—yet we grant that many questions remain unsolved. But, as bread nourishes even those who know nothing of its chemical constituents, or of the method of its digestion and assimilation, so the atonement of Christ saves those who accept it, even though they do not know how it saves them. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 264–267—“Heat was once thought to be a form of matter; now it is regarded as a mode of motion. We can get the good of it, whichever theory we adopt, or even if we have no theory. So we may get the good of reconciliation with God, even though we differ as to our theory of the Atonement.”—“One of the Roman Emperors commanded his fleet to bring from Alexandria sand for the arena, although his people at Rome were visited with famine. But a certain shipmaster declared that, whatever the emperor commanded, his ship should bring wheat. So, whatever sand others may bring to starving human souls, let us bring to them the wheat of the gospel—the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.” For answers to objections, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:156–180; Crawford, Atonement, 384–468; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:526–643; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 623 sq.; Wm. Thomson, The Atoning Work of Christ; Hopkins, Works, 1:321.