The Atonement in Relation to the Law of God
This means that the penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement involves a schism in the trinitarian life of God. But this objection is also based on a misunderstanding, for which the adherents of that doctrine may be partly to blame. They do not always sufficiently emphasize the truth to which attention was called in the preceding, that the whole work of the atonement originated in the good pleasure of God. Moreover, they frequently give the impression in their private conversation and in their public worship that Christ is the Alpha and Omega of the work of redemption. This tendency is very marked in the life and worship of the Moravian Brethren, but appears with almost equal strength and persistency in the religious attitude and exercises of many others, particularly in our country.
Some of them are frankly and piously opposed to a theocentric and insist on a christocentric religion. While they sing the praises of Christ in one hymn after another, they seldom rise to the heights of recognizing the triune God for His eternal love and for His boundless grace. They stop at the mediate, and forget all about the ultimate cause of their salvation, and might profitably reflect on some of the Old Testament psalms, such as. Ps. 16, 18, 23, 27, 34, and on such
New Testament passages as Luke. 1:47–50, 78; 2 Cor. 1:3; 4:15; Eph.
1:6; 2:4, and so on. The triune God provided freely for the salvation of sinners. There was nothing to constrain Him. The Father made the sacrifice of His Son, and the Son willingly offered Himself. There was no schism in the divine Being. The ultimate cause of the redemption of sinners lies, not in one person of the Trinity, but in the sovereign good pleasure of the triune God.
The Atonement in Relation to the Law of God Atonement legal; Denial of the legal element.
THE penal substitutionary doctrine of the atonement proceeds on the assumption that sin is in its very nature a transgression of the law of God and thus renders man guilty. For that very reason the remedy proposed for it must be first of all a legal remedy. This point calls for particular attention because of its widespread denial. The forensic nature of the atonement finds no favor with the advocates of the Moral Influence, or of the Mystical Theory, because it does not fit in with their fundamental thought. According to Sabatier "the capital defect of the old theory lay in its legal character. The Christian thought of our time has, on the contrary, been constantly endeavoring to lift the doctrine of expiation from the forensic to the ethical point of view." The Atonement in Modern Thought, p. 213.
Lyman Abbott makes the broad statement that "no theory of the atonement can be correct which represents it as a method of appeasing God's wrath, or satisfying His justice, or meeting the requirements of His law, or devised as a substitute for punishment due to infraction of that law." Ibid, p. 97 f. Stevens expresses the opinion that even "the stoutest recent defender of substitution and propitiation will not allow that he holds any legal or forensic theory."
The Christian Doctrine of Salvation, p. 251. Moreover, says he, "Desert the strict penal equivalence theory of atonement (as he thinks every sensible man will naturally do), and you logically end in the moral theory." Op. cit., p. 432.
Scripture teachings on man's relation to God.
When the Bible represents sin as a transgression of the law, as it repeatedly does, the idea is not that it is simply an infraction of some positive enactment of God, which served a merely temporary purpose and could be changed at any time. The law to which it refers is God's moral law, which is as to its essence grounded in the very nature of God, and is therefore necessary and immutable. It is a law which God cannot simply ignore or set aside at will, since it is the expression of His very Being. When God created moral beings, this law ipso facto (by that very fact) determined the relations in which they would stand to Him, and did not leave it to them to determine
these for themselves. The duty of obedience was necessarily imposed on them. This is perfectly evident from the fact that Jesus represents the obligation to love the Lord with all the heart, with all the soul, and with all the mind, and the neighbor as one's self, as the very essence of the law. To say that God might have required something essentially different or might have exacted less of his moral creatures, is to assume that He might have lost sight of the fact that He is the highest Good and that man is His image-bearer. The righteousness of God carries with it the assurance that His law is eternally right. The poet sings of it in the nineteenth psalm as "perfect,"
"right," and "pure." And Jesus testifies to the unchangeableness of the law, when He says: "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all things be accomplished." Matt. 5:17, 18. And, again: "But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fall." Luke
16:17. The least element of the law has more reality and durability than the whole universe. The law is a transcript of the will of God for the regulation of the lives of His moral beings, and the will of God is not an arbitrary will, but a will which is determined by and is in perfect harmony with all the divine perfections. This truth is denied in the Governmental Theory of the atonement, for according to Grotius law is not something inherent in God, nor is it the will of God, but simply an effect of His will, a positive enactment, which is mutable and can be set aside. In all Moral Influence Theories the question of the law and its demands is practically ignored. All legal elements are taboo: God is not a stern Judge, but a loving Father, who deals gently with His erring children. If they have transgressed against Him, He is quite willing to forget about it, provided they turn to Him with penitent hearts. He will even heap coals of fire upon their head, in order to induce them to say, "I will arise and go to my
Father."
A moral law carries with it a penal sanction.
Another point which requires special emphasis is that every law given for moral and responsible beings necessarily carries with it a penal sanction. Such a law calls for obedience and, in case of transgression, for the infliction of a penalty. The justice of God, which guarantees rich blessings to those who obey the law, necessarily inflicts due punishment on transgressors. Turretin correctly says: "If there be such an attribute as justice belonging to God, then sin must have its due, which is punishment." Atonement of Christ, p. 19. This means that the penalty of sin is something which of right and therefore necessarily follows transgression, and not something which God arbitrarily or with a view to some specific purpose attaches to infraction of the law. It is not inflicted because it may deter the sinner from further sins, or may be instrumental in reforming his character and habits, or may safeguard the interests of the moral government of God. The law requires that sin be punished because of its inherent demerit, irrespective of all further considerations. This principle applies not only in divine but also in human law. Justice requires the punishment of the transgressor. It finds strong expression in the words of Creighton: "Once you admit the fact of a divine precept with its declaration of penalty, you bar the thought of pardon as logically and absolutely as the extinction of the sun, moon, and stars would, in thought, mantle the world in a midnight of death. If the precept is just and the penalty just, the intervention of a prerogative voiding its execution would be unjust. It would violate a principle, and that principle the basis of all law, human and divine; namely, the principle of justice. The serious words of Bishop Newman quoted at the head of this chapter deserve to be repeated and emphasized: 'There is no such thing as pardon in His government; when His law is violated suffering must be endured, either by the original offender or by an adequate substitute.' " Law and the Cross, p. 46. This principle is fundamental in all those passages of Scripture which speak of God as a righteous Judge, a Judge who renders unto every man according to his deserts. "I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings," Jer.
17:10; cf. also Job 34:11; Ps. 62:12; Isa. 59:18. "The soul that sinneth
it shall die … and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him,"
Ezek. 18:20. "He that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons," Col. 3:25.
No substitution for the Penalty.
The advocates of the Governmental Theory and the Arminians, who accept this theory in part, maintain that Christ did not really bear the penalty of sin, but something that was substituted for the penalty.
Grotius regarded it as perfectly natural that the sinner should be punished for his sin, but did not consider it simply or universally necessary that he should be punished with such punishment as corresponded with his transgression. In his estimation the law was relaxable at this point and relaxation actually took place in the case of Christ. God graciously accepted something else in lieu of the penalty. And because Christ did not bear the penalty of sin, it can hardly be said that his sufferings were penal, though Grotius sometimes speaks of them as such, and they are so regarded by the Arminians. While Reformed theologians reject the Grotian view as derogatory to the justice of God, they do not as a rule maintain that Christ suffered the identical penalty which sinners would have had to suffer as the punishment of their transgressions. This was quite out of the question, since it would have required as many lives in Christ as there are sinners for whom He atoned, and He would have had to bear some consequences of sin, such as spiritual death including remorse for sin, which He could not and did not experience. They hold that He bore a full equivalent in the strictly legal sense for the sins of His people. The substitution of a divine and all-perfect person for guilty sinners made a substitution within the penalty not only possible, but even necessary, for, as Dr. Hodge says: "The execution of precisely the same sufferings, if it had been possible, in the person of the God-man, that would have been the proper penalty of the law if executed in the persons of the transgressors themselves would have been an outrageous injustice." The Atonement, p. 66.
Impossible to set the law aside.
The Grotian theory of the atonement leads on to still another thought. According to the eminent Dutch jurist God might have set aside the law altogether and refrained from inflicting any punishment for sin; and the reason why He did not do this lay in the fact that this might endanger the interests of His moral government.
God might have forgiven sin without any atonement whatsoever as far as the law was concerned. The Grotian conception of the law indeed allows of this possibility. But if the law is regarded as an expression of the moral character of God, and therefore as a necessary revelation of the will of God for the guidance of His moral creatures, it becomes utterly impossible to assume that the Judge of all the earth might have pardoned sin without any adequate atonement. Law, ideally considered, knows no pardon; pardon has no place in a perfect government, unless special provisions have been made to secure it. Says Creighton: "His (God's) government is perfect, and in a perfect government, perfect in its constitution and perfect in its administration, pardon is impossible without an atonement." He anticipates that some of his readers will object to this by saying that "even civil governments make provision for pardons," and that certainly "the divine government is more merciful than the human." In answer to this objection, however, he goes on to show, by quoting several eminent jurists, that the prerogative of pardon lodged in various human officials is not based on mercy but on justice, and that "it is a corrective means of justice, and its utility would be lost but for the lack of justice somewhere in the course of law." This power of pardon therefore finds its justification only in the imperfection of the administration of human justice, and could have no place in a perfect judicial system. And because God's administration of justice is perfect, it has no place there. In the divine economy there is no place for pardon without atonement. Cf.
Creighton, Law and the Cross, pp. 34–42; Armour, Atonement and Law, pp. 107–114.