Question: 1. A correspondent writes of “Recent Utterances,” especially pp.40-42, as “most confusing. That is, I know less than ever what Mr. Stuart wishes to prove, as differing from former teaching; I wonder if anybody knows.”
Answer: The question is not whether Mr. Pinkerton who is criticized is quite justified, when he speaks of Christ’s entrance into heaven “in virtue of His own blood.” This would require ἐν not διά as here. It was a slip, perhaps from thinking of Heb. 13:20, which does mean “in virtue of the blood of the everlasting covenant,” and not, “through.” Mr. P. would repudiate as cordially and emphatically as Mr. S., all thought of Christ’s needing His own atoning blood to enter heaven. But “by” would be hardly less objectionable, if intended to convey the means whereby He entered, in derogation of His. person, as well as inconsistently with the use of διά in the early part of the verse. Some who contend for such a rendering are obliged to make the first mean “through” locally, the second and third “through” i.e. “by means of.” But it has been long pointed out that διά (with the genitive and even with the accusative) sometimes points neither to the moans whereby, nor to the cause for which, but to a characteristic state in which the person was or acted; as in Rom. 2:25; 4:11; 14:20; Gal. 4:13. In some of these cases “with” seems the least equivocal English rendering, though “in” or “by” may suit other places better when understood as simply characteristic.
But in the course of a singularly unfair comment, harping on a sense given to Mr. P.’s words which Mr. S. owns was not meant, he himself lays down doctrine inexcusably false, which he does mean distinctly and deliberately, on the foundation truth of propitiation. He censures in the most sweeping terms what Mr. P. holds in common with all rightly taught believers, that propitiation was accomplished in this world, not in heaven, and his denial that Christ entered heaven to complete it. The affirmative, is the fundamental error which Mr. S. has embraced and teaches now, if not heretofore. From the type of Lev. 16 he declares boldly that, as propitiation by blood, an essential part of atonement, “was done and only done inside the most holy place, and by the high priest,” so propitiation by blood was made by our Lord “in heaven, and after death!” Thus the plainest and most solemn declarations of Christ’s atoning death in the N. T. are annulled, and His work, according to Mr. S., was not finished on the cross, because he is sure that his interpretation of the type so requires! Instead of believing Scripture that the law has only a shadow of the coming good things, he virtually makes it the image itself, thereby overthrowing the gospel truth of Christ’s expiation completed here below. Indeed he is not the only one of his company led on, by the same confidence in his own handling of the types, to override the surest anti-typical truth now alone fully revealed.
But this is not all. Some of his staunchest supporters notoriously disapprove of his teaching, yet most hold together though differing wholly on what is only short of Christ’s person in vital moment. Not only does Mr. S. wax bolder in his evil view, but the organ of the party for last month (Words in Season, xi. pp. 331, 2) stands committed to it, without the slightest warning of the Editor. And one may add with sincere grief that the statement is misleading enough for more than one upright man among them to circulate the periodical, in order to show that the matter was misjudged. Here Mr. S. says, “Atonement, then, was completed ere He rose” (p. 331). This was supposed to be a return to orthodoxy. But it is not so. It would have been, had Mr. S. written or meant, that atonement was completed by blood when He died. But he wrote carefully avoiding the truth, and still maintaining his fatal dream that “He made propitiation in the heavenly sanctuary as the High Priest after death, but before ascension” (p. 332)!!
That is to say in plain words, Mr. S. holds and teaches that, after death and before resurrection, Christ went up and by His blood made propitiation in heaven! In the disembodied state He entered on the office of High Priest to effect propitiation, before His present priestly service of intercession on high after He rose and ascended! Every believer, I should have judged, recognizes in the word, as particularly in the Hebrews, but one entrance of Christ on high, risen and glorified, no matter how often the high priest had to enter the holiest in the type. Far from seeing “no difficulty in this” distressingly strange doctrine, every saint sound in the faith will reject it as a different propitiation which is not another. It is not the atonement of the gospel, but an abuse of the type to supplant the truth by what is really a ghastly fable. We must unhesitatingly answer, “No!” to Mr. S.’s assertion that Christ in the separate state entered the heavenly sanctuary to make propitiation for the sins of the people. Scripture gives it no countenance; and the Epistle to the Hebrews knows of but one entrance, i.e. on His ascension.
Christ’s entrance into heaven was in no way to effect propitiation: His atoning blood had already done so. He entered once for all (not once as a separate spirit, and a second time as risen), having obtained everlasting redemption, not to obtain it. For now, in His death, was the Son of man glorified, and God was glorified in Him, and would straightway glorify Him in Himself. But even then, if earth, and hades, and the grave, and the law of God attested the efficacy of His death and blood-shedding, heaven assuredly appraised it no less, without an unworthy tissue of human imagination perverting God’s word.
Perhaps the worst part of the bad reasoning and strange doctrine is the argument drawn from putting together Heb. 2:17; 8:4, and 9:12. This would go much farther than the author intends; for, if just, it would confine the entire work of propitiation to Christ on high and deny any part of it to His suffering on the cross! The true answer to such incredible rashness is that Heb. 2:17, like the sacrificial part of Lev. 16, is exceptional and extra-priestly, being peculiar to the high priest in a representative way; which merged in our Lord as the one victim of everlasting efficacy, the basis of, while directly apart from, the regular priestly action which is alluded to in Heb. 8:4.
May the grace of God deliver the author of the scheme, as well as his ensnared companions—more especially such as, knowing the error, practically make light of it to the dishonor of Christ, of the cross, and of the truth as a whole.
P.S. Thus far was written and printed before “The Atonement” by B. F. Pinkerton comes to hand. The chief defect in it is his “difficulty about Heb. 17” (p. 17), and especially Note 1 (p. 47). There is no ground whatever for doubting that this verse does strictly and solely refer to atonement for sins. Compassion of course no one denies; but the true moaning is “to expiate,” or make propitiation for, “tile sins of the people.” This was not the function of the priest in the sanctuary (which alone is the point in Heb. 8:4), but the high-priest’s peculiar work on the day of atonement, in the anti-type Christ being alike Victim and high-priestly Offerer. Neither Luke 18:13, nor still less Matt. 16:22, bears on atonement. Even B. W. N. & Bethesda would be ashamed to put such an affront on Christ’s atoning death.