If, as we cannot but believe, man’s sin and rebellion, the self-will that constitutes its essence. must be not only painful and highly obnoxious to Him in itself, but in its most revolting feature, to speak as a man, a reflection, a shame, a dishonor on His own great Name in the face of His own great universe, how correspondingly great must be the pleasure He derives from the perfect sinless sacrifice of His own beloved Son come, in the humanity prepared for Him, to do His will, even unto death! And, if we cannot speak of the root-sin of humanity being herein retracted, can we not say at least that the position has been retrieved, gloriously retrieved, as regards the apparent traducing of God’s character through man’s becoming partaker in that great and terrible revolt of evil so maliciously planned by the enemy? For if the enemy have plans, is God without plans also? Eternal counsels are His, and quite in the track of their working, we are assured, is all that has been accomplished here. The fall of man, the rebellion of the creature, the setting up of the human will against God, how terrible a spectacle! But the perfection and obedience of Jesus Christ, tested and manifested to the extreme limit of death itself, in its expression of devotedness and self-surrender to His will affords, according to these same divine counsels, a manifestation, a display bringing glory to God in surpassing measure. “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.”
It is right that we should remember what the old “transactional theory” may have in some measure obscured—that the suffering and sacrifice of Christ was no mere piece of bargaining! something in the nature of a quantative repayment! so much suffering for so much sin nor only, as it truly was the case, that in being once offered He hare the sins of many; but that there and then was accomplished a work in and by which not only was the Son of man Himself glorified; but God also glorified in Him, and that through His perfect obedience—who even of the laying down of His life did say, “This commandment have I received of my Father.” And this emphatically enters into what constitutes that propitiatory character of the work which theories of the atonement so consistently ignore. But there must be no divorcing of the idea of the true expiatory nature of the Savior’s sufferings from this perfection of devotedness to God’s will to make everything of intrinsic value to consist in the self-abnegation and obedience so strikingly culminated there.
Theories of the atonement come and go. Logical and exhaustive no doubt they have each appeared to their originators. But one and all they have foundered in the past, and none have succeeded in filling out the complete scripture doctrine on the subject. Where all have failed, that remains for us clear and consistent, higher and fuller than theory or creed can reach or express. Explained to us also there, solely yet sufficiently, as never in theological statement or creed, by the revealed character of God Himself, who in His great love would have us, delivered and cleansed from sin, brought to Himself in righteousness, to be holy and without blame before Him in love.
“Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.” Facts sure enough they are, and “necessary to everlasting salvation to believe “; but how bald, how bare the statement of them! How open to any possible construction, and therefore worthless as definition, of what the import and significance may be of that greatest, most vital of all truths—the atoning work of our Redeemer! It was characteristic of the creeds to be vague and indefinite here, and indeed they are uniformly so. Sound enough in statement, as far as the statement goes as to Christ’s death; but fatally omitting all mention of what that death signified and accomplished. Is it not also a little remarkable that as we advance, beginning with the Apostles’ Creed, the statement becomes in the Nicene and Athanasian more and yet more meager. “Suffered for our salvation” eventually suffices to define all that advancing formalism and ritualism cared to retain. As forgiveness of sins became clouded over with uncertainty, and justification by faith so completely dropped out, what else could the doctrine of full and perfect atonement by Christ’s death be but ignored and recede into the background? Strange that modern infidelity should give indications of pursuing the same path. Christ’s death, His sufferings, in some way or other availing for our salvation is as far as they can pledge themselves to go. How different from such a clear and definite statement of faith as the following: “From Scripture I learn that this Blessed One, the Lord Jesus Christ, died for all, having given Himself a ransom for all, that He has made propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but for the whole world; that God being a righteous and holy God, the Son of man had to be lifted up upon the cross; that there He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, and was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him;... that He has obeyed even unto death, and wrought a perfect work upon the cross for us;... that as by one man’s disobedience many were constituted sinners, so by the obedience of one many shall he constituted righteous; that we are sanctified or set apart to God by God the Father through the offering of Jesus Christ once for all.”
In this study of the creed, were one to mark all that disapproves itself to the faith of plain people, reared on scripture teaching, and unlearned in, or unsophisticated by the lore of the schools, there should be no end. It is after all no wonder that, as one goes on, this exposition of Christian doctrine from the Presbyterian standpoint is found to fairly bristle with points of possible contention, or of unavoidable dispute. The influx of new thought, of the critical, dissolving, disintegrating spirit characteristic of our time is revolutionizing, as intelligent observers have all along predicted it would, the whole theological system of this interesting section of Christendom. As the evidence and product of this, in their modern preaching and lecturing, how much there is that is new and of foreign sound about it all! And in the instance before us, are we not being constantly arrested by the novel and strange in the interpretation given to an enunciation of doctrines on which Presbyterians in their measure used to be sound enough. We have seen it on the very elementary truth concerning the being of God, as to the question of the evidences to His existence. How the witness of nature to Him has been adulterated by the accommodation sought to be given to the hypothesis of evolution! How on the other hand the fact that among men such a thing as a universal religious sense, or God-consciousness exists has been so perverted in the interests of the so-called science of Comparative Religion as to give entirely false value to its witness! And with all this Revelation itself, as a testimony not only that God must he, but that He is, and may be known, left out of the sum of Christian evidences. While on the question of His Fatherhood, raised as a final item in connection with the first clause of the Creed, there is entire misapprehension both of the nature of the relationship, and of the plane upon which it is realized. Then, when we come to the second clause, speculation, modern philosophy, and theories of New Theology complexion have so leavened Christology that on both the deity and humanity of Christ very little that is really satisfactory can be gleaned. While again, on the contrary, it is just there, on the Person of Christ, that the malign influence of modern theology is most apparent. Nor is the great fundamental doctrine of Christ’s atonement immune from the contagion of novel interpretation, the surrender of valuable elements of the truth being here very marked.
And, were one to go on, the exposition would reveal in almost each several clause as it is taken up, most remarkable departure not only from scripture truth, but from the standards of doctrine professed in Presbyterianism as well. The first is no doubt the most sorrowful feature; but the latter also to thoughtful observers is indicative of much that calls for serious reflection. “Amidst the breaking up of conventional modes of thought and the felt insufficiency of the common standards of orthodoxy, if superstition does not take the place of truth... there is especial danger of the mind becoming weary and indifferent in the march after what is vital, and so taking refuge in the question, What is truth? as if it allowed of no definite or sufficient answer. This state of mind, in degree, may infest the church, as well as become the prevalent folly of the world.” But know this, O doubter, that truth will never be truth to thee nor to thy soul, until it is translated into action. Truth appeals to thy conscience, to thine affections, to thy duty, with all the authority of the God of truth. At first it deals with thee about ruin or redemption. It next claims to be formative of thy motives, to be the guide of thine actions, the director of thy thoughts, the animator of thine hopes, the overseer of thy whole inner as well as thine outer life. Truth exists not for thee, if thou refuse to it thine obedience and thine heart.” J. T.
(Concluded from page 208)