A Central Doctrine in Eclipse
bless the message which it conveys, and may thus ever-increasingly "see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied."
L. Berkhof.
A Central Doctrine in Eclipse Atonement central in the Christian religion.
CHRISTIANITY is pre-eminently a religion of redemption. It proceeds on the assumption that man's relation was disturbed by the entrance of sin into the world, and that the present natural development of his life is so abnormal that it, left to itself, can only terminate in eternal destruction. And it teaches us that God does not permit sin to run its free course and to encompass the whole human race in utter ruin. It brings a message of reconciliation and offers a way of escape from the ravages of sin and from its destructive power,
—and this way is the way of the cross. Reconciliation through atonement by the redeeming sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
The doctrine of atonement has always been regarded as central in the Christian religion and as the very marrow of theology. It has been called "the chief part of our salvation," "the anchor of faith," "the refuge of hope," "the heart of the gospel," "the keystone of the Christian religion," and so on. Robert S. Franks says in his valuable
History of the Doctrine of the Work of Christ, I, p. 5: "For where in the whole doctrinal system is there a single doctrine which is more a microcosm of the whole? The doctrine of 'the saving effects of Christ's incarnation, life, passion, death, and resurrection' is indeed in miniature the whole of Christianity, and has indeed more than once in the history of the Church been treated so as to include practically the whole of Christianity." Even modern liberal theologians often speak of it as a central and essential truth, though
they differ widely in their conception of it from the interpretation which the Church of all ages has given of this important truth.
Doctrine of vicarious atonement in the Church.
We may even be a little more specific. The doctrine of vicarious or substitutionary atonement always formed an important element in the faith of the Church, and is the only view of the atonement ever incorporated in its historical Confessions. It is true that the work of Christ was not always interpreted in the same way, and that different periods of time often brought a change of emphasis. The doctrines of the Church were not found precisely formulated in Scripture, but were the result of the Church's reflection on the truth. They were not fully apprehended at once, and were not all developed at the same time. The doctrines of the Trinity, of the Person of Christ, and of Sin and Grace were formulated long before the doctrine of the Redemptive Work of Christ.
Views of Early Church Fathers.
The views of the early Church Fathers can only be gathered from casual and partial expressions of the truth, which are wanting in definiteness and sometimes even contradictory. They speak of Jesus alternately as the Redeemer from ignorance and misery, or from sin and the devil. Their particular emphasis usually corresponds to the evil of which they were most poignantly conscious and from which they eagerly sought deliverance. Some stress the fact that Christ brought a new revelation of God and thus dispelled the ignorance of man. Others give prominence to the idea that He communicated new life to man and in a sense deified human nature. And still others emphasize the thought that He bore the penalty of sin and thereby redeemed man from spiritual slavery. Again, some find the great redemptive fact primarily in the incarnation, and others perceive it above all in the sufferings and death of Christ. In several cases these thoughts are placed right alongside of each other by the same authors without any proper synthesis.
However—and this is the point to be noted—from the very start the idea was present in Christian literature that the death of Christ was sacrificial, atoned for sin, and effected reconciliation between God and man. This thought was sometimes expressed in the peculiar form that Christ paid a ransom to the devil, but it was there and was clearly very persistent. It gains definiteness and precision in Augustine's Enchiridion, where it is explicitly stated that men were under the wrath of God, and that the death of Christ served to propitiate God and thus reconciled God and man. His statement is free from ambiguity. Gregory the Great brings out with even greater clearness the Godward aspect, the sacrificial and vicarious nature, and the saving effect of the atonement through the death of Christ.
He stresses the fact that only the sacrifice of Christ, as that of a sinless man, could atone for the sin of the human race. The French writer Riviere speaks of one passage in his works as "the completest synthesis of (ancient) Latin theology on the atonement."
Anselm on the Atonement.
The honor of first presenting the doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ in anything like a complete form, however, goes to Anselm. His Cur
Deus Homo (Why God became Man), though small, was a truly epoch-making work and contained nearly all the essential elements of a real satisfaction theory. Anselm emphasized the seriousness of sin as an infringement of the honor of God, grounded the necessity of the atonement in the very nature of the divine Being, regarded the death of Christ as the only possible adequate satisfaction to the divine honor, and clearly taught that the merits of Christ were accredited to man. But however excellent his construction of this doctrine was, it also had some serious defects. He grounded the necessity of the atonement in the honor rather than in the justice of God, placed the whole burden of the atonement on the death of Christ, as if his life did not count, failed to do justice to the penal character of the supreme sacrifice, and represented the transfer of the merits of the Redeemer to the sinner in a rather external way, thus exposing his theory to the stricture embodied in the name
"Commercial Theory." The Anselmian conception of the atonement remained the dominant view in later Scholasticism, though it was not always adopted without modification, and sometimes even appeared in combination with elements of the Abelardian view.
Reformers on the Atonement.
The Reformers continued to move in the general direction indicated by Anselm, though differing with him on some points. They do not so clearly and explicitly base the necessity of the atonement on the inner nature of God—though their construction of the doctrine favors this—but seem to ground it on the divine decree. Moreover, they remedy some of the defects of the Anselmian theory. They regard the atonement as a satisfaction to the justice rather than to the honor of God, stress the penal nature of the sufferings and death of Christ, ascribe atoning significance also to the life of the Redeemer, and clearly point out that the fruits of His work are mediated to sinners through the mystical union and appropriated by faith. The penal substitutionary view of the atonement became the official doctrine of the Church and is found in all the great historic Confessions of Christendom. It is and remains to this day the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. One cannot exchange it for another view without introducing a gospel which is not a gospel.
Opposition to the doctrine of vicarious Atonement.
It is a sad fact, however, that the penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement is not as popular today as it deserves to be. There was strong opposition to it right down from the days of Anselm. Abelard pitted his Moral Influence Theory against the Anselmian view, and Duns Scotus with his Acceptilation Theory strengthened the opposition. After the Reformation Faustus Socinus launched a seemingly rather formidable attack upon the doctrine of the Reformers and offered a substitute for it in his Example Theory.
Keen dialectics enlisted to establish a poor theology. Grotius ostensibly came to the defense of the doctrine of satisfaction in his
famous Defense of the Catholic Faith Concerning the Satisfaction of Christ, a work characterized by subtlety, acuteness, and great learning. In reality, however, he only succeeded in steering a middle course between the doctrine of the Reformers and the Socinian theory. His Governmental Theory represented a half-way position which satisfied neither one of the contending parties. Even the Arminians found it necessary to modify his views.
Under the influence of Rationalism and of what is usually called "the modern scientific spirit" the doctrine of vicarious atonement gradually lost its hold on the hearts and minds of ever-increasing numbers, and was supplanted by other views in the teaching, not only of creedless Churches, but even of some which still claim adherence to one or more of the great historic Confessions. In his
Introduction to Remensnyder's work on The Atonement and Modern Thought, p. XVI, Dr. Warfield says: "Probably the majority of those who hold the public ear have definitely broken with the doctrine of substitutive atonement." They call it unethical, contradictory, and subversive of the truth. In New England theology the Governmental
Theory of the atonement was revived. This theory, says Dr. Warfield, to quote once more from the same Introduction, p. XVII, "has come to be the orthodox Arminian view and is taught as such by the leading exponents of modern Arminian thought whether in Britain or America.… But not only is it thus practically universal among the Wesleyan Arminians. It has also become the mark of Nonconformity in Great Britain and of orthodox Congregationalism in America. Nor has it failed to take a strong hold of Scottish Presbyterianism; and on the continent of Europe it is widespread among the saner teachers."
But even this theory does not mark the last step in the downward grade. It retains at least an appearance of objectivity, that is, of the idea that God required some satisfaction, in order that He might pardon sin, an idea that is repugnant to those who stress the Fatherhood of God and regard love as the all-controlling perfection of the divine Being. There has long been a decided drift in the direction of the Moral Influence Theory, which was first advocated
by Abelard. Treatises such as those of Frederick Denison Maurice, John Young, McLeod Campbell, and Horace Bushnell, did not fail to catch the public ear and to find favor with the people. It is even more emphatic than the Grotian theory in making man's repentance the real atoning fact and the only condition of forgiveness. The secret of its popularity lies exactly in its purely ethical construction of the doctrine of the atonement.
Several important treatises have been written during the last half of the previous century to stem the tide of subjectivism, such as the works of A. A. Hodge, W. Symington, H. Martin, G. Smeaton, T.J.
Crawford, R. Dabney, and others, on the atonement. They have undoubtedly retarded the process of deterioration somewhat, but did not succeed in turning the tide. The doctrine of vicarious atonement is in discredit today. Even a Scot like David Smith writes of it: "It still indeed persists, but its vitality is gone: it is withered like an uprooted tree. What happened in previous periods of transition is once more being enacted before our eyes. Just as St. Bernard clung to the outworn Ransom Theory and refused to let it go, fancying that its abandonment involved a denial of the truth which it so imperfectly expressed, so some now, unconscious of the new order, are content with the old formula; while others, recognizing its insufficiency, labor to rehabilitate and readjust it, thus putting new wine into old wine-skins. It is a vain attempt. The Forensic Theory belongs to a bygone age. It has passed like its predecessors into the limbo of theological antiquities; and the task of faith is not to galvanize the dead past but to welcome the new order and re-interpret the ancient truth and commend it to the modern mind." The Atonement in the Light of History and the Modern Spirit, p. 124.
Whither will this modern spirit lead us? Where will it finally terminate in its interpretation of the atonement? Its evident tendency is to rob us completely of our "only High Priest," and to leave us a great ethical Teacher to whom the categories of the priesthood do not apply. It stresses the redemptive significance of the life of Christ, and then makes rather painful and sorry at tempts