Commentary on Romans; Systematic Theology

The Synod of Dort met two years after the publication of the work in which this theory was propounded. Grotius joined those who remonstrated against the decisions of that Synod, and who on that account were called Remonstrants. The Remonstrant theologians, however, did not as a class adhere to Grotius's peculiar doctrine. They did not regard the work of Christ as a governmental transaction, but adhered to the Scriptural mode of representation. They spoke of his death as a sacrifice and ransom. They rejected indeed the Church doctrine. They denied that what Christ did was a satisfaction of justice; that He bore the penalty of the law; that He acted as our substitute, fulfilling in our place all the demands of the law. As these ideas have no part, according to their view, in the doctrine of sacrifices for sin, so they have no place in the true doctrine concerning the work of Christ. Under the Old Testament a sacrifice was not an equivalent for the penalty incurred; it was not a satisfaction to justice; the victim did not do what the offerer ought to have done. It was simply a divine ordinance. God saw fit to ordain that the offering a sacrifice should be the condition of the pardon of the violations of the ceremonial law. So also He has seen fit to ordain that the sacrificial death of Christ should be the condition of the pardon of sin under the gospel. Even a ransom is no proper equivalent. The holder of a captive may take what he pleases as the condition of deliverance. On this point Limborch says: "In eo errant quam maxime, quod velint redemtionis pretium per omnia æquivalens esse debere miseriæ illi, e qua redemtio fit, redemtionis pretium enim constitui solet pro libera æstimatione illius, qui captivum detinet, non autem pro captivi merito. Ita pretium, quod Christus persolvit, juxta Dei patris æstimationem persolutum est."¹ This is the old Scholastic doctrine of "acceptatio;" a thing avails, irrespective of its inherent value, for what God sees fit to take it. The death of Christ was no more a satisfaction for sin, than that of bulls and of goats under the old dispensation. God saw fit to make the latter the condition of the pardon of violations of the ceremonial law; and He has seen fit to make the former the condition of the pardon of sins against the moral law.

Although the Remonstrants as a body did not accept of the governmental theory as proposed by Grotius, his main idea was frequently reproduced by subsequent writers. This was done especially by the Supernaturalists in Germany in their endeavour to save something from the destructive principles of the Rationalists. They conceded that the work of Christ was not strictly a satisfaction to justice. They taught that it was necessary as an example and a symbol.² It was designed as a manifestation of God's displeasure against sin; and, therefore, necessary to render its forgiveness consistent with the interests of God's moral government. This is true of Stäudlin, Flatt, and even of Storr. Speaking of the first of these writers, Baur says, "It was admitted that in the New Testament doctrine concerning the death of Jesus the Old Testament idea of a sin offering as a substitute and satisfaction was actually contained, and therefore that the Church doctrine of satisfaction agreed with the literal sense of the Scriptures; yet it was insisted upon that this literal doctrine of the Bible involved difficulties affecting our moral nature, and was evil in its practical effects, and inconsistent with what the Scriptures themselves elsewhere taught of guilt, merit, imputation, and of God's justice." Hence, he goes on to say, that to escape from this dilemma it was taught that when in the New Testament it is said "that Jesus suffered punishment in the place of men, and procured for them the forgiveness of sin, this can only mean that God, through the death of Christ and the sufferings therewith connected, declared himself to be the righteous judge of all evil."³

C. Ch. Flatt endeavoured to find "a middle way between the course of those who introduced into the Scriptures their own philosophical opinions, or the philosophy of the age in which they lived, and the strict grammatical, historical interpretation of those who insisted on taking the words of Scripture either in their etymological sense, or in that sense in which it can he historically proved that at least a part of the contemporaries of the sacred writers understood them, or which stupid Rabbinical literalists attached to certain phrases without regard to the fact how often the meaning of words, without a change of form, through higher culture and refinement of moral feeling, is spiritualized and ennobled."⁴ This middle way, according to Flatt, leads to the conclusion that the main design of Christ's death as viewed by Himself was effectually to correct the false ideas of the Jews concerning the Messiah's kingdom as one of earthly splendor, and to open the way for the entrance of his doctrine which taught that blessedness is to be secured by moral excellence. This doctrine of Flatt agrees with the governmental theory so far as it denies the Church doctrine of a satisfaction to justice, and makes the design of Christ's death purely didactic.

Storr, in all his works, and especially in his "Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews," and his dissertation on the design of Christ's death, makes the Scriptures his authoritative guide, and therefore approaches much nearer to the Church doctrine than perhaps any German theologian of his generation. He assumes that Christ as man was bound to render the same obedience to the divine law as is due from all other men. But in virtue of the union of his human with the divine nature He as man was entitled to all the exaltation and blessedness of which humanity is capable. Any reward, therefore, for his perfect obedience, are especially for his death on the cross, must be some benefit granted to others for his sake. The salvation of his people, therefore, is the Redeemer's reward. Such benefit, however, could not consistently be bestowed on sinners unless the death of Christ had been a vindication of the righteousness of God by being intended as an "example of punishment;" a manifestation of God's hatred of sin and of his determination to punish it.⁵

The governmental theory of the atonement seems to have had an entirely independent origin in this country. It was the necessary consequence of the principle that all virtue consists in benevolence. If that principle be correct, all the moral attributes of God are modifications of benevolence. There is no such perfection in God as justice other than the purpose and disposition to promote happiness. The death of Christ, therefore, could have no other design than to render the forgiveness of sin consistent with the best interests of the moral government of God. This theory was elaborated by the younger President Edwards, presented in full in Dr. Beman's work on the Atonement, and adopted by that numerous and highly influential class of American theologians who embraced the principle on which the theory, as held in this country, is founded. In the work of Dr. E. A. Park, of Andover, on the Atonement, there is a collection of discourses from the pens of the most distinguished teachers of this doctrine. In the introduction to that volume Professor Park gives an interesting history of the development of this view of the atonement as held in this country.

1. The first and most obvious objection to this theory is that it is founded on an erroneous idea of the nature of punishment. It assumes that the special design of punishment is the good of society. If the best interests of a community, either human or divine, a commonwealth of men or the moral government of God, can be secured without the punishment of crime, then no such punishment ought to be inflicted. But suffering inflicted for the good of others is not punishment any more than suffering inflicted for the good of the sufferer. The amputation of a crushed limb is not of the nature of punishment, neither are the sufferings of martyrs, although intended to redound to the good of the Church and of the world. The sufferings of Paul, which were so abundant and so constant, although so fruitful of good, were not penal. And the sufferings of Christ, if incurred in the discharge of his mission of mercy, and not judicially inflicted in execution of the penalty of the law, had no more tendency to show God's abhorrence of sin than the suffering of the martyrs.

No evil is of the nature of punishment unless it be inflicted in satisfaction of justice and in execution of the penalty of law. A writer in the "British Quarterly Review" for October, 1866, says: "There is a story of an English judge who once said to a criminal, You are transported not because you have stolen these goods, but that goods may not be stolen.'" The reviewer then adds, "No principle more false in itself or more ruinous to public morality was ever announced from the English bench. The whole moral effect of punishment lies in its being just. The man who suffers for the benefit of others is a martyr and not a convict." It is on this false principle that the whole governmental theory of the atonement is founded. It admits of no ground of punishment but the benefit of others. And if that benefit can be otherwise secured all necessity for punishment ceases, and all objection to the dispensing of pardon is removed. If the fundamental principle of a theory be false, the theory itself must be unsound.

2. The theory contradicts the intuitive moral judgments of men. The testimony of every man's conscience in view of his own sins is that he deserves to be punished, not for the good of others, but for his own demerit. If not guilty he cannot justly be punished; and if guilty he cannot justly be pardoned without satisfaction to justice. As this is the testimony of conscience with regard to our own sins, it is the testimony of the consciousness of all men with regard to the sins of others. When a great crime is committed, the instinctive judgment of men is that the perpetrators ought to be punished. No analysis of human consciousness can resolve this sentiment of justice into a conviction of the understanding that the interests of society demand the punishment of crime. That indeed is true. It is one of the incidental benefits, but not the special design or end of punishment. Indeed, the whole moral effect of punishment depends upon the assumption that it is inflicted on the ground of ill desert, and not for the public good. If the latter object be made prominent, punishment loses its nature and of course its appropriate moral effect. A theory which ignores these intuitive convictions of the mind is not suited to our state, and never can satisfy the conscience. We know that we deserve to be punished. We know that we ought to be punished, and therefore that punishment is inevitable under the government of a just God. If it is not borne by a substitute in our stead, it must be borne by ourselves. Where there is no expiation for sin there is inevitably a fearful looking for of judgment.

3. All the arguments heretofore urged in proof that the justice of God cannot be resolved into benevolence are valid arguments against the governmental theory of the atonement. The doctrine that happiness is the highest good, and that all virtue consists in the desire and purpose to promote the greatest possible amount of happiness, is almost discarded from the schools, and should be discarded from theology where it has wrought so much evil. It is so inconsistent with our moral nature, to assert that there is no difference between right and wrong except that between the expedient and the inexpedient, that the doctrine could never have been adopted except as a means of solving difficulties for the understanding, at the expense of the conscience. This point has been already considered when treating of the attributes of God and of the design of creation; and therefore it need not be further discussed in this place.

4. A fourth argument against the governmental theory is that it is unscriptural. The Bible constantly represents Christ as a priest, as a sacrifice, as a propitiation, as an expiation, as the substitute and representative of sinners; as assuming their place and sustaining the curse or penalty of the law in their stead. All these representations are either ignored or explained away by the advocates of this theory. Governments, civil commonwealths, from which the principles and illustrations of this theory are derived, know nothing of priests, sacrifices, and vicarious punishments. And, therefore, these ideas do not enter, and cannot be admitted into the governmental theory. But these ideas are the vital elements of the Scriptural doctrine of the atonement; so that if we renounce them we renounce the doctrine itself, or at least seriously impair its integrity and power. Whole volumes on the atonement have been written in which the words priest, sacrifice, and propitiation hardly occur.

5. This theory, as well as the moral view of the atonement is false, because defective. As it is true that the work of Christ is designed and adapted to exert the most powerful moral influence on sinners to induce them to return to God, so it is true that his work was designed and adapted to produce the strongest possible impression on the minds of all intelligent creatures of the evil of sin, and thus restrain them from the commission of it, but neither the one nor the other was its primary design. It has this moral impression on the sinner and upon the intelligent universe, because it was a satisfaction to the justice of God, and the strongest of all proofs that sin cannot be pardoned without an expiation, or adequate atonement.

§ 5. The Mystical Theory.

The fifth theory on this subject is the mystical. This agrees with the moral view (under which it might be included), in that it represents the design of Christ's work to be the production of a subjective effect in the sinner. It produces a change in him. It overcomes the evil of his nature and restores him to a state of holiness. The two systems differ, however, as to the means by which this inward change is accomplished. According to the one it is by moral power operating according to the laws of mind by the exhibition of truth and the exercise of moral influence. According to the other it is by the mysterious union of God and man, of the divine with the human nature, i.e., of divinity with humanity, brought about by the incarnation.

This general idea is presented in various forms. Sometimes the writers quoted in favour of this mystical view teach nothing more ihan what has ever been held in the Church, and what is clearly caught in the Scriptures.. It is true that there is a moral and spiritual union between God and man effected by the incarnation of the Son of God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. He and his people are one. Our Lord prays to the Father, John xvii. 22, 23, that those given to Him "may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me." And the Apostle Peter does not hesitate to say that we are made "partakers of the divine nature." This, and no more than this, is necessarily implied in the oft-quoted language of Athanasius in reference to Christ, autos enenthropesen, hina hemeis theopoiethomen. But besides this Scriptural doctrine there has prevailed a mystical view of the union of God and man to which the redemption of our race is ascribed, and in which, by some of its advocates, it is made exclusively to consist. So far as the fathers are concerned, a clear distinction was made between redemption and reconciliation; between the objective work of Christ in delivering us from the curse of the law and from the power of Satan, and the subjective application of that work. Both were ascribed to Christ. The former (our redemption), was effected by his bearing our sins, by his being made a curse for us, by his giving Himself as a ransom, and by his obedience being taken as a substitute for the obedience which we had failed to render. Our reconciliation with God, including restoration to his image and fellowship, was effected, not, as the Church has ever taught, by the work of the Holy Spirit, but according to the mystical theory, by the union of the divine nature with our fallen nature, brought about by the incarnation. In all ages of the Church there have been minds disinclined to rest in the simple statements of the Bible, and disposed to strive after something more philosophical and profound. Among the early fathers, Münscher says, there was an obscure and peculiar notion that in some way the coming of Christ had produced a physical effect upon our race to ennoble it and render it immortal.⁶ At times this idea is advanced in general terms and without any attempt to explain philosophically how this effect was produced. As Adam was the cause of the seeds of death and corruption being introduced into human nature, so Christ was the means of introducing a principle of life and immortality which operates as leaven in a mass of dough. Or, as any affection of one member of the body, especially of the head, affects the whole system, so the resurrection of Christ and his life has a physical effect upon the whole mass of mankind. They regarded the human race as one mass which, inasmuch as Christ had united Himself with it by his incarnation, was restored to its original perfection and made immortal.⁷ This idea was more perfectly worked out by the realists. They held humanity to be a generic substance and life, of which individual men are the modes of existence; and they also held that it was this generic humanity, and not merely a true body and a reasonable soul that Christ assumed into personal union with his divine nature; thus an element of divinity was introduced into humanity, by which it is restored and ennobled, and according to some, finally deified.

Among the Platonizing fathers, however, the mystical operation of the incarnation was connected with their doctrine of the Logos. What the real doctrine of the fathers and of Philo their predecessor and master in his matter concerning the Logos was, has ever been a matter of dispute among the learned. It is not at all even yet a settled matter whether Philo regarded the Logos as a person or not. Dorner, one of the latest and most competent authorities on this point, takes the negative side of the question. According to him Philo taught that the Logos was (1.) A faculty of God, the nous or understanding, and also the power of God. The two are united; thought and power. (2.) The Logos is the activity of God; not merely the power of thought and of creating, but also the actual activity of God in thinking and creating. God first created by thinking an ideal world, after which the actual world was to be fashioned. As a builder forms in his mind the plan of a city in all its details, before he carries that plan into execution; and as the dwelling-place of that ideal city is the understanding of the builder, so the ideal world is in the mind of God, i.e., in the Logos. (3.) According to Philo the Logos is not only the thinking principle which forms this ideal world, but the ideal world itself. (4.) This plenitude of ideas which constitutes the ideal world is the reality, life, and intelligence of the actual world. The latter is (or becomes) by the union of the ideal with matter, what it is. The kosmos noetos is realized in the kosmos aisthetos. The Logos, therefore (or the divine intelligence and activity), is the life and intelligence of the actual world. He is the reason in all rational creatures, angels and men.⁸ According to Philo the Logos was on the one hand identical with God, and on the other identical with the world as its interior reality and life.

In the hands of the Platonizing fathers this doctrine was only modified. Some of them, as Origen, held that the Logos was a person eternally begotten of the Father; according to Clemens Alexandrinus, He was, as the Logos endiathetos, eternally in God as his wisdom, and therefore impersonal; but as the Logos prophorikos, or united to the world as its formative principle, He became a person. In applying these philosophical speculations to the explanation of the doctrine concerning the person and work of Christ, there is no little diversity among these writers, so far as the details are concerned. In substance they agree. The eternal Logos or Son, became truly a man, and as such gave Himself as a sacrifice and ransom for the redemption of men. He also by his incarnation secures our recovery from the power of sin and restoration to the image and fellowship of God. How this latter object is accomplished is the mystical part of the theory. The Logos is the eternal Son of God; but He is also the interior life and substance of the world. Rational creatures included in the world, are endowed with personality and freedom. Some of them, both angels and men, have turned away from the Logos which is their life. A renewed union of the divine with the human restores them to their normal relation. The original creation of man was imperfect. The divine element was not strong enough to secure a right development, hence evil occurred. A larger infusion of the divine element corrects the evil, and secures the restoration ultimately. according to Origen, of all rational creatures to holiness and God. The Logos is the Mediator, the High-Priest between God and man (or rather God and the world). One with God, He is also one with the world. He unites the two, and they become one. The system has a pantheistic aspect, although it admits the freedom of rational creatures, and the separate existence, or an existence as self of the world. The whole universe, however, God and world, is one vast organism in which God is the only life and the only reason, and this life and reason are the Logos. And it is by giving the Logos, the rational or spiritual element, renewed power, that the world of rational creatures, who in the abuse of their freedom have turned away from God, are brought back not only to a real or substantial, but also to a cordial union with God, so that He becomes all in all.

In the beginning of the ninth century John Scotus Erigena anticipated most of the results of the highest modern speculation. Schelling and Hegel had him for a predecessor and guide. With him "Creator et creatura unum est. Deus est omnia, et omnia Deus." The creation is necessary and eternal; the incarnation is necessary and eternal; and redemption is necessary and eternal. All is process. An eternal unfolding of the infinite in the finite, and return of the finite into the infinite. Erigena, from his place in history and his relation to the Church, was forced to clothe his philosophy as much as possible with the drapery of Christianity this secured for him an influence which continued long after his death over later speculative theologians.

During the Middle Ages there was a succession of advocates of the mystical theory. Some of them following Erigena adopted a system essentially pantheistic; others were theistic. The one class strove to reduce Christianity into a system of philosophy. They adopted the principle of Erigena, "Conficitur inde, veram esse philosophiam veram religionem, conversimque, veram religionem esse veram philosophiam." The two sources of knowledge are recta ratio and vera auctoritas. Both are divine as coming from God. Reason however, as first, is the higher, and nothing is to be admitted as true which reason does not authenticate.⁹ The other class strove after fellowship with God. Both assumed that what Münscher and Gieseler call the physical union of the divine and human natures, was the normal and ultimate state of man. Whether this identity of the two was effected by a perfect development of God in man and nature; or by the elevation of the human until it is lost in the divine, the result is the same. Man is deified. And therein is his salvation. And so far as Christ was recognized as a Saviour at all, it was as the bond of union between the two, or the channel through which the divine flows into the human. The incarnation itself, the union of the divine and human natures, was the great saving act. Christ redeems us by what He is, not by what He does. The race, say some, the consummated Church, say others, is the God man, or God manifest in the flesh. Almost all this class of writers held that the incarnation would have been necessary, had man never sinned. The necessity arises out of the nature of God and his relation to the world, and out of the nature and destiny of man.

At the time of the Reformation the same mode of apprehending and presenting Christianity was adopted. While the Reformers held to the great objective truths of the Bible, to a historical Christ, to the reality and necessity of his obedience and satisfaction as something done for us and in our place, i.e., to an objective redemption and justification, a class of writers soon appeared who insisted on what they called the Christ within us, and merged the objective work of Christ into a subjective operation in the souls of his people; or at least subordinated the former entirely to the latter. A work, entitled "Die Deutsche Theologie" (German Theology), was published during the lifetime of Luther, which contained a great amount of important truth, and to which the illustrious reformer acknowledged himself greatly indebted. In that book, however, the mystical element was carried to a dangerous extreme. While the historical facts respecting Christ and his redeeming work were allowed to remain, little stress was laid upon them. The real value of the blessings received from Christ, was the change effected in the soul itself; and that change was not referred to the work of the Holy Spirit, so much as to the union of the divine nature with our nature, in virtue of the incarnation. The book teaches that if it were possible for a man to be as pure and obedient as Christ, he would become, through grace, what Christ was by nature. Through this obedience he would become one with God. Christ is not merely objective, isolated in his majesty, but we are all called that God should be incarnate in us, or that we should become God.

Osiander and Schwenkfeld, two contemporaries of Luther, were both advocates, although in different forms, of the same theory. Men are saved by the substantial union of the divine nature with the nature of man. According to Osiander justification is not by the imputation, but by the infusion of righteousness. And the righteousness infused is not the righteousness of Christ wrought out here on earth. What Christ did centuries ago cannot make us righteous. What we receive is his divine nature. This is the specific doctrine for which Osiander was denounced in the Form of Concord. Man, according to him, was originally created not after the image of God as such, nor of the Son as such, but of the Son as He was to become man. Manhood was eternally included in the idea and nature of the Son of God. His incarnation was, therefore, due to his nature, and not to the accident of man's sinning. The idea of the incarnation is eternal, and in reference to it the whole universe was created and all things consist. Christ's human nature is only the vehicle for conveying to us his divine nature. In the vine, he says, there are two natures, the one is the nature of the wood, which it retains, even if it should be withered up; the other is "plane occulta, fructifera et vinifera natura." And as the clusters of grapes could not have the vinous nature, unless they were wood of the wood of the vine; so neither can we partake of the divine nature of Christ, unless we, by faith and baptism, are so incorporated with Him, as to be flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. But the human nature of Christ, without the divine (si sine Deo esset), would be of no avail.¹⁰

While Osiander makes the divine nature of Christ as communicated to us our righteousness and life, and regards his humanity as only the means of communication, Schwenkfeld exalts the human into the divine, and regards this divine human nature as the source of life to us. He agreed with Osiander in making justification subjective, by the infusion of righteousness; and also in teaching that the righteousness which is infused is the righteousness of Christ; but instead of depreciating the human nature and making it only the channel for communicating the divine, he laid special stress on the humanity of Christ. The human nature of Christ was not a creature. It was formed out of the substance of God; and after its sojourn on earth, was even as to the body, rendered completely or perfectly divine, so that whatever can be predicated of God, can be predicated of the humanity of Christ. Nevertheless, the human nature was not so absorbed into the divinity, that Christ had but one nature. He continues God and man, but as man is God. And this divine human, or human divine nature, is communicated to us by faith. Faith itself is the first communication of the divine essence, the final result of which is the complete deification of man. The substance of God is not communicated to the race of men, so that God becomes thus identified with men in general. It is in the regenerated that this union of the divine and human natures is consummated. It cannot escape notice, that the views of this class of writers, so far as results are concerned, differ but little from those of the modern speculative theologians of Germany and their followers in England and America. The obvious objection, that if salvation depends on the union of the divine nature with ours, and if this union be due to the incarnation of Christ, those living before his advent in the flesh must be excluded from the benefits of his theanthropic nature, is very unsatisfactorily answered by the modern theologians referred to. Schwenkfeld had no hesitation in cutting the knot. In a Sendbrief written in 1532, in which he treats of the difference between the Old and New Testament economies, he says, that under the former there was no saving faith, and no justification, and that all the patriarchs had therefore perished forever.

Schwenkfeld's followers were numerous enough to form a distinct sect, which continues to this day. Some religionists, both in Germany and in this country, are still called by his name. All the writers on the history of doctrine give the authorities for the statements concerning the doctrines of Osiander and Schwenkfeld derived from sources not generally accessible in this country.