Part 6 — Chapter I. Christology, Or The Redemption Wrought By Christ. (continued 3)

See Lightfoot, on Phil. 2:8—“Christ divested himself, not of his divine nature, for that was impossible, but of the glories and prerogatives of Deity. This he did by taking the form of a servant.” Evans, in Presb. Rev., 1883:287—“Two stages in Christ's humiliation, each represented by a finite verb defining the central act of the particular stage, accompanied by two modal participles. 1st stage indicated in v. 7. Its central act is: ‘he emptied himself.’ Its two modalities are: (1) ‘taking the form of servant’; (2) ‘being made in the likeness of men.’ Here we have the humiliation of the Kenosis,—that by which Christ became man. 2d stage, indicated in v. 8. Its central act is: ‘he humbled himself.’ Its two modalities are: (1) ‘being found in fashion as a man’; (2) ‘becoming obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross.’ Here we have the humiliation of his obedience and death,—that by which, inhumanity, he became a sacrifice for our sins.”

Meyer refers Eph. 5:31 exclusively to Christ and the church, making the completed union future, however, i. e., at the time of the Parousia. “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother” = “in the incarnation, Christ leaves father and mother (his seat at the right hand of God), and cleaves to his wife (the church), and then the two (the descended Christ and the church) become one flesh (one ethical person, as the married pair become one by physical union). The Fathers, however, (Jerome, Theodoret, Chrysostom), referred it to the incarnation.” On the interpretation of Phil 2:6-11, see Comm. of Neander, Meyer, Lange, Ellicott.

On the question whether Christ would have become man had there been no sin, theologians are divided. Dorner, Martensen, and Westcott answer in the affirmative; Robinson, Watts, and Denney in the negative. See Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ, 5:236; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 327-329; Westcott, Com. on Hebrews, page 8—“The Incarnation is in its essence independent of the Fall, though conditioned by it as to its circumstances.” Per contra, see Robinson, Christ. Theol., 219, note—“It would be difficult to show that a like method of argument from a priori premisses will not equally avail to prove sin to have been a necessary part of the scheme of creation.”Denney, Studies in Theology, 101, objects to the doctrine of necessary incarnation irrespective of sin, that it tends to obliterate the distinction between nature and grace, to blur the definite outlines of the redemption wrought by Christ, as the supreme revelation of God and his love. See also Watts, New Apologetic, 198-202; Julius Müller, Dogmat. Abhandlungen, 66-126; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 512-526, 543-548; Forrest, The Authority of Christ, 340-345. On the general subject of the Kenosis of the Logos, see Bruce, Humiliation of Christ; Robins, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1874:615; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:138-150, 386-475; Pope, Person of Christ, 23; Bodemeyer, Lehre von der Kenosis; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:610-625.

II. The State of Exaltation.

1. The nature of this exaltation.

It consisted essentially in: (a) A resumption, on the part of the Logos, of his independent exercise of divine attributes. (b) The withdrawal, on the part of the Logos, of all limitations in his communication of the divine fulness to the human nature of Christ. (c) The corresponding exercise, on the part of the human nature, of those powers which belonged to it by virtue of its union with the divine.

The eighth Psalm, with its account of the glory of human nature, is at present fulfilled only in Christ (see Heb. 2:9—“but we behold ... Jesus”). Heb. 2:7—ἠλάττωσας αὐτὸν βραχύ τι παρ᾽ ἀγγέλους—may be translated, as in the margin of the Rev. Vers.: “Thou madest [pg 707]him for a little while lower than the angels.” Christ's human body was not necessarily subject to death; only by outward compulsion or voluntary surrender could he die. Hence resurrection was a natural necessity (Acts 2:24—“whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not possible he should be holden of it”; 31—“neither was he left unto Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption”). This exaltation, which then affected humanity only in its head, is to be the experience also of the members. Our bodies also are to be delivered from the bondage of corruption, and we are to sit with Christ upon his throne.

2. The stages of Christ's exaltation.

(a) The quickening and resurrection.

Both Lutherans and Romanists distinguish between these two, making the former precede, and the latter follow, Christ's “preaching to the spirits in prison.” These views rest upon a misinterpretation of 1 Pet. 3:18-20. Lutherans teach that Christ descended into hell, to proclaim his triumph to evil spirits. But this is to give ἐκήρυξεν the unusual sense of proclaiming his triumph, instead of his gospel. Romanists teach that Christ entered the underworld to preach to Old Testament saints, that they might be saved. But the passage speaks only of the disobedient; it cannot be pressed into the support of a sacramental theory of the salvation of Old Testament believers. The passage does not assert the descent of Christ into the world of spirits, but only a work of the preïncarnate Logos in offering salvation, through Noah, to the world then about to perish.

Augustine, Ad Euodiam, ep. 99—“The spirits shut up in prison are the unbelievers who lived in the time of Noah, whose spirits or souls were shut up in the darkness of ignorance as in a prison; Christ preached to them, not in the flesh, for he was not yet incarnate, but in the spirit, that is, in his divine nature.” Calvin taught that Christ descended into the underworld and suffered the pains of the lost. But not all Calvinists hold with him here; see Princeton Essays, 1:153. Meyer, on Rom. 10:7, regards the question—“Who shall descend into the abyss? (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead)”—as an allusion to, and so indirectly a proof-text for, Christ's descent into the underworld. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 211, favors a preaching to the dead: “During that time [the three days] he did not return to heaven and his Father.” But though John 20:17 is referred to for proof, is not this statement true only of his body? So far as the soul is concerned, Christ can say: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit,” and “To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise”(Luke 23:43, 46).

Zahn and Dorner best represent the Lutheran view. Zahn, in Expositor, March, 1898: 216-223—“If Jesus was truly man, then his soul, after it left the body, entered into the fellowship of departed spirits.... If Jesus is he who lives forevermore and even his dying was his act, this carrying in the realm of the dead cannot be thought of as a purely passive condition, but must have been known to those who dwelt there..... If Jesus was the Redeemer of mankind, the generations of those who had passed away must have thus been brought into personal relation to him, his work and his kingdom, without waiting for the last day.”

Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:662 (Syst. Doct., 4:127), thinks “Christ's descent into Hades marks a new era of his pneumatic life, in which he shows himself free from the limitations of time and space.” He rejects “Luther's notion of a merely triumphal progress and proclamation of Christ. Before Christ,” he says, “there was no abode peopled by the damned. The descent was an application of the benefit of the atonement (implied in κηρύσσειν). The work was prophetic, not high-priestly nor kingly. Going to the spirits in prison is spoken of as a spontaneous act, not one of physical necessity. No power of Hades led him over into Hades. Deliverance from the limitations of a mortal body is already an indication of a higher stage of existence. Christ's soul is bodiless for a time—πνεῦμα only—as the departed were.

“The ceasing of this preaching is neither recorded, nor reasonably to be supposed,—indeed the ancient church supposed it carried on through the apostles. It expresses the universal significance of Christ for former generations and for the entire kingdom of the dead. No physical power is a limit to him. The gates of hell, or Hades, shall not prevail over or against him. The intermediate state is one of blessedness for him, and [pg 708]he can admit the penitent thief into it. Even those who were not laid hold of by Christ's historic manifestation in this earthly life still must, and may, be brought into relation with him, in order to be able to accept or to reject him. And thus the universal relation of Christ to humanity and the absoluteness of the Christian religion are confirmed.”So Dorner, for substance.

All this versus Strauss, who thought that the dying of vast masses of men, before and after Christ, who had not been brought into relation to Christ, proves that the Christian religion is not necessary to salvation, because not universal. For advocacy of Christ's preaching to the dead, see also Jahrbuch für d. Theol., 23:177-228; W. W. Patton, in N. Eng., July, 1882:460-478; John Miller, Problems Suggested by the Bible, part 1:93-98; part 2:38; Plumptre, The Spirits in Prison; Kendrick, in Bap. Rev., Apl. 1888; Clemen, Niedergefahren zu den Toten.

For the opposite view, see “No Preaching to the Dead,” in Princeton Rev., March, 1875:197; 1878:451-491; Hovey, in Bap. Quar., 4:486 sq., and Bib. Eschatology, 97-107; Love, Christ's Preaching to the Spirits in Prison; Cowles, in Bib. Sac., 1875:401; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:616-622; Salmond, in Popular Commentary; and Johnstone, Com., in loco. So Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Bishop Pearson. See also E. D. Morris, Is There Salvation after Death? and Wright, Relation of Death to Probation, 22:28—“If Christ preached to spirits in Hades, it may have been to demonstrate the hopelessness of adding in the other world to the privileges enjoyed in this. We do not read that it had any favorable effect upon the hearers. If men will not hear Moses and the Prophets, then they will not hear one risen from the dead. ‘Today thou shalt be with me in Paradise’ (Luke 23:43) was not comforting, if Christ was going that day to the realm of lost spirits. The antediluvians, however, were specially favored with Noah's preaching, and were specially wicked.”

For full statement of the view presented in the text, that the preaching referred to was the preaching of Christ as preëxisting Logos to the spirits, now in prison, when once they were disobedient in the days of Noah, see Bartlett, in New Englander, Oct. 1872: 601 sq., and in Bib. Sac., Apr. 1883:333-373. Before giving the substance of Bartlett's exposition, we transcribe in full the passage in question, 1 Pet. 3:18-20—“Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; in which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, that aforetime were disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah.”

Bartlett expounds as follows: “ ‘In which [πνεύματι, divine nature] ‘he went and preached to the spirits in prison when once they disobeyed.’ ἀπειθήσασιν is circumstantial aorist, indicating the time of the preaching as a definite past: It is an anarthrous dative, as in Luke 8:27; Mat. 8:23; Acts 15:25; 22:17. It is an appositive, or predicative, participle. [That the aorist participle does not necessarily describe an action preliminary to that of the principal verb appears from its use in verse 18 (θανατωθείς), in 1 Thess. 1:6 (δεξάμενοι), and in Col. 2:11, 13.] The connection of thought is: Peter exhorts his readers to endure suffering bravely, because Christ did so,—in his lower nature being put to death, in his higher nature enduring the opposition of sinners before the flood. Sinners of that time only are mentioned, because this permits an introduction of the subsequent reference to baptism. Cf. Gen. 6:3; 1 Pet. 1:10, 11; 2 Pet. 2:4, 5.”

(b) The ascension and sitting at the right hand of God.

As the resurrection proclaimed Christ to men as the perfected and glorified man, the conqueror of sin and lord of death, the ascension proclaimed him to the universe as the reinstated God, the possessor of universal dominion, the omnipresent object of worship and hearer of prayer. Dextra Dei ubique est.

Mat. 28:18, 20—“All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth.... lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”; Mark 16:19—“So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God”; Acts 7:55—“But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God”; 2 Cor. 13:4—“he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth through the power of God”; Eph. 1:22, 23—“he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all”; 4:10—“He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.” Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:184-189—“Before the resurrection, Christ was the God-man; since the resurrection, he is the God-man.... He ate with his disciples, not to show the quality, but the reality, of his human body.” Nicoll, Life of Christ: [pg 709] “It was hard for Elijah to ascend”—it required chariot and horses of fire—“but it was easier for Christ to ascend than to descend,”—there was a gravitation upwards. Maclaren: “He has not left the world, though he has ascended to the Father, any more than he left the Father when he came into the world”; John 1:18—“the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father”; 3:13—“the Son of man, who is in heaven.”

We are compelled here to consider the problem of the relation of the humanity to the Logos in the state of exaltation. The Lutherans maintain the ubiquity of Christ's human body, and they make it the basis of their doctrine of the sacraments. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:674-676 (Syst. Doct., 4:138-142), holds to “a presence, not simply of the Logos, but of the whole God-man, with all his people, but not necessarily likewise a similar presence in the world; in other words, his presence is morally conditioned by men's receptivity.” The old theologians said that Christ is not in heaven, quasi carcere. Calvin, Institutes, 2:15—he is “incarnate, but not incarcerated.” He has gone into heaven, the place of spirits, and he manifests himself there; but he has also gone far above all heavens, that he may fill all things. He is with his people alway. All power is given into his hand. The church is the fulness of him that filleth all in all. So the Acts of the Apostles speak constantly of the Son of man, of the man Jesus as God, ever present, the object of worship, seated at the right hand of God, having all the powers and prerogatives of Deity. See Westcott, Bible Com., on John 20:22—“he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit”—“The characteristic effect of the Paschal gift was shown in the new faith by which the disciples were gathered into a living society; the characteristic effect of the Pentecostal gift was shown in the exercise of supremacy potentially universal.”

Who and what is this Christ who is present with his people when they pray? It is not enough to say, He is simply the Holy Spirit; for the Holy Spirit is the “Spirit of Christ”(Rom. 8:9), and in having the Holy Spirit we have Christ himself (John 16:7—“I will send him[the Comforter] unto you”; 14:18—“I come unto you”). The Christ, who is thus present with us when we pray, is not simply the Logos, or the divine nature of Christ,—his humanity being separated from the divinity and being localized in heaven. This would be inconsistent with his promise, “Lo, I am with you,” in which the “I” that spoke was not simply Deity, but Deity and humanity inseparably united; and it would deny the real and indissoluble union of the two natures. The elder brother and sympathizing Savior who is with us when we pray is man, as well as God. This manhood is therefore ubiquitous by virtue of its union with the Godhead.

But this is not to say that Christ's human body is everywhere present. It would seem that body must exist in spatial relations, and be confined to place. We do not know that this is so with regard to soul. Heaven would seem to be a place, because Christ's body is there; and a spiritual body is not a body which is spirit, but a body which is suited to the uses of the spirit. But even though Christ may manifest himself, in a glorified human body, only in heaven, his human soul, by virtue of its union with the divine nature, can at the same moment be with all his scattered people over the whole earth. As, in the days of his flesh, his humanity was confined to place, while as to his Deity he could speak of the Son of man who is in heaven, so now, although his human body may be confined to place, his human soul is ubiquitous. Humanity can exist without body; for during the three days in the sepulchre, Christ's body was on earth, but his soul was in the other world; and in like manner there is, during the intermediate state, a separation of the soul and the body of believers. But humanity cannot exist without soul; and if the human Savior is with us, then his humanity, at least so far as respects its immaterial part, must be everywhere present. Per contra, see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:326, 327. Since Christ's human nature has derivatively become possessed of divine attributes, there is no validity in the notion of a progressiveness in that nature, now that it has ascended to the right hand of God. See Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 4:131; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 558, 576.

Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:327—“Suppose the presence of the divine nature of Christ in the soul of a believer in London. This divine nature is at the same moment conjoined with, and present to, and modified by, the human nature of Christ, which is in heaven and not in London.” So Hooker, Eccl. Pol., 54, 55, and E. G. Robinson: “Christ is in heaven at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us, while he is present in the church by his Spirit. We pray to the theanthropic Jesus. Possession of a human body does not now constitute a limitation. We know little of the nature of the present body.”We add to this last excellent remark the expression of our own conviction that the modern conception of the merely relative nature of space, and the idealistic view of matter as only the expression of mind and will, have relieved this subject of many of [pg 710]its former difficulties. If Christ is omnipresent and if his body is simply the manifestation of his soul, then every soul may feel the presence of his humanity even now and “every eye” may “see him” at his second coming, even though believers may be separated as far as is Boston from Pekin. The body from which his glory flashes forth may be visible in ten thousand places at the same time; (Mat. 28:20; Rev. 1:7).

Section IV.—The Offices Of Christ.

The Scriptures represent Christ's offices as three in number,—prophetic, priestly, and kingly. Although these terms are derived from concrete human relations, they express perfectly distinct ideas. The prophet, the priest, and the king, of the Old Testament, were detached but designed prefigurations of him who should combine all these various activities in himself, and should furnish the ideal reality, of which they were the imperfect symbols.

1 Cor. 1:30—“of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.” Here “wisdom” seems to indicate the prophetic, “righteousness” (or “justification”) the priestly, and “sanctification and redemption” the kingly work of Christ. Denovan: “Three offices are necessary. Christ must be a prophet, to save us from the ignorance of sin; a priest, to save us from its guilt; a king, to save us from its dominion in our flesh. Our faith cannot have firm basis in any one of these alone, any more than a stool can stand on less than three legs.” See Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 583-586; Archer Butler, Sermons, 1:314.

A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 235—“For ‘office,’ there are two words in Latin: munus = position (of Mediator), and officia = functions (of Prophet, Priest, and King). They are not separate offices, as are those of President, Chief-Justice, and Senator. They are not separate functions, capable of successive and isolated performance. They are rather like the several functions of the one living human body—lungs, heart, brain—functionally distinct, yet interdependent, and together constituting one life. So the functions of Prophet, Priest, and King mutually imply one another: Christ is always a prophetical Priest, and a priestly Prophet; and he is always a royal Priest, and a priestly King; and together they accomplish one redemption, to which all are equally essential. Christ is both μεσίτης and παράκλητος.”

I. The Prophetic Office of Christ.

1. The nature of Christ's prophetic work.

(a) Here we must avoid the narrow interpretation which would make the prophet a mere foreteller of future events. He was rather an inspired interpreter or revealer of the divine will, a medium of communication between God and men (προφήτης = not foreteller, but forteller, or forth-teller. Cf. Gen. 20:7,—of Abraham; Ps. 105:15,—of the patriarchs; Mat. 11:9,—of John the Baptist; 1 Cor. 12:28, Eph. 2:20, and 3:5,—of N. T. expounders of Scripture).

Gen. 20:7—“restore the man's wife; for he is a prophet”—spoken of Abraham; Ps. 105:15—“Touch not mine anointed ones, And do my prophets no harm”—spoken of the patriarchs; Mat. 11:9—“But wherefore went ye out? to see a prophet? Yea, I say into you, and much more than a prophet”—spoken of John the Baptist, from whom we have no recorded predictions, and whose pointing to Jesus as the “Lamb of God” (John 1:29) was apparently but an echo of Isaiah 53. 1 Cor. 12:28—“first apostles, secondly prophets”; Eph. 2:20—“built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets”; 3:5—“revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit”—all these latter texts speaking of New Testament expounders of Scripture.

Any organ of divine revelation, or medium of divine communication, is a prophet. “Hence,” says Philippi, “the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings are called ‘prophetæ priores,’ or ‘the earlier prophets.’ Bernard's Respice, Aspice, Prospice [pg 711]describes the work of the prophet: for the prophet might see and might disclose things in the past, things in the present, or things in the future. Daniel was a prophet, in telling Nebuchadnezzar what his dream had been, as well as in telling its interpretation (Dan. 2:28, 36). The woman of Samaria rightly called Christ a prophet, when he told her all things that ever she did (John 4:29).” On the work of the prophet, see Stanley, Jewish Church, 1:491.

(b) The prophet commonly united three methods of fulfilling his office,—those of teaching, predicting, and miracle-working. In all these respects, Jesus Christ did the work of a prophet (Deut 18:15; cf. Acts 3:22; Mat. 13:57; Luke 13:33; John 6:14). He taught (Mat. 5-7), he uttered predictions (Mat. 24 and 25), he wrought miracles (Mat. 8 and 9), while in his person, his life, his work, and his death, he revealed the Father (John 8:26; 14:9; 17:8).

Deut. 18:15—“Jehovah thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet, from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him shall ye hearken”; cf. Acts 3:22—where this prophecy is said to be fulfilled in Christ. Jesus calls himself a prophet in Mat. 13:57—“A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country, and in his own house”; Luke 13:33—“Nevertheless I must go on my way to-day and to-morrow and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.” He was called a prophet: John 6:14—“When therefore the people saw the sign which he did, they said, This is of a truth the prophet that cometh into the world.” John 8:26—“the things which I heard from him [the Father], these speak I unto the world”; 14:9—“he that hath seen me hath seen the Father”; 17:8—“the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them.”

Denovan: “Christ teaches us by his word, his Spirit, his example.” Christ's miracles were mainly miracles of healing. “Only sickness is contagious with us. But Christ was an example of perfect health, and his health was contagious. By its overflow, he healed others. Only a ‘touch’ (Mat. 9:21) was necessary.”

Edwin P. Parker, on Horace Bushnell: “The two fundamental elements of prophecy are insight and expression. Christian prophecy implies insight or discernment of spiritual things by divine illumination, and expression of them, by inspiration, in terms of Christian truth or in the tones and cadences of Christian testimony. We may define it, then, as the publication, under the impulse of inspiration, and for edification, of truths perceived by divine illumination, apprehended by faith, and assimilated by experience.... It requires a natural basis and rational preparation in the human mind, a suitable stock of natural gifts on which to graft the spiritual gift for support and nourishment. These gifts have had devout culture. They have been crowned by illuminations and inspirations. Because insight gives foresight, the prophet will be a seer of things as they are unfolding and becoming; will discern far-signalings and intimations of Providence; will forerun men to prepare the way for them, and them for the way of God's coming kingdom.”

2. The stages of Christ's prophetic work.

These are four, namely:

(a) The preparatory work of the Logos, in enlightening mankind before the time of Christ's advent in the flesh.—All preliminary religious knowledge, whether within or without the bounds of the chosen people, is from Christ, the revealer of God.

Christ's prophetic work began before he came in the flesh. John 1:9—“There was the true light, even the light which lighteth every man, coming into the world”—all the natural light of conscience, science, philosophy, art, civilization, is the light of Christ. Tennyson: “Our little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they.” Heb. 12:25, 26—“See that ye refuse not him that speaketh.... whose voice then [at Sinai] shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more will I make to tremble not the earth only, but also the heaven”; Luke 11:49—“Therefore said the wisdom of God, I will send unto them prophets and apostles”; cf. Mat 23:34—“behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: some of them shall ye kill and crucify”—which shows that Jesus was referring to his own teachings, as well as to those of the earlier prophets.

(b) The earthly ministry of Christ incarnate.—In his earthly ministry, Christ showed himself the prophet par excellence. While he submitted, [pg 712] like the Old Testament prophets, to the direction of the Holy Spirit, unlike them, he found the sources of all knowledge and power within himself. The word of God did not come to him,—he was himself the Word.

Luke 6:19—“And all the multitude sought to touch him; for power came forth from him, and healed them all”; John 2:11—“This beginning of his signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested his glory”; 8:38, 58—“I speak the things which I have seen with my Father.... Before Abraham was born, I am”; cf. Jer. 2:1—“the word of Jehovah came to me”; John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word.” Mat. 26:53—“twelve legions of angels”; John 10:18—of his life: “I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again”; 34—“Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came ... say ye of him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God?” Martensen, Dogmatics, 295-301, says of Jesus' teaching that “its source was not inspiration, but incarnation.” Jesus was not inspired,—he was the Inspirer. Therefore he is the true “Master of those who know.” His disciples act in his name; he acts in his own name.

(c) The guidance and teaching of his church on earth, since his ascension.—Christ's prophetic activity is continued through the preaching of his apostles and ministers, and by the enlightening influences of his Holy Spirit (John 16:12-14; Acts 1:1). The apostles unfolded the germs of doctrine put into their hands by Christ. The church is, in a derivative sense, a prophetic institution, established to teach the world by its preaching and its ordinances. But Christians are prophets, only as being proclaimers of Christ's teaching (Num. 11:29; Joel 2:28).

John 16:12-14—“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth.... He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine and shall declare it unto you”; Acts 1:1—“The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach”—Christ's prophetic work was only begun, during his earthly ministry; it is continued since his ascension. The inspiration of the apostles, the illumination of all preachers and Christians to understand and to unfold the meaning of the word they wrote, the conviction of sinners, and the sanctification of believers,—all these are parts of Christ's prophetic work, performed through the Holy Spirit.

By virtue of their union with Christ and participation in Christ's Spirit, all Christians are made in a secondary sense prophets, as well as priests and kings. Num. 11:29—“Would that all Jehovah's people were prophets, that Jehovah would put his Spirit upon them”; Joel 2:28—“I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” All modern prophecy that is true, however, is but the republication of Christ's message—the proclamation and expounding of truth already revealed in Scripture. “All so-called new prophecy, from Montanus to Swedenborg, proves its own falsity by its lack of attesting miracles.”

A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 242—“Every human prophet presupposes an infinite eternal divine Prophet from whom his knowledge is received, just as every stream presupposes a fountain from which it flows.... As the telescope of highest power takes into its field the narrowest segment of the sky, so Christ the prophet sometimes gives the intensest insight into the glowing centre of the heavenly world to those whom this world regards as unlearned and foolish, and the church recognizes as only babes in Christ.”

(d) Christ's final revelation of the Father to his saints in glory (John 16:25; 17:24, 26; cf. Is. 64:4; 1 Cor. 13:12).—Thus Christ's prophetic work will be an endless one, as the Father whom he reveals is infinite.

John 16:25—“the hour cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in dark sayings, but shall tell you plainly of the Father”; 17:24—“I desire that where I am, they also may be with me; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me”; 26—“I made known unto them thy name, and will make it known.” The revelation of his own glory will be the revelation of the Father, in the Son. Is. 64:4—“For from of old men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen a God besides thee, who worketh for him that waiteth for him”; 1 Cor. 13:12—“now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known.” Rev. 21:23—“And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb”—not light, but lamp. Light is something generally diffused; one sees by it, but one cannot see it. [pg 713]Lamp is the narrowing down, the concentrating, the focusing of light, so that the light becomes definite and visible. So in heaven Christ will be the visible God. We shall never see the Father separate from Christ. No man or angel has at any time seen God, “whom no man hath seen, nor can see.” “The only begotten Son ... he hath declared him,” and he will forever declare him (John 1:18; 1 Tim. 6:16).

The ministers of the gospel in modern times, so far as they are joined to Christ and possessed by his spirit, have a right to call themselves prophets. The prophet is one—1. sent by God and conscious of his mission; 2. with a message from God which he is under compulsion to deliver; 3. a message grounded in the truth of the past, setting it in new lights for the present, and making new applications of it for the future. The word of the Lord must come to him; it must be his gospel; there must be things new as well as old. All mathematics are in the simplest axiom; but it needs divine illumination to discover them. All truth was in Jesus' words, nay, in the first prophecy uttered after the Fall, but only the apostles brought it out. The prophet's message must be 4. a message for the place and time—primarily for contemporaries and present needs; 5. a message of eternal significance and worldwide influence. As the prophet's word was for the whole world, so our word may be for other worlds, that “unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God”(Eph. 3:10). It must be also 6. a message of the kingdom and triumph of Christ, which puts over against the distractions and calamities of the present time the glowing ideal and the perfect consummation to which God is leading his people: “Blessed be the glory of Jehovah from his place”; “Jehovah is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him” (Ez. 3:12; Hab. 2:20). On the whole subject of Christ's prophetic office, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, IV, 2:24-27; Bruce, Humiliation of Christ, 320-330; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:366-370.

II. The Priestly Office of Christ.

The priest was a person divinely appointed to transact with God on man's behalf. He fulfilled his office, first by offering sacrifice, and secondly by making intercession. In both these respects Christ is priest.

Hebrews 7:24-28—“he, because he abideth forever, hath his priesthood unchangeable. Wherefore also he is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such a high priest became us, holy, guileless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; who needeth not daily, like these high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people: for this he did once for all, when he offered up himself. For the law appointeth men high priests, having infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was after the law, appointeth a Son, perfected for evermore.” The whole race was shut out from God by its sin. But God chose the Israelites as a priestly nation, Levi as a priestly tribe, Aaron as a priestly family, the high priest out of this family as type of the great high priest, Jesus Christ. J. S. Candlish, in Bib. World, Feb. 1897:87-97, cites the following facts with regard to our Lord's sufferings as proofs of the doctrine of atonement: 1. Christ gave up his life by a perfectly free act; 2. out of regard to God his Father and obedience to his will; 3. the bitterest element of his suffering was that he endured it at the hand of God; 4. this divine appointment and infliction of suffering is inexplicable, except as Christ endured the divine judgment against the sin of the race.

1. Christ's Sacrificial Work, or the Doctrine of the Atonement.

The Scriptures teach that Christ obeyed and suffered in our stead, to satisfy an immanent demand of the divine holiness, and thus remove an obstacle in the divine mind to the pardon and restoration of the guilty. This statement may be expanded and explained in a preliminary way as follows:—

(a) The fundamental attribute of God is holiness, and holiness is not self-communicating love, but self-affirming righteousness. Holiness limits and conditions love, for love can will happiness only as happiness results from or consists with righteousness, that is, with conformity to God.

We have shown in our discussion of the divine attributes (vol. 1, pages 268-275) that holiness is neither self-love nor love, but self-affirming purity and right. Those who maintain that love is self-affirming as well as self-communicating, and therefore that [pg 714]holiness is God's love for himself, must still admit that this self-affirming love which is holiness conditions and furnishes the standard for the self-communicating love which is benevolence. But we hold that holiness is not identical with, nor a manifestation of, love. Since self-maintenance must precede self-impartation; and since benevolence finds its object, motive, standard, and limit in righteousness, holiness, the self-affirming attribute, can in no way be resolved into love, the self-communicating. God must first maintain his own being before he can give to another; and this self-maintenance must have its reason and motive in the worth of that which is maintained. Holiness cannot be love, because love is irrational and capricious except as it has a standard by which it is regulated, and this standard cannot be itself love, but must be holiness. To make holiness a form of love is really to deny its existence, and with this to deny that any atonement is necessary for man's salvation.

(b) The universe is a reflection of God, and Christ the Logos is its life. God has constituted the universe, and humanity as a part of it, so as to express his holiness, positively by connecting happiness with righteousness, negatively by attaching unhappiness or suffering to sin.

We have seen, in vol. I, pages 109, 309-311, 335-338, that since Christ is the Logos, the immanent God, God revealed in nature, in humanity, and in redemption, the universe must be recognized as created, upheld and governed by the same Being who in the course of history was manifest in human form and who made atonement for human sin by his death on Calvary. As all God's creative activity has been exercised through Christ (vol. I, page 310), so it is Christ in whom all things consist or are held together (vol. I, page 311). Providence, as well as preservation, is his work. He makes the universe to reflect God, and especially God's ethical nature. That pain or loss universally and inevitably follow sin is the proof that God is unalterably opposed to moral evil; and the demands and reproaches of conscience witness that holiness is the fundamental attribute of God's being.

(c) Christ the Logos, as the Revealer of God in the universe and in humanity, must condemn sin by visiting upon it the suffering which is its penalty; while at the same time, as the Life of humanity, he must endure the reaction of God's holiness against sin which constitutes that penalty.

Here is a double work of Christ which Paul distinctly declares in Rom. 8:3—“For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” The meaning is that God did through Christ what the law could not do, namely, accomplish deliverance for humanity; and did this by sending his son in a nature which in us is identified with sin. In connection with sin (περὶ ἁμαρτίας), and as an offering for sin, God condemned sin, by condemning Christ. Expositor's Greek Testament, in loco: “When the question is asked, In what sense did God send his Son ‘in connection with sin’, there is only one answer possible. He sent him to expiate sin by his sacrificial death. This is the centre and foundation of Paul's gospel; see Rom. 3:25 sq.” But whatever God did in condemning sin he did through Christ; “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself” (2 Cor. 5:19); Christ was the condemner, as well as the condemned; conscience in us, which unites the accuser and the accused, shows us how Christ could be both the Judge and the Sin-bearer.

(d) Our personality is not self-contained. We live, move, and have our being naturally in Christ the Logos. Our reason, affection, conscience, and will are complete only in him. He is generic humanity, of which we are the offshoots. When his righteousness condemns sin, and his love voluntarily endures the suffering which is sin's penalty, humanity ratifies the judgment of God, makes full propitiation for sin, and satisfies the demands of holiness.

My personal existence is grounded in God. I cannot perceive the world outside of me nor recognize the existence of my fellow men, except as he bridges the gulf between me and the universe. Complete self-consciousness would be impossible if we did not partake of the universal Reason. The smallest child makes assumptions and uses processes of logic which are all instinctive, but which indicate the working in him of an [pg 715]absolute and infinite Intelligence. True love is possible only as God's love flows into us and takes possession of us; so that the poet can truly say: “Our loves in higher love endure.” No human will is truly free, unless God emancipates it; only he whom the Son of God makes free is free indeed; “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work” (Phil. 2:12, 13). Our moral nature, even more than our intellectual nature, witnesses that we are not sufficient to ourselves, but are complete only in him in whom we live and move and have our being (Col. 2:10; Acts 17:28). No man can make a conscience for himself. There is a common conscience, over and above the finite and individual conscience. That common conscience is one in all moral beings. John Watson: “There is no consciousness of self apart from the consciousness of other selves and things, and no consciousness of the world apart from the consciousness of the single Reality presupposed in both.” This single Reality is Jesus Christ, the manifested God, the Light that lighteth every man, and the Life of all that lives (John 1:4, 9). He can represent humanity before God, because his immanent Deity constitutes the very essence of humanity.

(e) While Christ's love explains his willingness to endure suffering for us, only his holiness furnishes the reason for that constitution of the universe and of human nature which makes this suffering necessary. As respects us, his sufferings are substitutionary, since his divinity and his sinlessness enable him to do for us what we could never do for ourselves. Yet this substitution is also a sharing—not the work of one external to us, but of one who is the life of humanity, the soul of our soul and the life of our life, and so responsible with us for the sins of the race.

Most of the recent treatises on the Atonement have been descriptions of the effects of the Atonement upon life and character, but have thrown no light upon the Atonement itself, if indeed they have not denied its existence. We must not emphasize the effects by ignoring the cause. Scripture declares the ultimate aim of the Atonement to be that God “might himself be just” (Rom. 3:26); and no theory of the atonement will meet the demands of reason or conscience that does not ground its necessity in God's righteousness, rather than in his love. We acknowledge that our conceptions of atonement have suffered some change. To our fathers the atonement was a mere historical fact, a sacrifice offered in a few brief hours upon the Cross. It was a literal substitution of Christ's suffering for ours, the payment of our debt by another, and upon the ground of that payment we are permitted to go free. Those sufferings were soon over, and the hymn, “Love's Redeeming Work is Done,” expressed the believer's joy in a finished redemption. And all this is true. But it is only a part of the truth. The atonement, like every other doctrine of Christianity, is a fact of life; and such facts of life cannot be crowded into our definitions, because they are greater than any definitions that we can frame. We must add to the idea of substitution the idea of sharing. Christ's doing and suffering is not that of one external and foreign to us. He is bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh; the bearer of our humanity; yes, the very life of the race.

(f) The historical work of the incarnate Christ is not itself the atonement,—it is rather the revelation of the atonement. The suffering of the incarnate Christ is the manifestation in space and time of the eternal suffering of God on account of human sin. Yet without the historical work which was finished on Calvary, the age-long suffering of God could never have been made comprehensible to men.

The life that Christ lived in Palestine and the death that he endured on Calvary were the revelation of a union with mankind which antedated the Fall. Being thus joined to us from the beginning, he has suffered in all human sin; “in all our affliction he has been afflicted” (Is. 63:9); so that the Psalmist can say: “Blessed be the Lord, who daily beareth our burden, even the God who is our salvation” (Ps. 68:19). The historical sacrifice was a burning-glass which focused the diffused rays of the Sun of righteousness and made them effective in the melting of human hearts. The sufferings of Christ take deepest hold upon us only when we see in them the two contrasted but complementary truths: that holiness must make penalty to follow sin, and that love must share that penalty with the transgressor. The Cross was the concrete exhibition of the holiness that required, and of [pg 716]the love that provided, man's redemption. Those six hours of pain could never have procured our salvation if they had not been a revelation of eternal facts in the being of God. The heart of God and the meaning of all previous history were then unveiled. The whole evolution of humanity was there depicted in its essential elements, on the one hand the sin and condemnation of the race, on the other hand the grace and suffering of him who was its life and salvation. As he who hung upon the cross was God, manifest in the flesh, so the suffering of the cross was God's suffering for sin, manifest in the flesh. The imputation of our sins to him is the result of his natural union with us. He has been our substitute from the beginning. We cannot quarrel with the doctrine of substitution when we see that this substitution is but the sharing of our griefs and sorrows by him whose very life pulsates in our veins. See A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 78-80, 177-180.

(g) The historical sacrifice of our Lord is not only the final revelation of the heart of God, but also the manifestation of the law of universal life—the law that sin brings suffering to all connected with it, and that we can overcome sin in ourselves and in the world only by entering into the fellowship of Christ's sufferings and Christ's victory, or, in other words, only by union with him through faith.

We too are subject to the same law of life. We who enter into fellowship with our Lord “fill up ... that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ ... for his body's sake, which is the church”(Col. 1:24). The Christian Church can reign with Christ only as it partakes in his suffering. The atonement becomes a model and stimulus to self-sacrifice, and a test of Christian character. But it is easy to see how the subjective effect of Christ's sacrifice may absorb the attention, to the exclusion of its ground and cause. The moral influence of the atonement has taken deep hold upon our minds, and we are in danger of forgetting that it is the holiness of God, and not the salvation of men, that primarily requires it. When sharing excludes substitution; when reconciliation of man to God excludes reconciliation of God to man; when the only peace secured is peace in the sinner's heart and no thought is given to that peace with God which it is the first object of the atonement to secure; then the whole evangelical system is weakened, God's righteousness is ignored, and man is practically put in place of God. We must not go back to the old mechanical and arbitrary conceptions of the atonement,—we must go forward to a more vital apprehension of the relation of the race to Christ. A larger knowledge of Christ, the life of humanity, will enable us to hold fast the objective nature of the atonement, and its necessity as grounded in the holiness of God; while at the same time we appropriate all that is good in the modern view of the atonement, as the final demonstration of God's constraining love which moves men to repentance and submission. See A. H. Strong, Cleveland Address, 1904:16-18; Dinsmore, The Atonement in Literature and in Life, 213-250.

A. Scripture Methods of Representing the Atonement.

We may classify the Scripture representations according as they conform to moral, commercial, legal or sacrificial analogies.

(a) Moral.—The atonement is described as

A provision originating in God's love, and manifesting this love to the universe; but also as an example of disinterested love, to secure our deliverance from selfishness.—In these latter passages, Christ's death is referred to as a source of moral stimulus to men.

A provision: John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son”; Rom. 5:8—“God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”; 1 John 4:9—“Herein was the love of God manifested in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him”; Heb. 2:9—“Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for every man”—redemption originated in the love of the Father, as well as in that of the Son.—An example: Luke 9:22-24—“The Son of man must suffer ... and be killed.... If any man would come after me, let him ... take up his cross daily, and follow me ... whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it”; 2 Cor. 5:15—“he died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves”; Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present [pg 717]evil world”; Eph. 5:25-27—“Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it; that he might sanctify it”; Col. 1:22—“reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy”; Titus 2:14—“gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify”; 1 Pet. 2:21-24—“Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin ... who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.” Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 181—“A pious cottager, on hearing the text, ‘God so loved the world,’ exclaimed: ‘Ah, that waslove! I could have given myself, but I could never have given my son.’ ” There was a wounding of the Father through the heart of the Son: “they shall look unto me whom they have pierced; and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son” (Zech. 12:10).

(b) Commercial.—The atonement is described as

A ransom, paid to free us from the bondage of sin (note in these passages the use of ἀντί, the preposition of price, bargain, exchange).—In these passages, Christ's death is represented as the price of our deliverance from sin and death.

Mat. 20:28, and Mark 10:45—“to give his life a ransom for many”—λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν. 1 Tim. 2:6—“who gave himself a ransom for all”—ἀντίλυτρον. Ἀντί (“for,” in the sense of “instead of”) is never confounded with ὑπέρ (“for,” in the sense of “in behalf of,” “for the benefit of”). Ἀντί is the preposition of price, bargain, exchange; and this signification is traceable in every passage where it occurs in the N. T. See Mat. 2:22—“Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the room of [ἀντί] his father Herod”; Luke 11:11—“shall his son ask ... a fish, and he for [ἀντί] a fish give him a serpent?” Heb. 12:2—“Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for [ἀντί = as the price of] the joy that was set before him endured the cross”; 16—“Esau, who for [ἀντί = in exchange for] one mess of meat sold his own birthright.” See also Mat. 16:26—“what shall a man give in exchange for (ἀντάλλαγμα) his life” = how shall he buy it back, when once he has lost it? Ἀντίλυτρον = substitutionary ransom. The connection in 1 Tim. 2:6 requires that ὑπέρ should mean “instead of.” We should interpret this ὑπέρ by the ἀντί in Mat. 20:28. “Something befell Christ, and by reason of that, the same thing need not befall sinners” (E. Y. Mullins).

Meyer, on Mat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many”—“The ψυχή is conceived of as λύτρον, a ransom, for, through the shedding of the blood, it becomes the τιμή (price) of redemption.”See also 1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23—“ye were bought with a price”; and 2 Pet. 2:1—“denying even the Master that bought them.” The word “redemption,” indeed, means simply “repurchase,” or “the state of being repurchased”—i. e., delivered by the payment of a price. Rev. 5:9—“thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe.” Winer, N. T. Grammar, 258—“In Greek, ἀντί is the preposition of price.” Buttmann, N. T. Grammar, 321—“In the signification of the preposition ἀντί (instead of, for), no deviation occurs from ordinary usage.” See Grimm's Wilke, Lexicon Græco-Lat.: “ἀντί, in vicem, anstatt”; Thayer, Lexicon N. T.—“ἀντί, of that for which anything is given, received, endured; ... of the price of sale (or purchase) Mat. 20:28”; also Cremer, N. T. Lex., on ἀντάλλαγμα.

Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever really uttered the words “give his life a ransom for many” (Mat. 20:28). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel, but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate the apostolic conception of Jesus' teaching, a conception which Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his apostles and should guide them into all the truth (John 14:26; 16:13). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.

(c) Legal.—The atonement is described as

An act of obedience to the law which sinners had violated; a penalty, borne in order to rescue the guilty; and an exhibition of God's righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is represented as demanded by God's law and government.

Obedience: Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law”; Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”—Christ's baptism prefigured [pg 718]his death, and was a consecration to death; cf. Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” Luke 12:50—“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” Mat. 26:39—“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt”; 5:17—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil”; Phil. 2:8—“becoming obedient even unto death”; Rom. 5:19—“through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”; 10:4—“Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.”—Penalty: Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”; 8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”; 2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf”—here “sin”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer); Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins”; 3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”; cf. Deut 21:23—“he that is hanged is accursed of God.” Heb. 9:28—“Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many”; cf. Lev. 5:17—“if any one sin ... yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity”; Num. 14:34—“for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years”; Lam. 5:7—“Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.”—Exhibition: Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God”; cf. Heb. 9:15—“a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant.”

On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes Ritschl's evasion of their natural force and declares Paul's teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor Paine's view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect. “God was in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:19) and God “manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16) are the keynote of Paul's teaching, and this is identical with John's doctrine of the Logos: “the Word was God,” and “the Word became flesh” (John 1:1, 14)

The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness, in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any more than the presence of man's spirit in all he thinks and does proves that man's spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3. God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of God's feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity of Christ and no objective atonement.

(d) Sacrificial.—The atonement is described as

A work of priestly mediation, which reconciles God to men,—notice here that the term “reconciliation” has its usual sense of removing enmity, not from the offending, but from the offended party;—a sin-offering, presented on behalf of transgressors;—a propitiation, which satisfies the demands of violated holiness;—and a substitution, of Christ's obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show that Christ's death is demanded by God's attribute of justice, or holiness, if sinners are to be saved.

Priestly mediation: Heb. 9:11, 12—“Christ having come a high priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption”; [pg 719] Rom. 5:10—“while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son”; 2 Cor. 5:18, 19—“all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses”; Eph. 2:16—“might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby”; cf. 12, 13, 19—“strangers from the covenants of the promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God”; Col. 1:20—“through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.”

On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the apostle to be, that “we were ‘enemies,’ not actively, as hostile to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.” The epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against Gentile and Jew alike (Rom. 1:18). “While we were enemies” (Rom. 5:10)—“when God was hostile to us.” “Reconciliation” is therefore the removal of God's wrath toward man. Meyer, on this last passage, says that Christ's death does not remove man's wrath toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself. See Denney, Com. on Rom. 5:9-11, in Expositor's Gk. Test.

Cf. Num. 25:13, where Phinehas, by slaying Zimri, is said to have “made atonement for the children of Israel.” Surely, the “atonement” here cannot be a reconciliation of Israel. The action terminates, not on the subject, but on the object—God. So, 1 Sam. 29:4—“wherewith should this fellow reconcile himself unto his lord? should it not be with the heads of these men?” Mat. 5:23, 24—“If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother [i. e., remove his enmity, not thine own], and then come and offer thy gift.” See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:387-398.

Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 42—“Ἐχθροὶ ὄντες (Rom. 5:10) = not the active disposition of enmity to God on our part, but our passive condition under the enmity or wrath of God.” Paul was not the author of this doctrine,—he claims that he received it from Christ himself (Gal. 1:12). Simon, Reconciliation, 167—“The idea that only man needs to be reconciled arises from a false conception of the unchangeableness of God. But God would be unjust, if his relation to man were the same after his sin as it was before.” The old hymn expressed the truth: “My God is reconciled; His pardoning voice I hear; He owns me for his child; I can no longer fear; With filial trust I now draw nigh, And ‘Father, Abba, Father’ cry.”

A sin-offering: John 1:29—“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world”—here αἴρων means to take away by taking or bearing; to take, and so take away. It is an allusion to the sin-offering of Isaiah 53:6-12—“when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin ... as a lamb that is led to the slaughter ... Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Mat. 26:28—“this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many unto remission of sins”; cf. Ps. 50:5—“made a covenant with me by sacrifice.” 1 John 1:7—“the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin”—not sanctification, but justification; 1 Cor. 5:7—“our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ”; cf. Deut. 16:2-6—“thou shalt sacrifice the passover unto Jehovah thy God.” Eph. 5:2—“gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odor of a sweet smell” (see Com. of Salmond, in Expositor's Greek Testament); Heb. 9:14—“the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God”; 22, 26—“apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.... now once in the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself”; 1 Pet. 1:18, 19—“redeemed ... with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ.” See Expos. Gk. Test., on Eph. 1:7.

Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 35, points out that John 6:52-59—“eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood”—is Christ's reference to his death in terms of sacrifice. So, as we shall see below, it is a propitiation (1 John 2:2). We therefore strongly object to the statement of Wilson, Gospel of Atonement, 64—“Christ's death is a sacrifice, if sacrifice means the crowning instance of that suffering of the innocent for the guilty which springs from the solidarity of mankind; but there is no thought of substitution or expiation.”Wilson forgets that this necessity of suffering arises from God's righteousness; that without this suffering man cannot be saved; that Christ endures what we, on account of the insensibility of sin, cannot feel or endure; that this suffering takes the place of ours, so that we are saved thereby. Wilson holds that the Incarnation constituted the Atonement, and that all thought of expiation may be eliminated. Henry B. Smith far better summed up the gospel in the words: “Incarnation in order to Atonement.”We regard as still better the words: “Incarnation in order to reveal the Atonement.”

A propitiation: Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, ... in his blood ... that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus.” A full and critical exposition of this passage will be found under the Ethical Theory of the Atonement, pages 750-760. Here it is sufficient to say that it shows: (1) that Christ's death is a propitiatory sacrifice; (2) that its first and main effect is upon God; (3) that the particular attribute [pg 720]in God which demands the atonement is his justice, or holiness; (4) that the satisfaction of this holiness is the necessary condition of God's justifying the believer.

Compare Luke 18:13, marg.—“God, be thou merciful unto me the sinner”; lit.: “God be propitiated toward me the sinner”—by the sacrifice, whose smoke was ascending before the publican, even while he prayed. Heb. 2:17—“a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people”; 1 John 2:2—“and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the whole world”; 4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins”; cf. Gen. 32:20, lxx.—“I will appease [ἐξιλάσομαι, “propitiate”] him with the present that goeth before me”; Prov. 16:14, lxx.—“The wrath of a king is as messengers of death; but a wise man will pacify it” [ἐξιλάσεται, “propitiate it”].

On propitiation, see Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 216—“Something was thereby done which rendered God inclined to pardon the sinner. God is made inclined to forgive sinners by the sacrifice, because his righteousness was exhibited by the infliction of the penalty of sin; but not because he needed to be inclined in heart to love the sinner or to exercise his mercy. In fact, it was he himself who ‘set forth’Jesus as ‘a propitiation’ (Rom. 3:25, 26).” Paul never merges the objective atonement in its subjective effects, although no writer of the New Testament has more fully recognized these subjective effects. With him Christ for us upon the Cross is the necessary preparation for Christ in us by his Spirit. Gould, Bib. Theol. N. T., 74, 75, 89, 172, unwarrantably contrasts Paul's representation of Christ as priest with what he calls the representation of Christ as prophet in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “The priest says: Man's return to God is not enough,—there must be an expiation of man's sin. This is Paul's doctrine. The prophet says: There never was a divine provision for sacrifice. Man's return to God is the thing wanted. But this return must be completed. Jesus is the perfect prophet who gives us an example of restored obedience, and who comes in to perfect man's imperfect work. This is the doctrine of the Epistle to the Hebrews.”This recognition of expiation in Paul's teaching, together with denial of its validity and interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews as prophetic rather than priestly, is a curiosity of modern exegesis.

Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 107-127, goes still further and affirms: “In the N. T. God is never said to be propitiated, nor is it ever said that Jesus Christ propitiates God or satisfies God's wrath.” Yet Dr. Abbott adds that in the N. T. God is represented as self-propitiated: “Christianity is distinguished from paganism by representing God as appeasing his own wrath and satisfying his own justice by the forth-putting of his own love.” This self-propitiation however must not be thought of as a bearing of penalty: “Nowhere in the O. T. is the idea of a sacrifice coupled with the idea of penalty,—it is always coupled with purification—‘with his stripes we are healed’ (Is. 53:5). And in the N. T., ‘the Lamb of God ... taketh away the sin of the world’ (John 1:29); ‘the blood of Jesus ... cleanseth’ (1 John 1:7).... What humanity needs is not the removal of the penalty, but removal of the sin.” This seems to us a distinct contradiction of both Paul and John, with whom propitiation is an essential of Christian doctrine (see Rom. 3:25; 1 John 2:2), while we grant that the propitiation is made, not by sinful man, but by God himself in the person of his Son. See George B. Gow, on The Place of Expiation in Human Redemption, Am. Jour. Theol., 1900:734-756.

A substitution: Luke 22:37—“he was reckoned with transgressors”; cf. Lev. 16:21, 22—“and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel ... he shall put them upon the head of the goat ... and the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land”; Is. 53:5, 6—“he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” John 10:11—“the good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep”; Rom. 5:6-8—“while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: for peradventure for the good man some one would even dare to die. But God commendeth his own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”; 1 Pet. 3:18—“Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.”

To these texts we must add all those mentioned under (b) above, in which Christ's death is described as a ransom. Besides Meyer's comment, there quoted, on Mat. 20:28—“to give his life a ransom for many,” λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν—Meyer also says: “ἀντί denotes substitution. That which is given as a ransom takes the place of, is given instead of, those who are to be set free in consideration thereof. Ἀντί can only be understood in the sense of substitution in the act of which the ransom is presented as an equivalent, to secure the deliverance of those on whose behalf the ransom is paid,—a view which is only confirmed by the fact that, in other parts of the N. T., this ransom is usually spoken of as an expiatory sacrifice. That which they [those for whom the ransom is paid] are [pg 721]redeemed from, is the eternal ἀπώλεια in which, as having the wrath of God abiding upon them, they would remain imprisoned, as in a state of hopeless bondage, unless the guilt of their sins were expiated.”

Cremer, N. T. Lex., says that “in both the N. T. texts, Mat. 16:26 and Mark 8:37, the word ἀντάλλαγμα, like λύτρον, is akin to the conception of atonement: cf. Is. 43:3, 4; 51:11; Amos 5:12. This is a confirmation of the fact that satisfaction and substitution essentially belong to the idea of atonement.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:515 (Syst. Doct., 3:414)—“Mat. 20:28 contains the thought of a substitution. While the whole world is not of equal worth with the soul, and could not purchase it, Christ's death and work are so valuable, that they can serve as a ransom.”

The sufferings of the righteous were recognized in Rabbinical Judaism as having a substitutionary significance for the sins of others; see Weber, Altsynagog. Palestin. Theologie, 314; Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes, 2:466 (translation, div. II, vol. 2:186). But Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:225-262, says this idea of vicarious satisfaction was an addition of Paul to the teaching of Jesus. Wendt grants that both Paul and John taught substitution, but he denies that Jesus did. He claims that ἀντί in Mat. 20:28 means simply that Jesus gave his life as a means whereby he obtains the deliverance of many. But this interpretation is a non-natural one, and violates linguistic usage. It holds that Paul and John misunderstood or misrepresented the words of our Lord. We prefer the frank acknowledgment by Pfleiderer that Jesus, as well as Paul and John, taught substitution, but that neither one of them was correct. Colestock, on Substitution as a Stage in Theological Thought, similarly holds that the idea of substitution must be abandoned. We grant that the idea of substitution needs to be supplemented by the idea of sharing, and so relieved of its external and mechanical implications, but that to abandon the conception itself is to abandon faith in the evangelists and in Jesus himself.

Dr. W. N. Clarke, in his Christian Theology, rejects the doctrine of retribution for sin, and denies the possibility of penal suffering for another. A proper view of penalty, and of Christ's vital connection with humanity, would make these rejected ideas not only credible but inevitable. Dr. Alvah Hovey reviews Dr. Clarke's Theology, Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:205—“If we do not import into the endurance of penalty some degree of sinful feeling or volition, there is no ground for denying that a holy being may bear it in place of a sinner. For nothing but wrong-doing, or approval of wrong-doing, is impossible to a holy being. Indeed, for one to bear for another the just penalty of his sin, provided that other may thereby be saved from it and made a friend of God, is perhaps the highest conceivable function of love or good-will.” Denney, Studies, 126, 127, shows that “substitution means simply that man is dependent for his acceptance with God upon something which Christ has done for him, and which he could never have done and never needs to do for himself.... The forfeiting of his free life has freed our forfeited lives. This substitution can be preached, and it binds men to Christ by making them forever dependent on him. The condemnation of our sins in Christ upon his cross is the barb on the hook,—without it your bait will be taken, but you will not catch men; you will not annihilate pride, and make Christ the Alpha and Omega in man's redemption.” On the Scripture proofs, see Crawford, Atonement, 1:1-193; Dale, Atonement, 65-256; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iv. 2:243-342; Smeaton, Our Lord's and the Apostles' Doctrine of Atonement.

An examination of the passages referred to shows that, while the forms in which the atoning work of Christ is described are in part derived from moral, commercial, and legal relations, the prevailing language is that of sacrifice. A correct view of the atonement must therefore be grounded upon a proper interpretation of the institution of sacrifice, especially as found in the Mosaic system.

The question is sometimes asked: Why is there so little in Jesus' own words about atonement? Dr. R. W. Dale replies: Because Christ did not come to preach the gospel,—he came that there might be a gospel to preach. The Cross had to be endured, before it could be explained. Jesus came to be the sacrifice, not to speak about it. But his reticence is just what he told us we should find in his words. He proclaimed their incompleteness, and referred us to a subsequent Teacher—the Holy Spirit. The testimony of the Holy Spirit we have in the words of the apostles. We must remember that the gospels were supplementary to the epistles, not the epistles to the gospels. [pg 722]The gospels merely fill out our knowledge of Christ. It is not for the Redeemer to magnify the cost of salvation, but for the redeemed. “None of the ransomed ever knew.” The doer of a great deed has the least to say about it.

Harnack: “There is an inner law which compels the sinner to look upon God as a wrathful Judge.... Yet no other feeling is possible.” We regard this confession as a demonstration of the psychological correctness of Paul's doctrine of a vicarious atonement. Human nature has been so constituted by God that it reflects the demand of his holiness. That conscience needs to be appeased is proof that God needs to be appeased. When Whiton declares that propitiation is offered only to our conscience, which is the wrath of that which is of God within us, and that Christ bore our sins, not in substitution for us, but in fellowship with us, to rouse our consciences to hatred of them, he forgets that God is not only immanent in the conscience but also transcendent, and that the verdicts of conscience are only indications of the higher verdicts of God: 1 John 3:20—“if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” Lyman Abbott, Theology of an Evolutionist, 57—“A people half emancipated from the paganism that imagines that God must be placated by sacrifice before he can forgive sins gave to the sacrificial system that Israel had borrowed from paganism the same divine authority which they gave to those revolutionary elements in the system which were destined eventually to sweep it entirely out of existence.” So Bowne, Atonement, 74—“The essential moral fact is that, if God is to forgive unrighteous men, some way must be found of making them righteous. The difficulty is not forensic, but moral.” Both Abbott and Bowne regard righteousness as a mere form of benevolence, and the atonement as only a means to a utilitarian end, namely, the restoration and happiness of the creature. A more correct view of God's righteousness as the fundamental attribute of his being, as inwrought into the constitution of the universe, and as infallibly connecting suffering with sin, would have led these writers to see a divine wisdom and inspiration in the institution of sacrifice, and a divine necessity that God should suffer if man is to go free.

B. The Institution of Sacrifice, more especially as found in the Mosaic system.

(a) We may dismiss as untenable, on the one hand, the theory that sacrifice is essentially the presentation of a gift (Hofmann, Baring-Gould) or a feast (Spencer) to the Deity; and on the other hand the theory that sacrifice is a symbol of renewed fellowship (Keil), or of the grateful offering to God of the whole life and being of the worshiper (Bähr). Neither of these theories can explain the fact that the sacrifice is a bloody offering, involving the suffering and death of the victim, and brought, not by the simply grateful, but by the conscience-stricken soul.

For the views of sacrifice here mentioned, see Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, II, 1:214-294; Baring-Gould, Origin and Devel. of Relig. Belief, 368-390; Spencer, De Legibus Hebræorum; Keil, Bib. Archäologie, sec. 43, 47; Bähr, Symbolik des Mosaischen Cultus, 2:196, 269; also synopsis of Bähr's view, in Bib. Sac., Oct. 1870:593; Jan. 1871:171. Per contra, see Crawford, Atonement, 228-240; Lange, Introd. to Com. on Exodus, 38—“The heathen change God's symbols into myths (rationalism), as the Jews change God's sacrifices into meritorious service (ritualism).” Westcott, Hebrews, 281-294, seems to hold with Spencer that sacrifice is essentially a feast made as an offering to God. So Philo: “God receives the faithful offerer to his own table, giving him back part of the sacrifice.” Compare with this the ghosts in Homer's Odyssey, who receive strength from drinking the blood of the sacrifices. Bähr's view is only half of the truth. Reunion presupposes Expiation. Lyttleton, in Lux Mundi, 281—“The sinner must first expiate his sin by suffering,—then only can he give to God the life thus purified by an expiatory death.” Jahn, Bib. Archæology, sec. 373, 378—“It is of the very idea of the sacrifice that the victim shall be presented directly to God, and in the presentation shall be destroyed.” Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 253, speaks of the delicate feeling of the Biblical critic who, with his mouth full of beef or mutton, professes to be shocked at the cruelty to animals involved in the temple sacrifices. Lord Bacon: “Hieroglyphics came before letters, and parables before arguments.” “The old dispensation was God's great parable to man. The Theocracy was graven all over with divine hieroglyphics. Does there exist the Rosetta stone by which we can read these hieroglyphics? [pg 723]The shadows, that have been shortening up into definiteness of outline, pass away and vanish utterly under the full meridian splendor of the Sun of Righteousness.” On Eph. 1:7—“the blood of Christ,” as an expiatory sacrifice which secures our justification, see Salmond, in Expositor's Greek Testament.

(b) The true import of the sacrifice, as is abundantly evident from both heathen and Jewish sources, embraced three elements,—first, that of satisfaction to offended Deity, or propitiation offered to violated holiness; secondly, that of substitution of suffering and death on the part of the innocent, for the deserved punishment of the guilty; and, thirdly, community of life between the offerer and the victim. Combining these three ideas, we have as the total import of the sacrifice: Satisfaction by substitution, and substitution by incorporation. The bloody sacrifice among the heathen expressed the consciousness that sin involves guilt; that guilt exposes man to the righteous wrath of God; that without expiation of that guilt there is no forgiveness; and that through the suffering of another who shares his life the sinner may expiate his sin.

Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 170, quotes from Nägelsbach, Nachhomerische Theologie, 338 sq.—“The essence of punishment is retribution (Vergeltung), and retribution is a fundamental law of the world-order. In retribution lies the atoning power of punishment. This consciousness that the nature of sin demands retribution, in other words, this certainty that there is in Deity a righteousness that punishes sin, taken in connection with the consciousness of personal transgression, awakens the longing for atonement,”—which is expressed in the sacrifice of a slaughtered beast. The Greeks recognized representative expiation, not only in the sacrifice of beasts, but in human sacrifices. See examples in Tyler, Theol. Gk. Poets, 196, 197, 245-253; see also Virgil, Æneid, 5:815—“Unum pro multis dabitur caput”; Ovid, Fasti, vi—“Cor pro corde, precor; pro fibris sumite fibras. Hanc animam vobis pro meliore damus.”

Stahl, Christliche Philosophie, 146—“Every unperverted conscience declares the eternal law of righteousness that punishment shall follow inevitably on sin. In the moral realm, there is another way of satisfying righteousness—that of atonement. This differs from punishment in its effect, that is, reconciliation,—the moral authority asserting itself, not by the destruction of the offender, but by taking him up into itself and uniting itself to him. But the offender cannot offer his own sacrifice,—that must be done by the priest.” In the Prometheus Bound, of Æschylus, Hermes says to Prometheus: “Hope not for an end to such oppression, until a god appears as thy substitute in torment, ready to descend for thee into the unillumined realm of Hades and the dark abyss of Tartarus.” And this is done by Chiron, the wisest and most just of the Centaurs, the son of Chronos, sacrificing himself for Prometheus, while Hercules kills the eagle at his breast and so delivers him from torment. This legend of Æschylus is almost a prediction of the true Redeemer. See article on Sacrifice, by Paterson, in Hastings, Bible Dictionary.

Westcott, Hebrews, 282, maintains that the idea of expiatory offerings, answering to the consciousness of sin, does not belong to the early religion of Greece. We reply that Homer's Iliad, in its first book, describes just such an expiatory offering made to Phœbus Apollo, so turning away his wrath and causing the plague that wastes the Greeks to cease. E. G. Robinson held that there is “no evidence that the Jews had any idea of the efficacy of sacrifice for the expiation of moral guilt.” But in approaching either the tabernacle or the temple the altar always presented itself before the laver. H. Clay Trumbull, S. S. Times, Nov. 30, 1901:801—“The Passover was not a passing by of the houses of Israelites, but a passing over or crossing over by Jehovah to enter the homes of those who would welcome him and who had entered into covenant with him by sacrifice. The Oriental sovereign was accompanied by his executioner, who entered to smite the first-born of the house only when there was no covenanting at the door.” We regard this explanation as substituting an incidental result and effect of sacrifice for the sacrifice itself. This always had in it the idea of reparation for wrong-doing by substitutionary suffering.

Curtis, Primitive Semitic Religion of To-day, on the Significance of Sacrifice, 218-237, tells us that he went to Palestine prepossessed by Robertson Smith's explanation that [pg 724]sacrifice was a feast symbolizing friendly communion between man and his God. He came to the conclusion that the sacrificial meal was not the primary element, but that there was a substitutionary value in the offering. Gift and feast are not excluded; but these are sequences and incidentals. Misfortune is evidence of sin; sin needs to be expiated; the anger of God needs to be removed. The sacrifice consisted principally in the shedding of the blood of the victim. The “bursting forth of the blood” satisfied and bought off the Deity. George Adam Smith on Isaiah 53 (2:364)—“Innocent as he is, he gives his life as a satisfaction to the divine law for the guilt of his people. His death was no mere martyrdom or miscarriage of human justice: in God's intent and purpose, but also by its own voluntary offering, it was an expiatory sacrifice. There is no exegete but agrees to this. 353—The substitution of the servant of Jehovah for the guilty people and the redemptive force of that substitution are no arbitrary doctrine.”

Satisfaction means simply that there is a principle in God's being which not simply refuses sin passively, but also opposes it actively. The judge, if he be upright, must repel a bribe with indignation, and the pure woman must flame out in anger against an infamous proposal. R. W. Emerson: “Your goodness must have some edge to it,—else it is none.” But the judge and the woman do not enjoy this repelling,—they suffer rather. So God's satisfaction is no gloating over the pain or loss which he is compelled to inflict. God has a wrath which is calm, judicial, inevitable—the natural reaction of holiness against unholiness. Christ suffers both as one with the inflicter and as one with those on whom punishment is inflicted: “For Christ also pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me” (Rom. 15:3; cf. Ps. 69:9).

(c) In considering the exact purport and efficacy of the Mosaic sacrifices, we must distinguish between their theocratical, and their spiritual, offices. They were, on the one hand, the appointed means whereby the offender could be restored to the outward place and privileges, as member of the theocracy, which he had forfeited by neglect or transgression; and they accomplished this purpose irrespectively of the temper and spirit with which they were offered. On the other hand, they were symbolic of the vicarious sufferings and death of Christ, and obtained forgiveness and acceptance with God only as they were offered in true penitence, and with faith in God's method of salvation.

Heb. 9:13, 14—“For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling them that have been defiled, sanctify unto the cleanness of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” 10:3, 4—“But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sins year by year. For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.” Christ's death also, like the O. T. sacrifices, works temporal benefit even to those who have no faith; see pages 771, 772.

Robertson, Early Religion of Israel, 441, 448, answers the contention of the higher critics that, in the days of Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, Jeremiah, no Levitical code existed; that these prophets expressed disapproval of the whole sacrificial system, as a thing of mere human device and destitute of divine sanction. But the Book of the Covenant surely existed in their day, with its command: “An altar of earth shalt thou make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt-offerings” (Ex. 20:24). Or, if it is maintained that Isaiah condemned even that early piece of legislation, it proves too much, for it would make the prophet also condemn the Sabbath as a piece of will-worship, and even reject prayer as displeasing to God, since in the same connection he says: “new moon and Sabbath ... I cannot away with ... when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you” (Is. 1:13-15). Isaiah was condemning simply heartless sacrifice; else we make him condemn all that went on at the temple. Micah 6:8—“what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly?” This does not exclude the offering of sacrifice, for Micah anticipates the time when “the mountain of Jehovah's house shall be established on the top of the mountains, ... And many nations shall go and say, Come ye and let us go up to the mountain of Jehovah” (Micah 4:1, 2). Hos. 6:6—“I desire goodness, and not sacrifice,” is interpreted by what follows, “and the knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings.” Compare Prov. 8:10; 17:12; and Samuel's words: “to obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Sam. 15:22). What was the altar from which Isaiah drew his description of God's theophany and from which was taken the live coal that touched his lips and prepared him to be a prophet? (Is. 6:1-8). Jer. 7:22—“I spake not ... concerning burnt-offerings or sacrifices ... but this thing ... Hearken unto my voice.” Jeremiah insists only on the worthlessness of sacrifice where there is no heart.

[pg 725]

(d) Thus the Old Testament sacrifices, when rightly offered, involved a consciousness of sin on the part of the worshiper, the bringing of a victim to atone for the sin, the laying of the hand of the offerer upon the victim's head, the confession of sin by the offerer, the slaying of the beast, the sprinkling or pouring-out of the blood upon the altar, and the consequent forgiveness of the sin and acceptance of the worshiper. The sin-offering and the scape-goat of the great day of atonement symbolized yet more distinctly the two elementary ideas of sacrifice, namely, satisfaction and substitution, together with the consequent removal of guilt from those on whose behalf the sacrifice was offered.

Lev. 1:4—“And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the burnt-offering; and it shall be accepted for him, to make atonement for him”; 4:20—“Thus shall he do with the bullock; as he did with the bullock of the sin-offering, so shall he do with this; and the priest shall make atonement for them, and they shall be forgiven”; so 31 and 35—“and the priest shall make atonement for him as touching his sin that he hath sinned, and he shall be forgiven”; so 5:10, 16; 6:7. Lev. 17:11—“For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life.”

The patriarchal sacrifices were sin-offerings, as the sacrifice of Job for his friends witnesses: Job 42:7-9—“My wrath is kindled against thee [Eliphaz] ... therefore, take unto you seven bullocks ... and offer up for yourselves a burnt-offering”; cf. 33:24—“Then God is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit, I have found a ransom”; 1:5—Job offered burnt-offerings for his sons, for he said, “It may be that my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their hearts”; Gen. 8:20—Noah “offered burnt-offerings on the altar”; 21—“and Jehovah smelled the sweet savor; and Jehovah said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake.”

That vicarious suffering is intended in all these sacrifices, is plain from Lev. 16:1-34—the account of the sin-offering and the scape-goat of the great day of atonement, the full meaning of which we give below; also from Gen. 22:13—“Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead of his son”; Ex. 32:30-32—where Moses says: “Ye have sinned a great sin: and now I will go up unto Jehovah; peradventure I shall make atonement for your sin. And Moses returned unto Jehovah, and said, Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now, if thou wilt forgive their sin—; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written.” See also Deut. 21:1-9—the expiation of an uncertain murder, by the sacrifice of a heifer,—where Oehler, O. T. Theology, 1:389, says: “Evidently the punishment of death incurred by the manslayer is executed symbolically upon the heifer.” In Is. 53:1-12—“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all ... stripes ... offering for sin”—the ideas of both satisfaction and substitution are still more plain.