BT 75 .M55 v. 2, c.2 Miley, John, 1813-1895 Systematic theology V7 CjDp n '- 4- BIBL] THE LIBRARY OF [CAL AND THEOLOGICAL LITERATI IRE. EDITED BY REV. GEORGE R. CROOKS, D.D.. LI.D., VOL. I. BISHOP JOHN F. HURST, D.D., LL.D. $4 00 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. By Rev. Henry M. Harman, D.D. " 11. BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS. By Rev. Milton S. Terry. D.D., LL.D 3 00 " 111. THEOLOGICAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA AND METH- ODOLOGY. By Rev. George R. Crooks, D.D., LL.D.. and Bishop John F. Hurst, D.D.. LL.D., . 3 50 '• IV. CHRISTIAN ARCHAEOLOGY. By Rev. Charles W. Bennett, D.D. With an Introductory Notice by Dr. Ferdinand Piper 3 50 " V. SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. Vol. 1. By Rev. John Miley, D.D.. LL.D 3 00 •' VI. SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. Vol. 11. By Rev. John Miley. D.D., LL.D 3 00 LIBRARY BIBLICAL AND THEOLOCtICAL LITERATURE EDITED BY GEORGE R. CROOKS, D.D. AND JOHN F. HURST, D.D. VOL. VI -SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS CINCINNATI : CURTS & JENNINGS PUBLISHERS' ANNOUNCEMENT. rpHE design of the Editors and Publishers of the Biblical AND Theological Libkaey is to furnish ministers and lay- men with a series of works which, in connection with the Commentaries now issuing, shall make a compendious appa- ratus for study. While the theology of the volumes will be in harmony with the doctrinal standards of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the aim will be to make the entire Library acceptable to all evangelical Christians. The following writers Mall co-operate in the authorship of the series : Dr. Harman, on the Introduction to the Study of the Holy Scriptures ; Dr. Terry, on Biblical Hermeneutics ; Dr. Bennett, on Christian Archaeology ; Dr. Miley, on System- atic Theology ; the Editors, on Theological Encyclopaedia and Methodology ; Dr. Ridgaway, on the Evidences of Cliristianity ; Prof. Charles J. Little, on Christian Theism and Modern Spec- ulative Thought ; Dr. Crooks, on the History of Christian Doctrine ; and Bishop Hurst, on the History of the Christian Church. The volumes on Litroduction to the Scriptures, Bib- lical Hermeneutics, Theological Encyclopaedia and Methodology, Christian Archaeology, and the first volume of the Systematic Theology have now been issued. In the case of every treatise the latest literature will be con- sulted, and its results incorporated. The works comprised in the series will be printed in full octavo size, and finished in the best style of typography and binding. Systematic Theology Tlacra }'pa(j>7i &E6TrvevaToc Kal u(j)E?.tfioc Trpog 6/6aoKa7iiav.—iiT. PAUL The whole drift of the Scripture of God, what is it but to teach Theology ? Theology, what is it but the Science of things divine ? What Science can be attained unto without the help of natural Discourse and Reason ? — Hooker JOHN MILEY, D.D., LL.D. Professor of Systematic Theology in Drew Theological Seminary^ Madison, New Jersey VOLUME II NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS CINCINNATI: CURTS & JENNINGS Copyright, 1894, by HUNT & EATON New York TABLE OF CONTENTS. PART IV.— CHRISXOLOGY. CHAPTER I. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. I. Construction of the Doctrine. page 1. Importance of a True Doctrine 4 2. Early Need of Doctrinal Construction 5 3. Formula of the Council of Chalcedon 6 II. Elements of the Doctrine. 1. The Divine Nature of Christ 10 2. The Human Nature of Christ 10 3. The Personal Oneness of Christ 12 CHAPTER II. THE DIVINE INCARNATION. I. Doctrine of the Incarnation. 1. Ground of the Person of Christ 14 2. The Incarnation a Truth of Scripture 14 8. Incarnation of the Personal Son 17 II. The Two Natures in Personal Oneness. 1. The Result of the Incarnation 18 2. The Catholic Doctrine 18 3. Mystery of the Doctrine 19 CHAPTER III. CHRIST IS THEANTHROPIC. I. Theanthropic in Personality. 1. Permanent Duality of His Natures 23 2. Communion of Attributes in His Personality 24 3. Truth of a Theanthropic Personality 24 4. A Necessity to the Atonement 26 II. The Interpretation of Christologrical Pacts. 1. Facts of Divinity Ascribed to Christ 27 2. Facts of Humanity Ascribed to Christ 27 3. Divine Facts Ascribed to Christ as Human 28 4. Human Facts Ascribed to Christ as Divine 28 vi CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. I. Sympathy through Common Suffering. page 1 . A True and Deep Law of Sympathy 30 2. Law of the Sympathy of Christ 31 8. The Law Appropriated in the Incarnation 31 4. Thorough Appropriation of the Law 32 II. The Consciousness of Christ in Suffering. 1. Deeper than a Human Consciousness 36 2. Else, only a Human Sympathy 36 3. An Utterly Insufficient Sympathy 36 HI. Suffering in a Theanthropic Consciousness. 1. Concerning a Human Consciousness of the Divine 88 2. Divine Consciousness of the Human 39 3. A Possibility of the Divine Consciousness 40 4. Real Ground of the Sympathy of Christ 42 5. Light on the Person of Christ 43 CHAPTER V. LEADING ERRORS IN CHRISTOLOGY, I. Earlier Errors. 1. Ebionism 45 2. Gnosticism 46 3. Arianism 48 4. Apollinai'ianism 49 5. Nestorianism 51 6. Eutychianism : 52 II. Later Errors. 1. The Socinian Christology ; 54 2. The Lutheran Christology 55 3. The Kenotic Christology 59 PART v.— SOXERIOLOGY. THE ATONEMENT IN CHRIST. PRELIMINARIES. 1 . Soteriology 65 2. Atonement as Fact and Doctrine 65 3. Relation of the Doctrine to other Doctrines 66 4. Definition of the Atonement 68 CHAPTER L REALITY OF ATONEMENT, "Witnessing Facts. 1. A Message of Salvation 70 2. The Salvation in Christ 70 CONTENTS. vii PAGE 3. Salvation in His Suffering 71 4. His Redeeming Deatli Necessary Vl 5. Only Explanation of His Suffering '72 H. Necessity of Faith to Salvation "72 7. Priesthood and Sacrifice ''4 8. Christ a Unique Saviour V7 II. Witnessing Terms. 1 . Atonement '9 2. Reconciliation 81 3. Propitiation 83 4. Redemption 84 5. Substitution 87 CHAPTER II. NECESSITY FOR ATONEMENT. I. Ground of Necessity in Moral Government. 1. Fact of a Moral Government 90 2. Requisites of a Moral Government 90 3. Divine Determination of Rewards 92 4. Measure of Penalty 92 II. Necessity for Penalty. 1. From its Rectoral Office 94 2. From the Divine Holiness 94 3. From the Divine Goodness 95 4. A Real Necessity for Atonement 95 6. Nature of the Atonement Indicated 95 CHAPTER III. SCHEMES WITHOUT ATONEMENT. I. Blessedness After the Penalty. 1. Salvation Excluded 97 2. Final Blessedness Really a Salvation 98 3. Impossible under Endless Penalty 98 II. Salvation through. Sovereign Forgiveness. 1 . An Assumption Against Facts 98 2. Contrary to Divine Government 99 3. Subversive of All Government 99 III. Forgiveness on Bepentance. 1 . Repentance Necessary 100 2. The Only Kind Naturally Possible 100 3. Such Repentance Inevitable 101 4. "Without any Deep Sense of Sin 101 5. True Repentance Only by Grace 101 IV. Some Special Facts. 1. Forgiving One Another 102 2. Parental Forgiveness 103 3. Parable of the Prodigal Son 103 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. THEORIES OF ATONEMENT. I. Preliminaries. page 1. Earlier Views of Atonement 106 2. Inception of a Scientific Treatment 107 3. Popular Number of Theories 109 4. Scientific Enumeration 109 5. Ground for Only Two Theories 112 II. Summary Reviews. 1. Theory of Vicarious Repentance 113 2. Theory of Redemption by Love 114 3. Theory of Self-propitiation by Self-sacrifice 115 4. Realistic Theory 119 5. Mystical Theory 119 6. Middle Theory 120 7. Theory of Conditional Penal Substitution 121 8. Leading Theories 123 CHAPTER V. THEORY OF MORAL INFLUENCE. I. Facts of the Theory. 1. The Redemptive Law 125 2. Socinian 126 3. Its Dialectics 126 4. Truth of Moral Influence 127 II. Its Kefutation. 1. By the Fact of an Atonement 129 2. By its Necessity 131 3. By the Peculiar Saving Work of Christ 131 4. Not a Theory of Atonement 132 CHAPTER VI. THEORY OF SATISFACTION. I. Preliminaries. 1 . Position in Doctrinal Faith 133 2. Formation of the Doctrine 133 3. Two Factors of the Atonement 134 4. Concerned with the Penal Substitution 135 II. Elements of the Theory. 1. Satisfaction of Justice in Punishment 135 2. Through Penal Substitution 136 3. Three Forms of the Substitution 136 4. An Absolute Substitution 137 III. Justice and Atonement. 1. Their Intimate Relation 138 2. Distinctions of Justice 139 3. Punitive Justice and Satisfaction 139 CONTENTS. ix IV. Principles of the Theory. page 1. The Demerit of Sin 140 2. A Divine Punitive Justice HO 3. Sin Ought to be Punished 141 4. Penal Satisfaction a Necessity of Justice 14 1 v. The Satisfaction Impossible by Substitution. 1. The Satisfaction Necessary 143 2. The Substitution Maintained 144 3. No Answer to the Necessity 145 4. No Such Answer Possible 147 6. The Theory Self -destructive 148 VI. Pacts of the Theory in Objection. 1. The Punishment of Christ 148 2. Redeemed Sinners Without Guilt 149 3. A Limited Atonement 153 4. Element of Commutative Justice 163 CHAPTER VII. GOVERNMKNTAL THEORY. I. Preliminary Facts. 1. Substitutional Atonement 155 2. Conditional Substitution 1 56 3. Substitution in Suffering 1 56 4. The Grotian Theory 159 5. The Consistent Arminian Theory 165 II. Public Justice. 1. Relation of Public Justice to Atonement 109 2. Public Justice One with Divine Justice 170 3. One with Distributive Justice 170 4. Ground of its Penalties 171 5. End of its Penalties 172 6. Remissibility of its Penalties 175 7. Place for Atonement 176 8. Nature of the Atonement Determined 176 III. Theory and Necessity for Atonement. 1. An Answer to the Real Necessity 176 2. Grounded in the Deepest Necessity 177 3. Rectoral Value of Penalty 178 4. Rectoral Value of Atonement 180 6. Only Sufficient Atonement 1 83 6. True Sense of Satisfaction 184: IV. Theory and Scripture Interpretation. 1. Terms of Divine Wrath 184 2. Terms of Divine Righteousness 186 3. Terms of Atonement 186 4. Terms of Atoning Suffering 187 X CONTENTS. V. Theory and Scripture Facts. pauk 1. Guilt of Redeemed Sinners 19(» 2. Forgiveness in Justification 192 3. Grace in Forgiveness 192 4. Universality of Atonement 19:^ 5. Universal Overture of Grace 193 6. Doctrinal Result 194 CHAPTER VIII. SUFFICIENCT OF THE ATOKEMENT. I. The Holiness of Christ. 1 . A Necessary Element 195 2. Scripture View 195 II. His Greatness. 1. An Element of Atoning Value 196 2. An Infinite Value in Christ 196 III. His Voluntariness. 1. A Necessary Fact 196 2. Christ a Voluntary Substitute 193 3. The Atoning Value 197 IV. His Divine Sonship. 1. Sense of Atoning Value 197 2. Measure of Value ^98 V. His Human Brotherhood. 1. Mediation must Express an Interest 199 2. The Principle in Atonement * 199 VI. His Suffering. 1. Extreme Views 200 2. A Necessary Element 200 3. An Infinite Sufficiency 201 CHAPTER IX. OBJKCTIONS TO THE ATONEMENT. I. An Irrational Scheme. 1. A Pretentious Assumption 203 2. Analogies of Providence a Vindication 203 II. A Violation of Justice. 1 . No Infringement of Rights 204 2. Analogy of Vicarious Suffering 204 3. The Atonement Clear of Injustice 204 4. Vantage-ground against the Moral Theory. . . 205 III. A Keleasement from Duty. 1 . Fatal, if Valid 205 2. Nugatory against the True Doctrine 206 CONTENTS. xi IV. An Aspersion of Divine Goodness. page 1 . Reason of Law and Penalty 206 2. No Aspersion of Divine Goodness 207 3. Divine Love Magnified 207 CHAPTER X. A LESSON FOR ALL INTELLIGENCES. I. Kelations of the Atonement. 1. A Salvation for Man Only 208 2. Broader Relation to Moral Beings 208 8. A Practical Lesson for All 209 II. A Lesson of Universallnterest. 1. Higher Orders Interested in Redemption 210 2. Meaning of the Lordship of Christ 211 3. Moral Grandeur of the Atonement 214 CHAPTER XL UNIVERSALITY OF THE ATONEMENT. I. Determining Law of Extent. 1. Intrinsic Sufficiency for All 218 2. Divine Destination Determinative of Extent 219 3. The True Inquiry 221 II. Pleasure of the Father. 1 . Question of His Sovereignty 222 2. In One Relation to All 223 3. All in a Common State of Evil 223 4. Voice of the Divine Perfections 223 III. Pleasure of the Son. 1. Application of Preceding Facts 22.5 2. Atoning Work the Same 225 .". A Question of His Love 225 IV. Scripture Testimony. 1. Proof-texts for Limitation 226 2. Proof-texts for Universality 227 3. Redemption in Extent of the Evil of Sin 228 4. Testimony of the Great Commission 229 V. Fallacies in Defense of Limitation. 1. Facts Admitted .' 232 2. Inconsistent with the Divine Sincerity 232 3. Sufficiency of Atonement in Vindication 232 4. True Sense of Sufficiency 233 5. Sufficiency only with Divine Destination 233 fi. Limited in the Scheme of Satisfaction 234 7. Assumption of Only a Seeming Inconsistency 237 8. Mixed State of Elect and Non-elect 238 9. Distinction of Secret and Preceptive Divine Will 239 CONTENTS. TEE SALVATION IN CHRIST. CHAPTER I. BENEFITS OF THE ATONEMENT. I. Immediate Benefits. page 1. The Present Life 24 .> 2. Gracious Help for All 245 3. Capacity for Probation 24(> 4. Infant Salvation 247 II. Conditional Benefits. 1. Meaning of Conditional Benefits 248 2. The Conditionality of Salvation 249 3. The Great Facts of Salvation Severally Conditional 252 CHAPTER II. DOCTRINAL ISSUES. I. Doctrine of Predestination. 1. Divine Decrees 254 2. Predestination 260 3. Election 260 4. Reprobation 263 II. Other Points in Issue. 1. Limitation of the Atonement 266 2. Moral Xecessity 266 3. Irresistibility of Saving Grace 267 4. Absolute Final Perseverance 268 CHAPTER III. FREE AGENCY. I. The Freedom in Question. 1. Not the Freedom of Things 271 2. Not the Freedom of External Action 271 3. Not the Freedom of the Will 272 4. The True Question of Freedom 273 5. Importance of the Question 274 6. Theoretical Forms of Necessity 275 II. On the Domination of Motive. 1. Choice as the Stronger Motive 277 2. Ascertainment of the Stronger Motive 278 3. Necessity in Motive Domination 278 4. A Law of Universal Necessity 279 III. On Choosing as "We Please. 1. As a Formula of Freedom 280 2. A Nullity for Freedom 281 3. Consistent with Determining Inclination 281 4. Indifferent whence or what the Inclination 282 CONTENTS. xiii IV. Mental Facts of Choice. page 1. Freedom of Choice a Question of Psychology 283 2. Need of All the Mental Facts 284 3. Deficiency of the Usual Analysis 284 4. The Facts in a Complete Analysis 286 5. The Facts Conclusive of Freedom 287 CHAPTER IV. FREEDOM OF CHOICE. I. Rationality of Choice. 1. Motive and Choice 288 2. Rational Character of Choice 289 3. Rational Conduct of Life 289 II. Rational Suspension of Choice. 1. Meaning of Rational Suspension 291 2. Omissions of the Suspension 291 3. Power of Suspension Manifest 292 4. Only Account of Noble Lives 292 III. Immediate Power of Suspension. 1. Denial of the Power 293 2. A Denial of Personal Agency 294 3. Suspension of Choice not Choice 295 4. The Immediate Power Manifest 295 IV. Power over Motives. 1. Motive States of Mind 297 2. Laws of Motive States 297 3. Power over the Laws of Motive States 298 4. Power over Motives 301 V. Sufficient Motives for Required Choices. 1. Objective Motives 303 2. Rational Motives 303 3. Moral and Religious Motives 303 4. Power of Commanding the Requisite Motives 304 5. True Freedom of Choice 306 CHAPTER V. JUSTIFICATION. The Nature of Justification. 1. Terminology of the Subject 309 2. Forensic View of Justification 309 3. The Vital Fact of Forgiveness 310 4. The Use of Forensic Terms 311 5. A Change of Legal Status 312 9 » xiv CONTENTS. II. The Ground of Justification. page 1 . In Socinianism 313 2. In Romanism 313 G, In Calvinism 314 4. In Arminianism 317 5. Justification Purely of Grace 318 III. The Condition of Justification. 1. Faith the One Condition 318 2. The Imputation of Faith for Righteousness 319 3. Faith in Christ the Condition 320 4. Nature of the Faith 321 5. Harmony of Paul and James 324 CHAPTER VI. REGENERATION. I. The Nature of Begeneration. 1. In the Light of the Scriptures 327 2. Representative Terms 329 3. Analogical Interpretation 329 4. Deeper Principle of Interpretation 330 6. Other Forms of Presentation 331 6. The New Life 332 II. The "Work of the Holy Spirit. 1. Testimony of the Scriptures 333 2. Immediate Agency of the Spirit 334 3. The Only Efficient Agency 334 III. Begeneration and Sonship. 1. Regeneration the Ground of Sonship 337 2. Adoption and Sonship 337 3. The Heritage of Blessings 338 CHAPTER VII. ASSURANCE. I. The Doctrine. 1. Meaning of Assurance 839 2. Truth of Assurance 340 3. Sources of Assurance 341 II. "Witness of the Spirit. 1. A Distinct Witness 342 2. A Direct Witness 344 3. Manner of the Witnessing 347 III. "Witness of Our Own Spirit. 1. Nature of the Testimony 348 2. Illustrations of the Witnessing 348 3. Process of the Witnessing 350 CONTENTS. XV IV. The Assurance Given. page 1. Subjectively One 350 2. Variable in Degree 351 3. Thoroughly Valid 352 CHAPTER VIII. SANCTIFICATION. I. Meaning of Sanctification. 1. Ceremonial Sanctification 355 2. Deeper Moral Sense 356 3. Entire Sanctification 356 4. Two Spheres of the Sanctification. 357 II. Sanctification of the Nature. 1. Incomplete in Regeneration 357 2. Completion in Sanctification 362 3. Concerning Sin in the Regenerate 366 4. The Second- Blessing View 368 III. The Life in Holiness. 1. Portraiture of the Life 872 2. Grades in Graces 377 3. Law of Perfection in Graces 377 4. The Assurance of Sanctification 379 5. Sanctification a Common Privilege 382 CHAPTER IX. THE CHURCH. I. The Church and Means of Grace. ^ 1. Idea of the Church 386 2. Duty of Church Membership 388 3. Means of Grace 389 4. The Sacraments 392 II. Christian Baptism. 1. Meaning of the Rite 395 2. Mode of Administration 396 3. The Subjects of Baptism 404 m. The Lord's Supper. 1. Institution of the Supper 411 2. Nature of the Supper 411 3. Factitious Sacraments 414 IV. Constitution of the Chvirch. 1 . Laity and Ministry 415 2. Divine Vocation of the Ministry 415 3. Ecclesiastical Polity 416 CONTENTS. PART VI.— ESCHAXOLOGY. CHAPTER I. FUTURE EXISTENCE. I. The Spirituality of Mind. page 1 . Falsity of Materialism 423 2. Truth of Spirituality 425 3. The View of Scripture 426 II. The Immortality of Mind. 1. Spirituality as Proof of Immortality 42ft 2. A Question of the Divine Purpose 42 Y 3. Evidences of the Divine Purpose 427 CHAPTER II. THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. I. Question of an Intermediate Place. 1 . In the View of the Scriptures 430 2. In the Faith of the Church 431 II. A State of Conscious Existence. 1. The Common Christian Faith 432 2. The Clear Sense of Scripture 432 3. Review of Objections 434 III. Not a Probationary State. 1. Significant Silence of Scripture 436 2. Clear Sense of Scripture 435 3. The Question Respecting the Heathen 436 4. Not a Purgatorial State 438 CHAPTER III. THE SECOND ADTENT. I. Doctrine of the Advent. 1. A Personal, Visible Coming of Christ 440 2. Theory of a Merely Figurative Sense 441 3. The Premillennial Theory 443 II. The Advent in the Light of its Concomitants. 1 . The General Resurrection 443 2. The Final Judgment 444 3. The End of the World 445 CHAPTER IV. THE RESURRECTION. I. Doctrine of the Besurrection. 1 . The Sense of the Scriptures 448 2. Speculative Theories .' 452 3. The Resurrection Body 453 CONTENTS. xvii II. Credibility of the Kesurrection. page 1. A Divinely Purposed Futurity 454 2. Within the Plan of Redemption 454 3. Apparent Difficulties of the Doctrine 454 m. Oneness of the Resurrection. 1. Theories of Distinct Resurrections 45.") 2. Proof of the Oneness 456 CHAPTER V. THE J U n G M K N T . I. A Future Judgment. 1. Explicit Words of Scripture 458 2. Judgment after the Resurrection 459 II. A General Judgment. 1. The Scripture Proof 459 2. Manner of the Judgment 461 CHAPTER VI. FUTURE rUNISHMEST. I. Rational Proofs. 1. Reality of a Moral Governmeut 462 2. Under a Law of Equity 462 3. Present Omissions of the Law 462 4. Requirement of Future Punishment 465 II. Scripture Proofs. 1. Final Neglect of Salvation 465 2. Fact of Dying in Sin 465 3. Future Happiness only for the Righteous 466 4. Contemporary Doom of the Wicked 466 5. Punishment at the Final Advent 466 6. Resurrection to a Penal Doom 467 1. Final Judgment of Condemnation 467 III. Eternity of Punishment. 1. Recoil from the Doctrine 467 2. Fruitless Endeavor Toward a Rationale 468 3. Purely a Question of Revelation 469 4. Obvious Sense of Scripture 469 CHAPTER VIL FL'TL'KE BLESSEDNESS. I. Heaven a Place. 1. Sense of Place 472 2. Localism of Spiritual Beings 472 3. Requirement of the Resurrection 472 4. Pervasive Sense of Scripture 473 5. Location of Heaven 473 xviii CONTENTS. II. The Blessedness of Heaven. page 1 . Beauty of the Place 474 2. Elements of Blessedness 474 AF'F'ENDICES. I. INSPIRATION OF THK SCRIPTURES. I. Threefold Operation of the Spirit. 1 . Illumination of the Mediate Agent 481 2. Communication of the Truth 481 5. Agency in the Publication 482 4. Inspiration as the Requirement 482 II. Erroneous Theories of Inspiration. 1. Inspiration of Genius 48S 2. Special Religious Consciousness 488 3. Illumination and Elevation 483 4. Divine Superintendence 48S 6. The Mechanical Theory 484 III. The Dynamical Theory. 1. Sense of the Theory 486 2. Place for the Human Element 486 3. Clear of Serious Difficulty 486 4. Sufficient for a Revelation 486 IV. Inspiration and the Scriptures. 1. Fact of Inspiration from the Scriptures 487 2. Not a Credential of the Sacred Writers 487 3. Verification of Inspiration 487 4. A Rationally Credible Fact 488 5. Value of Inspiration 488 II. THE ANGELS. I. Concerning the Angels. 1. Realities of Existence 490 2. Of a Spiritual Nature 491 3. With Personal Endowments 491 4. Grade of their Powers 492 5. All Originally Holy 492 II. The Good Angels. 1. A Great Multitude '. 493 2. Ever Loyal to God and Duty 493 3. In Social and Organic Compact 498 4. Ministry of the Good Angels 494 CONTENTS. xix III. The Evil Angels. tage 1. Evil by Apostasy 479 2. The Evil One 497 3. Demoniacal Possession 499 4. Work of the Devil and his Angels 502 5. Final Overthrow 504 III. ARMIMAN TREATMENT OF ORIGINAL SIN. I. The Question in Arminianism. 1 . A Common Adamic Sin 505 2. A Common Justification in Christ 612 3. Denial of Concession to Calvinism 515 II. The Issue with Calvinism. 1. Underlying Principle of the Issue 517 2. Real Point of the Issue 517 3. Arminian Treatment of the Issue 517 4. Doctrinal Confusion and Contradiction 520 Index 525 PART IV. CHRISTOLOGY. I CHRISTOLOOY. Christology — Xpiarov Aoyof — has Christ for its subject, and might properly include his divinity and subsistence in scope of the the Trinity; his incarnation and unique personality; his subject. prophetic, priestly, and kingly offices. Such truths are central to Christianity, and determinative of what it is in itself, and in dis- tinction from other religions. Their inclusion in Christology would give to it a very wide scope. Then, in addition to the range of its own legitimate topics, the subject is greatly broadened in its doc- trinal history. Few questions in theology have been more persist- ently or deeply discussed. The fact is quite natural to the intrinsic importance of the subject. Besides, the discussion has been inten- sified by the divergences of doctrinal views of the Christ. For the present, however, we are specially concerned with the one question of the person of Christ. This does not thepersonal- mean the omission of other great topics of Christology. "y of christ. T'hey must be included in a system of Christian theology because they involve fundamental truths of the system. Some of them are inseparably connected with the question of the person of Christ, but may be more appropriately discussed in other parts of the sys- tem. The question of personality is itself a subject of Wide scope. It is such m the range of its own topics, and also in its doctrinal history. It is the one question of Chris- tology which has been most in discussion. Opposing views have been maintained; and the issues thus raised have been regarded, not as matters of merely speculative interest, but as questions of the profoundest religious concern. The result is that the theories and discussions respecting the person of Christ occupy a large place in the history of Christian doctrine. Any one who wishes to study these discussions can readily find ample resources in the literature which they have produced, particularly in Corner's great work on the development of the history of the doctrine of the person of Christ. However, systematic theology is concerned with this history only so far as it may be helpful in reaching the true doc- trine. h SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. CHAPTER I. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. I. COKSTRUCTION OF THE DOCTRINE. 1. Importance of a True Doctrine. — The doctrine of the person of Christ is not a question of mere speculative interest, RELATION OF . ^ i T • CHRIST TO but one that vitally concerns the central realities of CHRISTIANITY, dj^lstianity itself. No other religion is related to its founder as Christianity is related to Christ. Buddhism is related to Buddha simply as the original of its doctrines and cultus. They derive no intrinsic worth from him, and would he the very same in value if originated by any other man. The same is true of Con- fucianism and Mohammedanism, and of every other religion of human origin. Even in the instance of men divinely commissioned and inspired for the communication of religious truth and the insti- tution of forms of worship, nothing in themselves gives intrinsic worth to either the truth so communicated or the religious service so instituted. So thoroughly is this true that, in the providence of God, other men might have replaced Moses and Aaron, David and Isaiah, Peter and Paul, without any intrinsic change in either Judaism or Christianity. It could not be so respecting Christ. Without him Christianity could not be what it is. No man could have taken his place. He so wrought himself into Christianity that what he is must determine what it is. It follows that the doc- trinal view of the person of Christ must determine the view of Christianity itself. The history of doctrinal opinions respecting the person of Christ HISTORY OF witnesses to the importance of a true doctrine. Indeed, THE DOCTRINE without thc dctalls of history this importance is clearly A WITHESS TO %j x ^ */ ITS I MP OR- manifest in the inevitable consequences of any serious TANCE. Qj, determining error of doctrine. Hereafter we shall have occasion to point out several errors in Christology and to note their consequences. For the present it may suffice that we place the Socinian doctrine in contrast with the Chalcedonian or ortho- dox doctrine. In the former Christ is a mere man, a mere human person. No spiritual or miraculous endowments, not even such as the older Socinianism freely conceded, could change this fact. He THE PERSON OF CHRIST. S would still be a mere man. In the latter doctrine he is a the- anthropic person — truly God-man. He is the Son of God incar- nate in our nature. In this doctrine there is sure and sufficient ground for all the great facts of Christian soteriology: atonement; justification by faith; regeneration by the Holy Spirit; a new and gracious spiritual life. There is no ground for these great facts in the Socinian Christology. A mere human Christ could not make an atonement for sin. He could not be a Saviour in any other mode than that in which Peter and Paul, Luther and Wes- ley, Edwards and Asbury, were saviours. So determining is the doctrine of the person of Christ in Christian theology. Without his divinity and incarnation, without his theanthropic personality, he is another Christ, and Christianity is robbed of its divine realities in the measure of the change in him. 2. Early Need of Doctrinal Construction. — In Christianity, even from the beginning, Christ was the great theme of the „ ^ ^ „^ O _ o' _ , ° . AN EARLY SUB- Gospel and the life of Christian experience and hope, ject of deep Therefore he could not fail to be the subject of much ^'^^°^- thought. Nor could such thought limit itself to merely devotional meditations, but inevitably advanced to the study of his true nat- ure or personality. For the deepest Christian consciousness Christ was the Saviour for whose sake all sin was forgiven, and in whose fellowship all the rich blessings of the new spiritual life were re- ceived. For such a consciousness he could not be a mere man. It is true that in the history of his life he appeared in the fashion of a man and in the possession of human characteristics; still, for the Christian consciousness he must have been more than man. But how much more? And wherein more? Such questions could not fail to be asked; and in the very asking there was a reaching forth of Christian thought for a doctrine of the person of Christ. In such a mental movement the many utterances of Scripture which ascribe to him a higher nature and higher perfections than the merely human would soon be reached. Here it is that a doctrine of the person of Christ would begin to take form. He is human, and yet more than human; is the Son of God incarnate in the nature of man; is human and divine. Eeflective thought could not pause at this stage. If Christ is both divine and human in his natures, how are these the questions natures related to each other? What is the influence discussed. of each upon the other on account of their conjunction or union in him? Is Christ two persons according to his two natures, or one person in the union of the two? Such questions were inevitable. Nor could they remain unanswered. The answers were given in the 3 6 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. different theories of the person of Christ which appeared in the earlier Christian centuries. It is not to be thought strange that theories differed. The sub- DiFFERENCEs j^ct is ouc of thc profoundcst. It lies in the mystery OF DOCTRINE, of thc divlnc incarnation. The divine Son invests him- self in human nature. So far the statement of the incarnation is easily made ; but the statement leaves us on the surface of the pro- found reality. With a merely tactual or sympathetic union of the two natures, and consequently two distinct persons in Christ, the reality of the divine incarnation disappears. With the two distinct natures, and the two classes of divine and human facts, how can he be one person? Is the divine nature humanized, or the human nature deified in him? Or did the union of the two natures result in a third nature different from both, and so provide for the oneness of his personality? The Scriptures make no direct answer to these questions. They give us many Christological facts, but in elementary form, and leave the construction of a doctrine of the person of Christ to the resources of Christian thought. Soon various doctrines were set forth. In each case the doctrine ERRORS OP was constructed according to what was viewed as the DOCTRINE. more vital or determining fact of Christology, as re- lated to the person of Christ. Opposing views and errors of doc- trine were the result. More or less contention was inevitable. The interest of the subject was too profound for theories to be held as mere private opinions, or with indifference to opposing views. The strife was a serious detriment to the Christian life. Hence there was need of a carefully constructed doctrine of the person of Christ ; need that the construction should be the work of the best Christian thought, and that it should be done in a man- ner to secure the highest moral sanction of the Church. 3. Formula of the Cou7icil of Chalcedon. — The state of facts pre- pcRPosE OF viously described called for some action of the Church THE COUNCIL, whlch mlglit correct or, at least, mitigate existing evils. Certainly there was need that errors in Christology should be cor- rected and contending parties reconciled. A council which should embody the truest doctrinal thought of the Church seemed the best agency for the attainment of these ends. The Council of Chal- cedon was constituted accordingly, in the year of our Lord 451. The Council of Nice was specially concerned with the doctrine of the Trinity. The doctrine constructed clearly and ■WORK OF THE '' . . . . „ COUNCIL OF strongly asserted the true and essential divinity of NICE. Christ, but expressed nothing definitely respecting his personality. For more than a century this great question still THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 7 remained without doctrinal formulation by any assembly properly representative of the Church. The construction of such a doctrine was the special work of the Council of Chalcedon. The subject was not a new one. Much preparatory work had been done. Many minds were in possession of the true doctrine, which was already the prevalent faith of the Church. There was such preparation for the work of this Council. Indeed, the notable letter of Leo, Pope of Eome, to Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople, so accurately and thoroughly outlined a doctrinal statement of the person of Christ, that little more remained for the Council than to cast the material into the mold of its own thought and send it forth under the moral sanction of the Church. Perfection is rarely attained in such work ; never, indeed, on so profound a subject. Yet the work of this Council was jjo better con- well done. The Chalcedonian symbol combines the struction of elements of truth respecting the person of Christ. ^^^ doctrine. There is no better construction of the doctrine. It is true that this symbol has not completely dominated the Christological thought of the Church ; yet it has ever held a position of commanding in- fluence, and has furnished the material and the model for the Christological symbols since constructed in the orthodox Churches. In view of these facts we here give it entire : "We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in Manhood ; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body ; con- substantial [co-essential] with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin ; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the Manhood ; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, uncliangeably , indivisihly , inseparably ; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the prop- erty of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us."' ' Schaff : Creeds of Christendom, vol. ii, pp. 63, 63. 8 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. It is proper to note the doctrinal contents of this formula, so far CONTENTS OF ^s thcj dlrcctly concern the question of the person of THE FORMULA. Qhrist. Hc Is thc subjcct of its doctrinal predications. Christ, the incarnate Son, is truly and essentially divine; '^per- cHRisT TRULY fcct lu Gfodhcad ; " " consubstantial with the Father DiTiNE. according to the Godhead." In these affirmations there is a formal exclusion of the Arian Christology, which denied the essential divinity of Christ. The real and complete humanity of Christ is definitely affirmed. He is "truly man, of a reasonable soul and body;" *' consubstantial with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin." These affirmations were formally exclusive of two heresies in Christology : the Gnostic, which denied to Christ the possession of v real body of flesh and blood ; and the Apollinarian, which denied to him the possession of a human mind. The personal oneness of Christ in the union of the two natures PERSONALLY 18 affirmed : " One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, ^^^- only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, in- confusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably ; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one person and one subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons." These doctrinal predications excluded two heresies in Christology : the Nestorian, in which Christ was held to be two persons, not one ; and the Eutychian, which held the deification of the human nature in consequence of its union with the divine in the incarnation ; so that the human nature became one with the divine. On this great question the Athanasian Creed is in full accord DOCTRINE OP ^i^^ ^^® Chalcedonian : ''For the right faith is that THE ATHANA- wc belicvc and confess : that our Lord Jesus Christ, siAN CREED. ^^^ g^^ ^^ ^^^^ -^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ , _ pgrfcct God, and perfect man, of reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting. . . . Who, although he be God and man, yet he is not two, but one Christ. One, not by the conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the manhood into God: one altogether, not by confusion of sub- stance, but by unity of person. For as the reasonable soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ."' It is readily seen that this creed affirms both the divinity and humanity of Christ, and the oneness of his personality in the union of the two natures in him. The Council of Chalcedon declared its Christological symbol to be ' Schaff : Creeds of Christendom, vol. ii, pp. 68, 69. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 9 final, and forbade the formation of any other, under penalty of ex- communication. Yet the Council of Constantinople, additions by in the year of our Lord 680, made important Christo- of*^^constantn logical formulations, and joined them to the Chaleedo- nople. nian symbol in a manner which evinced the purpose of making them an integral part of that symbol. ' These additions were specially intended for the correction or exclusion of monothelitism, the doctrine of one will in Christ, and to establish in its stead the doc- trine of two wills : a divine will, and a human will. We here have the monothelitic and diothelitic issue — the question whether Christ had one or two wills. There is no more difficult question in Chris- tology. It concerns the deepest mystery of the divine incarnation. It is not, therefore, a question for much dogmatism ; yet, naturally enough, both parties to the issue were intensely dogmatic. Monothelitism could readily admit a human will as really present in the complete human nature assumed in the divine incarnation; but the denial of its exercise in volitions distinctively human in- volved the very difficult task of properly interpreting many facts in the life of Christ which were seemingly of a jjurely human cast. On the other hand, if such human volitions are asserted, really nesto- the result must be either a Nestorian or a Socinian ^i^"^- Christology. We regard the Constantinopolitan additions to the Chalcedonian syinbol as really Nestorian, though not so intended. The existence of two wills in Christ is strongly asserted; and the human is viewed, not merely as an element of the human nature assumed in the incarnation, but as an active agency in the life of Christ. There are two natural energies or operations — which must mean the separate energizings of a divine will and a human will in Christ. Nothing that follows respecting the union and harmony of the two wills in Christ can bring their alleged duality into still nesto- consistency with the oneness of his personality. The ^^^'*'- assertion respecting the complete submission of the human will to the divine will, instead of eliminating the Nestorian dualism, really concedes it.'' No such obligatory or becoming submission can be required of any impersonal thing. Not even the heavens can be subject to any such law of courtesy, propriety, or duty. No more can a finite will in its abstract self, or apart from a finite per- son, be the subject of any such law. Only a person can yield a becoming or dutiful submission to the divine will. Hence, in the ' Schaff : Creeds of Christendom, vol. ii, p. 72. ^ " Oportebat enim camis voluntatem moveri, subjici vero voluntati divinae, juxta sapientissimum Athanasium." H ^ 10 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. assertion of such a submission of the human will to the divine will in Christ, there is an assumed personal dualism which can- not be reconciled with the oneness of his personality. This is really the Nestorian error. II. Elements of the Doctkine. 1. The Divine Nature of Christ. — As we found in the divinity of the Son a necessary element of the doctrine of the Trinity, so must we find in the divinity of Christ a necessary element of VITAL IN the doctrine of his personality, as it is maintained by cHRisTOLOGT. ^^e Church. If he does not possess a divine nature through the incarnation of the divine Son, there is not in him the ground of a theanthropic personality, and the Chalcedonian Chris- tology must give place to an Arian, Nestorian, or Socinian Chris- tology. So vital is the question of a divine nature in Christ. However, much of this question was anticipated in the discussion of the divinity of the Son as a necessary part of the doctrine of the Trinity. That discussion need not here be repeated; and it will meet all further requirement that we set forth, in its appropriate place and on the grounds of Scripture, the incarnation of the Son in the person of Christ. 2. Tlie Human Nature of Christ. — The reality, of a human nat- PRESENCE OF ^re VQ. Clirlst is determined by the presence of human HUMAN FACTS, facts VQ. hls Hfc. This determination is on a principle which underlies science, and is valid for the knowledge of things in the many spheres of science. In all these spheres we know things by the presence of their distinctive qualities. The principle is thoroughly valid respecting the human nature of Christ. As we know men to be human, thoroughly human, by the presence of human facts in their lives, so by the presence of such facts in the life of Christ we know that he possessed a complete human nature. We are just as certain of this in the instance of Christ as in that of any eminent man of history. So far we have proceeded on the assumption of such human facts in his life, and, therefore, must now set them forth as they are given in the Scriptures. A sum- mary presentation will suffice for the present point. It is in the meaning of the first promise of a Saviour that he FACTS IN should be the lineal offspring of Eve;' and this means POINT. }jjg possession of a human nature. There are various Christological facts which, in form and meaning, are in close ac- cordance with this first promise. Christ is the seed of Abraham; * 1 Gen. iii, 15. « Gen. xxii, 18 ; Acts iii, 25. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 11 is the offspring of David; ' is made of a woman; ^ is born of Mary;* is the Son of man. ' All these facts mean the reality of a human nature in Christ. He was born in the manner of other children, and, both physically and mentally, grew in the manner of others: "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man."* The great texts of the divine incarnation clearly contain the truth of a human nature in Christ, and can receive no tkxts of the proper interpretation without it. Indeed, the reality incarnation. of the divine incarnation is the reality of a human nature in Christ. A body was prepared for the Son, that through an incarnation he might redeem mankind.* The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.' The Son, who was in the form of God, was made in the likeness of man.^ He assumed a body of flesh and blood in the likeness of our own.^ However, as these and other texts of the incarnation must be considered in the direct treatment of that sub- ject they need no formal exposition here. If it should be said that these texts make no direct mention of a human soul as a part of the nature assumed by the Son, a human soul the fact is admitted; but it is not admitted that they ^'"^ christ. mean any restriction to a mere physical nature. That in the in- carnation the divine Son did assume a complete human nature, the mind as well as the body, is manifest in many facts in the life of Christ. These facts are such that they cannot be interpreted with- out the presence of a human mind in him. We recall the fact of his increase in wisdom. This increase shows the presence and development of a human mind. This is none the less certain if we account his growing wisdom specially moral or spiritual in its kind. For such a growth there must be a ground ^^^^ ^^^^^^ in rational mind. The temptations of Christ, both as pretation op presented to him and as endured or repelled by him, show the presence of a human mind. We may specially note the temptation in the wilderness.'" Hunger is a physical appetite, and may be suffered by an animal; but only with a rational mind can any one receive or repel such a temptation in the manner of Christ. The other temptations, the one to religious presumption and the other to ambition, whether viewed in the manner of their presentation or in that of their resistance, can have no satisfactory interpretation without the presence of a human mind in him. He has joy of soul: ''In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank 1 Rev. xxii, 16. ' Gal. iv, 4. ^ Matt. 1, 21-35. * Matt, xiii, 37. =• Luke ii, 52. « Heb. x, 5-9. ' John i, 14. « Phil, ii, 6, 7. 9 Heb. ii, 14. '» Matt, iv, I-IO. 12 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. thee, 0 Father." ' Only with the presence of a human mind can we find the ground of a joy of spirib so thoroughly human in its cast. Christ had sorrow, many and deep sorrows, and such as were specially mental in their mode. It suffices that we recall his deep words on the night of his betrayal: '* My soul is exceeding sorrow- ful, even unto death."' These words must mean a human soul, though his suffering was far deeper than a mere human conscious- ness. The sympathy of Christ, through a law of common suffer- ing with us, as set forth in the Scriptures, is possible only with his possession of a mental nature like our own.^ The perfecting of Christ through suffering, that he might accomplish the work of our salvation, means, and must mean, his possession of a human soul." 3. The Personal Oneness of Christ. — Oneness of personality is DETERMINING iutriuslc to personality itself. With the presence of its FACTS. distinctive facts, and the absence of all contrary facts, we are sure of its reality and oneness. Personality is a most defi- nite form of existence. Its determinations thoroughly differentiate it from every other mode of being. These determinations are well known in our observation of others as well as in our own con- sciousness. There is nothing of which we are more certain respect- ing either ourselves or others. By the presence of its distinctive and determining facts in any human life we know the reality and oneness of the personality which they express. To assume a du- ality of persons in what is formally one human life would be to assume two sets of personal facts as really distinct as in the instance IN THE LIFE OF of auy two men. By the presence of personal facts in CHRIST. iiyQ lifg of Christ, and the absence of all facts expressive of duality, we know the oneness of his personality just as we know that of any man of historic eminence. He appears among men as one person, talks and acts as one. In his words he often uses the personal pronouns in application to himself, just as he uses them in application to others. Thus I, mine, me, frequently occur in his discourses and conversations. Friends and foes address him and speak of him in like manner. Clearly, they fully recognize the oneness of his personality. There is no intimation of any thought of a duality of persons in Christ. Such are the facts as given in the Scriptures; and they are the NO INTIMATION Kiore dccisivc because, while the personal qualities as- OF DUALITY, cribcd to Christ are often in the utmost contrast, there is no intimation of any personal duality. Some have a purely human > Luke X, 21. s Matt, xxvi, 38. 3Heb. ii, 17, 18; iv, 15. "Heb. ii, 9, 10. THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 13 cast, while others have the perfection of divine attributes. He is at once the Son of God and the Son of man; a newly born child and the everlasting Father; before all things and yet of human lineage; upholder of all things and yet daily subsisting in the manner of men. If the Scriptures mean any duality of persons in Christ, surely that distinction would be made, or at least recognized, in ascribing to him personal facts so widely different. There is no such recognition. Hence his personal oneness must be a truth of the Scriptures. We may easily verify and illustrate the above statements by ref- erence to a few appropriate texts. The Messiah is at PERSONALLY once a child born, a son given, and truly God — The one in two Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of ^^™«^s. Peace.' The child of Mary is Emmanuel, God with us.'' Christ is both the Son and Lord of David — Son in the sense of a human lineage. Lord in the sense of divinity.^ Wearied by his journey, Jesus sat and rested on the well of Jacob, and asked a drink of wa- ter of the woman of Samaria. Then, in further conversation, he assured her that he could give her to drink of the water of life, and that whosoever drank of this water should never thirst, but possess the fountain of everlasting life.' Herein the person who sat by the well as a weary man asserted for himself the resources of divin- ity. The same personal Christ is of Jewish lineage, as concerning his flesh, and over all, God blessed forever.^ We have given the substance of a few texts out of many. They all concur in ascribing to Christ both human and divine attributes, and yet without any distinction as to his personality. That is ever one. ' Isa. ix, 6. ' Matt, i, 23. 3j!,|[att. xxii, 43-45. ^ John iv, 6-14. ' Eom. ix, 5. 14 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY- CHAPTER II. THE DIVINE INCARNATION. I. DOCTRIXE OF THE INCARNATION. 1. Ground of the Persoti of Christ. — When we speak of the per- sonality of Christ we have in view, not that of the unincarnate Son, nor that of a man simply, but the unique personality which arises from a union of the divine nature with the human. Only in this union could there be such a person as Christ. He AS GOD-MAN. . ^ ,.,.-,. . , -, •I'T. is God m his divme nature and man m his human nature, but in personality he is the God-man. Hence the incarna- tion of divinity in humanity is the necessary ground of such a per- sonality. The necessary union of the two natures is possible only in the mode of a divine incarnation. The divine nature is eternal, while the human originated in time. The divine was therefore eternally before the human. Hence the union of the two in the person of Christ must have been an event in time. The divine Son did incarnate himself in human nature, or did take the nature of man into personal union with himself; and this union is the ground of the unique personality of Christ. 2. The Incarnation a Truth of Scripture. — A few appropriate texts will suffice for the setting forth of this truth. Those that we shall use are more or less familiar to students of theology, and, therefore, need not be formally cited. We begin with the words of St. John.' The Word was in the DOCTRINE OF beginning, was with God, and was God, by whom all ST. JOHN. things were made. The Word must be a personal being, for only a personal being can be the subject of such predications. Also, he must be a divine being. The predications are as conclu- sive of divinity as of personality. He who was in the beginning, and the creator of all things, must possess the attributes of omnis- cience and omnipotence, and, therefore, must be God. Accord- ingly, the text declares that the Word was God. Then, in the fourteenth verse, it is declared that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us — made flesh, not by transmutation of his nature into a body of flesh, but by the incarnation of himself in the nature ' John i, 1-3, 14. THE DIVINE INCARNATION. 15 of man. The words " and dwelt among us " forcibly mean such an incarnation. Then this same verse clearly identifies the Word with the Son of God: " And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." We have a great Christological text from St. Paul.' Three facts are specially noted: Christ in the form of God; Christ doctrink of in equality with God; Christ in the likeness of men. st. paul These facts contain the truth of a divine incarnation. ''Who, being in the form of God " — bq hv jitop0^ Qeov vnapx^^- Mostly, these words have been interpreted to mean an existence in the nature of God. Such a sense of fJ-oQcpy is fully warranted by its use; and such must be its meaning here; or, at least, the words together must mean an existence in possession of the divine perfections. Such, for the most part, has been their interpretation since the time when the great questions of Christology first came into formal discussion. They are still so interpreted by some of the ablest ex- positors. '' Though juop^;) is not the same as (pvoig or view of ovoia, yet the possession of the [toQ(l)ri involves participa- lightfoot. tion in the ovoia also; for f^opcp?) implies not the external accidents, but the essential attributes. " * Only with such a sense of iioQ(pf] — form — can the several parts of the text be brought into harmony. The pre-existence harmony of of Christ in the form of God is clearly the ground of his '^"^ facts. rightful claim to an equality with God — to elvai loa QeQ. Wherein equal? Not in divine perfection, for that would identify the object of his claim with its ground; but equal in estate, in the glory which he had with the Father. Only the possession of divine perfection could be the ground of a rightful claim to such an equality with God. Thus these two facts come into harmony, and each inter- prets the other. With these facts in possession, other facts of the text are easily interpreted. The equality of estate with God and the form of a servant in the likeness of men appear in their proper antithesis, while the Son freely surrenders the former and accepts the latter instead. " Being made in the likeness of men " and " being found in fashion as a man " can mean nothing less or other than the assumption and possession of a human nature. Thus we have the truth of a divine incarnation. In another passage St. Paul clearly gives the same truth.^ Here the facts are presented in an order reverse to another text that observed in the texts already noticed, but none the °^ ^'^- ^^'^'" less definitely on that account. The subject of the text is the Son, ' Phil, ii, 6-8. ' Lightfoot : Philippians, in loc. ' Col. i, 13-17. 16 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. "in whom we have redemption through his blood/' The blood means the Son's possession of a body like our own. Then the facts which follow in the same text are conclusive of his true and essential divinity. This was shown before in treating the works of the Son as the proof of his divinity. No text in the Scriptures more clearly or surely expresses the work of a divine creation : " For by him — the Son through whose blood we have redemption — were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions, principalities or powers : all things were created by him, and for him : and he is before all things, and by him all things consist." The divine Son, thus proved to be truly and essentially divine, must have incarnated himself in our nature before he could redeem us with his blood. *' God was manifest in the flesh."' This is the explicit truth A THIRD TEXT 0^ ^^6 divluo incamatiou. No reason of doubt whether OF ST. PAUL. Q^^g belongs to the original text can affect its mean- ing respecting the incarnation. It is the divine Son who was man- ifest in the flesh. This is determined by the facts which immedi- ately follow : " Justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory." The truth of the divinity of the Son is in no sense dependent upon the genuineness of deog in this text. His divinity has the most thorough proof in the Scriptures, and the text now in hand clearly and definitely asserts his incarnation. The Epistle to the Hebrews is replete with Christological facts. EPISTLE TO THE Amoug thcsc Is thc iucamation of thc divluc Sou. ''For- HEBREws. asmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same." ^ This text is central to others which fully determine its meaning. The divin- ity of the Son is clearly given in the first chapter of this epistle. He is the maker of worlds and the upholder of all things by the word of his power. He is Lord of the angels and the object of their supreme worship. In the beginning he laid the foundation of the earth and framed the heavens ; and while they shall wax old and perish he is the same, and his years fail not.^ This is the divine Son who incarnated himself in the nature of man. Therein he was made a little lower than the angels, that through death he might redeem mankind. Thus he entered into brotherhood with men in the assumption of their nature, that by his own death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them, who through fear of death were all their ' 1 Tim. iii, 16. « Heb. ii, 14. ' Heb. i, 3, 3, 6, 10-13. THE DIVINE INCARNATION, 17 life-time subject to bondage/ This is the truth of a divine in- carnation. 3. Incarnation of the Personal Son. — The full truth of the in- carnation is not contained in the notion of a union of the divine nature, simply as such, with the human nature. The , . J, S . . DEEPER TRDTH subject of the incarnation was not a mere nature, but a of the incar- person — the personal Son. The divine nature is com- ^'^''''^'^• mon to the persons of the Trinity ; therefore any limitation of the incarnation to the divine nature would deny to the Son any distinct or peculiar part therein. This would contradict the most open and uniform sense of Scripture. The Father and the Holy Spirit had no such part in the incarnation as the Son. Nor could any union of the divine nature, simply as such, with the human nature give the profound truth and reality of the incarnation. It could mean nothing for the unique personality of the Christ ; nothing for the reality and sufficiency of the atonement. The Scriptures are most explicit respecting the incarnation of the personal Son. We have already seen this in the the script- great texts of the incarnation, and it may suffice for uk*^s explicit. the present point that we recall a part of them. In the statement of the first text it was the Word that was made flesh and dwelt among us ; but in the same text the Word is identified with the divine Son." In the next it is the Son through whose blood we have redemption and remission of sins, the Son who created all things.' This must mean the incarnation of the personal Son. This same truth is clearly given in the texts of the incarnation, which we found in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Again, it is the Son who created all worlds, who is Lord of the angels and the object of their supreme worship, that was made a little lower than the an- gels by an incarnation in which he assumed a body of flesh and blood.* We have specially noted this fact of the incarnation for the rea- son of its relation to the person of the Christ. There „ ^ „ „ ■T^ _ , , AS related to is an intimate, even a determining relation of the one to the person of the other. Christ could not be a wholly new personality, ^'^^'^^• because the personality of the Son could not be suspended or neu- tralized by the incarnation. His true and essential divinity forbids the notion of any such result. The personality of the Son, as veri- fied to himself in the facts of his own consciousness, must forever abide. The immutability of the Son in his essential being and in his personal attributes affirms this truth. Therein lies the ground of the immutability of Christ : *' Jesus Christ the same yesterday, ' Heb. ii, 9, 11, 14, 15. "^ John i, 14. 3 Col. i, 13-16. ^ Heb. i, ii. 18 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. and to-day, and forever.'" With all his mutations of estate, he ia eternally the same, because he is the incarnate Son. The personal- ity of the Son must forever abide. What, then, is the result of the incarnation in the personality of the Son ? Not a new personality, but a modified per- coNscious- sonality — modified by the possession of new facts of ^"^^^^ consciousness. The reality of the incarnation will not allow us to stop short of this result. We here face a profound ques- tion, but shall find a more appropriate place for its discussion. Any question which involves the reality of the incarnation must be pro- found. Respecting these new facts of consciousness many questions of difficulty and doubt might readily be asked. How could the divine Son come into the possession of new facts of consciousness? No definite answer may be given as to the mode, but surely the possibility lies in the fact that he is a person, with the ceaseless exercise of a personal agency. What are the new facts of conscious- ness? Such as came to him through the human nature assumed in the incarnation. What could the incarnation mean, or what could be its reality, without such result? Not else could there be a union of the two natures in a personal oneness ; not else the unique per- sonality of the Christ ; not else the God-man. II. The Two Natures in Personal Oneness. 1. The Result of the Incarnation. — The reality of the incarna- THE DECISIVE tlou determines the personal oneness of the Christ in FACTS. the union of the two natures. We already have the facts which verify this statement. They came into our possession while discussing the doctrine of the person of Christ, and more fully in the treatment of the incarnation. The divine Son did not place himself in a merely tactual or sympathetic union with a human person, even though it were the closest possible to the mode, but so united our nature with himself as to share our experiences. The Christ is the Son incarnate. He is one person, but in posses- sion of both divine and human attributes. The divine nature is the necessary ground of the former ; the human, the necessary ground of the latter. Therefore while he is personally one he must possess both natures in a personal oneness. This is the meaning and the result of the incarnation. Only with such a re- sult can it be a reality — such a reality as will interpret the Script- ures, or meet the necessity for an atonement, or satisfy the deep- est religious consciousness. 3. Tlie Catholic Doctrine. — That the union of the two natures in ' Heb. xiii, 8. THE DIVINE INCARNATION. 19 the personal oneness of Christ is, in the proper sense of catholic, the catholic doctrine, is so surely and openly true that it needs no elaborate treatment. The doctrine is embodied in the creeds of the Churches. Exceptions are too rare to discredit or render inac- curate the general statement. Even its omission from a creed may not mean its omission in the faith of the Church which formulates such creed. The creeds of some Churches are very brief, and deal but little with formulations of doctrine. In such instances the omitted doctrine of the union of the two natures in the personal oneness of Christ may hold its place as firmly in the faith of the Church as other fundamental doctrines likewise omitted. This doctrine is in the ecumenical creeds, and by their accept- ance has become the catholic doctrine. It is true that in the ecumek- this doctrine was not definitely formulated in the Nicene ^^^^ creeds. Creed, but the ground of it was therein laid, and so far it became the faith of the Church. It is also true that the Athanasian Creed was not formally ecumenical, but the consensus of the Church soon gave it ecumenical character, and thus determined the union of the two natures in the personal oneness of Christ, so definitely formulated in this creed, to be the doctrine of the Church universal. There follows the Chalcedonian symbol, formulated by an ecumenical coun- cil convened for the definite purpose of constructing a doctrine of the person of Christ. Nothing in this doctrine is more definitely for- mulated than the union of the two natures in his personal oneness. This was then the creed of the whole Church. Since the division into the Greek and Roman it has been in common the creed of both. It is the doctrine of the Protestant Churches: of the Lutheran; of the Reformed; of the Churches which hold substan- jntheprot- tially the Westminster Confession; of the Church of est ant England; of the Methodist Churches, and of others ^'''^'^''^• here omitted. It is thus manifestly true that the union of the two natures in the personal oneness of Christ is the catholic doctrine. 3. Mystery of the Doctrine. — We reach the profoundest mystery of the incarnation in the personal oneness of the divine-human Christ. It is, if possibly so, a profounder mystery than the doc- trine of the Trinity. The notion of three personal subsistences in one nature seems less remote from the grasp of thought than a unity of personality in the union of two natures, each of which is nor- mally a person. Personality itself is a profound mys- personality tery. How obscure the notion of an unbodied spirit ^ mystery. endowed with personal faculties and active in modes of personal agency! Nor do we attain to any clearness of view in the instance of personal mind enshrined in a physical organism. Indeed, it is difficult 20 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. to say in which case lies the deeper mystery. Even our own e'xperi- ence in the embodied mode of life clears no obscurity. That we thus exist and personally act we know, but below these facts all is mystery. Surely, then, it is not for us to grasp in thought the personality of the Christ in the union of- a human nature with the divine. The constitution of our own personality in the union of two dis- A FRUITLESS tiuct naturcs, the mental and the physical, has been in ILLUSTRATION, fpequcut use for the illustration of the person of Christ. Any helpful illustration would be accepted readily, but we can find no help in the one here offered. The want of analogy wholly voids the illustration. In order to secure any ground of analogy our mental and physical natures must be combined in the basis of our personality. This is attempted, but certainly without attainment. In man the seat of personality is wholly in the mind, and there is no ground for two personalities in his constituent natures. No at- tribute of personality belongs to the body. The mind is the whole personal self, and if disembodied would still possess its personality. For the present life the body determines some modes of its personal agency and some facts of its consciousness, but has no part in its personal constitution nor place in its ground. But the human nature assumed by the divine Son in the person of Christ not only may be a person, but normally is a person. The depth of mystery lies in the union of two such natures in the unity of personality. For the illustration of such a personality there is no analogy in the constitution of our own. The mystery deepens in the fact that in his personality the finite blends with the infinite. In his consciousness there is a mingling of human forms of experience ^r.^ »«.„a«x, rv» with forms of the divine consciousness. The person of CHRIST A MYs- ChHst Is a mystery of Christian truth without solution TERY. ^^ ^^j. pg^gQQ^ j|. jg proper here to recall the profound difference, previously pointed out, between a mystery and a contra- diction. There is nothing in the doctrine of the person of Christ which contradicts our reason. The world is full of mysteries, but mystery is not the limit of assured truth. On the ground of Script- ure the doctrine of the person of Christ, as previously set forth, is true, and on that ground we hold it in a sure faith. Two facts are offered in aid of our thought. If not of any serv- ice for the solution of this mystery they may be helpful toward a true notion of the person of Christ. One fact is that it was a form of human nature, simply as such, ONLY OUR NAT- ^ud uot lu pcrsoual development, that the Logos as- CRE ASSUMED, gumcd iu thc incarnation. While it is conceded that the assumption of a human nature in its personal form would have THE DIVINE INCARNATION. 21 resulted in a duality of persons in Christ, it is claimed that by the assumption of a human nature as yet impersonal such a conse- quence is avoided. " If the Son of God had taken to himself a man now made and already perfected, it would of necessiiiy follow that there are in Christ two persons, the one assuming and the other assumed; whereas the Son of God did not assume a man's person into his own, but a man's nature to his own person, . . . the very first original element of our nature, before it was come to have any personal human subsistence. ... By taking only the nature of man he still continueth one person, and change th but the manner of his subsisting, which was before in the mere glory of the Son of God, and is now in the habit of our flesh." ' Of course, the fact here given as securing the oneness of person- ality in Christ requires that the assumed human nature should in itself ever remain in an impersonal form; for any subsequent change into a personal mode would have the same consequence of personal duality as an original incarnation of the Son in a human person. Yet this notion of a mere human nature must ^ THE NATURE not be carried too far, nor held too rigidly, else the must be act- nature itself will not account for the human facts in the "^^ life of Christ. We know nothing of the mode of connection be- tween a mental nature and a physical organism, whereby the physi- cal determines the cast of many facts of experience in the mental. No more can we know the mode in which the spiritual nature of man must be related to the incarnate Logos so as to constitute in him the ground of experiences like our own. Yet it seems mani- fest that there can be no such ground without the activity of the mental nature assumed with the physical nature in the incarnation. This must be the case in respect to such experiences as have a spe- cially mental cast. While, therefore, we may deny to the human nature assumed in the incarnation a distinct personal subsistence in Christ, we must still allow it such forms of activity as will account for the human facts of his incarnate life. The other fact is that the ground of the personality of Christ is in his divine nature, not in his human nature. There grounrofthe is here such a distinction between nature and person as personality. we find in the doctrine of the Trinity, as formulated by the Coun- cil of Nice. While we cannot think of the divine nature as ever actually in an impersonal state, we can so think of a human nature. Indeed, the nature of every man exists in an impersonal mode be- fore it attains to personality. In this case, however, as in the pre- ceding one, it must be assumed that the human nature of Christ ' Hooker : Ecclesiastical Polity, book v, § 53. > 4 22 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. remains without personality in itself. But in this case, as in that, it must not be assumed that the human nature remains inactive or without effect in the consciousness of Christ. Such an assumption would deny the reality of the divine incarnation. While it is true that our own mind has the ground of its personality entirely in it- self, yet its enshrinement in a physical organism has much to do with its consciousness. So the impersonal human nature assumed in the incarnation may determine many facts in the consciousness of Christ. Thus arises his theanthropic personality. In the con- sciousness of both divine and human facts he is the Grod-man. The new facts of consciousness are entirely consistent with the unity of his personality — just as the experiences which come to the human personality through the bodily organism are entirely consistent with its unity. CHRIST IS THEANTHROPIC. 23 CHAPTER III. CHRIST IS THEANTHROPIC. There is a sense in which Christ is God, and a sense in which he is man; but there is a deeper sense in which he is God-man. His theanthropic character is determined by the union of the divine and human natures in his personality. That he is truly thean- thropic is clearly a truth of the Scriptures. It is the key to the many Christological paradoxes which they contain. I. Theai^thropic in^ Persoi^^ality. 1. Permanent Duality of His Natures. — It is the doctrine of the Church, as definitely formulated in the Chalcedonian symbol, that the union of the two natures in Christ is forever an inseparable one. This, however, is not the present question. The point we here make is that the natures suffer no change in consequence of their union in Christ. This also is the doctrine of the Church, and, as we have already shown, is very fully and definitely expressed in the same Christological symbol. There is neither change nor mixture of the natures. The divine is not transmuted into the human; the human is not transmuted into the divine. There is no mixing of the natures, with a resultant third nature, or indefinable tertium quid — something neither human nor divine. Christological speculation has not been entirely without the no- tion of such results of the divine incarnation. We may a contrary instance the monophysitic or Eutychian heresy, accord- ^'^^• ing to which the human nature was so changed by its union with the divine nature that it ceased to be human and really became divine. It would follow that there was but one nature in Christ. This is one of the errors which the Council of Chalcedon so for- mally excluded from the doctrine which it formulated. Without a personal union of the two unchanged natures in Christ the facts which appear in his life must remain without any satisfactory interpretation. There is in his life a mingling of human and di- vine facts. The human can have no ground in a purely diviue nature; the divine, no ground in a purely human nature. The presence of two classes of facts, the human and the divine, in the '/A SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. one life of Christ imperatively requires the presence of both natures in the unity of his personality. 2. Commu?iion of Aftribufes in His Personality. — There is in doctrinal Christology a distinction between the communion and the communication of attributes in Christ. The former means simply that the attributes of the two natures are common to the person of Christ; the latter, that each nature communicates its attributes to the other ; particularly, that the divine nature imparts its attri- SENSE OF COM- butcs to thc human nature. The theory is technically MUNicATioN. expressed as the coimnunicatio idiomatum. This was really the monophysitic or Eutychian theory, previously noticed, and which we found to be excluded as a heresy from the doctrine of the Church. As a modern theory, it has its place mostly in the Lutheran theology. It is necessary to the doctrine of consubstan- tiation — the doctrine of the real presence of the body of Christ in the sacrament of the supper — as maintained in Lutheranism. As previously pointed out, the deification of the human nature of Christ cannot be reconciled with the human facts so thoroughly manifest in his life. This may here suflBlce, as we must again con- sider this theory. The communion of the attributes in Christ, in the sense that the SENSE OF COM- attrlbutes of the two natures are common to his per- MCNioN. sonality, is clearly a truth of the Scriptures, and a truth necessary to the interpretation of the Christological facts which they contain. Such a communion is determined by the nat- ure of the divine incarnation. Therein the personal Son took the nature of man into personal union with himself. The two natures, without change in either, were thus united in the personal oneness of the Christ. Therefore, as he thus unites in himself the two natures, he must possess the attributes of both in the unity of hi* personality. Accordingly, the Scriptures freely, and with frequent repetition, ascribe to him both human and divine facts. In the collection of separate utterances we find the ascription of attri- butes in the utmost extremes. Christ is an infant in the arms of Mary, and over all, God blessed forever ; weary from his journey, and the upholder of all things ; grows in stature and acquires knowledge in the manner of other children, and yet is the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever. Often there are such ascrip- tions in the same verse or passage. Such are the paradoxes of Christology which find their interpretation in the theanthropic character of Christ. 3. Truth of a Theanthropic Personality. — As in his personality Christ possesses the attributes of both the divine nature and the CHRIST IS THEANTHROPIC. 25 human, so must he be a theanthropic person. As a person he is not God merely, nor man merely, but God-man. This meaninc* of must be the meaning of the orthodox creeds, for other- ™^ creeds. wise they would be self -contradictory. They ever confess the one- ness of Christ in two distinct natures. With such a duality of natures he can be one only in his personality. Yet, with the confes- sion of the one Christ in the two natures, the same creeds declare him to be God and man. We may instance the Chalcedonian sym- bol.' The Christological symbol of the Methodist Episcopal Church is really the same.* But the immediate connection denies to these terms, very God and very man, a definite personal mean- ing in their application to Christ ; for with this meaning the same symbol would confess him as one person, and also as two persons, and would be self -contradictory. Besides, it is not the meaning of either the Scriptures or the Christological symbols that in a personal sense Christ is very God and very man. This is really the Nestorian heresy, which the creeds so formally and thoroughly reject. Christ is very God and very man only in the sense that he possesses the two natures in the oneness of his personality. In his personal one- ness he is simply and truly God-man. The theanthropic personality of Christ is determined by the nature of the divine incarnation. This incarnation was result of the a profound reality. Therein the divine Son took the incarnation. nature of man into a most intimate, even a personal union with him- self. W^ith this union of the two natures in Christ there is for him both divine and human facts of consciousness. There is still a unity of consciousness, as a central reality of all personality, but for this consciousness in Christ there are new facts, which are deter- mined by his human nature. We have no insight into this mystery. Indeed, as previously pointed out, we have no insight into the en- shrinement of our own mind in a physical organism, or into the unity of our own consciousness in the mingling of the diverse forms of ex- perience as determined by our sensuous, rational, and moral natures. But, if we accept the personal union of a human nature with the di- vine nature, we should not stumble at the new facts of consciousness. They lie in the mystery of the incarnation, but surely belong to its reality. The facts determine the theanthroj)ic character of the Christ. In the truest, deepest sense he is personally God-man. ' " We , . . confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, . . . truly God and truly man." '^ " So that two whole and perfect natures, that is to say, the Godhead and manhood, were joined together in one person, . . . whereof is one Christ, very God and very man." — Articles of Religion, article ii. 4 ' 26 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. 4. A Necessity to the Atonement. — Any other union of the divine nature with the human than that in a personal oneness must leave the human in its own complete and separate personality. What, then, is the ofEerinff or sacrifice in atonement for sin? NO MERE HU- . ^^ . ^ MAN SACK I- A human being, a mere man. jNo gracious endowments ^^^^' or supernatural gifts could change the grade of his be- ing. As the paschal lamb whose blood was shed in atonement for sin was a mere lamb, so Christ, who was sacrificed for the redemp- tion of the world, would be a mere man. This would mean that Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us an offering and a sac- rifice to God, was a mere man; ' that our great High-priest, Jesus, the Son of God, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God in atonement for sin, was a mere man.* We need not pause to show how utterly false such a view is to the pro- found meaning of these texts, and of many others like them. All the fundamental truths of Christian theology must pronounce such a mere human sacrifice utterly insufficient for the redemption of the world. These consequences cannot be obviated by any appeal to the offices of the Son as our great High-priest in the offer- CHRIST BOTH , » /-mi . i m • • i PRIEST AND mg up of Christ on the cross. There is no priesthood SACRIFICE. ^j ^j^g g^^ without his incarnation in a manner which unites the nature of man in personal oneness with himself. Be- sides, if we divide the Christ into distinct personalities, the one divine and the other human, even the priestly service of the divine could not change the character or grade of the human sacrifice; it would still be merely human. Nor can we, in this case, hold priest and sacrifice in any such duality. Christ is, at once, both priest and sacrifice: '' Who needeth not daily, as those high-priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's : for this he did once, when he offered up himself.'' ''For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself."^ Thus the identity of priest and AND PERSON- sacrlficc in the atonement is definitely a truth of the ALLY ONE. Scriptures. Any such division of Christ into a divine priest and a human sacrifice is manifestly false to the Scriptures; and it is equally false to the catholic doctrine of his person- ality. In the hour of our redemption the Christ does not fall asunder into two persons, the one divine and the other human, while the divine in the office of high-priest offers up the human in atonement for sin; but the divine, incarnate in the human, offers • Eph. V, 3. » Heb. iv, 14 ; ix, 14. = Heb. vii, 27 ; ix, 36. CHRIST IS THEANTHROPIC. 27 up himself. Only thus can we secure the truth and reality of the atonement. The possibility of such an atonement lies in the theanthropic personality of Christ. II. The Interpretation of Christological Facts. In treating the theanthropic character of Christ we might have begun with the multiform facts which the Scriptures ascribe to him, and thus in an inductive method reached the truth of his theanthropic personality. This truth, however, we found in the nature and reality of the divine incarnation. Now we THF KFY find in this truth the key to the many Christological paradoxes which appear in the Scriptures. These paradoxes lie in the diverse facts which the Scriptures ascribe to Christ. But, while we find in his theanthropic personality the interpretation and har- mony of these diverse facts, we also find therein the verification of his theanthropic character. Thus it is doubly proved that Christ is verily God-man. It should be specially noted that the facts here considered are ascribed to Christ in his personality, and are true of him facts of per- as a person. Most of these facts have appeared already sonality. in our discussion, particularly in the treatment of the divinity and humanity of Christ, and therefore require only a summary presen- tation here. 1. Facts of Divinity Ascrihed to Christ. — The Son incarnate is the personal Christ. Hence, as we found the Son in possession of the distinctive facts of divinity, so we find the Christ in full pos- session of the same facts. The Scriptures ascribe to him the titles, attributes, works, and worshipfulness which belong only to true and essential divinity. All this ascription is thoroughly warranted on the ground of his divine nature. 2. Facts of Humanity Ascribed to Christ. — These facts were sufficiently given in treating the humanity of Christ, as furnishing the second element in the formulated doctrine of his personality. They are the common essential or distinctive facts of humanity. The Scriptures freely ascribe them to the same personal Christ to whom they ascribe the facts of divinity. This is properly done because he possesses a true and complete human nature. As the divine facts ascribed to him have their interpretation on the ground of his divinity, so these human facts have their interpretation on the ground of his human nature. Thus on the ground of the two natures in the personal oneness of Christ the two classes of facts come into complete harmony. In like manner we have the interpretation of various texts which 28 SYSTE>LiTIC THEOLOGY. combine the two classes of facts in ascribing them to Christ. The child born, the Son dven, is the mightv God, the THE T W 0 o -' 1 Cor. ii, 8. QQ SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. CHAPTEE IV. THE SYMPATHY OP CHRIST. The sympathy of Christ is in itself an important truth of Chris- tology; but the special reason for its present treatment lies in its intimate relation to the question of his personality. Some facts which deeply concern this question may be most appropriately treated under the heading of the present chapter. The sympathy of Christ has an open place in the Scriptures. PLACE IN Inspiration gives it clear and full expression. We may SCRIPTURE. aigo view it in the light of our own sympathy, although there is a wide difference between the two. We ever associate the sympathy of Christ with his greatness, with the intensity of his suffering and the infinite fullness of his love. Hence, it has for our thought and feeling a fullness and sufficiency infinitely above all mere human sympathy. Still the fact of sympathy in ourselves is helpful in this study, and gives us the deeper and clearer insight into the sympathy of Christ. With these several facts in hand this sympathy may seem to us PROFOUND a specially open truth and one most easy of comprehen- yuESTioN. sion. Simply as a fact it is most manifest, but as a truth for doctrinal study it is one of the profoundest in Christian theology. It is inseparably connected with the divine incarnation, and this fact invests some of its elements in a like mystery. Still it is a great and precious truth of Christology, and therefore a proper subject for our deepest study. In order to the greatest bene- fit of this sympathy in our Christian life there is need that we appre- hend its real and sufficient grounds. The apprehension of these grounds will give us the clearer insight into the person of Christ. I. Sympathy theough Common" Suffering. 1. A True and Deep Lmv of Sympathy. — It is not assumed, nor could it be successfully maintained, that common suffering is a nec- NOT A NECEs- cssary condition of sympathy. Such a capacity seems SARY LAW. intrinsic to our own nature wholly irrespective of any personal suffering. It is a fact of the Scriptures that holy and ever happy angels sympathize with us in the misery and peril of sin. Only with such sympathy can they have Joy in our repentance and THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 31 ealvation. Here we have an instance of very real sympathy with- out any ground in common suffering. The compassionate love of the Father, a love in profound sympathy with us, was the deepest source of the great plan of human redemption. Also, before the incarnation and suffering of the Son he was in loving sympathy with us. It is none the less a truth that suffering, and particularly suffer- ing in common with others, is a very real law of sym- very real pathy. Few, if any, are without the personal experi- ''^^'■ ence which verifies this law. Innumerable witnesses could testify to its reality. More readily, and as by the attraction of a special affinity, we go for sympathy to those who have suffered ; for the deepest sympathy, to those who have suffered as we suffer. 2. Law of tlie Symjmthy of Christ. — There is the same law of sympathy in Christ. This is not a speculation or mere inference, but an explicit truth of Scripture. And it is a truth to which the Christian consciousness is gratefully responsive. As in the exigen- cies of our trouble and sorrow we turn to Christ for his helpful sympathy, the fact of his own suffering in our nature, and in a manner so like our own, is ever most assuring. It is proper that we here present this law of his sympathy in the light of the Scriptures. A few texts will suffice for the clear in presentation. '' For in that he himself hath suffered scripture. being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." ' There are other like words : '' For we have not a high-priest which can- not be touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." ' Immediately preceding these words the duty of fidelity to the Christian profes- sion is strongly enforced. " Seeing then that we have a great high-priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Sou of God, let us hold fast our profession." ' Such a characterization of our great High-priest as the Son of God, and as having passed into the heavens, might readily suggest a doubt whether one so remote in his exaltation and greatness could still have a helpful sympathy with his disciples in the sore trials incident to their Christian pro- fession. Hence, as if in apprehension of such a doubt, there im- mediately follow the words, as previously cited, which give the fact of his own former sufferings as the ground and warrant of his ever- abiding sympathy. This law of his sympathy is thus specially em- phasized. 3. The Law Appropriated in the Incarnation. — Our previous discussion of the incarnation supersedes any requirement for its ' Heb. ii, 18. " Heb. iv, 15. ' Heb. iv, 14. 32 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. formal treatment here. All that we further need is to point out and briefly illustrate the fact stated in our last heading, that it was through his incarnation that Christ appropriated the law of his sympathy with us. It seems clearly the sense of Scripture that a special purpose of A PURPOSE the Son in the incarnation was that through a partici- THEREOF. pation in our suffering he might have the deeper sym- pathy with us. It was in the incarnation that he was made a little lower than the angels ; and therein he entered into the profound suffering which he endured.^ A special reason for all this is im- mediately given, which means the truth here maintained : " For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their sal- vation perfect through sufferings. " ^ Other verses follow which are replete with the same truth. Through the incarnation the divine Son entered into a real brotherhood with man. In this brother- hood there is sympathy with us in our sufferings.^ He thus met all the requirements for the work of our salvation: *^ Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high-priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted." * It is thus manifest that the divine incarnation, with its result in the personality of the Christ, furnishes the real ground THE APPROPRI- L J ' & ATioN MANi- of his sympathy. Hence, if we would reach any proper ^^^'^' apprehension of his sympathy we must view it in the light of his incarnation. 4. Thorough Appropriation of the Law. — The divine incarnation was very real; therefore the appropriation of this law of sympathy was very thorough. We need not here renew the formal discussion of the incarnation ; yet a few facts which directly concern the pres- ent question may properly be specialized. The divine Son assumed a real human nature. The facts, as given in the Scriptures, allow no place for the early A REAL BODY ± ■' x v Gnosticism which denied this reality and held the hu- man form of Christ to be a mere phantasm. On the truth of such a theory there could have been no divine appropriation of a law of sympathy with us. The theory openly contradicts the facts of Scripture. In proof of this we need only to recall the appropriate texts, most of which were previously cited. *' The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." " Forasmuch then as the children > Heb. ii, 9. « Heb. ii, 10. ^ jjeb. ii, 11-16. * Heb. ii, 17, 18. THE SYMPATHY OP CHRIST. 33 are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same." " For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.'" It seems quite impossible to mistake the meaning of such explicit words respecting the reality of the human body of Christ. In the incarnation the divine Son assumed, not only a real human body, but also a human soul, the soul and body thus constituting a complete human nature. This is, at once, the sense of Scripture and the doctrine of the Church. Ac- cordingly, the Church repudiated the Apollinarian heresy, which, while conceding to Christ a real body, denied to him a human mind, and assumed to provide for its functions in his life by the offices of the incarnate Logos. It was no such defective form of human nature that the divine Son assumed in the incarna- tion. The historic life of Christ can have no interpre- maj„fj.st in tation without the presence of a human mind. The the life op phenomena of such a mind are just as manifest in his life as the phenomena of a body of flesh and blood. Further, with- out the presence of such a mind there could be no sufficient ground for the sympathy of Christ. Many of our own experiences in which we so mu^ch need his sympathy have their seat in our rational and moral nature. Hence the need that the " reasonable soul " should constitute a part of the nature assumed in the incarnation. It was only in a personal union with the human mind in his incarnation that the divine Son could appropriate the law of sympathy through a common suffering with us. This law he did fully appropriate by the assumption of our complete nature. We here emphasize another point previously made. The human nature assumed in the incarnation suffered no change the nature in consequence of this assumption. Again we meet an unchanged. opposing and perverting heresy, the Eutychian, which assumed a transmutation of the human nature into the divine. With such a result there could be no place for the human facts in the life of Christ ; no place for the experiences which are the ground of his sympathy. This heresy was rejected by the Church, and the truth was maintained, that the human nature assumed in the incarnation remained unchanged. With this truth the ground of the sympa- thy of Christ remains complete. In the incarnation the complete human nature was taken into personal union with the divine. Here again there was a personal an opposing heresy, the Nestorian, which denied the ^^'on- union of the two natures in the personal oneness of Christ, and ' John i, 14 ; Heb. ii, 14 ; 2 John 7. g4 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. held that in the historic Christ there were really two persons, the Son of God and a human person. Between the two, as thus dis- tinct in personality, there could be only a spiritual communion. Consequently, there could be no sympathy of the Son through a law of common suffering with us. But, with the personal oneness of Christ in the union of the two natures, the ground of his sympathy remains complete. The life of Christ is replete with instances of suffering in the likeness of our own. His sufferings were manifold and LIKE OUR deep. In him were fulfilled the prophetic utterances of *^''" Isaiah: ''He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief."' He suffered trials even from his chosen disciples. Much more did he suffer the contradic- tion of hostile minds. Malignant eyes were ever upon him. Scribe and Pharisee, priest and people, were combined against him in hatred and persecution. Deep were his trials from the opposition of the wicked. There is profound meaning in the words: " For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against POWER OF HIS himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds." - EXAMPLE. These trials were such in kind as the disciples of Christ were called to suffer; for otherwise there could have been no power in his example of patience to fortify their minds with a like power of endurance. His own words picture to us other forms of trial: " The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." ' Here again is the meaning of such trials as often enter into human experiences; only, the meaning is specially profound in the application of the words to Christ. Nor may we infer that his transcendent character in anywise rendered him indifferent to such forms of trial. With such loftiness of character his sensibilities were all the more acute. Still, there are differences between Christ and ourselves which POINTS OF DiF- may suggest some doubt respecting this law of sympa- FERENCE. ^jjy^ QjjQ ig that, whatever his temptation or trial, there was in him no evil tendency, while in us there is such a tend- ency. How, then, can he sympathize with us in our conflict with such a tendency, since there was no such experience in his own trials ? The law of his sympathy is not deficient at this point. The profound reality of the divine incar- nation still provides for its sufficiency. In the assumption of a complete human nature into a personal union with himself the divine Son entered so deeply into the consciousness of human experiences that, without any evil tendency of his own nature, he ' Isa. liii, 3. - Heb. xii, 3. ' Matt, viii, 20. THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 35 can sympathize with us in our conflict with such tendencies. We may instance his temptation in tlie wilderness.' In this tempta- tion he knew in his own experience the intense appetence of very real hunger. He thus knew the appeal of worldly power and glory, and the solicitation to an irrational presumption upon the provi- dence of God. All this must be admitted, or we sink re^l tempta- these temptations into a mere appearance, with the con- '^'^^''^• sequence, that Christ was not really tempted in the wilderness. A solicitation in the sensibilities and an inclination responsive to its gratification are distinct facts, and the entire absence of the latter does not affect the reality of the former. While these forms of temptation found nothing responsive in the nature of Christ, as too often they do in our own, still he knew in his own experience their power of solicitation. These trials were so very real in the experience of Christ, and so comprehensive of the forms of our own trials, that they constitute in him a very real and profound law of sympathy with us. There is another suggestion of doubt respecting this law of sym- pathy. It arises from the fact that we have forms of „„ „ ^ -^ . . . NOT IN ALL trial of which Christ had no experience. There are our forms spheres of life into which he never entered, and hence ^^ trial. he could not know in his own experience the precise forms of trial peculiar to these spheres. This is the view. It is true that in one text of Scripture the law of Christ's sympathy is based on an ex- perience of trial as broad and diverse as our own: " For we have not a high-priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet with- out sin."^ This, however, need not be interpreted in an absolute sense. Nor is it necessary that Christ should have entered into all the precise forms of our own trial in order to sympathize with us in all. We find in ourselves the power of sympathy with others in forms of trial peculiar to themselves, and the more deeply as we ourselves have suffered, though not in precisely the same form of trial. So his trials were so multiform and deep, and so thoroughly in the cast of our own, as to constitute in him the profoundest and most comprehensive law of sympathy with us. When we add to the many trials of his life the severe sufferings which crowded its closing hours the law of his sympathy with us is manifestly complete. II. The Consciousness of Chkist in Suffeking. In the conclusion of the previous section it was stated that the sufferings of Christ in common with our own were such in multi- formity and intensity as to constitute a complete law of his sym- 'Matt. iv, 1-11. «Heb. iv. 15. 36 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. pathy with us. There is, however, a further question which vitally concerns the sufficiency of this law. It is the question of the con- sciousness of Christ in the sufferings which he endured. The doc- trine of his personality is vitally concerned in this question. 1. Deeper than a Human Consciousness. — On the ground of the person of Christ, as revealed in the Scriptures and accepted in the faith of the Church, he suffered in a consciousness far deeper than a mere human consciousness. In a personal oneness there must be a unity of consciousness. With a distinct and purely human con- sciousness in Christ there must have been a distinct human person. The result would be either a Socinian or a Nestorian Christology. Christ must have been either a mere man or two persons, divine and human, in a merely spiritual communion. Each consequence is contrary to the accepted doctrine of the person of Christ, and subversive of all that is deep and evangelical in Christianity. Yet even in the orthodox faith or with orthodox believers there is a tendency to the Nestorian view. While the thean- TENDENCY TO . '' NESTORiAN throplc charactcr of Christ, as determined by the union VIEW. ^£ ^j^g ^^^ natures in a oneness of personality, is ac- cepted as a truth of doctrine, there is a halting at the consequent relation of his divine nature to the consciousness of his sufferings. In the thought of not a few his sufferings are restricted to a mere human consciousness. Such a limitation must mean a distinct hu- man person in Christ, and consequently the sundering of Christ into two persons. This is openly contradictory to the accepted doctrine of his personal oneness in the union of the two natures. 3. Else, Only a Human Sympathy. — If the sufferings of Christ were limited to a mere human consciousness, his sympathy through a law of common suffering with us must be limited to a mere human ground and capacity. Sympathy through suffering must be in the same consciousness in which the suffering was endured. We can- not limit the suffering of Christ to a mere human consciousness and then carry it up into his divine consciousness as a law of sym- pathy therein. By such limitation neither the suffering nor the sympathy can have any place in the divine. And again the Christ is sundered into two persons, the one divine and the other human, while only the human can sympathize with us through a law of suffering. 3. An Utterly Insufficient Sympathy . — A mere human sympathy of Christ, though in the fullest capacity of the human, could not answer for its place in either the Scriptures or the deeper Christian thought and feeling. There was no deification of the human nature assumed in the divine incarnation. Its exaltation and THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 37 glorification with the divine Son could not free it from the limita- tions of the finite. The false assumption of its distinct personal existence must concede it, even in that exaltation and glorification, the limitations of the human. It would follow that the sympathy of Christ through a law of common suffering with us must be sub- ject to human limitations. Therefore his sympathy could not be sufficient for the many instances of suffering and need in the pres- ent life. There are two forms of limitation which should receive special notice. Sympathy is conditioned by the measure of personal knowledge. It can reach no one which the knowledge does not reach; l^w of limi- nor can it be more intense than the clearness of the tation. mental apprehension. These facts impose narrow limits upon the capacity of human sympathy. If we determine for the human nature of Christ a distinct human personality, his knowledge must be subject to the limitations of the human. As his sufferings, if limited to a human consciousness, cannot be carried up into the divine consciousness as a law of sympathy therein, so the divine knowledge cannot be brought down into the human mind as the provision of a sympathy which may have the comprehensiveness of the divine. The sympathy of Christ which the Scriptures reveal as through a law of common suffering with us would thus be subject to the limitations of human knowledge. Hence, it could reach but few of the many that need its gracious ministries. Nor could it be intense and constant respecting any. Such is not the sympathy of Christ which the Scriptures reveal. There is still another law of disability under such limitations. All sympathy through mere human suffering is subject another law to the laws of time and changing conditions. The try- ^^ limitation, ing experiences which lie far back in the years of even the present life give little power of present sympathy with others in like trials. The mother who buried her child twenty years ago cannot have through the memory of her own sorrow the same sympathy with a friend in a like bereavement as the mother who came but yesterday from the burial of her child. The more is all this true as the years subsequent to one's sufferings may be full of new and happy expe- riences. The same laws must be operative in the future as in the present life. The deep nature of Moses was tenderly illustra- responsive to the afflictions of his people; and his sym- '^^°^^- pathy was the deeper as he suffered with them. In the pathos of this sympathy he could pray that, if they might not be spared, he might perish with them.' Such a soul was St. Paul's. AVith a ' Exod. xxxii, 32. 5 38 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. like deep nature and sympathy he could wish himself accursed from Christ for the sake of his brethren, his kinsmen according to the jdesh.' Neither Moses nor Paul has lost the depth of his nature in the glory of his exaltation; but with the many centuries of blessedness which separate them from their earthly sorrows little power of sympathy through the memory of those sorrows can re- main with them. Some personal facts of the present life we may ever carry with us in the full vigor of their reality; but they must be facts of personal conduct which concern ourselves, and cannot be such as mainly constitute the ground of our sympathy with others. If we limit the sufferings of Christ to a human consciousness, RESPECTixG and so determine for him a distinct human personality, THE CON- i\yQYQ must bc ttic samc laws of disability in his sym- sciousness OF CHRIST. pathy. These consequences cannot be voided by any appeal to his divine nature; for by such limitation we place that nature infinitely above all consciousness of suffering; and there- fore we cannot bring it down so as to invigorate the law of his sympathy and lift it above the limitations of all human sympathy. If the sympathy of Christ is subject to such limitations it must ever be a diminishing force, and in the blessedness and glory of his exaltation would already be quite exhausted of its efficiency. III. Suffering in a Theanthropic Consciousness. In the unique personality of Christ, as accepted in the faith of the Church, there is a theanthroj)ic consciousness; and in the ex- periences of trial and suffering therein we shall find the real and sufficient law of his sympathy. 1. Concerning a Human Consciousness of the Divine. — Often a leading question in the orthodox treatment of Christology concerns the human consciousness of the divine in Christ. Many facts in his earlier life appear to us as purely and distinctively human, while later there is seemingly a transition into a higher conscious- ness, the consciousness of a divine nature. Such facts naturally suggest this question. It is one, however, that should be treated guardedly; for, otherwise, it may prove itself misleading. MERELY Hu- It procccds on the assumption of a distinctively hu- ^^^^' man personality and consciousness in Christ for a longer or shorter period; with some, reaching the time of his baptism or the beginning of his public ministry. In this view, up to such time the incarnate divine nature must have remained in a latent state, or without any manifestation in the consciousness of Christ. Or, if there was any exception, it was only in some transient ' Eom. ix, 3, THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 39 instance, such as that of his notable conversation with the doctors in the temple. ' Otherwise, up to the time of his baptism or entrance upon his public ministry his consciousness was simply that of a man, without any recognition of either his great mission or his divine nature. Such a view of Christ simplifies the interpretation of facts in his earlier life. It would equally simplify the interpretation thk tiew of many facts of his public life which have a like hu- nestoriax. man cast. But the view is closely kindred to the Nestorian, and may easily lead to a perversion of doctrine respecting the person of Christ. If we start with the assumption of a purely human con- sciousness, and so of a purely human person of Christ, we may carry the same assumption through his whole life, and he shall be to us two persons, after the Nestorian manner. Even with the ad- mission of a deeper consciousness of the divine in the later life of Christ, it might still be denied that this was the result of a personal union of the two natures in him. Indeed, this union is denied so long as we hold a distinct human consciousness of Christ. While this view could readily interpret some facts of his life, it cannot interpret the communion of divine and human facts in his personal oneness. This personal oneness in the union of the two natures lies in the mystery of the incarnation. In personality Christ is God-man. This is the only doctrine which can interpret and har- monize the Christological facts of Scripture. There is no dis- tinctively human Christ, and therefore no distinctively human con- sciousness of the divine in Christ. 3. Divine Consciousness of the Human. — In the incarnation the divine Son so took the nature of man into personal union with himself as to enter into the consciousness of trials like our own. The facts of the incarnation, as given in the Scriptures and ac- cepted in the faith of the Church, mean such a consciousness. The self-incarnating Son was himself complete in personality, but the human nature which he assumed, while complete as a nature, was without personality. The personality of the Son was ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ not neutralized; nor were his personal attributes com- son ally ijc pressed into the measure of the human. Wherein, then, ^^'*'^'''- lies the reality of the incarnation? Not in a personality of Christ distinct from the personality of the Son. There is no such a per- sonality, and to assume it is to deny the reality of the incarnation. Nor is this reality to be found in the entrance of a human person into such a union with the divine nature as to attain the conscious- ness of the divine in Christ. There is no such a person in Christ. > Luke ii, 46, 47. 40 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. Such a consciousness would be a purely human consciousness, and therefore could not answer for the reality of the incarnation. The INCARNATION incamatiou was a divine act, not a human act; and if A DIVINE ACT. ^g would apprchcud its reality we must view it on its divine side. Here is the great truth which we previously considered. In the incarnation the divine Son entered personally into the nature of man in a manner to enter into the consciousness of trials like our own. This is the deepest and most luminous truth of the divine incarnation. The divine consciousness of the human is an intrinsic fact of the theanthropic character of Christ. As we previously pointed out, he is theanthropic in his personality, not in his natures. In his natures he is divine a7id human, but in the unity of personality he is divine-human, God-man. In the unity of personality there must be a unity of consciousness, but in a theanthropic conscious- ness there must be both divine and human facts. In the thean- thropic consciousness of Christ the divine facts come with the divinity of the Son; the human facts, through the human nature in which he was personally incarnated. 3. A Fossihility of the Divine Consciousness. — A great mystery ! But the divine consciousness of facts in the form of human expe- riences is no greater a mystery than the incarnation itself. Indeed, the profoundest mystery of the incarnation lies in the union of the divine and human natures in the personal oneness of Christ. The ^ o ^ divine is thus brought into new relations. Through NEW FACTS OF <= , ° CONSCIOUS- new relations there may be new facts of consciousness. NESS. Thie, is often exemplified in human experience. An angel, existing in pure spirituality, or in a corporeity wholly without sensitivity, might still have the consciousness of many facts, but must be without many such as we have. Such an angel might be- come enshrined in a bodily organism, just in the manner of a human spirit, without any suspension of personal consciousness, but not without many new facts of experience in the form of our own. So in the incarnation the divine Son may have the consciousness of facts in the form of human experiences. We are in possession of no light or principle which can warrant a denial of the possibil- ^ity of such facts. They must be actual in the very reality of the divine incarnation. There is a sympathy in God which must witness for the truth which we here maintain. As in our own nature there is a power of MEANING OF ^J^P^^^j f^r thc dccpcr action of which common DIVINE STM- suffering is a special law, so in the very nature and love of God there is a sympathy with the suffering so true and deep as to manifest the possibility that in the incarnation THE SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 41 the divine Son could so enter into the forms of human trial as to appropriate this special law of sympathy with us. God is not the Absolute of speculative agnosticism, impersonal, without knowl- edge or sensibility. Even our speculative theology has too often removed God so far away from mankind as to deny to them his real compassion, or invested him with an absoluteness of blessedness which could not be affected by either the joys or woes of men. God is not such a being. He is our Father in heaven. He is love. He has pleasure in our happiness and sympathy with us in our suf- fering. He suffers with us. This is the meaning of his compassion, which the Scriptures so frequently and earnestly express. If God is such in himself, and such in his sympathy with us, we should not stumble at the doctrine of the sympathy of Christ which we have maintained. The chief objection urged against it is that it is contradictory to the absolute divine blessedness. This objection vanishes before the character of God as revealed in the Scriptures. The gift of the Son for the redemption of the world means a stress of sacrifice in the consciousness of the ^ stress of Father. How else can we interpret the expressions of sacrifice. his love in that gift? God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son; spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all ; sent his own Son to be the propitiation for our sins.' If this gift of the Son was without stress of sacrifice in the consciousness of the Father, what mean these intense expressions of his love ? There could be no such love in the gift of the Son without a stress of sacrifice in the giving. In the presence of such a fact of divine sacrifice it must be admitted that the incarnate Son could enter into the consciousness of trials like our own, and so appropriate the deepest law of sympathy with us. There are facts in the redeeming work of Christ which mean, and must mean, such a law of sympathy with us. It was the sacrifice of Son who, though he was rich, for our sake became poor, ™^ ^•^'^• that we through his poverty might be rich ;" who was in the form of God, and equal with him in glory, but parted with that glory and took instead the form of a servant in the likeness of men, and humbled himself unto death, even the death of the cross.' In these facts we must admit a stress of sacrifice infinitely profound, or assume an utter indifference of the Son as between these states. If the state of poverty was the same to his consciousness as the state of riches which he surrendered, the form of a servant in the likeness of men the same as the glory of the Father in which he dwelt and with ' John iii, 16 ; Rom. viii, 33 ; 1 John iv, 10. « 3 Cor. viii, 9. ^ p^ii, a^ g-S. 42 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. which he parted, then there was for him no stress of sacrifice in the profound facts of his redeeming work. If it be so, what can these intense words mean ? Nothing ; really nothing. Indeed, they can mean nothing less than a profound sacrifice of the Son in the work of redemption — a sacrifice fully apprehended in his divine conscious- ness. Mostly, our orthodox theology lays aright the foundation of ouy THE SON IS soteriology. The Son of God, truly and essentially SAVIOUR. divine, is the Saviour. The Scriptures emphasize the fact that the Son is the Saviour ; ^ so that there is no reason, no excuse even, for any halting or divergence at this point. That the Son may save us he incarnates himself in our nature, takes it into personal union with himself. Now, the Son incarnate is the Christ Jesus of the Gospel ; a theanthropic person. All this is accepted and maintained. But in the further exposition of FORGETTING . ^^ . • -, • i ,> ^ ■ i • THE REAL our sotcriology Christ m his work of redemption begins TRUTH. ^^ appear quite distinct from the person of the Son. It is forgotten that there is no theanthropic Christ except as the incarnate Son enters into the consciousness of experiences like our own. Even the possibility of such a consciousness is denied. Then the human nature of Christ begins to be viewed as a human person, quite distinct from the divine nature, and as the conscious subject, and the only conscious subject, of the vicarious sufferings whereby the world was redeemed. This is a wide departure from the ac- cepted doctrine of the person of Christ, and ends in the notion of the redemption of the world by the sacrifice of a man. It was not a man, but his own Son, that the Father sent to be the Saviour of the world ; and the Son was consciously present and operative in all the work of its redemption ; consciously participant in the deep- est sorrows of Gethsemane and in that bitterest outcry on Calvary. All this is in the accepted doctrine of the person of Christ, in the reality of the divine incarnation, and in the sense of Scripture. We have no insight into the mystery of such facts. They lie in MYSTERY OF tlic dcptlis of thc divluc incarnation. We attempt no THE PACTS. philosophy of the manner in which the divine Son entered into the consciousness of trials like our own. We do not even intimate any form of physical pain, such as we suffer. We simply maintain the deep and manifest truth of Scripture, that in the incarnation the divine Son entered into the consciousness of trials like our own, and through such trials appropriated the deep- est law of sympathy with us. 4. Ileal Ground of the Sympathy of Christ. — We thus reach the ' John iii, 16, 17 ; 1 John iv, 9, 14. THE SYMPATHY OP CHRIST. 43 very sure ground of the sympathy of Christ as it is revealed in the Scriptures and apprehended in the deepest Christian thought and feeling. This ground does not lie in the experi- ences of a mere human consciousness, with all the limitations and disabilities of the human. Nor is it subject to the law of time and changing conditions, as the grounds of all human sym- pathy must be. The trials of Christ which constitute the ground of his sympathy have their place in his theanthropic conscious- ness. Therein they ever abide, and for all the requirements of his sympathy are living facts still, just as they were in the hours of his trial. Such a sympathy of Christ is sufficient for its place in the Script- ures and for the exigencies of Christian experience, a sufficient It is free from all the limitations of a merely human ground. sympathy, and with its grateful ministries can reach all cases of need. Mere human sympathy, even in its deepest intensity, must often consume itself in kindly yearnings while it is powerless for any effective ministry. Many could weep with Martha and Mary, but could not reach the depth of their grief. Jesus wept, and turned .their sorrow into joy. In him an infinite efficiency com- bines with an infinite depth of sympathy. 5. Light on the Person of Christ. — It should be remembered that we took the sympathy of Christ into our discussion, not only because it is an important truth of Christology, but specially for the reason of its intimate relation to the question of his personal- ity. In the progress of the discussion we have seen that this relation is, indeed, most intimate. We found that his sympathy is grounded in a law of common suffering with us. In law of his iiis life we found many facts of trial and suffering in sympathy. the likeness of our own ; but a deeper study discovered their insuffi- ciency for the requirements of his sympathy, if they are restricted to a mere human consciousness. In this case his sympathy could be only human, and therefore utterly insufficient for its place in the Scriptures and for the needs of Christian experience. We further found that only as these forms of trial and suffering were appre- hended in a divine consciousness could they constitute in Christ a sufficient ground for his sympathy. It is here that we find in the sympathy of Christ the true doctrine of his personality. He must be a theanthropic person, ms true per- else he could not have the consciousness of trial and s^'^'^'-ity. suffering which is necessary to his sympathy. He is a theanthropic person as in personal oneness he unites a human nature with his divine nature and through the human enters into the consciousness 44 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. of trial and suffering like our own. The theanthropic conscious- ness of Christ is the central truth of his personality. Literature. — Pearson : Eocposition of the Creed, articles ii, iii ; Hooker : Ec- clesiastical Polity, book v, sees. 51-54 ; Waterland : The Athanasian Creed, Works, vol. iii ; Owen : The Person of Christ, Works (Goold's), vol. i ; Martensen : Christian Dogmatics, sees. 135-147 ; Domer : System of Christian Doctrine, vol. iii ; Doctrine of the Person of Christ ; Luthardt : The Saving Truths of Christianity, lect. iv ; Usher : On the Incarnation ; Hovey : God With Us ; Wilberforce : On the Incarnation ; Pope : The Person of Christ ; Gess : The Person of Christ ; Goodwin, Henry M. : Christ and Humanity ; Goodwin, Thomas : Christ the Mediator ; Schmid: Biblical Theology of the New Testament, part i ; Ullmann : The Sinlessness of Jesus ; Bruce : The Humilia- tion of Christ ; Plumptre : Christ and Christendom, Boyle Lectures, 1867; Medd : The One Mediator, Bampton Lectures, 1882 ; Du Bose : The Soteriology of the New Testament ; Gore : The Incarnation of the Son of God, Bampton Lectures, 1891 ; Schaff : The Person of Christ ; Neander : History of the Church, vol. ii, pp. 424-557 ; Hefele : History of Church Councils, book xi. EUKORS IN CIIRISTOLOGY. 45 CHAPTER V. LEADING ERRORS IN CHRISTOLOGY. The treatment of Christological errors is specially the work of historical theology ; yet some attention to them is proper in a system of doctrines. We may thus set in a clearer light the true doctrine of the person of Christ. However, a brief presentation of the lead- ing errors is all that we require and all that we attempt. I. Earlier Errors. While it is convenient to make the general distinction between the earlier and later Christological errors, a chronological order is not important in the treatment of the errors as classed in the two divisions. Here it is better to observe, as far as practicable, a log- ical order. 1. Ebionism. — The Ebionites were probably so named by an opprobrious application to them of a Hebrew word which means poor ; but not on account of their low and impoverished views of Christ, as some have held. Ebionism Avas a strongly Judaized form of Christianity. This is true as a general characteriza- several tion. However, Ebionism represents several sects, with sects. different Christological tenets. There were two leading sects: the Essene and the Pharisaic. The Essene Ebionites held the Mosaic law to be obligatory on all Jewish Christians, but did not require its observance by Gentile Christians. Therefore they accepted the apostleship and teaching of St. Paul. The Pharisaic Ebionites held that all Christians must observe the law of Moses, the Gentile no less than the Jewish. Therefore they repudiated the apostleship and teaching of St. Paul. They were his virulent and persistent opposers and persecutors. Both sects held Christ to be the promised Messiah, but their notion of him was the low, secularized notion of the notion op Jew. But, with agreement on this point, the two sects christ. differed on others. The Essene held the miraculous conception of Christ, while the Pharisaic held him to be the son of Joseph and Mary by natural generation. The former of these views is in close identity with the earlier Socinianism ; the latter in a like identity with a more modern humanitarianism, which holds Christ to be a 46 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. man, just as others, whatever moral superiority may be conceded him. With these statements the errors of Ebionism in Christology are manifest. The divinity of Christ and the divine incarnation in him are both denied.' 2. Gnosticism. — No doubt the term Gnostic had its ground in the Greek word yi'waic. As appropriated by the Gnostics it meant the profession of a high order of knowledge. As knowledge is pos- HiGH PRETEN- siblc, such a claim is not necessarily groundless ; but it SIGNS. jj^ay mean, and with the Gnostics did mean, the pro- fession of a peculiar insight into great problems which lie beyond the grasj^ of other minds. They dealt freely, and with much pre- tension of knowledge, with the profoundest questions. AVe may instance the "s^^orld-ground or absolute being ; all secondary or finite existences ; the mode of their derivation from the absolute ; the origin of evil and the mode of the world's redemption. Mostly, however, their treatment of these great questions was in a purely speculative mode. Hypothesis and deduction were in the freest use. Deduction, however, must be kept within its own sphere, and proceed only from grounds or principles of unquestionable truth. The Gnostics were heedless of these imperative laws, carried their speculations into spheres where induction is the only appropriate method, and proceeded from the merest hypotheses or assumptions. With such methods in view the vagaries of Gnosticism should cause no surprise. Gnosticism divided into various schools. This was an inevitable VARIOUS consequence of its purely speculative method. It was SCHOOLS. also made certain by the diverse influences to which its speculations were subject. " The principal sources of Gnosticism may probably be summed up in these three. To Platonism, modi- fied by Judaism, it owed much of its philosophical form and tend- encies. To the dualism of the Persian religion it owed one form at least of its speculations on the origin and remedy of evil, and many of the details of its doctrine of emanations. To the Bud- dhism of India, modified again probably by Platonism, it was in- debted for the doctrines of the antagonism between spirit and mat- ter and the unreality of derived existence (the germ of the Gnostic Docetism), and, in part at least, for the theory which regards the universe as a series of successive emanations from the absolute ' Burton: Heresies of the Apostolic Age, Bampton Lectures, 1829, lect. iii ; Reuss : Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age, book i, chap, ix ; Neander: History of the Church, vol. i, pp. 344-353 ; Schaff : History of the Christian Church, vol. li, pp. 431-442, 1886 ; Dorner : Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. i, vol. 1, pp. 188-217. ERRORS IN CIIRISTOLOGY. 47 unity." ' Theories would thus take form just as one source of in- fluence or another predominated, or according to the elements com- bined in their construction. It is already apparent that leading tenets of the Gnostic heresy flourished in different philosophies long before the Christian era. As a heresy in Christianity it began its evil work while •J -J O XT WORK IN the apostles yet lived and wrote. There are many ref- apostolic erences to it in the Xew Testament, particularly in the ^'■^"''^' writings of St. John. It is every-where reprehended as false in doctrine, evil in practice, and corrupt in influence. These charac- terizations are not limited to its evils as then manifest, but are pro- phetic of far greater evils in a future not remote. The truth of these prophecies was fully verified in the early history of the Church. There were two principles of Gnosticism which led to an utterly false doctrine of the person of Christ. These were the perterting tenets of emanation and the intrinsically evil nature of principles. matter. God was not a creator of the universe, but the source of emanations. In this mode all things have proceeded from him. But this process is on a descending scale ; so that even the first emanation must be inferior to the original ground of all things. Hence, wherever Christ is placed in the scale of emanated existences, even though it were at the top, he cannot be truly divine. The other tenet that matter is intrinsically evil, and corruptive of all spiritual being in contact ev,l natcre with it, was common to the different schools of Gnosti- *^^ matter. cism, and led to a denial of the divine incarnation. That is. Gnosticism denied the reality of the human nature of Christ. What in him seemed a real body was not such in fact, but a mere phantasm or appearance. It was on this ground that the Gnostics were often called Docetse, from Sokeo, to seem or appear. If there was no reality in the bodily form of Christ, of course there was no divine incarnation in him. It was in view of this heresy as an evil already at work, and as seen in prophetic vision, soon to become a far greater nENorxcKD in evil, that St. John opened his gospel with a doctrine of «^'Riptcre. the Logos, which could mean nothing less than his essential divin- ity, and asserted in a manner so definite the reality of his incar- nation.' It was in the same view that he wrote in his epistles : " And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God : and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come ; and even now al- ready is it in the world." " For many deceivers are entered into ' Mansel : The Gnostic Heresies, p. 32. 'John i, 1-3, 14. 48 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. "' ' It is obvious that such texts are indirect reprobation of certain principles of the Gnostics, which determine for them an utterly false doctrine of the person of Christ. According to these principles he could be neither divine nor an incarnation of divinity in our nature." 3. Arianism. — The term Arianism was derived from Arius, who became the representative of certain doctrinal views re- garded as heretical. Arius was a presbyter of the Church of Alexandria, early in the fourth century, and a man of influence. He set forth and maintained views at issue with the accepted doctrine of the Trinity; but the real point of the issue concerned the divinity of the Son. When, in an assembly of his clergy, Alexander, Bishop HERETICAL of Alcxaudria, maintained the eternity of the Son, VIEWS. Arius openly opposed him, and maintained that in the very nature of his relation to the Father, the Son could not be eter- nal. This position could not remain as the whole adverse view. It involved doctrinal consequences which could not be avoided, and which, therefore, were soon accepted and maintained. If the Son was not eternal, then there was a time when he was not. This consequence was accepted and avowed. If the Son was not eternal, then his existence must have originated in an optional will of the Father, and either in the mode of generation or in that of creation. These consequences were also accepted; but respecting the actual mode of the Son's origin the earlier Arian- ism was vacillating or indefinite. Later, the mode of creation was more in favor. Thus, the Son was held to be of creaturely char- acter. The departure from the orthodox faith was really the same, whichever view of his origin was maintained. A being originat- ing in time, and by an optional act of God, whatever the mode of his operation, could not be truly divine. This consequence was fully accepted. The results of these views respecting the doctrines of the Trinity RESULTS oBTi- ^nd tlic pcrsou of Christ are obvious. They are utterly ^^^- subversive of both. The truth of the Trinity impera- tively requires the essential divinity of the Son. He must be con- ' 1 John iv, 3 ; 3 John 7. '^ Burton : Heresies of the Apostolic Age, Bampton Lectures, 1829 ; Mansel : The Gnostic Heresies ; Norton : History of the Gnostics ; Lightfoot : Commen- tary on Colossians, pp. 73-113 ; Ueberweg : History of Philosophy, § 77 ; Eeuss : Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age, book iii, chaps, ix, x ; Neander : History of the Church, vol. i, pp. 366-478 ; Domer ; Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. i, vol. i, pp. 218-252 ; King : The Gnostics and their Remains. An appendix to King's book gives very fully the literature of the subject. ERRORS IN CHRISTOLOGY. 49 substantial with the Father, and his personal subsistence must be in the mode of an eternal generation, not by any optional act of the Father. A true doctrine of the person of Christ equally requires the essential divinity of the Son. Hence Ariauism subverts the deepest truth of the person of Christ. When the Son ^o divine in- is reduced to a temporal existence, to a finite being, to carnation. the plane of a creature, there can be no divine incarnation in Christ, no theanthropic character of Christ. No attribution of greatness to the Son can obviate these consequences. Arianism may declare him, as it did, the head of creation, and far above all other creatures, so far as to be like God ; but all this avails nothing because such likeness means, and is intended to mean, that he is not God, and that the divine nature is not in him. No more relief comes with the ascription to the Son of the whole work of crea- tion. Relief might thus come if this work were allowed to mean what it really means for the divinity of the Son ; but there is no re- lief so long as Arianism denies his divinity and reduces him to the plane of a creature. The contradictory ascription of false chris- the work of creation to the Son, after he is reduced to tology. the plane of a creature, leaves Arianism in the utter subversion of the truth respecting the person of Christ. ' 4. Apollinarianism. — The Apollinarian Christology was so named from Apollinaris, Bishop of Laodicea, and was disseminated in the fourth century. Its distinctive characteristic is that it denies to Christ the possession of a human mind. Necessarily, grounded in therefore, the theory grounded itself in a trichotomic trichotomy. anthropology. Man was assumed to consist of three distinct natures, body, soul, and spirit — au)iia, ^vxq, -rrvevfia. In the theory body and mind were held in their usual meaning : the former as the physical nature ; the latter as the rational and moral nature. The peculiar- ity of the theory was in the meaning given to the psyche or soul. This was held to be a distinct nature, intermediate between the physical and mental, and the seat of the sensuous or animal life. Provision was thus made for the theory of a partial incarnation. If man consists of three distinct natures it was possible that in the incarnation the Son should assume two of these natures and omit the third. It was assumed, accordingly, that the rational and moral ' Newman, Cardinal : Arians of the Fourth Century ; Gwatkin : The Avian Controversy ; Waterland : Defense of the Divinity of Christ ; A Second Defense of ChrisVs Divinity, Works, vol. ii ; Cunningham : Historical Theology, vol. i, pp. 276-293 ; Gieseler: Ecclesiastical History, vol. i, pp. 294-322; SehafE : His- tory of the Christian Church, vol. iii, ^§ 119-125, 1886; Domer : Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. i, vol. ii, pp. 201-241. 50 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. nature was omitted, and that the Son united with himself merely the physical and psychic natures of man. With such limitation of the human nature assumed in the incar- souRCE OF nation, or the omission of the mental nature, the the- MENTAL FACTS. Qry must account for the rational and moral facts, such as have a human cast, in the life of Christ. The account was at- tempted on the assumption that the incarnate Logos so fulfilled the functions of a rational mind in Christ as to account for this class of facts in his life. While trichotomy provides for a partial incarnation, it is the necessary ground of a Christology which makes such TRICHOTOMY JO OJ ^ ^ ^ AND CHRIS- limitation fundamental. If man is only dichotomic m TOLOGY. j^-g jjatures, there is no place for such a Christology. However, the refutation of Apollinarianism is not to be most readily achieved through the refutation of trichotomy. While the Scriptures are seemingly in favor of dichotomy, yet they are not decisive, as appeared in our discussion of that question. Nor can the question be concluded in any scientific or philosophic mode. On the other hand, there is here a fatal weakness of the Apollina- rian Christology. In the first place, it is unable to establish the truth of trichotomy, which yet is its necessary ground. In the next place, the established truth of trichotomy could not conclude the Apollinarian Christology ; indeed, could not furnish any proof of it. The disproof of this Christology lies in the historic life of Christ. DISPROOF OF The facts of a rational and moral life in the cast of the THE DOCTRINE, humau arc as manifest therein as the facts of a psychic life, as here distinguished from the rational and moral. The pres- ence of a human mind in Christ is the necessary ground and the only rational account of these facts. They cannot be accounted for simply by the presence of the incarnate Logos. To assume this possibility would be to assume the compression of his divine attri- butes into the limits of the human, after the manner of the modern kenoticism. Then there could no longer be a divine incarnation. The humanization of the Logos in Christ contradicts the deepest truth of the incarnation, which lies in the divine consciousness of the human. If the divine is in any way changed into the human there can no longer be a divine consciousness of the human. The reality of the divine incarnation is itself the disproof of the Apollinarian Christology. The assumption of a human DISPROOF IN J^^ O-' i^ . THE iNCARNA- uaturc wlthout the rational mmd could not be an mcar- '^^^^' nation in the nature of man. The mind is so much of man that without it there is no true human nature. Nor could the ERRORS IN CHKISTOLOGY. 51 self-incarnating Son, with such limitation of the nature assumed, so enter into the consciousness of experiences like our own as to be in all points tempted like as we are, and thus appropriate the deepest law of his sympathy with us. Our deepest trials and our deepest exigencies of experience lie in our rational and moral nature ; therefore it was necessary that he should take this nature into per- sonal union with himself. Only in this mode could he share the consciousness of such experiences and so appropriate the law of his profoundest sympathy with us.' 5. Nestorianism. — The term Nestorianism is derived from the name of Nestorius, and means the doctrine of two persons in Christ. This doctrine was propagated early in the fifth century, and at one time very widely prevailed, particularly in the Eastern Church. Nestorius, whose name is so responsibly con- NFSTORIUS nected with the doctrine, was a presbyter of Antioch, and, later. Patriarch of Constantinople, and a man of eminence and moral worth. However, he was not the author of the Christolog- ical view so directly connected with his name. The true author- ship was with Theodore of Mopsuestia, but his doctrine found able advocates in his former pupils, Nestorius and Theodoret, the latter. Bishop of Cyrus. While it was a special aim of the Apollinarian doctrine to make sure of the oneness of the person of Christ, it was equally the aim of the Nestorian doctrine to make sure of the integrity of his two natures, particularly of his human nat- ure. Each made an unnecessary sacrifice of vital truth in order to the attainment of its aim : the former, of the integrity of the human nature of Christ ; the latter, of the unity of his personality in the union of the two natures. It is true that the dualism ix leaders of Nestorianism, such as we have named, claimed Christ. to hold the personal oneness of Christ, or denied the dualism with which Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria, and others charged them. Cyril was their chief opponent. Their doctrine of the union of the Logos with the human nature in Christ fell far short of the re- quirement of his personal oneness, and left the human in the mode of a distinct and complete human personality. ' " They thkcnionxot called it an inhabitation ; and the general nature of the personal. inhabitation, as distinct from that by which God dwells in all men. through his omnipresent essence and energy, they indicated by the ' Neander : History of the Church, vol. iii, pp. 428-434 ; SchaflE : History of the Christian Church, vol. iii, ;^ 136 ; Plumptre : Christ and Christendom, Ap- pendix H ; Hagenbach : History of Doctriiies, § 99 ; Domer : Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. i, vol. ii, pp. 351-398. 52 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. phrase 'by good pleasure' {Kad' ev6oKiav); and this indwelling by good pleasure in Christ they further discriminated from God's in- dwelling in other good men, by representing it as attaining in him the highest possible degree. This indwelling of the Logos in Christ was also said to be according to foreknowledge, the Logos choosing the man Jesus to be in a peculiar sense his temple, because he knew beforehand what manner of man he should be. . . . Among other phrases current in the same school were such as these; union by conjunction ; union by relation, as in the case of husband and wife ; union in worth, honor, authority ; union by consent of will ; union by community of name, and so forth ; for it were end- less to enumerate the Nestorian tropes or modes of union." ' No NO PERSONAL such unlon of the divine nature with the human as- oNENEss. sumed in the incarnation is here expressed, or even allowed, as will answer for the personal oneness of Christ. There- fore, while Nestorianism might repudiate the doctrine of two per- sons in Christ, it could not free itself from the implication of such a doctrine. The disproof of Nestorianism lies in the proofs of the personal DISPROOF OF oneness of Christ in the union of the divine and human THE THEORY, natures. These proofs were given in the treatment of that question ; hence they need not here be repeated. Further, this doctrine, as the Apollinarian, and even more fully, is refuted by the reality of the divine incarnation. The great texts adduced in the treatment of that question mean, and must mean, that the divine Son took the nature of man into a personal union with him- self ; so that of the two natures so united there is one Christ, very God-man. The Nestorian Christology must deny the reality of the divine incarnation, and, therefore, must be false to the Christology of the Scriptures.^ 6. Eutychianism. — This error is coupled with the name of Euty- ches, a monk without other distinction, unless we reckon to his account a notable lack of culture, an intense love of debate, and an extreme doggedness. He is not reckoned the author of this Chris- tological error, though he may have contributed something toward its extreme form. His intense activity in the propagation of the doctrine seems to be the only reason for its bearing his name. ' Bruce : The Humiliation of Christ, pp. 48, 49. ^ Hefele : History of Church Councils, book ix, chaps, i, ii ; Schaff : History of the Christian Church, vol. iii, §§ 137-139, 1886 ; Neander : History of the Church, vol. ill, pp. 446-524 ; Cunningham : Historical Theology, vol. i, pp. 315-320 r Gieseler : Ecclesiastical History, vol. i, pp. 343-355 ; Hagenbach : History of Doc trines, § 100 ; Domer : Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. il, vol. i, pp. 25-79. ERRORS IN CHRISTOLOGY. 53 Eutychianism is monophysitic as it respects the nature of Christ; that is, that as the incarnate Loeros Christ possessed but _, . . • T , . 1- 1^- . MONOPHYSITIC. one nature. This view was in direct contradiction to tlie Chalcedonian symbol, which so formally declared that in him there were two complete, unmixed, and unchanged natures, the human and the divine. Eutychianism admitted the reality of the divine incarnation, and the incipient duality of the natures, but denied that their distinction remained in Christ. Just time ok when, and in what mode, the distinction ceased, and the change. two natures became one, are questions on which the doctrine was quite indefinite. Respecting the time, it was held that it might have been instant with the incarnation, or at the baptism of Christ, or after his resurrection. Nor was the theory less in- nature of definite respecting the change in the natures whereby change. the two became one. Whether the divine was humanized, or the human deified, or the two so mixed and compounded as to consti- tute a nature neither human nor divine was not determined, though the stronger tendency was toward the view of the deification of the human nature. In this view Christ was wholly divine. The hu- man nature was transmuted into the divine, or absorbed by the divine, as a drop of honey is absorbed by the ocean. Such an illus- tration was in frequent use for the expression of the change to which the human nature assumed in the incarnation was subject and the monophysitic result determined. Much is thus expressed. The drop of honey absorbed by the ocean would no longer be a drop of honey ; nor would it be distinguishable from the body of the ocean. Hence the frequent use of such an illustration fully justi- fies our statement, that the doctrine strongly tended to the view of a deification of the human nature in Christ. It seems quite needless to subject such a doctrine to the tests of criticism. Unless this change is held to have occurred p^^sE to at least as late as the ascension of Christ, the doctrine is christolog- openly contradicted by the daily facts of his life. We may as readily question his divinity as his humanity. His life is replete with facts so thoroughly in the cast of the human that he must have possessed a human nature ; for otherwise these facts have no rational or possible account. Besides, if the human nature as- sumed by the divine was so transmuted or absorbed, the incarnation loses its own true, deep meaning and assumes a purely docetic form. Thus all grounds of the atonement and of the sympathy of Christ through a law of common sujffering with us are utterly swept away. It may suffice to add that such a transmutation of the human nature into the divine is an absolute impossibility. We mean by 6 54 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. this that it is not within the power of God. This must be mani- fest to any mind which takes the proposition into clear thought.' II. Later Errors. A review of all the modern phases of Christological error would be tedious, and without compensatory result. It will suflBce that we consider some of the leading forms of such error. 1. The Socinian CJmstology. — Socinianism, as a system of theol- ogy, originated in the sixteenth century, and took its designation from Laelius Socinus, an Italian, but who spent most of his active life in Poland, because he there found more liberty in the propaga- tion of his peculiar doctrinal views. However, while the original of this system is with LebHus Socinus, his nephew, Faustus Soci- nus, born 1539, more fully developed and propagated it, and first formed the converts to this faith into a distinct religious body, so that he may properly be regarded as one of the founders of Socinianism. We here need only the most summary statement of its doctrinal tenets. Mostly, the Scriptures were admitted to be of divme origin, but rather as containing than as being a divine revelation. A strong rationalistic jDrinciple was held as a law of biblical exegesis. It was in this mode that Socinianism provided for itself so much liberty of interpretation, that it might the easier wrest the Scriptures from the proof of the orthodox faith and maintain its own opposing views. With all this rationalism, the earlier Socinianism admitted the supernatural in Christianity, particularly in its Christology. It held the miraculous conception of Christ ; that he was the subject of supernatural moral and spir- itual endowments, and that he was temporarily taken to heaven in order to a better preparation for his great work in the redemption of the world. As Socinianism denied the divinity of Christ, so it denied the doctrine of the Trinity. Its anthropology was Pelagian, and its soteriology admitted no other ground or power of human salvation than the moral influence of the life and lessons of Christ. With these tenets of doctrine in hand, the Christology of the THECHRisTOL- systcm is easily stated. With all the concession of ■^^^- supernatural facts, as previously stated, the Christ of Socinianism is a man, nothing more. True, he was declared to be more than man, but no sufficient ground was given, or even ' Hefele : History of Church Councils, book x, chap, ii ; Neander : History of the Church, vol. iii, pp. 504-511; Schaff : History of the Christian Church, vol. iii, §§ 140-145, 1886 ; Hooker : Ecclesiastical Polity, book v, §§ 53-54 ; Dorner : Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. ii, vol. i, pp. 79-119. ERRORS IN CHRISTOLOGY. 55 admitted, for the truth of the declaration. No supernatural fact con- ceded, nor all combined, could I'aise him in his own nature or being above the plane of the human. No other ground is given for the assertion that he was more than man. In its Christology, therefore, 8ocinianism was substantially the same as the old Ebionism. In many instances of its later purely rationalistic or Unitarian forms it has degenerated from the higher views of Christ with which it began. The Christology of Socinianism is utterly false to the Christology of the Scriptures. It denies the divinity of Christ ; f^lse to the the reality of the divine incarnation ; the union of the scriptlres. two natures in the personal oneness of Christ. All ground of the atonement is excluded from the system.' 2. The Lutheran Christologi/. — This error lies in the ascription of divine attributes, particularly of omnipresence, to the human nat- ure of Christ. Only in an omnipresence or, at least, multipresence of his human nature could the Lutheran Christology answer to the doctrine of consubstantiation — the doctrine of the presence and communion of the body and blood of Christ in the sacrament of the supper. If in this supper the communicants really partake of the body and blood of Christ, then in some real sense, however obscure its mode, he must be present in his human nature, and, therefore, he must be present in many places at the same time. This is not denied by those who hold the doctrine of the real presence ; indeed, it is affirmed. It has often been said by divines who controvert the Christology of the Lutherans that its construction was determined jj^latiox to by the requirements of their doctrine of the real pres- conscbstan- ence. Lutherans, however, deny this, and maintain t'lat their doctrine of the person of Christ was constructed directly upon the ground of the Scriptures, and in the proper interpreta- tion of their Christological facts ; yet it is admitted that the one doctrine confirms the other and sets it in a clearer light. Thus, Dr. Gerhart having maintained that the Lutheran doctrine of the person of Christ *^was developed from the Lutheran theory of the sacrament," ' Dr. Krauth replies : *' If Dr. Gerhart means no ' Dorner : Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. ii, vol. ii, pp. 249-265 ; Cunningham : Historical Theology, chap, xxiii ; Owen : Works (Goold's), vol. xii. The utter falsity of this and all other forms of Christology grounded in the mere humanity of Christ is fully shown in discussions of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ, to which reference was given under our own treatment of these questions. « Bibliotheca Sacra, 1863. 56 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. more than that God in his providence made the discussions in VIEW OF regard to the Lord's Supper the means of bringing KRAUTH, more fully and harmoniously into a well-defined con- sciousness and into clearer expression the doctrine of the Scriptures in regard to the person of Christ, we do not object to it ; but if he means that the doctrine of our Church on the person of Christ orig- inated in the necessity of defending her doctrine in regard to the Lord's Supper, we think he is wholly mistaken. The doctrine of our Church rests upon the direct testimony of God's word ; and her interpretation of the meaning of that word is not one of her own devising, but had been given ages before her great distinctive con- fession, by the fathers and councils of the pure Church." ' Theologians of any distinct Christian communion have the right STATING THEIR of statlug thcir own case on any such issue ; but OWN CASE. lY^Qj hare no final authority. That the Lutheran doctrine of the person of Christ was the doctrine of the early fa- thers and councils is rejected as groundless. Further, it is in the truth of doctrinal history that the Christology of the Lutheran Church has ever been associated with her doctrine of the real pres- ence of Christ in the sacrament of the supper, and that mostly the former has been treated as secondary or subordinate to the latter. It is true that Dorner concedes to Luther a construction of his Christology independently of his doctrine of the Lord's Supper, but he also says this : " During the sixteenth century it was the doctrine of the supper that gave its direction and character to the concrete development of Christology."* ' The Lutheran doctrine is greatly lacking in clearness. Nor is this to be thought strange, especially in view of its peculiar tenets. Further, Lutherans have dijffered widely among themselves, and DOCTRINAL ^^is fact grcatly .hluders the clear apprehension of the DIFFERENCES, doctrinc. The contentions on this question within the Lutheran Church were quite equal to those which she maintained with Papists, Zwinglians, and Calvinists. There were two schools of special prominence in these interior doctrinal issues : one in the following of Brentz ; the other in the following of Chemnitz. There were other schools, each with its own doctrine, and for which it contended against all opposing views. Among the con- tending parties there were real differences of doctrine. These contentions were fruitful of much evil. This came to be so clearly seen and deeply felt as to awaken an intense desire for peace and a harmony of doctrinal views. The attainment of these ends was ' The Conservative Reformation and its Theology, p. 502. ^ Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. ii, vol. ii, p. 301. I ERRORS IN CIIRISTOLOGY. 57 earnestly attempted. The Formula of Concord was the product of this endeavor. The aim was good, but the result brought little satis- faction. The desiderated concord was not attained. Divisions were rather increased than diminished. There was still a Brentzian doc- trine, and still a Chemnitziau doctrine. Others were added, notably a (jiiessen doctrine, and a Tilbingen doctrine. There were others, but enough have been named to show the persistence and prevalence of the strife. These facts of division and disputation not only hinder the clear apprehension of the Lutheran Christology, but clearly point to peculiar difficulties of the doctrine, and really disprove it. Where shall we find the doctrine ? Naturally, we turn first to the Augsburg Confession ; but it is not given in the looking for article which directly concerns this question.' In the the doctrine. article on the Lord's Supper some facts are given which, if true in themselves, must be determinative of some vital elements of the doctrine.* We note specially the alleged facts that the body and blood of Christ are truly present with the bread and wine, and are communicated to those who partake of the supper. But the deter- mination of the doctrine of the person of Christ from the contents of this article would subordinate it to the doctrine of the supper in a manner to which Lutheran divines strongly object. The Formula of Concord, while giving a later formulation of the doctrine, and the latest with any claim to authority, formula of still leaves us in uncertainty, and for two reasons : one, concord. that this statement was a compromise among opposing parties ; the other, that it has not been held in any unity of faith. Yet we know not any better source to which we may look for the Lutheran doctrine. Much of the article on the person of Christ is in full accord with the Chalcedonian symbol, but it contains elements article which are peculiar to the Lutheran doctrine.^ These eight. appear in the ascription of divine attributes to the human n"ature of Christ. It is not meant that the human nature is deified in any Eutychian sense, but that by virtue of the union of the two natures in Christ the human possesses the attributes of the di- oommdnicatio vine. This is the sense of the communicatio idioma- 'd'omatum. turn, the communion of the attributes of the two natures in Christ. It seems obvious that, if the union is such that the human should possess the attributes of the divine, then, conversely, the divine should possess the attributes of the human. This, however, is de- nied. Omniscience, omnipotence, and ubiquity are the divine attri- butes which are more specially ascribed to' the human nature of Christ. "Therefore now not only as God, but also as man, he ' Article iii. * Article x. ' Article viii. 6 58 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. knows all things, can do all things, is present to all creatures, has nnder his feet and in his hand all things which are in heaven, in the earth, and under the earth." These facts are central to the Christology of the article, and other facts affirmed are in full accord with them. " What the divine has in its essence and of itself, the human has and exercises through the divine, in consequence of its personal union with it. We might imitate one of our Lord's own deep expressions in characterizing it, and might suppose him to say: * As my divine nature hath omnipresence in itself, so hath it given to my human nature to have omnipresence in itself."" If the union of the two natures is valid ground for the omnipresence of the human, the same union must be equally valid for its omniscience and omnipotence. The statement of such a doctrine seems entirely sufficient for its refutation. The human nature assumed by the Logos in the incarnation remained human, with the attributes of the human. In itself it possessed the capacity for only such knowledge, power, and presence as are possible to the human. How then could it become omniscient, omnipotent, and omni- present ? The answer is, through the divine nature with which it was united. But if this union answers for such results, either it must give to the finite attributes of the human nature the plenitude of the infinite, or invest that nature with the attributes of the infi- nite. Attributes of knowledge, power, and presence, such as we here contemplate, are concrete realities of being, not mere notions or names. There can be neither knowledge, nor power, nor pres- ence without the appropriate attribute of being. The being must answer for the character of the attribute, and the attribute must answer for all that is affirmed of it. Only a mind possessing the power of absolute knowing can be omniscient. Omnipotence must have its ground in a will of absolute power. Omnipresence, such as the Lutheran Christology affirms of the human nature of Christ, is possible only with an infinite extension of being. Hence, either the finite attributes of the human nature assumed by the Logos must be lifted into the infinitude of the divine attributes, or the divine attributes must be invested in the human nature, which is intrinsically finite, and which in itself, even as the Lutheran Christology concedes, must ever remain finite. It is at this point that the doctrine encounters insuperable diffi- AssuMED iM- culties, even absolute impossibilities. There is no pos- possiBiLiTiEs. sibility that the human nature of Christ should possess the attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence ' Krauth : The Conservative Reformation and its Theology, p. 479. ERRORS IN CHRISTOLOGY. 59 which the Lutheran Christology ascribes to it. It is properly re- garded as an axiom that the finite has not a capacity for the infi- nite—;A'w//?^w non capax infiniti. The principle is absolutely true in application to the points which we here make. The finite attri- butes of the human nature can neither be enlarged to the infinitude of the divine attributes nor receive into themselves the* plenitude of the divine. Neither can the finite nature of man receive the investment of these divine attributes. But there can be no om- niscience without the attribute of absolute knowing ; no omnipo- tence without a will of absolute power ; no omnipresence of being without an infinite extension. Here are the impossibilities which the Lutheran Christology encounters in the ascription of such attributes to the human nature of Christ,' 3. The Kenotic Christology. — The seed-thought of kenoticism in Christology is credited to Zinzendorf, but it remained fruitless for a long time after he cast it forth. In later years his. thought has been developed into doctrinal form. Indeed, there are several forms of this development. Professor Bruce has carefully noted four leading types of the doctrine, as severally represented by Thomasius, Gess, Ebrard, and Martensen.*^ With this classifica- tion he proceeds to a careful statement and critical review of each type. A study of this discussion is helpful toward a clear insight into the kenotic Christology. We, however, are mainly concerned with the deeper tenets of the doctrine. Kenoticism is the doctrine that in the incarnation the Logos emptied himself of his divine attributes, or compressed • T /. 1 1 ±1 i 1 '''"E DOCTRINE. them into the measure and cast of the human ; that he parted with his omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, and subjected himself to the limitations of a merely human life. These are the central ideas of the doctrine, though not all kenoticists hold so extreme a view. Whether in the incarnation the Logos assumed a human soul as well as a body, or whether in his own humanized form respkcting a he fulfilled the functions of a human soul in the life human soul. of Christ, is a question on which kenoticists are not agreed. The admission of a distinct human soul must mean, for this doctrine, the co-existence of two souls in Christ — two not different in tlieir human cast. In this case there could be no personal oneness of ' Domer : Doctrine of the Person of Christ, div. ii, vol. ii, pp. 53-115 ; 266-315 ; Schmid : Doctrinal Theology of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, § 55 ; Gerhart : Bibliotheca Sacra, January, 1863 ; Krauth : The Conservative Reforma- tion and its Theology, article x. '^ Bruce : The Humiliation of Christ, lect. iv. 60 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. Christ. On the other hand, the denial of a distinct human soul must mean a denial of the divine incarnation. The reality of such an incarnation cannot lie in the assumption of a mere body of flesh and blood. Certainly such a limitation could not answer to the sense of the Scriptures respecting this profound truth. This kenoticism has really no ground in Scripture, though it NO GROUND IN assumcs such ground. The proofs which it brings are SCRIPTURE. jiot proofs, because it is only by an unwarranted inter- pretation of the texts adduced that they can give any support to the theory. We give a few instances. " And the Word was made flesh." ' This cannot mean any transmutation of the divine Logos into a body of human flesh. Much less can it mean a transforma- tion of the Logos into a man, for this is much farther away from a literal sense than the former. The meaning is simply that in the incarnation the Logos invested himself in a human nature, of which a body of flesh is the visible part. This interpretation places the text in complete accord with other texts of the incarnation. Here are other instances : " God was manifest in the flesh." * " Foras- much then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same."' These texts give the same doctrine of the incarnation, but without any suggestion of the transformation of the Son into a man. That the Logos was made flesh can mean nothing more than these texts. The special reliance of the theory is on a passage from St. Paul: THK SPECIAL ^' Who, being in the form of God, counted it not a TEXT. prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men." * We have cited the Revised Version, it being more literal than the Authorized. We gave the meaning of this text in the treatment of the incarnation, and therefore require the less in considering its application to the present question. " Being in the form of God " must mean an existence of the iNTERPRETA- Sou cithcr in the nature of God or in the glory of God. TioN. jf ^]^g former be the true sense, then, on the ground of his divine nature, an equality of glory with the Father was his rightful possession. If the latter be the true sense, then we have simply the fact that the Son rightfully existed in the full glory of God. It should be specially noted that this estate of glory was not his merely in right, but his in actual possession. This mean- ing is in the words, '' counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied himself." This accords with another text : ^' And now, 0 Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with ' John i, 14. ' 1 Tim. iii, 16. ' Heb. ii, 14. * Phil, ii, 6, 7. ERRORS IN CIIRISTOLOGY. 61 the glory which I had with thee before the world was." ' Here the clear meaning is that the Son actually existed in the glory of the Father prior to his incarnation. 8uch is the sense of the great text now under special consideration. What, then, is the truth of the kenosis in this case ? The Son emptied himself — tovrdv e/ctvwae. But of what ? Surely not of his divine nature, nor of his divine per- fections, which are inseparable from his nature. Nor can this act of kenosis mean the compression of his perfections into the cast and measure of mere human powers. Such an idea seems utterly foreign to any idea which the terms of the text either express or imply. This act of kenosis has respect to that estate of glory which, on the ground of his divine nature, the Son rightfully possessed in equality with the Father. It means a self-emptying or self-divestment of that glory. This accords with his own words as previously cited : *' And now, 0 Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." That glory he once possessed, but had surrendered. The surrender was by the act of kenosis which we have in the text under special consid- eration. This interpretation brings all the parts of the text into complete harmony. The form of a servant in the likeness of men, Avhich the Son assumed in the incarnation, stands in clear antithe- sis, not with his divine nature and perfections, but with the estate of glory which he possessed with the Father ; which glory he might have rightfully retained, but with which he freely parted, and took instead the form of a servant in the likeness of men. The text gives no support to the kenotic Christology. The aim of kenoticism is twofold: to secure the unity of the per- son of Christ, and to provide for the human facts of aim of keno- his life. The self-limitation of the Son in the incar- ticism. nation to a mere human cast and measure is held to be necessary to the personal oneness of Christ, and to the reality of the human facts of his intramundane or historic life. The personal oneness is declared to be impossible on the ground of the traditional doctrine of the divine incarnation. It is readily conceded that this per- sonal oneness is incomprehensible ; but surely the the mystery mystery is riot solved nor in the least relieved by the remains. theory of a humanized Logos as co-existent with a human soul in Christ. A duality of persons seems absolutely inseparable from such a co-existence ; and this attempt to secure and explain the personal oneness of Christ is utterly futile. Further : if, as we formerly pointed out, the deepest truth of the incarnation lies in ' John xvii, 5. 62 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. the divine consciousness of the hnman, may not this question of personal oneness have for us less pressing concern than we usually concede it ? All that we require is such a relation of the divine to the human in Christ as will provide for this consciousness. And may there not be such a relation without the rigid unity of personality which is usually maintained ? Let it be observed, however, that, in this hypothetical putting of the case, we do not yield the doctrine of the personal oneness of Christ. But on the ground of this ke- noticism there could be no divine consciousness of the human in the incarnation, because the humanized Logos could no longer have any divine consciousness. The implications of this doctrine of the kenosis in Christology are contrary to the deepest truths of Christian theology. IMPLICATIONS "^ ^ ... . OF THE DOC- If the Son of God could part with his divine attributes TRINE. ^^. jj^^^anize himself, then divinity itself must be muta- ble. This consequence can be denied only on a denial of the divin- ity of the Son. But his divinity is conceded in the very idea of his self-divestment of his divine attributes. The theory is subver- sive of the divine Trinity. The humanized Son, self-emptied of his divine attributes, could no longer be a divine subsistence in the Trin- ity. Hence this kenosis of the Son must mean the destruction of the Trinity. The theory is not less subversive of other funda- mental truths of Christian theology. No ground of an atonement in the blood of Christ could remain. That the Son once existed in the divine Trinity, and in the plenitude of the divine life, could avail nothing for such an atonement. If self-reduced to the meas- ure of a man, his death could be no more saving than the death of a man. No ground of the sympathy of Christ could remain, as that sympathy is revealed in the Scriptures, and as it must be in order to meet the exigencies of Christian experience. Such a sym- pathy we have found to be possible only through the divine con- sciousness of human experiences of suffering and trial. But there can be no such consciousness in the mere human consciousness to which this kenoticism limits the incarnate Logos. A theory with such implications can have no ground of truth in the Scriptures. ' ' Bruce : The Humiliation of Christ ; Pope : The Person of Christ, note viii ; Goodwin : Christ and Humanity ; Martensen : Christian Dogmatics, pp. 237-288 ; Crosby : The True Humanity of Christ ; Hodge : Systematic Theology, vol. ii, pp. 430-440 ; Gess : Scripture Doctrine of the Person of Christ. Translation and additions by Reubelt. This work and Bruce's Humiliation of Christ are specially useful in the study of this question. PART V. SOTERIOLOGY. SOTTERIOLOGY. the atonement in christ. Preliminaries. The great facts specially distinctive of Christianity lie in its soteriology. Hence this is the part of theology in which the truth of doctrine most deeply concerns us. 1. Soteriology. — The term soteriology is from oojTTjpla and Xoyog, and means the doctrine of salvation. The doctrine two great includes two great facts : an atonement for sin, and a iacts. salvation from sin. Underlying these facts there is the great truth of a Saviour, Jesus Christ, who makes the atonement, and through its provisions accomplishes the salvation. Hence any proper ex- pression of these facts of Christian soteriology must recognize their vital connection with him. We shall lated to attain this recognition in the use of the following *^^'^'^'''- formulas for their representation : the atonement in Christ, and the salvation in Christ. 2. Atonement as Fact and Doctrine. — We should distinguish be- tween the fact and the doctrine of atonement. Are the vicarious sufferings of Christ the ground of forgiveness and salvation ? In what sense are they such a ground ? These are distinct questions, and open to distinct answers. The first concerns the fact of an atonement ; the second concerns its nature. Nor does an affirma- tive answer to the first question determine the answer to the sec- ond. Were this so, all who hold the fact of an atonement would agree in the doctrine. But such is not the case. Different schemes of theology, while in the fullest accord on the fact, are widely diver- gent respecting the doctrine. Both questions are important, but that concerning the fact is the more vital. If the atonement be a reality, we may ac- the fact the cept it in faith, and receive the benefit of its grace be- ^^^^ vital. fore we attain its philosophy. So accepted, it has the most salutary influence upon the religious life. To this both the experience of individual Christians and the history of the Church bear witness. 66 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. Yet the question of theory is far from being an indifferent or IMPORTANCE Dierelj speculative one. The atonement is most f unda- •OF THE DOC- mental in Christianity. Hence the theory of it must TRINE. j^^i^ ^ commanding position in any system of Christian doctrine, and largely draw into itself the interest of the system. This is apjDarent upon a reference to the three great systems, which may be designated as the Arminian, the Calvinian, and the Socin- ian. As are other cardinal doctrines of each, so is its doctrine of atonement, or, conversely, as its doctrine of atonement, so are its other doctrines. In all profounder study the mind, by an inevi- table tendency, searches for a philosophy of things. There is the same tendency in the deeper study of Christian truth. Thus, be- yond the fact of an atonement, we search for a doctrine. We seek to understand its nature ; what are its elements of atoning value ; how it is the ground of divine forgiveness. We attempt its ra- tionale. It must have a philosophy ; and one clear to the divine mind, whatever obscurity it may have to the human. Its clear apprehension would be helpful to faith in many minds. ' 3. Relation of tJie Doctrine to other Doctrines. — That a doctrine of atonement must fairly interpret the facts and terms of Scripture in which it is expressed, we hold to be an imperative law. There SCIENTIFIC AC- ^^ ^^^ ^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ Mghcst authoHty in logical method. coRDANCE OF It Is thc law of a scientific accordance in intimately TRUTHS. related doctrinal truths. It has its application to all scientific systems, and to the science of theology equally as to any other. In any and every system truth must accord with truth. In systematic theology doctrine must accord with doctrine. Under this law a doctrine of atonement must be in scientific accord with cardinal doctrines vitally related to it. This law, while imperative, neither leads us away from the authority of Scripture nor lands us in a sphere of mere speculation. All Christian doctrine, to be true, must be scriptural. Doctrines in a system, to be true, must be both accordant and scriptural. If discordant or contradictory, some one or more must be both unscriptural and false. Hence this law of a scientific accordance in vitally related truths is consistent with the profoundest deference to the authority of revelation in all questions of Christian doctrine. This law may render valuable service in the construction and in- LAw OF DOC- te^'pretation of Christian doctrine. As we may inter- TRiNAL INTER- prct Scripturc by Scripture, so may we interpret doctrine R TATioN. i^y. (joQ^pjjjg^ Only, the interpreting doctrine must it- >self be certainly scriptural. As such, no Christian doctrine can be ' Eandles : Substitution : Atonement, pp. 2, 3. SOTERIOLOGY: ATONEMENT. 67 out of accord with it. In any distinction of standard or determin- ing doctrines, preference should be given to the more fundamental ; especially to such as are most certainly scriptural. Accepting such a law in the interpretation of atonement, or in the determination of its nature, we are still rendering the fullest obedience to the authority of the Scriptures in Christian doctrine. In the line of these facts and principles this law may be of special service in testing different theories of atonement, as ^ppnEo to they belong to different systems of theology. We shall thk atoxe- the better understand the legitimacy and service of this application if we hold in clear view the two leading facts previously noted, that in any system of Christian theology the several doc- trines, as constituting a system, must be in scientific agreement, and, as Christian, must be scriptural. Hence, as leading doctrines of the system are true or false, so is the doctrine of atonement which is in accord with them. For illustration we may refer to the three leading systems previously named. If other peculiar and leading doctrines of the Socinian theology be true and scriptural, so is its atonement of moral in- ix sociniax- fluence. If its Christology and anthropology be true 's^'- and scriptural, this atonement is in full harmony with the system ; and, further, is the only one which it needs or will admit. Clearly, it cannot admit either the satisfaction or the governmental theory. Both are out of harmony with its more fundamental and determin- ing doctrines, and hence are excluded by the law of a necessary ac- cordance of such truths when brought into scientific relation. The Socinian scheme, by the nature of its anthropology and Christol- ogy, denies the need of such an atonement, and has no Christ equal to the making of one. But if on the leading doctrines of Chris- tianity the truth is with the Calvinistic or the Arminian system, then the Socinian atonement is false. It is so out of harmony with such doctrines that it cannot be true while they are true. If other cardinal doctrines of Calvinism are true, its doctrine of atonement is true. It is an integral part of the system, ° -^ •' IN CALVIXISM. and in full harmony with every other part, ihe doc- trines of divine sovereignty and decrees, of unconditional elec- tion to salvation, of the effectual calling and final perseverance of the elect, and that their salvation is monergistically wrought as it is sovereignly decreed, require an atonement which in its very nat- ure is and must be effectual in the salvation of all for whom it is made. Such an atonement the system has in the absolute substi- tution of Christ, both in precept and penalty, in behalf of the olect. He fulfills the righteousness which the law requires of them, k 68 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. and suffers the punishment which their sins deserve. By the nat- ure of the substitution both must go to their account. Such a theory of atonement is in scientific accord with the whole system. And the truth of the system would carry with it the truth of the theory. It can admit no other theory. Nor can such an atone- ment be true if the system be false. If the cardinal doctrines of the Arminian system, such as differ- iN ARMINIAN- sntiatc it from Calvinism, be true, then the atonement '^"- of satisfaction, in the Calvinistic sense of it, cannot be true. If the atonement is really for all, and in the same sense suf- ficient for all, then it must be only provisory, and its saving benefits really conditional. And no other truths are more deeply wrought into Arminianism, whether original or Wesleyan ; none have a more uniform, constant, unqualified Methodistic utterance. They are such facts of atonement, or facts in such logical relation to it, that they require a doctrine in scientific agreement with themselves. Such a doctrine is the special aim of this discussion — not without regard to consistency in the system, but specially because these facts are scriptural, and the doctrine agreeing with them scriptural and true. 4. Definition of the Atonement. — A true doctrine of atonement can be fully given only in its formal exposition. Yet we give thus early a definition, with a few explanatory notes, that, so far as practicable by such means, we may place in view the doctrine which this discussion shall maintain. Tlie vicarious sufferitigs of Christ are an atonement for sin as a conditional substitute for penalty , fulfilling , on the forgiveness of sin, the obligation of justice and the office of penalty in moral gov- ernment. The sufferings of Christ are vicarioiis, not as incidental to a philanthropic or reformatory mission, but as endured for sinners under divine judicial condemnation, that they might be forgiven and saved. They are a substitute for penalty, not as the punishment of sin suBSTiTu- judicially inflicted upon Christ, but in such rectoral TioNAL. relation to justice and law as renders them a true and sufficient ground of forgiveness. They are a conditional substitute for penalty, as a provisory meas- ure of government, rendering forgiveness, on proper conditions, consistent with the obligations of justice in moral administration. Subjects of the atonement are none the less guilty simply on that account, as they would be under an atone- ment by penal substitution, wherein Christ suffered the judicial SOTERIOLOGY : ATONEMENT. 60 punishment of sin in satisfaction of an absolute retributive justice. Under a provisory substitution, the gracious franchise is in a priv- ilege of forgiveness, to be realized only on its proper conditions. Thus the substitution of Christ in snSermg fulfills the obligation of justice mid tlie office of penalty in their relation to kkctoralok- the ends of moral government. Justice has an impera- ''''^*^- tive obligation respecting these ends; and penalty, as the means of justice, a necessary office for their attainment. But penalty, as an element of law, is the means of good government, not only in its imminence or execution, but also through the moral ideas which it expresses. Hence its infliction in punishment is not an absolute necessity to the ends of its office. The rectoral service of its exe- cution may be substituted, and in every instance of forgiveness is substituted, by the sufferings of Christ. The interest of moral government is thereby equally conserved. The e7ids of justice thus concerned involve the profoundest in- terests. They include the honor and authority of God ends cox- as ruler in the moral realm; the most sacred rights and served. the highest welfare of moral beings; the utmost attainable restraint of sin and promotion of righteousness. Divine justice must regard these ends. In their neglect it would cease to be justice. It must not omit their protection through the means of penalty, except on the ground of such provisory substitute as will render forgiveness consistent with that protection. Such a substitute is found only in the vicarious sacrifice of Christ. As fully answering for these ends, his sufferings are an atonement for sin, fulfilling, on forgive- ness, the obligation of justice and the office of penalty in moral government. 70 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. CHAPTEK I. REALITY OF ATONEMENT. Ik this chapter we treat the atonement simply as a fact, not as a doctrine. The sense in which the vicarious sacrifice of Christ con- stitutes the objective ground of divine forgiveness is for separate discussion. I. WiTNEssiJs'^G Facts. There are certain facts that all should receive as scriptural, how- ever diversely they may be interpreted. We claim for them a decisive testimony to the reality of an atonement for sin in the mediation of Christ. 1. A Message of Salvation. — The Gospel is pre-eminently such a message to a sinful and lost world. Its very style as the Gospel — rd evayyeXiov — sets it forth as good tidings. It is " the glori- ous Gospel of the blessed God ;" ' " the Gospel of the grace of God ;""^ " the Gospel of salvation."^ A free overture of grace in forgiveness and salvation crowns the Gospel of Christ. 2. Tlie Salvation in Christ. — While the great fact of Revelation is the mission of Christ, the great purpose of this mission is the salvation of sinners. The Scriptures ever witness to this purpose, and specially reveal Christ as the Saviour. The angel of the an- nunciation gave charge respecting the coming Messiah : " And thou shalt call his name Jesus : for he shall save his people from their sins." * The announcement of the blessed advent to the shepherds was in a like strain : " And the angel said unto them. Fear not : for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great Joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." ' Additional texts could only emphasize these explicit -utterances of the salvation in Christ. " For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world ; but that the world through him might be saved." ^ ''This is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world."'' "And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world." * These texts, though but a small fraction ' 1 Tim. i, 11. - Acts XX, 24. ^Eph. i, 13. " Matt, i, 31. 5 Luke ii, 10, 11. « John iii, 17. •» John iv, 43, « 1 John iv, 14. REALITY OF ATONEMENT. 71 of a great number, are sufficient for the verification of the fact that the salvation so freely offered in the Gospel is a salvation in Christ. 3. Salvation in His Suffering. — This truth is declared by the very many texts which set forth the mission of Christ as * PROOF-TFXTS the Saviour of sinners. They are so numerous that their full citation would fill many pages. We may give a few in part : *' But 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." ' This whole chapter is full of the same truth, and clearly anticipates the higher revelation of the New Testament. " Whom God hath set forth to be a propitia- tion through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins." ' " Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him." ' " For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quick- ened by the Spirit."* "And the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleans- eth us from all sin." ' " Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father ; to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen."'' These words, so explicitly attributing our salvation to the vicarious sacrifice of Christ, might well be heard as from the very borderland between the earthly and heavenly states. Then like words, and equally explicit, come from beyond the border, attributing the salvation of the saintsin heaven to the same atoning blood : " These are they which came out of great tribula- tion, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple."' These texts suffi- ciently verify this third fact as a fact of Scripture, that the salva- tion so freely offered in the Gospel of Christ is a salvation provided in his suffering and death. 4. His Redeeming Death Necessary. — The vicarious sacrifice of Ciirist was not a primary or absolute necessity, but only necessary to as the sufficient ground of forgiveness. And not only salvation. is salvation directly ascribed to his blOod, but his redeeming death is declared to be necessary to this salvation. " Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day : and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem."* Thus it behooved Christ to suffer, not for the fulfillment of the prophetic ' Isa. liii, 5. '' Rom. iii, 25. ' Rom. v, 9. "1 Pet. iii, 18. ' 1 John i, 7. » Rev. i, 5, 6. ^ Rev. vii, 14, 15. « Luke xxiv, 46, 47. 72 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. Scriptures, but in order to the salvation which, long before his advent, they had foretold as the provision of his vicarious sacrifice. Only on the ground of his suffering and death could there be either the preaching of repentance, or the grace of repentance, or the remission of sins. This was the imperative behoof. " Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." ' The em- phasis of this text is in the fact that these things are affirmed of the ELSE CHRIST crucificd Christ. " For if righteousness come by the DIED IN VAIN, law, then Christ is dead in vain.''* In the context St. Paul is asserting his own realization of a spiritual life through faith in Christ, who loved him, and gave himself for him. This life in salvation he declares to be impossible by the law, and possi- ble only through the sacrificial death of Christ. Were it otherwise, Christ has died in vain. The necessity for his redeeming death in order to forgiveness and salvation could not be affirmed more explic- itly, nor with deeper emphasis. " For if there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law."^ Here is the same truth of necessity. Life is by the redeeming Christ, and has no other possible source. 5. Only Exinlanation of His Suffering. — The sufferings of Christ were for no sin of his own. Nor were they officially necessary, ex- cept as an atonement for sin. He had power to avert them, and en- dured them only through love to a lost world and in filial obedience to his Father's will." They were not chosen for their own sake on the part of either, but only in the interests of human salvation. They were a profound sacrifice on the part of both. And while the Son went willingly down into their awful depths his very nature shrank from them. Three times the prayer of his soul was poured out to his loving Father, " 0 my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." " There must have been some deep necessity for his drinking it. Clearly that necessity lay in this — that only thereby could salvation be brought into the world. And these suf- ferings of the redeeming Son witness to the reality of an atonement for sin. 6. Necessity of Faith to Salvation. — The facts already given and verified by the Scriptures are decisive of an atonement for sin in the sufferings and death of Christ. They go beyond its reality and conclude its necessity. It is also a significant fact, and one bearing on the same point, that faith in Christ, and as the redeeming Christ, is the true and necessary condition of forgiveness and salvation. ' Acts iv, 12. ' Gal. ii, 21. ^ Gal. iii, 21. '• John X, 18. 5 Matt, xxvi, 39, 42, 44. REALITY OF ATONEMENT. 73 Generally, faith in Christ, with the associated idea of his redeem- ing death, is set forth as the condition. Proof-texts are ^he great numerous and familiar. We may instance the great commission. commission : " And he said unto them. Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is bap- tized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned."' As Christ laid this solemn charge upon his ministers to preach the Gospel in all the world, and which should be so especially the preaching of himself crucified, it was very proper and profoundly important that he should distinctly set forth the condition of the great salvation so proclaimed. This he did in the most explicit terms. Faith in Christ is the condition so clearly given. This is the imperative requirement. And the Lord emphasizes the fact by declaring the different consequences of believing and not believing. We may add another text in this general view: " And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up : that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." " As the Israelites, bitten by the fiery serpents and ready to perish, were recovered only on looking upon the brazen serpent which Moses lifted up in the midst of the camp,^ so is our salvation conditioned on our faith in Christ lifted up upon the cross as a sacrifice for sin. Yet more directly is this fact given: ''Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to de- mork specif- clare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are ically. past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be Just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus."* Here the forgiveness of sin is through the propitiatory blood of Christ as its ground, and on faith therein as its condition. Such is the economy of redemption, whereby the divine righteousness is vindicated in the Justification of sinners. Faith could not be so required were not the blood of Christ a true and necessary atonement for sin. Were repentance a the faith sufficient ground of forgiveness, it would still be neces- necessary. sary to believe certain religious truths for the sake of their practical force. Only thus could there be a true repentance. But such is not the faith on which we are Justified. There is a clear distinc- tion of offices in the two cases. The faith necessary to repentance is operative through the practical force of the religious truths which it apprehends ; but the Justifying faith apprehends the blood of ' Mark xvi, 15, 16. ' John iii, 14, 15. 3 Num. xxi, 7-9. * Rom. iii, 25, 36. 7 » V4 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. Christ as a propitiation for sin, trusts directly therein, and receives forgiveness as the immediate gift of grace. No other view will interpret the Scriptures, which most explicitly give us the truth of justification by faith in Christ.^ The justification is in the forgive- ness of sin, and must be, as it is the justification of sinners. And the direct and necessary connection of justification with faith in the redemption of Christ, together with the immediateness of the forgiveness itself, concludes this distinct office of justifying faith. Hence, to confound such a faith with another faith in Christ as salutary simply through the practical force of spiritual truths and motives so apprehended, is to jumble egregiously. There is such a practical faith in Christ, and of the highest moral ^. potency. It may precede or follow the justifying faith. PRACTICAL It apprehends the great practical lessons embodied in the ^^^™- Gospel. Their apprehension in faith is the necessary condition of their practical force. The soul thus opens to their moral motives, and realizes their practical influence. This is the philosophy of a chief element of the practical power of faith. It gives the law of moral potency in all practical appeals in view of the love of God and the sacrifice of Christ in the redemptive media- tion. Such is the only office of faith in the scheme of moral influ- ence. We fully accept the fact of a great practical lesson in the mediation of Christ ; and our own doctrine combines the weightiest elements of its potency. But we object to the accounting this moral lesson, however valuable, an element of the atonement proper — most of all, the very atonement itself. This is the error of the theory of moral influence. But our special objection to this view here is A SPECIFIC OF- that it denies a distinct office of faith in the propitia- FicE OF FAITH, tory work of Christ as the condition of justification. It consistently and necessarily does this. But there is such an office of faith, and one clearly distinguished from its office as a practical force in the religious life. And the distinct requirement of faith in the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, in order to forgive- ness, is conclusive of a true and necessary atonement for sin in his suffering and death. 7. Priesthood and Sacrifice. — The priesthood of Christ had its prophetic utterance: '^The Lord hath sworn, and will not repent, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.*'" But the fullest unfolding of his priesthood with its sacrificial and inter- cessory offices is in the Epistle to the Hebrews : " Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high-priest in things pertaining ' Eom. iii, 19-22 ; iv, 5 ; Gal. ii, 16 ; iii, 22-24. » Psa. ex. 4 REALITY OF ATONEMENT. 75 to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people." "See- ing then that we have a great high-priest, that is passed into tlie heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession." "Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: "We have such a high-priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." ' These texts will suffice for what is really placed beyond question. As it was an office of the priesthood, under the law, to offer sac- rifices in atonement for sin, so Christ as our high-priest ms sacriki- must offer a sacrifice for sin. This is not a mere in- cial office. ference, but the word of Scripture: "For every high-priest is or- dained to offer gifts and sacrifices : wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer." ^ Nor are we left in any doubt respecting his sacrifice. He offers up himself. The fact is so often stated, and in such himself a sac- terms, as to give it the profoundest significance. R'^^e. " Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offer- ing and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor." ^ "Who needeth not daily, as those high-priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's : for this he did once, when he offered up himself."* "How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living Godi ' "Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high- priest entereth into the holy place every year with the blood of others; for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." ^ No critical exegesis is required to find in these texts the fact of an atonement in the mediation of Christ. In the statements respecting the sacrifice of Christ there are clear references to the ancient sacrifices; and its inter- typical sac- pretation in the light of these references gives us the R'f'CEs. same fact of an atonement. But we shall not discuss that system; a brief reference will answer for our purpose. The great annual atonement has special prominence. Its many rites, divinely prescribed with exactness of detail, were great anxial sacredly observed. Its leading facts were few and sim- atonement. pie, but of profound significance. The high-priest sacrificed a bullock in atonement for himself and family, and, entering with its blood into the holy of holies, sprinkled it upon the • Heb. ii, 17 ; iv, 14 ; viii, 1. » Heb. viii, 3. ^ gph. v, 2. "■ Heb. vii, 27. ' Heb. ix, 14, 25, 26 ; see also chap, x, 5-12. V6 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. mercy-seat. Thus he found access into the divine presence. Then he selected two goats for an atonement for the people. One he sacrificed, and, entering with its blood into the most holy place, sprinkled it upon the mercy-seat before the Lord. Then, with his hands upon the head of the other, he confessed over it the sins of the people, and sent it away into the wilderness, thus signifying the bearing away of their sins.' Thus the high-priest made an atonement for sin.^ The whole idea of atonement may here be denied on an assump- CLEAR IDEA OF tlou tliat thc mcaus have no adequacy to the end ; that ATONEMENT. j^ jg jjot lu thc uaturc of such a ceremony or such a sacrifice to constitute a ground of forgiveness. It is conceded that there is therein no intrinsic atonement. This, indeed, is the Script- ure view.^ But the idea of atonement is not therefore wanting. The divine reconciliation is real, the forgiveness of sin actual, but on the ground of the vicarious sacrifice of Christ — "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."* His atonement was not yet formally made, but already existed as a provision of the redemptive economy, and as efficacious for salvation. And the idea of atone- ment is as real in the typical sacrifice as in that which is intrin- sically sufficient. Otherwise, the Levitical atonement has no typical office, and hence is utterly inexplicable. We have thus the idea of atonement in the Levitical sacrifices, and the fact of a real atonement in the sacrifice of Christ. The former were an atonement for sin only typically, not efficaciously; while the latter, represented by them, and the ground of their accept- ance, is intrinsically the atonement. As divinely appointed in their sacrificial office, and typical therein of the sacrifice of Christ, they give decisive testimony to the fact of an atonement in his death. ^ The intercession of Christ in a priestly office fulfilled in heaven INTERCESSION IS a fact clcarly given in the Scriptures: "Who is he IN HEAVEN. ^}jg^^ condemneth ? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.'^ ° " Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us." "For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true ; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us."' ' Lev. xvi, 5-23. ' John Pye Smith : Sacrifice and Priesthood, pp. 246, 247. 3 Heb. X, 1-lL * Eev. xiii, 8. * Heb. ix, 8-12 ; x, 1. « Rom. viii, 34. ' Heb. ix, 12, 24. REALITY OF ATONEMENT. 77 Now mere intercession does not prove atonement; but such inter- cession does. It is in the order of the priestly office of provesatone- Christ. This is clear from the texts cited, especially "''■''''• with their connections. It follows the atoning sacrifice of himself, and with clear reference to the service of the Levitical atonement. As the high-priest entered with the blood of the sacrifice into the most holy place, and sprinkled it upon the mercy-seat, the very place of the divine presence and propitiation; so Christ entered with his own blood — not literally with it, but with its atoning vir- tue and the tokens of his sacrifice — into heaven itself, into the very presence of God, in the office of intercession. Such an inter- cession, the very pleas of which are in his vicarious sacrifice and blood, affirms the reality of atonement. 8. Christ a Unique Saviour. — Christ is a person in history; but his history is unique, and his character and work unique his- unique. Often designated the Son of man, he yet ™'^^- cannot be classed with men. In the fashion of a man, he is yet above men. The facts of his life constitute a new history, distinct and different from all others. They reveal a personal conscious- ness alone in its kind. A manifest fact of this consciousness is the profound sense of a divine vocation, original and singular in the moral history of the world, and which he only can fulfill. The moral impression of his life upon the souls of men is peculiar to itself, and fitly responsive to the originality of his own character and work. Amid men and angels, he stands apart in his own per- sonality and mission. His religion is unique. It is such because he, as a religious founder, is original and singular. Here, also, he can- unique re- not be classed with others in any exact sense. Every l'gion. religion is, more or less, what its founder is. His thoughts and feelings are wrought into it. It takes its molding from the cast of his mind. Its aims and forces are the outgoing of his own sub- jective life. Most eminently has Christ wrought his soul and life into his own religion. In the highest sense its aims and forces are the outgoing of his own mind : so much so that to come into the same mind with him is the highest realization of the Christian life. What he is, his religion is. But his distinctive peculiarity, as the founder of a religion, is not so much in the higher measure of his life wrought into it as in the quality of that life. Hence his re- ligion differs so much from all others, because he differs so much from all other religious founders. His religion is unique as one of salvation. And it is not only the fact of a salvation, but especially the distinctive character of 78 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. it, that constitutes the peculiarity. It is a salvation in forgiveness of sin and in moral regeneration. So it is realized A SALVATION. • , 1 • • J? 1 A J XI • m the gracious experience oi many souls. And this salvation comes not as the fruit of culture, nor in reward of per- sonal merit, nor as the purchase of penance or treasure. A religion grounded in such profound truths respecting God and man, and especially respecting man's moral state and spiritual destiny and needs, never could offer such a salvation on such conditions. The means have no sufficiency for the end. This salvation is pro- vided for and possible only in the grace and spiritual agencies of a redemptive economy. Here sin is taken away and the soul renewed. There is a new life in Christ. In this life is salvation — such a salvation as no other religion provides. Most of all is Christ a unique Saviour in that he saves us by the sacrifice of himself. The salvation is not in his A SATIOFR. ,. . ., . , . , ., • 1 • divinity, nor m his humanity, nor m his unique per- sonality as the God-man, nor in the lessons of religion which he taught, nor in the perfect life which he lived and gave to the world as an example, nor in the love wherewith he loved us, nor in all the moral force of life, and lesson, and love combined, but in his cross — in the blood of his cross as an atonement for sin. The voice of revelation is one voice, ever distinct, unvarying, and emphatic, in the utterance of this truth. This utterance comes forth of all the facts and words which reveal the distinctively saving work of Christ. They need no citation here. A few have already been given. Others will appear in their proper place. For the present, the position need only be stated and emphasized: Christ is a Sav- iour through an atonement in his blood. He is such a Saviour singularly, uniquely. The fact is too clear and certain for denial. No one familiar with the Scriptures, and frank in his spiritual mood, can question it. This is a cardinal fact, and one not to be overlooked in the in- THRouGH HIS tcrpretatioii of the redeeming work of Christ. No OWN BLOOD, other has ever claimed to put his own life and blood into the saving efficiency of his religion. No other is, nor can be, such a Saviour as Christ. If a Saviour only through a moral influ- ence, good men are saviours as truly as he, and in the same mode, differing only in the measure of their influence. Can such a theory interpret the Scriptures, or find a response in the highest, best form of the Christian consciousness? Who is there in all the Christian ages whom we can regard as a saviour in the same sense as Christ, and differing only in the measure of his saving influ- ence? As revealed in the Scriptures, and apprehended in the liv- REALITY OF ATONEMENT. 79 ing faith of the Church, and realized in the truest Christian expe- rience, Christ is the only Saviour. And lie is a Saviour only through an atonement in his blood. This is his highest distinction as a Saviour, and one that jihices him apart from all others. Any theory of Christianity contrary to this view is false to the Script- ures, false to the soteriology of the Gospel, false to the living re- ligious faith and consciousness of the Christian centuries. And unless we can surrender all essentially distinctive character in the saving work of Christ, and so do violence to all decisive facts in the case, we must maintain a true atonement in his death as the only and necessary ground of forgiveness and salvation. II. Witnessing Teems. Advocates of an objective atonement in Christ, while differing on the doctrine, are quite agreed on the Scripture proofs of the fact. Their interpretations are much the same, except where they go be- yond the reality- of an atonement and press their respective doctrinal views into the exposition. It is in the order of a better method to keep, as far as practicable, to one question at a time. This we shall endeavor to do in treating the leading terms for the fact of atonement. A full treatment of these terms for the purpose in hand would require a volume. The discussion has often been elab- orately gone over, and very conclusively for the fact of an atone- ment. There is, therefore, the less occasion to repeat it. Any one interested in the question will readily find its full and able treat- ment in the standard works on systematic theology, and in treatises exclusively on the atonement. 1. Atonement. — This term is of frequent use in the Old Testa- ment, but occurs only once in the New. The original, ")Q3, signifies to cover ; then to cover sin, to forgive sin, to discharge from pun- ishment : in its noun form, an expiation, a propitiation, a redemp- tion. ' In its primary meaning the term has no proper sense of atone- ment." It acquires such a sense in its use. Its meaning, as in the case of many other terms, is thus broadened. A rigid adherence in such a case to the primary sense is false to the deeper ideas con- veyed. Atonement, as expressed by this term, was often for the removal of ceremonial impurities, or in order to a proper qualifi- cation for sacred services. It has this sense in application to both ' Geseniua : Hebrew and English Leocicon ; Magee : Atonement and Sacrifice, dissertation xxxvi ; John Pye Smith : Sacrifice and Priesthood, pp. 136, 301-304 ; Cave : The Scriptural Doctrine of Sacrifice, pp. 483-486. " Gen. vi, 14. 80 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. things and persons/ We have not yet, however, the full sense, but a foreshadowing of its deeper meaning. In the more strictly moral and legal relations of the term we may admit a lower and a higher sense, and without any LOWER SENSE. • , ^1 i i.i J £ xi ^ concession to those who, on the ground oi the former, would exclude the latter. In many instances atonement was made for what are designated as sins of ignorance.' It may not be right- fully assumed that these sins were without amenability in justice and law. The contrary is apparent. " The ignorance intended cannot have been of a nature absolute and invincible, but such as the clear promulgation of their law, and their strict obligation to study it day and night, rendered them accountable for, and which was consequently in a certain degree culpable."^ But were such instances without culpability, and therefore without evidence of an atonement, the fact could not affect the instances of atonement for sins of the deepest responsibility. There are such instances.^ And to put the lower sense upon examples of the higher — most of all, to deny the higher because there is a lower — is without law in Script- ure exegesis. In the higher moral and legal relations of atonement there are the facts of sin and judicial condemnation. The of- fender is answerable in penalty. Then there is a vicari- ous sacrifice, and the forgiveness of the sinner. There is an atone- ment for sin. The fact is clear in the Scripture texts given by reference. Others equally conclusive will be given elsewhere. There are instances of atonement without any sacrifice. Moses bv an intercessory prayer made an atonement for Israel ATONEMENT '^ J i. J ,.. WITHOUT after the sin of idolatry m worshiping the golden calf. SACRIFICE. Aaron with his censer atoned for the congregation after the rebellion of Korah.^ Phinehas by his religious zeal made an atonement for the people, and turned away from them the divine wrath.' In view of such facts it is urged that there is no direct and necessary connection between sacrifices of atonemejit and the divine forgiveness, and hence, that there is no proof in the sacrificial system of an atonement for sin in the sacrifice of Christ. This is inconse- quent. The sacrifices of the law were an atonement only typically, not intrinsically." While, therefore, certain kinds might have special fitness for this service, yet mere typical fitness has nothing essential. Hence these sacrifices of atonement might be varied or • Lev. xvi, 11, 16, 18, 33. 'Lev. iv, 13-26 ; v, 17-19 ; Num. xv, 24-28. ^ Magee : Atonement and Sacrifice, dissertation xxxArii. " Lev. vi, 2-7. * Exod. xxxii, 30-32. « Num. xvi, 46-48. ^Num. XXV, 11-13. 8Heb. x, 1-11. REALITY OF ATONEMENT. 81 even omitted, while the atonement in the sacrifice of Christ, as intrinsically such, is both real and necessary. We get the proof of an atonement in Christ not so much from the direct application of the original term to him as from atonkment in certain significant types fulfilled in him, and especially c'irist. from the application ct equivalent terms in the Greek of the New Testament to his redemptive mediation. We may give one in- stance in which the original term is applied to the atoning sacrifice of Christ.' The passage referred to is clearly Messianic. It deter- mines by historic connections the time of Christ's advent. Then it gives certain ends to be accomplished : '' to make an end of sins " — to terminate the typical sacrifices of the law by the one sufficient sacrifice of himself ; '* and to make reconciliation — ^^S3^i — for in- iquity." The passage clearly shows that Christ makes an atone- ment for sin by the sacrifice of himself. And this sense is empha- sized in the further fact that " Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself," especially as viewed in the light of intimately related facts and utterances of the Gospel. 2. ReconciUation. — Reconciliation, and to reconcile — KaraXXayri, KaraXXdaoetv — are terms frequently applied to the redemptive work of Christ, and with the clear sense of a real atonement. '* For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son; much mor:, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his lifo."' This is the reconciliation of enemies, and, therefore, of persons under God's displeasure and ju- dicial condemnation. The reconciliation is by the death of his Son. The assurance of salvation lies in the fact of such a reconciliation of enemies. Acceptance in the divine favor comes after this recon- ciliation as its provisional ground. The death of Christ renders forgiveness consistent with the requirements of justice in moral administration. Si:ch a reconciliation is the reality of atonement. With such a fact, St. Paul might well add i "And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received — r^v KaraXXayriv — the reconciliation." * Here is the joy of an actual reconciliation through the death of Christ. "And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of by jesus reconciliation," etc.* The facts of this text give the christ. sense of a real atonement. The reconciliation is in Christ. It includes a non-imputation of sin ; that is, we are no longer held in absolute condemnation, but have the gracious privilege of the divine ' Dan. ix, 24-26. '■< Eom. v, 10. ^Rom. v, 11, *2 Cor. v, 18-21. 82 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. forgiveness and friendship. Hence there is committed to us the ministry of reconciliation, with its gracious overtures and entreat- ies. And the manner in which God reconciles us to himself in Christ is deeply emphasized: " For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin ; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." Any fair exposition of this text must find in it the fact of an atonement.' It is urged in objection, that in these texts we are said to be rec- REcoNciLEDTo oucilcd to God, not God to us. The fact is admitted, GOD. while the validity of the objection is denied. It falsely assumes that the only bar to God's friendship with his rebellious subjects is in their hostility to him; and hence illogically concludes that the reconciliation in Christ is an atonement, not as a rectoral ground of the divine forgiveness, but simply as a moral influence leading them to repentance and loyalty. This is contradicted by many principles and facts previously discussed. It is contrary to those texts according to which God, by the reconciliation in Christ, puts himself into a relation of mercy toward us, and then, on the ground of this reconciliation, urges and entreats us in penitence and faith to accept his offered forgiveness and love. Thus upon the ground of a provisory divine reconciliation there will follow an actual reconciliation and a mutual friendship. Further, this objection falsely assumes that reconciliation is sim- ply the cessation of hostility in the party said to be recon- SENSE OF THE ^. *' J 1 J REcoNciLiA- ciled. It properly means, and often can mean only, ^^*'"*' that he is reconciled in the sense of gaining the forgive- ness and friendship of the party to whom he is reconciled. Of this there are familiar instances in Scripture.* As applied to rebellious subjects the term has its first relation to the ruler. *' To be 7'econ- ciled, when spoken of subjects who have been in rebellion against their sovereign, is to be brought into a state in which pardon is of- fered to them, and they have it in their power to render themselves capable of that pardon, namely, of laying down their enmity. . . . Wherefore, the reconciliation received through Christ is God's placing all mankind, ever since the fall, under the gracious new covenant, procured for them through the obedience of Christ ; in which the pardon of sin is offered to them, together with eternal life, on their fulfilling its gracious requisitions."^ This is an accu- rate statement of the reconciliation in Christ, and gives us the fact of an atonement therein. ' See also Eph. ii, 16 ; Col. i, 20-22 ; Heb. ii, 17. 2 1 Sam, xxix, 4 ; Matt, v, 23, 24. ' Maeknight : On the Epistles, Rom. v, 10. REALITY OF ATONEMENT. 83 3. Propitiation. — To be propitious is to be disposed to forgive- ness and favor. To propitiate is to render an aggrieved or offended party clement and forgiving. A propitiation is that whereby tho favorable change is wrought. There are two points to be specially noticed: the nature of the divine propitiousness toward sinners; and the relation of the redemptive mediation of Christ to that propitiousness. God is propitious to sinners in a disposition toward forgiveness. This is in the definition of the term. The same sense divine propi- is given in Scripture, without any direct reference to a tiousxess. propitiatory sacrifice. The fact will render the clearer the propi- tiatory ofl&ce of the blood of Christ. We will cite a few texts in illustration; but for a clearer view of the sense stated, the original terms — appropriate forms of 123) n^D, IXdaiiofiai — should be con- sulted, as the term propitious, or to be propitious, is not given in our translation. " For thy name's sake, 0 Lord, imrdon mine in- iquity; for it is great."' " But he, being full of compassion, for- gave their iniquity, and destroyed them not : yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath."'' " 0 Lord, hear; 0 Lord, forgive."^ "God he merciful to me a sinner."* "For I will 5e merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. " * These texts, selected from many similar ones, suffice for the position that God is propitious in a disposition toward forgiveness, and in the fact of forgiveness as the exercise of such clemency. Here are sins, and the divine displeasure against them. Here are sinners with a deep sense of sin and of the divine condemnation. Here are their earnest prayers to God, that he would be propitious and forgive. And he forgives them, turns away his wrath and accepts them in favor, as he is propitious to them. These facts determine the meaning of a propitiation. It is that which renders an aggrieved or offended party clement and forgiv- ing; that which is the reason or ground of forgiveness. Such a propitiation is an atonement. Christ is a propitiation for sin. He is such in his sacrificial death, and in relation to the divine clemency and for- christ a pro- giveness. " "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitia- pitiatiox. tion through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past."' Here are all the facts of a true propitiation: the presupposed sins as an offense against God, and his displeasure against them ; the blood of Christ as a propitiation ' Psa. XXV, 11. " Psa. Ixxviii, 38. ' Dan. ix, 19. * Luke xviii, 13. ' Heb. viii, 13. * Rom. iii, 35. 84 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. for sins ; the divine clemency and forgiveness through this propi- tiation. The blood of Christ fulfills its propitiatory office with God. There is, therefore, an atonement in his blood. Other Scripture texts give the same truth. " And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. " ' Such a propitiation for sin is the reality of an atonement in Christ. 4. Redemption. — Under this term might be classed many texts which, with the utmost certainty, give us the fact of an atonement. Eedemption has a clear and well-defined sense. To redeem is to purchase back, to ransom, to liberate from slavery, cap- tivity, or death, by the payment of a price. This gives the sense of redemption or to redeem — Xvrgoui — in both its classic and Scripture use.^ Under the Mosaic law alienated lands might be recovered by the payment of a ransom or price. This would be a re- INSTANCES. -I- »^ J- demption. Such alienated property, if not previously ransomed, reverted without price at the Jubilee; but this rever- sion was not a redemption, because without any ransom.^ A poor Israelite might redeem himself from slavery by the payment of a sum reckoned according to the time remaining for which he had sold himself. This would be his redemption. But the freedom which came with the jubilee was not a redemption, because it came without any price.* These facts confirm the sense of redemption as previously given. Further, in the case of one who has forfeited his life: "If there be laid on him a sum of money, then he shall give for the ransom of his life whatsoever is laid, upon him."" * This is an instance of redemption. The same meaning lies in the fact that for the life of a murderer no ransom was permitted." Occasional uses of the term simply in the sense of a deliverance are not contrary to the truer and deeper meaning. There is a de- liverance as the result of a redemption. The ransom is paid in order to the deliverance. And it is a proper usage to apply the name of a thing to its effect, or to what constitutes only a part of its meaning. This use is entirely consistent with the deeper sense of redemption, while the deeper sense cannot be reduced to that of a mere deliverance. This is true of the instances previously given, and will be found true of the redemption in Christ. ' 1 John ii, 2 ; iv, 10. ' John Pye Smith : Sacrifice and Priesthood, pp. 204-207 ; Hill : Lectures in Divinity, pp. 474, 475. ^ Lev. xxv, 23-28. •* Lev. xxv, 47-54. ' Exod. xxi, 30. « Num. xxxv, 31. IIEALITY OF ATONEMENT. 85 We shall here select but a few of the many texts which apply the terms of redemption to the saving work of Christ. rkdemption "The Son of man came ... to give his life a ransom bychrist. for many." " Who gave himself a ransom for all." ' The original terms — Xvtqov, dvriXvTgov — are the very terms which signify tlie ransom or price given for the liberation of a captive, the recovery of anything forfeited, or the satisfaction of penal obligation. So, for our deliverance from sin and death, and for the recovery of our forfeited spiritual life, Christ gives his life — himself — as the ransom. Kedemption in its deeper sense could not have a clearer expression. Truly are we ''bought with a price;" ''not redeemed with cor- ruptible things, as silver and gold, . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot."^ As in other cases silver and gold constitute the ransom, so the blood of Christ is the price of our redemption from sin. " Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity." — " And for this cause he is the mediator of the New Tes- tament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the trans- gressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance."^ Here are facts of redemption which give us a real atonement. We are sinners, with the penal liabilities of sin; and Christ gives his own life as the price of our ransom. " Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written. Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." "But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to re- deem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." * In the second text we have a different original word — e^ayopdi^cj — but of like meaning. The subjects of the re- demption are under the law, and under the curse of the law — the former state implying all that the latter expresses. Whether " the law " be the law of nature or the Mosaic, the facts of redemption are the same. Under both men are sinners, and by neither is there salvation. The redemption is from the penalty of sin — from the curse of the law. The same sense is determined by tlie fact that the redemption is to the end "that we might receive the adoption of sons." The death of Christ upon the cross is the redemption. " Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." "In whom we have redemption through his ' Matt. XX, 28 ; 1 Tim. ii, 6. » 1 Cor. vi, 20 ; 1 Pet. i, 18, 19. 3 Titus ii, 14 ; Heb. ix, 15. •• Gal. iii, 13 ; iv, 4, 5. 8 8G SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace." ' Here we have the same facts of redemption. We are sinners and under divine condemnation. The redemption through Christ, and in his blood, is in order to our justification, or the forgiveness of our sins. Such are the facts of redemption by Jesus Christ. And with the A REAL ATONE- ^lu aud condcmnation of men as its subjects, with the MENT. forgiveness and salvation which it provides, with the blood of Christ as the ransom whereby the gracious change is wrought, it is unreasonable to deny the fact of an atonement in his redeeming death. "Every one feels the effect of introducing the nouns XvTQov or dvriX.vTpov, in connection with the verb Xvo), when applied to the case of a discharged debtor or released captive, as making it perfectly clear that his redemption is not gratuitous, but that some consideration is given for the securing it. Nor is the significancy of these nouns in the least diminished when it is from penal consequences of a judicial nature that a person is released. The Xvrgov^ indeed, in that case, is not a price from which the law- giver is to receive any personal advantage. It is the satisfaction to public law and justice upon which he consents to remit the sen- tence. But still, the mention of it, in this case as well as in others, is absolutely inconsistent with a gratuitous remission."^ This statement holds true, with all the force of its facts, in application, as intended, to the redemption in Christ. The deeper ideas of redemption were wrought into the minds of the writers of the New Testament by both their Hebraic and Hellenic education. Nor may we think that they used its terms out of their proper meaning in applying them to the saving work of Christ. Such a redemption is the reality of atonement. Kedemption holds a prominent place in the nomenclature of atonement ; indeed, is often used for the designative NOT IN A . 1 « • ij? T 1 COMMERCIAL tcrm lustcad of atonement itself. It may be pressed SENSE. -j^^^ ^i^g service of an erroneous doctrine. The result is a commercial atonement. But this is carrying the analogy in the case to an unwarranted extreme. Eedemption is modified by the sphere in which it is made. The ransom-price of a captive or slave goes to the personal benefit of the party making the surrender; it is his compensation. The transaction is one of barter. When a penalty of death was commuted for a sum of money the ransom ' Rom. iii, 24 ; Eph. i, 7. '^ Hill : Lectures in Divinity, vol. ii, p. 483. The passage varies from the same one in the American edition, and is given as quoted by Professor Crawford. REALITY OF ATONEMENT. ST was penal and of rectoral service, but also of pecuniary value with the government. In the divine government there can be no such element of redemption. The redemption does not thereby lose the sense of an atonement, but should, therefore, be guarded against an erroneous doctrine. The gist of the analogy is in the fact of a compensatory ransom. This is consistent with a wide distinction in the nature of the compensation. There is a wide distinction in fact: in the one case a personal, pecuniary compensation; in the other, a compensation in rectoral value. In the one case money redeems a captive or slave as a commercial equivalent; in the other, the blood of Christ redeems a soul as the rectoral equivalent of penalty. The ransom is as vitally related to the result in the latter case as in the former. This gives us the reality of an atonement in the redemption of Christ, and will give us a doctrine without any commercial element. 5. Substitution. — Substitution is not formally a Scripture term, but well expresses the sense of numerous texts in their application to the saving work of Christ. Like the term " redemption," it may be pressed into the service of an erroneous doctrine. This, however, can be done only by a wrong interpretation of the substi- tution. But we are still only on the fact of an atonement, and, for the proof of this, here require nothing more than the substitution of Christ in suffering as the ground of forgiveness. The fifty-third chapter of Isaiah is clearly Messianic, and clearly gives us the fact of substitutional atonement. We words of shall attempt no elaborate or critical exposition. This isaiah. has often been done, and successfully for the sense of a real atone- ment.' We cite the leading utterances: " But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastise- ment of our peace was upon him ; and with his stripes we are healed. . . . The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. . . . He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter. . . . For the transgres- sion of my people was he stricken. . . . Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin. . . . And he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors."^ These words are deci- sive of a substitutional atonement in the sufferings of Christ. " For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man other proof Avill one die: yet perad venture for a good man some '"^^ts. would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward ' Alexander, Lowth, Delitzscb, severally on Isaiah ; Terry : Methodist Quar- terly Review, January, 1880. " laa. liii, 5-12. 88 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."' Surely here is atonement in substitution. Those for whom Christ died are noted as ungodly, sinners, enemies. Hence they are in a state of condemnation. In the death of Christ for them is the ground of their Justification, which is impossible by the deeds of the law. These facts give us atonement by substitution. This sense is confirmed by the supposed case of one dying for another. It is the supposition of a substitution of one life for another, the rescue of one by the vicarious sacrifice of another. So Christ died for us as sinners, and in order to our forgiveness and salvation. It is a substitution in law ; not penal, but rectoral, so that law might still fulfill its office in the interest of moral government. This is vica- rious atonement. " Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness : by whose stripes ye were healed."^ Here is a clear reference to the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and also the same sense of atonement by substitution. " For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God."^ Our sins separate us from God, and bring us under his condemnation. There can be reconciliation and fellowship only through forgiveness. Christ provides for this by suffering for our sins in our stead — the just for the unjust. This is the reality of atonement by substitution in suffering. » Rom. V, 6-8. "1 Pet. ii, 24. » 1 Pet. iii, 18. NECESSITY FOR ATONEMENT. 89 CHAPTER IT. NECESSITY FOR ATONEMENT. The necessity for an atonement is so closely related to the ques- tion of its nature that the former might be fully discussed in con- nection with the latter. Yet its separate treatment, at least so far as our own doctrine is concerned, is in the order of the better method. In our witnessing facts for the reality of an atonement we gave Scripture proofs of its necessity. This necessity, as proofs of xe- divinely revealed, is asserted in the most explicit and ^-kssity. emphatic terms. It is given with all the force of a logical implica- tion in the requirement of faith in the redeeming Christ as the necessary condition of forgiveness and salvation. It is further verified as the only explanation of the sufferings and death of Christ. The facts of his redemptive mediation are of no ordinary character. Indeed, they are so extraordinary as to require the profoundest necessity for their vindication under a specially prov- idential economy. The incarnation of the Son of God is a mar- velous event. Its deeper meaning we read only in the light of his own character and rank. In the form of God, he has a rightful glory in equality with him. This he surrenders, and takes, instead, the form of a servant, in the likeness of men. His estate is in the deepest abasement. He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He bears the reproaches and hatreds of men. His sufferings have unfathomed depths. After the profound self-humiliation in the incarnation he yet further hum- bles himself and becomes obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.' The will of the Father is concurrent with the will of the Son in this whole transaction. While the Son comes in the gladness of filial obedience and the compassion of redeeming love, the Father sends him forth and prepares for him a body for liis priestly sacri- fice.' The infinite sacrifice of this concurring love of the Father and the Son affirms the deepest necessity for an atonement as the ground of forgiveness. ' Psa. Ixix, 9 ; Rom. xv, 3 ; Phil, ii, 6-8 ; 1 Tim. iii, 18. 2 Psa. xl, 6-8 ; Heb. x. 5-9. «J0 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. I. Ground of Necessity iif Moral Governmekt. Only with the fact of a divine moral government can there be the occasion of any question respecting the necessity for an atonement. If we are not under law to God we are without sin. If without sin, we have nothing to be forgiven. Hence there could be for us no necessary ground of forgiveness. 1. Fact of a Moral Government. — God being God, and the Crea- tor of men, and men being what they are, a moral government is the profoundest moral necessity. We have a moral nature, with the powers of an ethical life. Our character is determined according to the use of these powers. Herein is involved our profoundest per- sonal interest. We also deeply affect each other, and after the manner of our own life. Here is a law of great evil. Nor would the fact be other, except infinitely worse, were we wholly without law from heaven. The less men know of a divine law, with its weightier obligations and sanctions, the lower they sink into moral corruption and ruin. The moral powers and the forces of evil are full of spontaneous impulse. Nor do they await the occasion of a revealed law for their corrupting and ruinous activity. And however the absence of all divine law might change our relation to judicial penalty, our moral ruin would be, nevertheless, inevitable and utter. Now, should we even concede God's indifference to his own claims upon our obedience and love, it would be irrational, and blasphemous even, to assume his indifference to all the interests of virtue and well-being in us. He cannot overlook us. His own perfections constrain his infinite regard for our welfare. Under the condition of such facts there is, and there must be, a divine moral government over us. The moral consciousness of humanity affirms the fact of such a government.' 2. Requisites of a Moral Government. — Within the moral realm subjects may differ : possibly, in some facts of their personal con- stitution ; certainly, in their moral state and tendencies. A wise government must vary its provisions in adjustment to the require- ment of such differences. In some facts the divine law must be the same for all. It must require the obedience of all ; for such is the right of the divine Ruler and the common obligation of his subjects. It must guard the rights and interests of all. Beyond such facts, yet for the reason of them, the provisions of law, as means to the great ends of moral government, should vary as subjects differ. The same principles which imperatively require a moral ' Bishop Butler : Analogy of Beltgion, part i, chaps, ii, iii ; Gillett : Tfie Moral System. NECESSITY F()I{ ATONEMENT. 91 govenimeiit for moral beings also require its economy in adjustment to any considerable peculiarities of moral condition and tendency. This law has special significance, and should not be overlooked in the present inquiry. We are seeking for the necessity specially >or of an atonement in tlie requirements of moral govern- *'-^^'- ment ; and we shall more readily find it in view of our own moral tendencies and needs. The atonement, while directly for man, has infinitely wider relations than the present sphere of humanity. Indirectly it concerns all intelligences, and is, no doubt, in adjust- ment to all moral interests. Still, in its immediate purpose it is a provision for the forgiveness and salvation of men. The atonement is, therefore, a measure introduced into the divine government as immediately over us, and its special necessity must arise from the interests so directly concerned. Subjects should know the will of the Sovereign. There are things to be done, and things not to be done. Nor can a law of such things always be known either by reason or expe- "^"''^• rience. This may be true even with the highest in perfection, and with every thought and feeling responsive to duty. Most certainly is it true of us. The mode in which the law of duty shall be given is not first in importance. It is the law itself that is so essential. How God may reveal his will to angels we know not, because wo know neither his modes of expression nor their powers of appre- hension. In some mode it is made known, and so becomes the law of their duty. And God has made known his will to us. This is chiefly done through revelation, though we have some light through the moral reason and the direct agency of the Holy Spirit. God gave a law to Adam, communicated his will to the patriarchs, wrote the dec- alogue on tables of stone for Israel and for man, spake often to the people by the prophets. And Christ summed up the law of Christian duty in the two great commandments. It is not requisite that every particular duty should lie given in a special statute. This would be for us an impracticable code. We have the law of duty, in a far bet- ter form, in the great moral principles given in the gospels. And thus we have the divine will revealed to us as the law of our duty. In the highest conceivable perfection, with the clearest appre- hension of duty, with every sentiment responsive to its sanction of behests, and with no tendency nor temptation to the rewards. contrary, obedience would be assured without the sanction of re- wards. In such a state, however munificent the divine favors might be to such obedience, penalty could have no necessary govern- mental function. But when obedience is difficult and its failure a special liability, duty must have the sanction of rewards. They 92 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. must form a part of the law and have as distinct an announcement as its precepts. Otherwise, government is void of a necessary ad- justment to the moral state of its subjects. Such is the requirement of our moral condition. With us there NECESSARY ^rc mauj hinderances to duty, and the liability to sin FOR MAN. jg great. There is moral darkness, spiritual apathy, a strong tendency to evil, and the incoming of much temptation. We deeply need the moral sanctions of law in the promise of good and the imminence of penalty. And however defective the virtue Avrought merely under the influence of such motives, they are clearly necessary to the ordinary morality of life. Whether in view of human or divine law, or of the history of the race, every candid man must confess the necessity of such support to the social and public morality, and that without it there could be no true civil life. It was in the conviction of such a truth that the ancient sages asserted the necessity of religion to the life of the State and the well-being of society, and that the ancient lawgivers and rulers maintained religious institutions and services for the sake of the support which the expectation of rewards in a future state gave to law and duty in the present life.' And for us as a race there is the profoundest need of penalty as a fact of law. With the vicious, as the many would be without the law, the imminence of penalty is a far weightier sanction of law than the promise of reward. 3. Divine Determination of Reivards. — It is the prerogative of the divine Euler to determine the rewards of human conduct. No other can determine them either rightfully or wisely. Specially are we void of both the prerogative and the capacity for their proper apportionment. Even in the plane of secular duties and interests, and with the gathered experience of ages, questions of penalty are still the perplexing problems of the most highly civilized States; and surely we should not assume a capacity for the adjustment of law and its rewards to the requirements of the divine government. But God comprehends the whole question, and has full prerogative in its decisions. He knows what measure of rewards is befitting his justice and goodness and required by the interests of his moral government. And, accordingly, he has given us the law of our duty^ with its announced rewards of obedience and sin. 4. Measure of Penalty. — God determines the measure of penalty, DETERMINING l^^t uot arbitrarily. His infinite sovereignty asserts no LAWS. disregard of the principles of justice nor of the rights and interests of his subjects. He is a wise and good Sovereign, as he is a just and holy one. ' Warburton: The Divine Legation of Moses, books ii, iii. NECESSITY FOR ATONEMENT. 93 Siu has intrinsic demerit. It deserves to be punished; and God has the exact measure of its desert. So far penalty thk demerit may be carried. Divine justice, in its distinctive retrib- of sin. utive function, has no reason for pause short of this. In its own free course it would so ininish all sin. But justice cannot carry its penalties beyond the demerit of sin. Nor can it suffer any inter- ests of moral government to carry them beyond this .limit. Nay, punishment cannot go beyond. Whatever transcends the intrinsic demerit of sin ceases in all that transcendence to be punishment. Hence, while the inherent turpitude of sin is the real and only ground of punishment, its own measure is a limitation of penalty. It is an important office of penalty to conserve the interests of the government. We here use the term government the office of not in any ideal or abstract sense, but as including the p'^'"''^'''^^- divine Sovereign ruling in its administration, and the moral beings over whom he rules. The rights and glory of God are concerned; the profoundest interests of men are concerned. So far we may speak with certainty, however it may be with other orders of moral beings. Hence the rectoral function of penalty is a most important one. Its importance rises in the measure of the interests which it must conserve. It must fulfill its rectoral office sjiecially as a restraint upon sin. It must, therefore, be wisely adjusted in its measure to this specific end. Two facts condition its restraining force: one, the strength of our tendency to sin ; the other, the state of our motivity conditioning to penalty as an impending infliction. Both of these facts facts. deeply concern the measure of penalty required by the highest inter- ests of moral government. With a strong tendency to sin, and a feeble motivity to the imminence of penalty — facts so broadly and deeply written in human history — penalties must be the severer. The interests of moral govei'ument may require them even in the full measure of the demerit of sin. Up to this limit, whatever God may see to be requisite to these interests will not fail of his appointment as the penalty of sin. All the fundamental principles which deter- mine his institution of the wisest and best government must so determine him respecting the measure of penalty. II. Necessity for Penalty. The physical evil and moral wretchedness which follow upon our sinful conduct, but really as consequent to our constitu- go„g gy,Lg tion and relations, are not strictly of the nature of pun- ^ot penal. ishment, though such is a very common view. That sin brings misery is in the order of the divine constitution of things. It is i>4 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. not clear that there could be such a constitution of moral beings that suffering would not follow upon sin. Indeed, the contrary is manifest. But what so follows as a natural result, though in an order of things divinely constituted, is not strictly penal. Such naturally consequent evil may have in the divine plan an important ministry in the economy of moral government. But punishment, strictly, is a divine infliction of penalty upon sin in the order of a judicial administration. The necessity for penalty, therefore, is not from necessary causation, but from sufficient moral grounds. Penalty has such a necessity in the interest of moral government, except as its office may be fulfilled by some substitutional measure. In the moral realm there is a divine moral Ruler ; and the vital truth of the present question must be viewed in the light of his perfec- tions and rectoral relations. In such light the moral necessity for penalty is manifest. 1. Froyn its Rectoral Office. — Omitting other things for the pres- ent, penalty has a necessary office in the good of moral govern- ment. Justice itself is directly concerned therein. Nor is any requirement of justice more imperative. Sin must be restrained and moral order maintained for the honor of God and the good of moral beings. The innocent must be protected against injury and wrong. Justice cannot overlook these profound interests. In such neglect it would cease to be justice. It must sacredly guard them. A necessary power for their protection lies in its penalty. This it may not omit, except through some measure equally fulfilling the same rectoral office, while forgiveness is granted to repenting sinners. 2. From the Divine Holiness. — God, as a perfectly holy being, must give support to righteousness and place barriers in the way of sin. He must seek, in the use of all proper means, the prevention or utmost restraint of sin. But in the moral state of humanity penalty is a necessary means for such limitation. Lift the restraint of its imminence from the soul and conscience of men, and, wicked as they now are, they would be immensely worse. Even a pre- sumptive hope of impunity emboldens sin. The divine forbear- ance in the deferment of merited punishment is made the occasion of a deeper impenitence and a more persistent impiety. " Be- cause sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, there- fore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." ' And a release from all amenability to penalty would be to many a divine license to the freest vicious indulgence. The divine holiness, therefore, must require the restraint of sin through the ministry of ' Eecles. viii, 11. NECESSITY FOR ATONEMENT. 95 penalty, except as the interest of righteousness may be protected through some other means. 3. From the Divine Goodness. — Nor less must the divine good- ness support this office of justice. Sin brings misery. It must bring misery, even in the absence of all infliction of penalty. The race would be far more wretched in the absence of all penalty than it is under an amenability to its rectoral inflictions. While, there- fore, God punishes with reluctance, and with profound sympatliy for the suffering sinner, yet, as a God of love, he must maintain the office of penalty in the interest of human happiness. The only ground of its surrender, even on the part of the divine goodness, must be found in some vicarious measure equally answering the same end. 4. A Real Xecessity for Atonement. — The result is, the necessity for an atonement. Without such a provision sinners cannot be for- given and saved. The impossibility is concluded by the facts and principles which this chapter unfolds. The necessity for the redemptive mediation of Christ lies ultimately in the perfections of God as moral ruler. It is, therefore, most imperative. 5. Nature of the Ato?iemenf Indicated. — We have not yet reached the place for the more formal discussion of the true theory of atone- ment ; yet certain facts and principles have already come into view which so clearly indicate its nature that their doctrinal meaning may properly be noted here. AYe have the truth of a divine moral government as the ground- fact in the necessity for an atonement. We have found by its neces- the facts and principles of such a government strongly ^'■^^• affirmative of this necessity. They thus respond to the explicit affirmations of Scripture thereon. Further, we have found this necessity to be grounded in the profoundest interests of moral government, for the protection of which the jDcnalties of the divine justice have a necessary function. Here we have the real hinder- ance to a mere administrative forgiveness, and, therefore, the real necessity for an atonement. The true office of atonement follows accordingly. The vicarious sufferings of Christ answer for the obligation of justice and the office of penalty in the interests of moral government, so that such interest shall not suffer through the forgiveness of sin. This is, however, not the whole service of the redemptive mediation of Christ, but a chief fact in its more specific office, and one answering to the deepest necessity for an atonement. The nature of the atonement is thus determined. The vicarious sufferings of Christ are a provisory substitute for pen- its real xat- alty, and not the actual punishment of sin. He is not ^'^*^- such a substitute in penalty as to preserve the same retributive 96 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. administration of justice as in the actual punishment of sinners. The sufferings of Christ, endured for us as sinners, so fulfill the obli- gation of justice and the office of penalty in the interest of moral government as to render forgiveness, on proper conditions, entirely consistent therewith. Such is the nature of the atonement. Such a view fully answers to the relation between God and IN ACCORD nien as sovereign and subjects, and to the facts of their WITH FACTS, sinfulness and subjection to his righteous displeasure and judicial condemnation. Sin offends his justice and love, incurs his righteous displeasure, and constitutes in them punitive desert. Such are the facts which the Scriptures so fully recognize. And God as a righteous ruler must inflict merited penalty upon sin, not, indeed, in the gratification of any mere personal resentment, nor in the satisfaction of an absolute retributive justice, but in the interest of moral government, or find some rectorally compensatory measure for the remission of penalty. Such a measure there is in the redemptive mediation of Christ. The conclusion gives us an atonement, not by an absolute substitution in punishment, but by a provisory substitution in suffering. SCHEMES WITHOUT ATONEMENT. 97 CHAPTER III. SCHEMES WITHOUT ATONEMENT. Some hold the fact of salvation who yet deny a vicarious atone- ment. Such consistently deny its necessity. There is, in their view, no element of divine justice, nor interest of moral government, which makes it necessary. Sin may be forgiven or ultimate salva- tion attained without it. These great blessings have other grounds or modes. In accord with this position, and as consistency re- quires, certain grounds or modes are alleged as entirely sufpcient for our forgiveness or future happiness. Thus we have schemes of salvation without an atonement in Christ, and in the denial of its necessity. It may be proper to notice some of them. I. Blessedness After the Penalty. Universalism and Calvinism differ widely in their completed sys- tems— if we may speak of the former as a system. They are infi- nitely apart respecting the demerit of sin and the measure of its merited penalty. Yet the two are at one in the cardinal princi- ple that sin must be punished according to its desert. We speak of these systems in their more regular form, not in all their phases. But such a principle in Universalism, as in any non-atonement scheme, gives no place for salvation. 1. Salvation Excluded. — In any deep sense of the term, salvation is possible only as a real forgiveness of sin, or its substitutional punishment, is possible. Where the penalty is fully suffered by the offender, as Universalism asserts it must be, there is no salva- tion. When a criminal has suffered the full penalty awarded him his discharge is no matter of grace, and his further punishment would be an injustice. There is neither forgiveness nor salvation in his release. On the scheme of Universalism the same must be true in every instance of divine penalty. Such a scheme is false to the clearly revealed fact of forgiveness; false to the soteriology of the Scriptures. The fact is deeply wrought into the Gospel of Christ that he is a Saviour through the forgiveness of sin; a Saviour from the punishment of sin; and such a Saviour through an atone- ment in his blood. These facts have been set forth and verified by the Scriptures, and need not here be repeated. 98 SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY. 2. Final Blessedness really a Salvation. — The denial of ultimate happiness as a salvation is a logical implication of this scheme. The same is true whether merited punishment is limited to this life or continues for a greater or less time in the next. There is no salvation in the termination of sugh a punishment, whether in the present or future world. Justice has no further penal claim. And while the happiness then beginning and flowing on forever might be far above any merit in us, still it could not be a salvation. Certainly it could be no such a salvation as the Scriptures reveal in Christ. In the truest and deepest sense future happiness is a sal- vation through his atonement.' Hence the scheme which precludes this fact cannot be true. 3. Impossible under Endless Penalty. — A scheme of ultimate and endless happiness, after a full personal satisfaction of justice in penalty, must limit the duration of punishment, however long it may continue in a future state. If penalty be eternal there can be no after-state of happiness. Here arises a great question, the discussion of which would lead us quite aside from the subject in hand. We simply note in passing that the Scriptures exjDress the duration of penalty in terms most significant of its eternity. What seems specially decisive is, that it is so expressed when placed in immediate contrast with the endless reward of the righteous: **And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal." "^ The same original word — al