21. Smith. The Christ of the Cross: or the Death of Jesus Christ in its relation to Forgiveness and Judgment
By Rev. J. Gibson Smith. Wellington, N. Z.: Gordon & Gotch (London: Gordon & Gotch). 1908. 1 r. Smith's object in this strongly and even fervently written volume
M is to propose what he takes to be a new theory of the Atonement.
It is not, however, as new as he takes it to be. It is in point of fact one of the most prevalent theories of the Atonement in this age of lowered conceptions of the guilt of sin, and heightened conceptions of man's own part in the saving process. Stated in its barest outline, it is the theory that the ground on which God receives sinful man back into His favor is just man's own repentance and faith, while the part of Christ is simply to induce acceptable repentance and faith in man. This is, of course, only a form—one of the highest forms, certainly—of the so-called "Moral
Influence" theory (see "The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia," i. 1908, p.
352b).
Mr. Smith, to be sure, formally repudiates the "Moral Influence" theory—as he states it, that is; and that means, in one of its special forms (p.
57: "as thus stated"). But his own theory is only another mode of stating essentially the same view. He thinks he draws away from the "Moral
Influence" theory (of course, in the unacceptable form of it which he outlines) in two particulars—inasmuch as he gives an essential place in his theory to the death of Christ, and makes this death "answer to some demand in the nature of God, as well as to some need in man" (p. 57). The wariness of this language should not pass, however, without observation. If an essential place is given to the death of Christ, it is not that the salvation of the sinner is grounded in the death of Christ; it is grounded in the sinner's own repentance and faith and nothing more. The necessity which is vindicated for the death of Christ arises merely out of the sinner's need of influences issuing from the death of Christ to produce in him such repentance and faith as will be acceptable to God. And if the death of Christ may be said in this indirect way to "answer to some demand in the nature of God," it directly meets no demand of the nature of God at all. It operates only to secure from man the repentance and faith which meet the demand of God's "holy mercy." The death of Christ thus terminates solely on man, affecting him; and not at all on God, affecting Him—save through the effect it works in man, by inducing in man acceptable repentance and faith.
Mr. Smith does occasionally, to be sure, incidentally use language which may seem to imply or assert that the death of Christ has an effect on God. Thus, we read (p. 54) of a "remission of sins on the ground of the death of Christ," and again (p. 36), of "obstacles to man's forgiveness in God" which Christ has come and removed. But these perhaps not unnatural reversions to the common language of Christianity must naturally be interpreted according to the terms of his own theory. And
according to the terms of his theory Christ's work does not terminate on God supplying the ground on which He forgives sins, and does not remove any obstacles on God's part to the forgiveness of sin. In his view there is on God's part no obstacle to man's forgiveness, and God requires no death of Christ, or anything else of the kind, to enable Him to remit sin. All that is required to enable God's free mercy to flow forth to sinful man, is that the conditions of forgiveness necessarily imposed by a holy God on sinners should be fulfilled (pp. 106 f.). And Christ's work does not fulfill these conditions. It terminates wholly on man, enabling him to comply with the necessary conditions of acceptance with God and so be saved. "Therefore," we read (p. 106), "even though there is mercy eternally in God, and even though God requires no satisfaction to His retributive justice before He can show mercy, yet the mercy of God must remain eternally unavailable for sinful man unless, through the mediatorship of a Saviour from sin, he is enabled to comply with the conditions which God's holiness must always impose upon God's mercy." Man, in other words, is his own saviour, though, of course, only as empowered thereto by Christ. God accepts man only on the fulfillment by himself of conditions of salvation, not on the fulfillment of any conditions by Christ. Christ's whole work is to enable man to save himself: and only as man, thus enabled, saves himself can he be saved. The function which Christ performs in the saving process is not, then, that He does anything for man, but that He enables man to do all that it is necessary to do for himself.
This line of thought is very familiar. It is, moreover, the natural line of thought for one who occupies the general theological standpoint of Mr.
Smith. Mr. Smith has turned his back upon the governing conceptions of his Reformed forefathers, and adopted instead the point of sight of their
Arminianizing opponents. He considers himself in doing so only to be rising out of the "earth-born mist" of "fatalism," and to be according to
men only "the full possession of their moral freedom" (p. 97). That is to say, in plain English, Mr. Smith takes his starting-point in a Pelagianizing anthropology; his position relatively to the condition of the human race being as nearly as possible that of historical Semi-Pelagianism (pp. 125–
127). Man being thus conceived to need only incitement to enable him to do all that God requires of him, God is, on the other hand, conceived as requiring no satisfaction for guilt, but freely extending mercy to all who return to Him in acceptable repentance and faith. The resultant soteriological scheme travels thus in an ellipse around the two foci of the divine offer of mercy up to the uttermost (p. 215), and the free dealing accorded to this offer by man. Man may accept this offer; and the power to accept it is native to him; he needs divine aid only to work fully out to their complete issues the results of his acceptance of it. Or man may reject this offer, and may not in any mechanical or miraculous fashion be deprived of his power to reject it, even up to "the point of the Breaking-Strain of the Soul"—beyond which he can but reject it, and before which, of course, he may equally readily accept or reject it. His destiny being thus determined by his own choice, he who accepts God's proposals of mercy will on this acceptance, being united by faith with Christ, be, through spiritual discipline received from Christ, more and more enabled to repent and believe, and on this beginning be accepted by God on the guarantee of Christ that this imperfect repentance and faith will ultimately ripen into perfect. There would seem to be implied here a doctrine of "Perseverance," and, though this is nowhere explicitly asserted, it is everywhere implied and frequently stated in less theological language. Otherwise the scheme is the familiar Arminian one and has nothing to distinguish it from what we hear on every side of us, every day. And Mr. Smith's acumen is to be commended for perceiving that in this scheme there is no place for a doctrine of expiatory atonement; and for seeking another doctrine more
conformable to his general theological point of view. If God's mercy is "free" and man's will is "free" in the senses of "freedom" ascribed to them respectively by this type of thought, a doctrine of expiatory atonement is an impertinence. And this is one of the most telling evidences of the falsity of the system. For the doctrine of an expiatory atonement is undoubtedly taught in the Scriptures, and no scheme of salvation can be the true one which, we will not say can find no place for it, but does not make it central.
Mr. Smith, of course, would deny that a doctrine of expiatory atonement is taught in the Scriptures. And it is in his effort to support this denial, if anywhere, that original material is presented by his book. He finds five "large tracts of Scripture which at least seem to be opposed to the theory" of "satisfaction to justice" in the blood of Christ (pp. 23 ff.). Three of these he subsequently, however (very justly), abandons—apparently as raising only prima facie objections to the expiatory doctrine of the Cross— and hangs his case on the other two (pp. 66 ff.). These, which he speaks of as "two great, important, perfectly plain, and intelligible truths" of Scripture, hitherto neglected, he calls "the Truth of the Crime of the Crucifixion" and "the Truth of the Coming Judgment" (pp. 66–67). These two plain facts of Scripture, that the Crucifixion of the Lord of Glory was a terrible, "a unique and transcendent" crime, and that there looms before men a yet future judgment in which God's righteousness will be manifested in retributive justice—he represents as utterly inconsistent with the expiatory theory of the Cross. "The former truth," he declares (p. 81),
"leads us to reject that theory because it is impossible—for how can God's most holy justice be satisfied through the commission of a crime on the person of His Son, or through the Son's submitting to have a crime committed upon His person? The latter truth calls upon us to reject the expiatory theory, because it is unnecessary, for how can it have been necessary that God's retributive justice, which is, in the future, to be
satisfied to the full in the final Judgment, should already have been satisfied to the full upon the Cross?" A great portion of his volume is occupied with the elaboration and enforcement of these contentions, and he quite properly places one of them, in a quotation from Mr. W. L. Walker's "The Spirit and the Incarnation," in its forefront as the motto of the whole. The entire argument, indeed, turns on them as on its hinge and stands or falls with them. And yet—can it be necessary to point out the confusions on which both of them rest?
When Mr. Smith declares, "It is simply inconceivable that the crucifixion of Christ can be, at one and the same moment, a terrible crime which God is bound to regard as a crime, and also a means of satisfying
God's retributive justice" (p. 73)—what can the astonished reader do but pause in wonder and ask, Why? Why does not the philosophy of Gen. 1:20
—"And as for you, ye meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive"—apply here as it applies throughout God's dealings with men? Of course, Mr. Smith cannot sustain his own contention. He finds himself compelled to admit that the Scriptures declare that "the death of Christ was divinely appointed, and foretold, that Jesus endured it of His own free will, and that it was a death for sin, by which the salvation of believing sinners was secured" (p. 73); that in that death "the purposes of God were carried out" (p. 76), and the like.
From which it emerges that the difference between him and those whom he opposes here does not concern the question whether the same transaction may be on man's part a crime deserving punishment and on God's part a vehicle of blessing for the race, but solely the question of what particular purpose of God is accomplished by this particular crime of the Cross. The tentative attempt to distinguish between indirect and direct utilization of man's crimes by God for the attainment of His ends (p. 92) may be neglected here as not directly applied by Mr. Smith to this question, and,
indeed, as obviously not applicable to it. The plain fact is that Mr. Smith's whole contention at this point is but an attempt to confuse the reader's judgment by directing and holding his attention to the moral quality of the human acts involved in the crucifixion of Christ, to the exclusion of contemplation of the tremendous purpose of God in that great transaction.
To say (p. 78) that it is "the supposition of the expiatory theory" "that there was practically no crime in the Cross at all, and that God's justice was satisfied thereby" is to set in collocation things which stand out of all relation to one another. Rather, on the supposition of the expiatory theory there was an immense crime committed in the crucifying of Christ, and God's justice was satisfied thereby.
When we say, however, that God's justice was satisfied thereby we are hard on the heels of Mr. Smith's second "great tract of Scriptural truth" which he represents as inconsistent with the doctrine of satisfaction in the blood of Christ—the Truth, as he calls it, of the Coming Judgment. By this he means simply that if Jesus satisfied the divine justice on the Cross, then there can remain no more remembrance of sin, and accordingly there can be left no place for a Coming Judgment. Did we not have it here repeatedly flaunted in our face, it would be incredible that anyone could fail to distinguish between the satisfaction rendered on the Cross for Christ's people and the judgment which still hangs over those who are "without." It is quite true that those who are in Christ Jesus do not come into judgment; but how that abolishes the judgment impending over those who are not in Christ, it is, we do not say difficult, but impossible, to see. What has blinded the eyes of Mr. Smith here is no doubt the strength of his revulsion from the Reformed doctrine of a "definite atonement," and his consequent zeal for a so-called "universal atonement." He is quite right in insisting that a universal satisfaction for sin on the Cross would have abolished all impending judgment. There is a certain validity, therefore, in his reiterated
assertion that if, "according to the expiatory theory, God's retributive justice" (simpliciter) "was satisfied on the Cross," if there was made on it "a complete satisfaction of retributive justice," so that "God's retributive justice has already been satisfied to the full upon the Cross" (p. 74), there cannot remain any real judgment for the future. But it is safe to say no one but convinced Universalists—who do abolish all future judgment and usher all into eternal life—has ever taught such a universal atonement as this. The most convinced advocates of the so-called "universal" satisfaction for sin, Arminian as well as Calvinist, have made it hypothetical, conditioned in its efficacy on faith, so that its expiatory value inured only to believers, and a place of judgment remained for all unbelievers. We do not say that this hypothetical scheme will work: we do not think it will, and we commend recent Arminian thinkers for seeing that it will not work and discarding it. What we do not commend in them is that in discarding it they discard the expiatory doctrine and set themselves to invent lowered views of the atonement more conformable to Arminian principles. The unconformableness—which we believe to be real—of Arminian principles with the Biblical doctrine of the substitutive satisfaction of Christ, is the condemnation, not of that doctrine, but of the Arminian principles which cannot be united with it in a consistent system of truth. But all this aside, what Mr. Smith has set up in his universal expiatory atonement which satisfies the divine retributive justice simpliciter, leaving no retribution for the future, is a man of straw. Nobody holds to such a doctrine. Nobody holds that Christ has rendered satisfaction for the sins of any but "believers," whether these believers be conceived as the elect of God, who believe because God has bought them by the precious blood of His Son, or whether they be conceived as sinners who, by believing, have made themselves the beneficiaries of the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God. A satisfaction, however, for the sins of believers, cannot be said in any way to
affect the necessity or the ethical value of the proclamation of a coming judgment for those who do not believe. Surely, if it is only by such confusions as these that the expiatory doctrine of the Cross can be attacked, it lies safely entrenched behind the mass of direct Scriptural evidence by which it is established.
The positive side of Mr. Smith's argument for his theory of the Atonement is no more solid than its negative side. What he has undertaken to commend to us in the stead of the expiatory doctrine of the Church is a theory of salvation on the ground of our own repentance and faith, induced in us by a work of Christ undertaken and accomplished for this end—that He might lead us perfectly to repent of our sins and believe in God our Saviour. For the validation of such a theory it would be necessary to show, (1) that repentance and faith can avail to ground acceptance of sinners by God; (2) that a repentance and faith such as can avail with God can be exercised by sinful men; and (3) that the work of Christ was directed towards and was adapted to and was efficient for the production in sinful men of a repentance and faith such as may avail with God. It cannot be said, however, that Mr. Smith has shown any of these things.
The first of them he does not even attempt to show. He simply assumes it, remarking lightly (pp. 107 ff.) that as a self-respecting man will certainly require repentance and faith as conditions precedent to his own bestowals of forgiveness on any brother man who has sinned against him, so God will demand the same conditions "with this infinite difference, that God must demand, not a relatively true repentance and a relatively genuine faith, but a perfect repentance and a perfect faith" (p. 109). Much effort is expended to show that this at least must be demanded by God—that nothing but a perfect repentance and a perfect faith will suffice; but no effort is made to show that this will suffice with God. That is just assumed. After the late
Prof. Moberly's acute and sustained argument of this point—even which
we can but judge ineffective—one would have anticipated that no subsequent writer would be able to pass it over. But cardinal point as it is to the whole theory, Mr. Smith leaves it a mere assumption that repentance and faith can avail to commend a sinner to God; and an assumption, let us add, which is at variance at once with all Scripture, all experience, and all the dictates of natural justice. In point of fact, for example, no man ever does, and no man ever contends that we ought to, "forgive," that is, absolve from punishment, criminals, say, on mere repentance: else; no murderer who seriously repents of his crime would be hanged. The speciousness of his argument here depends on treating sin for the nonce merely as something personally offensive to God, rather than as something morally wrong.
This initial difficulty, or rather impossibility, having been, we will not say transcended, but put out of sight, Mr. Smith's theory is immediately face to face with another equally intractable. How can sinful man render to God the repentance and faith which a holy God must require before extending mercy? We have seen that Mr. Smith is insistent in asserting— properly enough—that this repentance and faith must be perfect. Dr.
McLeod Campbell cut the knot by affirming that Christ Himself, sympathetically identifying Himself with sinful man, offered up to God in his stead a perfect repentance. Mr. Smith, however,—very properly again— rejects this expedient as inoperative (pp. 61, 120). Where, then, is sinful man to get this perfect repentance and faith, accept anything less than which God cannot "without denying Himself" (p. 109)? Mr. Smith is no Pelagian and cannot say that it is the ineradicable privilege of every man to be perfect whenever he chooses. He is rather at pains to show that "natural men," though capable of repenting and believing (for Mr. Smith is a SemiPelagian), are not capable of such repentance and faith as God—the All-
holy One—is able to accept as enough (p. 110). Here, clearly, we are at an impasse.
Mr. Smith gets over this impasse by teaching that God accepts the promise for the performance. After all, then, God does accept our imperfect repentance and faith (though He cannot do so "without denying
Himself"), because He foresees that this imperfect repentance and faith is after a while to become perfect. "The Scripture doctrine deals with possibilities that will by and by become actualities, and which, in the sight of Him who is the Alpha and the Omega, are as good as actualities already"
(p. 44). "It is because God, who sees the end of all things in their beginnings, sees that great day as though it were present now, that He is able, in entire consistency with His holiness, to grant forgiveness of sins to the sinful man who is united by faith to the Christ of the Cross" (p. 180).
"It is because God finds in the faith of the Christian believer this certainty of becoming, in the end, perfect, assured knowledge that sin is worthy of death, that He is able, in entire consistency with His holiness, to bestow a full and free forgiveness on the sinner whose faith unites him to the Christ of the Cross" (pp. 194 f.). There is, of course, here confusion worse confounded. The question raised is, On what ground can God accept sinful man into His favor? The answer returned is that there can be no other ground than a perfect repentance and faith. It is admitted, however, that no man can render this perfect repentance and faith until after he has been received into the divine favor and as a result of that favor. It is the product in him of the Holy Spirit received in Christ, and, if we do not misunderstand the author, is never realized in this life (e.g. p. 284). It is actually taught, however, that God receives man into His favor on the ground of this perfect repentance and faith foreseen as certainly to be realized by him who is in Christ (e.g. p. 267). That is to say, man is received into the divine favor on the ground of the foreseen product of that favor!
Of course, this is only a roundabout way of saying that sinful man is accepted by God on the ground of his weak and imperfect faith and repentance by which he becomes united with Christ, through whom he is enabled gradually to perfect his repentance and faith. Stripped of its labored verbiage, in other words, Mr. Smith's elaborate theory reduces simply to the common Arminian doctrine. Man's imperfect faith and repentance is the proper ground of his acceptance with God, who graciously accepts it as perfect and undertakes to make it perfect through spiritual influences brought to bear on man in Christ.
Thus we are brought to the part which Christ, according to Mr.
Smith's theory, plays in the salvation of sinful man. Put briefly, this is the part of producer and guarantor of the perfect repentance and faith in man, on the ground of which alone a holy God can receive sinful man into His favor. The whole of Christ's work is, according to Mr. Smith, devoted to this end—that He may qualify Himself to impart and then may actually impart to sinners the perfect repentance and faith on the ground of which alone a holy God can accept them as His children; while meanwhile he guarantees to the holy God this perfect repentance and faith on the part of those who believe in Him. "The holy God is able to accept" the sinner "as one of His own children, because he is united by faith to a Saviour, who is now able, because He has acquired through His experience on earth a perfect human hatred of sin, and a perfect human love of righteousness, and a perfect human knowledge of God, to communicate these eternal possessions of His to all human beings who believe in Him, and thus to enable them in the end to comply to the uttermost with the conditions of divine mercy. God therefore knows that the Saviour is an all-sufficient surety for the ultimate perfection of all who trust in Him.… And therefore
God, who sees the end of all things in their beginnings, is able even here and now to reckon as righteous every true believer in Jesus Christ" (p. 267).
In such passages as this—which are rather frequent—there are brought together in commodious succinctness all the essential elements of the theory. These concern (1) the qualification of Christ to communicate a perfect repentance and faith to those who believe in Him; (2) the method of communication by which the perfect repentance and faith are imparted by Christ to those who believe in Him; (3) the capacity of Christ in the meanwhile to act as guarantor of this perfect repentance and faith in His people.
It is to the first of these elements of his theory that the author addresses himself with most fullness, and we may say predilection. The whole volume may be said without unfairness, indeed, to be a sustained attempt to show that Christ "has through His death on the Cross become eternally qualified to impart through the Holy Spirit to all who believe in Him a perfect human hatred of sin, a perfect human love of righteousness, and a perfect human knowledge of God" (p. 267). The presupposition is that a divine, or an angelic, hatred of sin, love of God, knowledge of God is incommunicable to man (p. 149). If these things were to be communicated to man, therefore, it behooved the Son of God to become man, that in the way of a true and pure human experience He might acquire a hatred of sin, and a love of righteousness, and a knowledge of God, which, while perfect, should be truly human, and thus capable of being communicated to man.
This is the account, according to Mr. Smith, of the incarnation and the sufferings of the Son of God—and what He did and all that He endured were necessary to the acquisition by Him in human experience of these great possessions (e.g. p. 164). What the essential difference is between a perfect hatred of sin, love of righteousness, and knowledge of God in the divine heart—or in an angel's heart—and in a man's heart, which renders the former incommunicable to those who are expected to be perfect even as their Father in Heaven is perfect, to be imitators of God, sharers in the
divine nature, and partakers of His holiness, and to have the same mind in them that was in Christ Jesus when He was in the form of God and might well have clung to His equality with God—while the latter is communicable to them—the author does not stay to tell us.
Nor, indeed, does he make it very clear how this humanly acquired hatred of sin, love of righteousness, and knowledge of God which he declares to be alone communicable, is actually communicated to those who believe in Christ. He tells us, certainly, broadly, that it is "imparted through the Holy Spirit" (pp. 221, 267, 283–284), and by a "process of spiritual discipline" (pp. 194, 207), but he does not go into details here. He does, indeed, make it plain that in his view there is no "irresistible" activity of the Spirit contemplated. The Holy Spirit, it seems, in taking the things of Christ and showing them to man does not operate "by way of force or of overwhelming demonstration to the senses," nor "in such a way that men could not, if they chose, quench the Spirit; but by reasonable and spiritual persuasion, so that those who did not accept the salvation offered in Christ might do so of their own free and deliberate choice" (p. 283). "God
Himself," therefore, "cannot render it certain that every man shall accept His offered mercy" (p. 213). Man's "moral freedom" must be preserved at all hazards! Thus the impartation by Christ to men of perfect repentance and faith cannot be a prevalent impartation. It is of the nature of a tender rather than of a true communication. We are told, therefore, that it is effected through, first, a revelation of the Truth, and next an impartation— doubtless through suasion only—of a spiritual power (p. 259). We read accordingly (p. 124): "He is able to declare the truth with certainty, authority, and assurance, and so [italics ours] produce in sinful man that allessential, God-acceptable faith which, when it attains its culmination, ceases to be any longer merely faith, but is transmuted into certain and assured spiritual knowledge." This truth is "sympathetically communicated
and willingly received" (p. 229), and it is only "by accepting the crucified Christ as their Saviour" that men "are enabled to become partakers of that perfect human hatred of sin and that perfect human love of righteousness which Christ through the Cross has acquired," and that God may possess for them "a guarantee that in the end they shall be freed from all complicity with sin, and made worthy to enter fully into His holy kingdom" (p. 203).
Only, we miss the ground of this guarantee. If the Spirit's work is only suasive, and no recreating power is exerted, how are men who, by reason of sin, cannot repent and believe perfectly, to be made able to do so? Can suasion overcome an inability? And how can we call an act of mere suasion a true "communication"; or in such circumstances declare that the Saviour, who is able no doubt to supply "all the spiritual gifts" necessary to sinful man's perfection, in the way of proffer, is able also to guarantee the acceptance and improvement of these gifts by sinful man? Do we not find ourselves in the unfortunate position of being compelled to say, not merely that "God Himself cannot render it certain that every man shall accept His offered mercy" (p. 213), but that God Himself cannot render it certain that any man shall accept it? And by parity of reasoning, so far from God knowing "that there is not one of the Saviour's flock that will not in the end be presented before Him wholly spotless and clean" (p. 267), are we not compelled to say that He cannot know that any one will be so presented before Him? If the Saviour of the world is to be limited in His saving work to what is euphemistically described as doing "the best possible for man, by saving him while still respecting his freedom of will" (p. 155), it is absurd to speak of Him as able to "guarantee to the God of all holiness that the man who was truly His should at once, in some degree, and at last perfectly, become partaker of that perfect, holy, human hatred of sin and that perfect, holy, human love of righteousness which He, as the Sinless
Man, by suffering sin to do its utmost worst upon Him, and thereby
fulfilling to the uttermost the will of the Father, had made His own forever" (pp. 165 f.). If the very principle of our construction is to preserve to men as moral agents a moral freedom which in its very definition is made to involve uncertainty, we can obtain no certainty by assuming the play upon these men of any merely moral inducements.
We perceive, then, that Mr. Smith's theory of the Atonement fails at every salient point. Proclaiming salvation solely on the ground of perfect repentance and faith, it fails to show that perfect repentance and faith will avail with God, or can be supplied by man, or can be communicated to man by Christ. It stands indeed more completely bare before its task than is usual with theories of its class. Dr. Moberly had something at least specious to say of the atoning power of repentance and faith. Dr. McLeod Campbell had a perfect repentance to offer in the sympathetic expression of repentance by Christ. The Germans, with their inheritance from the Lutheran doctrine of the "Means of Grace," have something plausible to urge of the revolutionary effect of the Cross when brought home in its true meaning to the hearts of men—which the Andover divines were not slow to avail themselves of. Of none of these expedients to give a superficial appearance of completeness to his theory does Mr. Smith, however, avail himself. His theory is certainly not really weakened by this refusal to invoke the aid of unavailing expedients. But it stands out more barely in its essential inefficiency through their absence; and its ineffectiveness is perceived with more startling distinctness. Its main difficulty is, however, no other than that on which all other autosoteric theories are wrecked— and that is just its autosoteric character. If man can save himself or must save himself, he does not need a Saviour. And if nevertheless it is urged that he does need the work of Christ to induce him or to enable him to save himself, new difficulties at once emerge.
For example, what are we to say of those who lived before Christ, on whom, therefore, no influences from the Cross could play? Mr. Smith declares boldly that Christ "came that He might become eternally qualified to be the Saviour not of Jews only, but of the whole world—of all generations of men, past, present, and to come" (p. 173). But we can only reply, Such an effect, on his theory, were impossible. Does he not in the very assertion declare that Christ came in order to qualify Himself to become a Saviour—and that His saving power arises from effects "produced in His own being and character by His experiences in the midst of sinful men"? f
And does he not over and over again tell us that the saving effects of Christ's work depend on influences which were incapable of working except after the saving work was accomplished (cf. p. 267: "is now able"), and which play not on God but on men? Now, if Christ came as the Godprovided substitute for sinners and expiated the guilt of our sins on the tree, why, of course, God could act upon this great satisfaction in prospect as well as in retrospect: for God's promissory note is as good as the money down. But if He came to qualify Himself to communicate to men a spiritual power attained by Himself only in the course of His earthly work
—why, of course, this communication cannot be made until He is qualified to make it and it can be made only to those who are exposed to those influences which spring from it. The universal loss of the entire human race before Christ is the inevitable result of finding the saving fact in an action of man's own will under influences streaming from the Cross.
We do not put this consideration forward, of course, as the matter of main importance: but only as an incidental result which may bid us pause and think. The matter of main importance is, naturally, that no man at all can ever be saved by such an Atonement—because man is ex hypothesi incapable in his sin-bred inability of responding, in a saving act of faith and repentance, to any inducements brought to bear on him from the Cross.
He needs not merely inducements to action but recreating grace, and an Atonement which purchases for him the recreating Spirit as well as the proffer of mercy. It is here that the true opposition between the two views lies. It is the old opposition between "grace" and "free will." "I am at present reading our Erasmus," wrote Luther six months before he inaugurated the Reformation movement by nailing his theses on the door of the Schloss-Kirche at Wittenberg: "I am at present reading our Erasmus, but my heart recoils more and more from him.… The human is to him of more importance than the divine.… Those who ascribe something to man's freedom of will regard these things differently from those who know only
God's free grace." Here we have the real hinge of the Reformation announced to us; and the core of the gospel. There is an impassable gulf fixed between those who hang the efficacy of Christ's work upon the "free" action of man's will, and those who ascribe all to God's free grace. They are of different religions.
We have noted an occasional misprint in Mr. Smith's volume—for example, p. 173, line 4, "alienable" for "inalienable." We may be permitted to suppose, therefore, that the monstra "true and proper incarnate man,"
"sinless incarnate humanity," "Sinless Incarnate Man," "sinless incarnate humanity," occurring on pp. 151–152, are to be attributed to the printer.
1. 1 The Princeton Theological Review, vii. 1909, pp. 141–152.