45. Mozley. The Doctrine of the Atonement
By J. K. Mozley, M.A. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
1916. 1 r. Mozley has packed an immense amount of detail into these two M hundred and odd small pages, and has done so without in the least overweighting them. The book is written in a charming style, clear and pointed; and so far as its two main sections are concerned—those on the Biblical material and on the history of the doctrine—it is not only informing but illuminating. We do not think Mr. Mozley has done justice to himself in the third—the constructive—section. He devotes only twenty of his two hundred and twenty pages to it, and although he enhearteningly tells us that we cannot live without a doctrine of the Atonement, he ventures only to give us, not a doctrine, but merely suggestions "towards a doctrine." The worst of it is that the reader is apt to think in the end that this is just as well. The doctrine to which the lines of suggestion laid down appear to point, seems to be of a surprisingly low order—for Mr. Mozley:
lower than the doctrine which he himself finds suggested by Paul, or by our Lord Himself, or by the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. A book on the Atonement, which, after two thousand years of Christian living and thinking and teaching, manages to come to a close without telling us just what the Atonement is, can scarcely be thought other than a portent: but it is better so than that such a book should seek dogmatically to impose upon its readers, as the issue of all these years, a wholly inadequate doctrine of the Atonement.
The notion of Atonement which Mr. Mozley suggests may possibly lie at the end of our search after a doctrine, could we penetrate far enough, may perhaps be shadowed out in the following two sentences. Christ's death has a relation to sins not His own, which implies an intervention that amounts to a mediation between God and man. As the result of this mediation, the situation as between God and man changes. In expounding the notion thus vaguely expressed, Mr. Mozley lays stress primarily on sin's desert of punishment, a punishment which is at bottom retributive; and on the penitent soul's recognition of the justice of its punishment and yearning after the removal of that estrangement from God which is the primary effect of sin. The divine response to this penitence, he tells us, is forgiveness; and if we cannot quite equate forgiveness with the cancellation of punishment, we can say that it cancels a situation, that it changes punishment from retributive to restorative. Suffering, we are now told, always implies sin. The sufferings of Christ, therefore, who, we must bear well in mind was not Himself a sinner, but the Son of God, must therefore stand in relation to sin and could not leave things as they were. They altered the nature of the reference of suffering and death to sin; they so transformed death to us, indeed, that it loses its character as judgment: "the element of judgment, universal in death, spends itself in the Cross" (p.
216).
This may be expressed, says Mr. Mozley, "by saying that Christ bore penal sufferings for us and in our stead." We do not discover in his further exposition, however, any adequate justification of this excellent mode of expression. What we get instead is an explanation of how Christ is related to the race, by virtue of which His acts stand in a quite unique relation to the action of the race. Mr. Mozley does not think of Christ's humanity as "inclusive" or "generic." His mind rests rather, in accordance with modern feelings of solidarity, on the "almost limitless reaction of individuals and their acts upon other personalities" (p. 217). Apparently this carries us no further than the notion that Christ's saving work is accomplished by His so affecting men as to lead them "to identify themselves by way of aspiration with the work of Christ." This enables Mr. Mozley to say of this "work of Christ," that it is not the work of man but Christ's own work; though he adds as if that were the significant point, "it is also not the work of a divine non-human redeemer, but of Christ as Man fulfilling human obligations"
(p. 218). The upshot, then, seems to be no more than that Christ, entering the human race and sharing with it the sufferings and death which had come to it as the punishment of sin, transmutes suffering and death for this race from retributive to restorative, and in the reactions of personality on personalities quickens men to identify themselves with "His work"—which seems scarcely to mean more than to imitate His lofty attitude towards life and its evils.
If we have not misunderstood Mr. Mozley's exposition of it, we can hardly look upon the theory of Atonement which he thus tentatively suggests as more than an elevated form of what is known as "the moral influence theory," the nerve of which is the reaction of Christ's personality on the lives of His fellow men. The actual atoning fact appears to be discovered not in what Christ does, nor even in what He is—but in what men do under the inspiration of His life among them. And therefore the
discussion is brought to a close with such questions as these (p. 218): "Is there anything immoral if God looks at men's inchoate moral achievements and forgives their moral shortcomings, that is, their sins, in the light of the moral completeness of Christ's life? If He reckons faith as righteousness, when in the act of faith man recognizes the moral obligations that press upon him for fulfilment, confesses his own failures, admits the justice of punishment as that which he has deserved, and at the same time points to the complete fulfilment of the law, the complete confession of God's holiness, and the voluntary endurance of penal suffering and death by Christ from within humanity?" Translating these questions into affirmations, there is suggested here that God, looking at men's inchoate moral achievements, forgives their moral shortcomings, that is, their sins,— for so sin is inadequately defined—and that He does this "in the light of"— whatever that may mean, but scarcely "on the ground of"—"the moral completeness of Christ's life." It is suggested again that God reckons faith as righteousness in certain circumstances, namely, when in the act of faith man recognizes the moral obligations that press upon him for fulfillment, confesses his own failures, admits the justice of punishment as that which he has deserved, and at the same time points to Christ's complete fulfillment of the law, complete confession of God's holiness, and voluntary endurance of penal suffering and death from within humanity.
Why men should thus point to Christ's holy life and to His death, as if God's action with respect to men could or should be affected by them, remains unexplained. Why the fact that Christ's sufferings and death come from "within humanity," should be adduced when only the modern notion of solidarity is in question, as a ground for God's dealing with humanity otherwise than according to its strict deserts, remains unexplained. How
Christ's suffering and death can be spoken of as penal, is only lamely explained. We cannot wonder then that Mr. Mozley can only add by way of
conclusion: "We go beyond what we have a right to assert if we say with Anselm that God was bound by the satisfaction which Christ provided and the merit which He won to treat man after a particular manner; but we have a right to say that it is neither unreasonable nor immoral that He should do so." Is not this a confession that no basis has been laid for firm confidence in salvation "for Christ's sake"? And is not even the negative conclusion presented too bold? Would it after all be reasonable—would it be moral—for God to accept men as righteous in His sight on the grounds here stated? The questions which have vexed all the ages start into sight: Is repentance an adequate ground for the forgiveness of sin? Is man able in his own strength to repent adequately of his sin? We would fain read Mr.
Mozley's phrases: "in the light of the moral completeness of Christ's life," pointing "to the complete fulfilment of the law, the complete confession of God's holiness, and the voluntary endurance of penal suffering and death by Christ from within humanity,"—as indicative of the attribution to Christ of some real law-keeping and penalty-paying on behalf of man. But, with the best will in the world, we have been unable to find in his expositions just warrant for doing so. We are ever driven regretfully back upon the recurring fear that Mr. Mozley's suggestions for a possible doctrine of the Atonement reduce in the last analysis to the presentation of man's own repentance plus an unjustified appeal to Christ's life and death
(unjustifiedly spoken of as "penal"), as having taken place "within humanity," as the ground of forgiveness. The fundamental idea seems to be that repentance secures forgiveness; and the fundamental effect of Christ's life and death seems to be conceived as awakening men to repentance. So far as appears, the interposition of Christ—His mediating intervention—has this for its sole effect: and the attempt to suggest for it a Godward operation also seems to have failed. This, as we have already mentioned, is, according to Mr. Mozley's own expositions, below what the Scriptures teach in all
their parts: and we believe it to be below also what Mr. Mozley himself wishes to teach. It seems to us perfectly clear that he must allow to our
Lord's life and death a much more distinct substitutive character and a much more distinct propitiatory effect upon God if he would raise the theory to which his suggestions point above the rank of a purely subjective one.
It is with great pleasure that we turn back from Mr. Mozley's unfortunate constructive chapter to the brilliant chapters in which he expounds the Biblical teaching with respect to atonement. There are three of these: one on the Old Testament; one on the testimony of the Synoptic
Gospels; and one on the New Testament interpretation, dealing with the rest of the New Testament. They are all marked by an adequate command of the literature of the subject, a clear, critical, and independent judgment and luminous exposition. The tendency of them all is to vindicate for the Biblical writers a consistent testimony to the need and provision in Christ of an objective atonement. The chapter on the "testimony of the Synoptic
Gospels" is an especially admirable piece of writing, well-informed, sympathetic, penetrating. The account given in it of the consistently eschatological school of Gospel criticism, the discussion of the "ransom" passage, and, perhaps in a somewhat less eminent degree, that of our Lord's words at the last supper, are particularly instructive and leave us with an impression which cannot easily be dissipated that Jesus did represent His death as having the effect of an expiation of sin.
Even in these admirable chapters, however, we meet with some odd uses of language, which are forerunners perhaps of the failure in constructing a doctrine of Atonement in the end. Thus in discussing the Old Testament foundation Mr. Mozley distinguishes very sharply not only between "substitution and vicarious punishment" on the one hand and atonement on the other, but between propitiation and expiation. He is
willing to admit that the Old Testament sacrifices were expiatory, but not propitiatory, much less vicarious or substitutionary. This is a series certainly of very delicate distinctions, and the distinctions are as unusual as they are delicate. We have been accustomed to hear of a propitiation without expiation, but scarcely of an expiation without propitiation: and it is difficult to comprehend how expiation of sin can be made through the medium of another's death, and substitution and vicarious punishment be avoided. It is already evident that Mr. Mozley uses current terms in not quite their current meanings—and that is at least confusing. His notion appears to grow out of the idea that sacrifices are essentially gifts—gifts intended, not to appease, but to make amends: gifts, that is to say, speaking in the language of the older theories of sacrifice, not of the order of bribes but of the order of fines. He quotes Piepenbring approvingly (p. 22) to the effect that "expiatory sacrifice" is "like every other sacrifice, a corban, a gift":
"a guilty person" offers it to God "to make amends." In his own language, he explains that "the sacrificial system assumes that sin makes a barrier between man and God; and that before the covenant relationship with Jahveh, which the individual normally enjoys as a member of the covenant people, can be restored, the sin must be covered or wiped out. For that Jahveh Himself has made provision, and the final act of reparation is the presentation and sprinkling of the blood, the most sacred of all earthly things, as the equivalent of life" (pp. 22–23). The most notable thing about this definition is what we may call its prudence. Precisely what sacrifice is, it is difficult to learn from it: or what really removes the barrier which sin has erected between men and God. We are told that, for its removal, "sin must be covered or wiped out,"—the two meanings assigned to kipper by differing schools of philologists being both prudently allowed for. We are told that God has made provision for this, but are not told what the precise nature of this provision is: we are only told what the final (may we take this
as equivalent to essential?) act of "reparation" is. Are we to take "reparation" here as descriptive of what is accomplished by the "covering" or "wiping out" of the sin of the earlier clause, or as what is accomplished by the presentation and sprinkling of the blood? And how is "reparation" wrought in either case? The definition is vague at the crucial point, and covers under generalities questions which must be faced and settled if the sacrificial system of Israel is to be understood. The reader is just about to conclude that nothing is discovered in Old Testament sacrifices except
"making amends," and that this is paralleled by the prophetic demand of nothing but repentance, when he is happily pulled up by a ringing denial that repentance and amendment sum up prophetic religion and finds himself reading with delight a good exposition of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah which brings clearly out the conception of vicarious punishment embedded in that passage.
Somewhat similarly in the chapter on "the New Testament interpretation" we find Mr. Mozley boggling at the word "punishment" as a description of Paul's view of the sufferings of Christ. He is willing to allow that Paul holds these sufferings to be "penal." "For St. Paul," he says,
"there is a penal element in the Cross" (p. 72). "Christ on the Cross," he (with agreement) quotes Feine as saying, "has endured what mankind had to expect." But he will not allow the word "punishment" in this connection. This seems rather wiredrawn. What is the difference in the fundamental connotation of punishment and penalty? Apparently two difficulties lie in Mr. Mozley's mind. He does not wish to say that Christ suffered precisely what we should have suffered had we borne the penalty of our own sins. And he does not wish to make Christ's sufferings punishment to Him. He has no question that Christ's sufferings were vicarious; and he has no difficulty with the idea of substitution. But he balks at saying that Christ "was vicariously punished." He agrees (with
Herrmann) that "St. Paul thinks of Christ as suffering what we should have suffered." But he adds at once that His sufferings "had not the same quality or character as ours would have had," and commends Beyschlag for declaring that "Jesus does not die the eternal death which we as sinners have deserved" (p. 73). He agrees (with Jülicher) that according to Paul "God reckons Christ's sufferings to mankind as punishment endured by it." But he adds at once, "That is not to equate suffering and punishment." "St.
Paul's doctrine is not one of atonement and expiation through punishment, but rather of expiation instead of punishment, in which respect he anticipates Anselm." We may speak, he says through the medium of a quotation from Pfleiderer, of Paul teaching, not that Christ suffered
"vicarious punishment," but certainly that He suffered death vicariously; not that He suffered this as a punishment, but that He endured it as a penalty. If the thought arises unbidden in our minds that we are very close to logomachy here, we correct it at once by perceiving happily that Mr.
Mozley is only, very properly although not very clearly, attributing to Paul the doctrine of "satisfaction." The doctrine of "satisfaction" denies that Christ's sufferings had "the same quality or character as ours." What it affirms is that they had the same value. It denies that He died the eternal death that we sinners deserved. What it affirms is that His sufferings and death had the same value in the sight of God that our eternal death would have had. According to it, in this sense Christ did not bear our punishment, but something which took the place of our punishment. There was "a vicarious quittance of the penalty"; but this was wrought by paying it.
Similarly with all his denials Mr. Mozley allows that according to Paul what was done by Christ was penal and what He endured was penalty. It must be confessed, however, that only a few pages after thus expounding Paul as teaching the doctrine of "satisfaction," Mr. Mozley, by an odd
inconsequence, lapses for a moment in seeking to reproduce Paul's thought (p. 79) into phrases made familiar to us by the Rectoral theory.
Mr. Mozley is not the first writer on the history of the doctrine of the Atonement who has found pitfalls dug for him by the differing conceptions of the Atonement indicated by the Scholastic terms—ultimately derived from the Roman law—solution, satisfaction, acceptilation, acceptation. He is probably not primarily responsible for the confusion of the last two in the Index, in which there is but one entry "acceptatio," the references under which refer indifferently to acceptatio and acceptilatio in the text. But this confusion in the Index only follows the confusion in the text. Mr. Mozley blames Grotius for accusing Socinus "of applying the word acceptilatio to the remission of sins," and adds, "whereas his own theory has no coherence at all apart from the Scotist idea, to which the term acceptilation is technically applied, that God can fix a value as He will" (p. 155). And he speaks of Dr. Dale's well-known treatise as containing much which recalls
Grotius "and the theory of acceptilatio, that Christ's sufferings were not the actual penalties of sin, but were accepted by God in place of, or as of equal value with, those penalties" (p. 179). Grotius may be wrong in saying that Socinus himself calls his theory by the name of acceptilatio, but he does
Socinus no injustice in describing it as a theory of acceptilatio; and though we ourselves might agree that Grotius' own theory is little better than
Socinus' in this respect, Grotius would have repudiated this imputation with vigor, and (being learned in the law) would have opened his eyes with wide surprise to hear acceptilation identified with "the Scotist idea that God can fix a value as He will." Has he not himself carefully explained to us that acceptilation is applied in law to discharges which are made without any payment at all, and has he not sharply separated his own theory from complicity with such notions, because, as he says, it provides for "some payment"? Scotus, of course, does not use the term acceptilatio of his
theory, though he freely employs acceptatio, a term in such general use, to be sure, that it can scarcely be called a technical law-term: and Grotius would have so little denied that he himself taught an acceptatio, that he proclaims that fact with full voice when he gives the name of satisfactio to his theory. It is one of the things which Mr. Mozley does not seem quite to apprehend that when we say satisfaction we have already said acceptation; that acceptation is of the very essence of satisfaction; and that the difference between the Church doctrine of the "satisfaction" of Christ and the Scotist theory of "acceptation," as it has become the habit to speak of it, does not turn on the presence or absence of "acceptation" in the transaction
—"acceptation" occurs in both views—but on the part assigned to this "acceptation" in the two views severally. The constitutive fact of the doctrine of "satisfaction" is that the reparation "accepted" by God is held to be per se equivalent to the obligation resting on the sinner. The characteristic feature of Scotist theory, on the other hand, is that the reparation provided is declared to possess no intrinsic equivalence to the obligation, but to be "accepted" by God in its place by an act of gracious will. The whole zeal of the satisfactionists is expended throughout all the centuries of debate in this matter on insistence upon this difference: and "equivalence" becomes thus their most insistent watchword. A "satisfaction," ex vi verbi, is the rendering of an equivalent; not the very thing in obligation (that would be solutio in the strict sense) nor something merely "accepted" in lieu of the obligation (that would be acceptatio in the Scotist sense) but, in distinction from both, a real equivalent.
Through failure to hold in mind these distinctions Mr. Mozley sometimes goes astray in his criticism of theories and writers. For example, it is questionable whether a remark like the following does not miss the mark: "Thomas, apparently, does not keep to the Anselmic distinction aut satisfactio aut poena. Rather does he think of 'satisfaction by the legal
penalty merited and duly borne,' and so of penal expiation" (p. 138). Every satisfaction is an alternative to penalty: the infliction of the precise penalty would be solutio (in the strict sense), not satisfactio. Anselm's aut … aut brings this out, that lying in the line of his argument. When on the other hand the interest shifts and the purpose is to bring out that what was offered was a real satisfaction (and not something arbitrarily accepted in lieu of a real satisfaction), the insistence is transferred to the complete equivalence of what Christ bore to the penalty incurred. Accordingly what
Aquinas is insistent for is that "he properly satisfies for our offense, who exhibits to the offended one what he loves equally or more than he hates the offense." "The passion of Christ," he says accordingly, "was not only a sufficient but a superabundant satisfaction for the sins of the human race"
(p. 136). To insist thus that what Christ bore in His satisfaction was in no respect less than the poena incurred by sinners is in no way inconsistent with saying that what He offered to God was a satisfactio, not the poena itself. It is only a slightly different mode of employing terms. Anselm also is at pains to show that the satisfactio offered by Christ was fully equivalent in value to the poena the place of which it took. Aquinas is as clear as Anselm that the satisfactio offered by Christ was not the poena itself but took the place of the poena to which we were bound by our sin.
The matter may perhaps be better illustrated by Mr. Mozley's remarks on John Owen and Richard Baxter, to neither of whom is he able quite to do justice, precisely because his apprehension of the implications of "satisfaction" is not altogether perfect. It is true that the personal attitude of the two men towards Grotius is different; but it is unfair to represent
Baxter on that account as holding the Grotian rather than the strictly penal view of the atonement. When Baxter "denies that Christ paid the same penalty as was due from men, and contends that the idea of satisfaction can be preserved only if Christ paid an equivalent, but not the same, penalty,
with avowed approval of the Grotian satisfactio non est solutio eiusdem" (p.
157), he is standing squarely on the ground of "satisfaction"—and the assertion that "satisfaction is not the payment of the very thing," is
"Grotian" in no other sense than that Grotius, as a jurist, of course knew the legal commonplaces and repeats them on occasion. It is on the selfsame ground of "satisfaction" that Owen equally squarely stands. The difference between the two amounts only to this: that Baxter's zeal is to show that Christ's work, being a satisfactio, is not a solutio in the strict sense; while
Owen's zeal is to show that Christ's work, being a satisfactio, is not an acceptatio in the Scotist sense. In his righteous zeal—it is a very righteous zeal—Owen does modify the language ordinarily employed by satisfactionists, and insists that Christ made payment eiusdem and not merely tantidem, although, as he of course adds, not per eundem; and even asserts that His satisfaction discharges ipso facto. He explains, however, that by his idem he means merely full equivalence—"there is a sameness in Christ's sufferings with that in the obligation in respect to essence, and equivalency in respect of attendancies,"—and that by ipso facto he means, not "apart from God's acceptance," but "without any further conditions"—intending to exclude Grotius' insertion of a condition, not absolutely procured by Christ, on the performance of which alone by the sinner would Christ's satisfaction take effect on him. Owen departs from the doctrine of satisfaction by his strong insistence on one side of its contention as little as Baxter does by his equally strong insistence on its other side. They both stand firmly on the fundamental Christian doctrine of "the satisfaction of Christ," a doctrine which magnifies at once the infinite grace of God in the forgiveness of sins for Christ's sake (which is what Baxter had in mind to assert) and the perfection of the satisfaction for our sins wrought by Christ (which is what Owen had in mind to assert).
Mr. Mozley writes with an obvious desire to be not only fair but sympathetic and generous in his presentation of and judgments on the opinions he reviews. Of course he speaks from his own standpoint, and that means that he must distribute his commendations and condemnations from the point of view of his particular notion of the nature of our Lord's atoning work. We do not know that satisfactionists have much ground for discontent with the judgment he passes on their position—or at least on their position as reproduced by what he calls "the rigid American school of half a century ago." He names here Charles Hodge, A. A. Hodge, W. G. T.
Shedd, and A. H. Strong in his earlier, and in our judgment better, teaching. And this is what he says of them: "Given their premisses as to the inspiration of Scripture, and the validity of a perfectly precise method of deduction with the use of hard and fast ideas, and their conclusions afford little scope for logical disintegration" (p. 177). We surely ought to be satisfied to have it recognized that this doctrine which we teach as Scriptural is Scriptural—provided Scripture be trusted wholly in what it says and its teachings be drawn from it by a perfectly precise method. When Mr.
Mozley adds that nevertheless the conclusions thus arrived at are morally disquieting, that seems to us, in the circumstances, an arraignment of the moral character of the Scriptures from which they are derived by precise deduction: and we console ourselves by recalling that when Paul taught these same conclusions (we shall remember that Mr. Mozley at one point interprets Paul as we have seen in terms of the doctrine of "satisfaction"), the Pharisees and the Libertines united in declaring them immoral. Paul himself did not seem to think so.
No small part of the value of Mr. Mosley's volume is given it by the wideness of his survey of the history of the doctrine. He has not permitted his view to be narrowed to any coterie or to any single class of writers. Not only writers of every age and land, but, what is more unusual, writers of
every ecclesiastical connection and type of thought, are given equal attention, and are treated with like care and interest. Mr. Mozley does not conceal his predilections; but his sympathies are wide, and, we rejoice to say, are most warm for the more deeply Christian types of thought. The book thus acquires a distinctly conservative tone and despite what seems to be the deficiencies of the constructive doctrine of Atonement outlined in it, will make for sane and sound views.
1. 1 The Princeton Theological Review, xv. 1917, pp. 467–476.