The Fundamentals
A Testimony to the Truth
Volume XI
Compliments of Two Christian Laymen
T estimony P ublishing C ompany (Not Inc.) 808 North La Salle Street Chicago, 111., U. S. A.
“To the L a w and to the Testimony”
FOREWORD There has been much unavoidable delay in connection with the issue of this volume of “ T h e F undam entals ,” Volume XI. This was occasioned by the very serious illness of the former Executive Secretary of “T h e F undam entals ” Com mittee. This illness lasted for many months, only terminat ing in his death. He bore up very bravely and it was not thought wise to put the work in other hands lest he should be discouraged, feeling that there was no hope. Further delay was occasioned by the necessity of going over his manuscripts and papers and selecting such as had already been passed upon by the Committee for Volume XI and in passing upon other manuscripts in his possession. We have been greatly cheered by the letters that have come to us from all parts of the world, from ministers, mission aries, editors, college presidents, Sunday School superintend ents and others, speaking of the great personal blessing which they have received from “ T h e F und am en ta l s , ” and of the good accomplished by the various volumes in the lives of others to whom they have been passed on. The present volume will go to about one hundred thousand English-speaking Protestant pastors, evangelists, missionaries, theological professors, theological students, Y. M. C. A. sec retaries, Y. W. C. A. secretaries, Sunday School superintend ents, religious editors, and lay workers throughout the earth. May we ask the prayers of every reader that it may be abun dantly blessed, as its predecessors have been, unto the strength ening of the faith of Christians, unto the defense of the truth against the various forms of error so prevalent at the present day, and unto the conversion of a multitude of the unsaved. There is a large circle of prayer formed of men and women in all parts of the earth who know God and who are upholding
before Him the work of “ T h e F undam entals ” and of the Committee to which the Two Christian Laymen have entrusted the editing and publishing of these volumes. We earnestly request other men and women who know God to join this circle of prayer in order that in answer to believing and united prayer the truth may have new power and that a world-wide revival of religion may be begun and grow. I t was the original plan of the Two Laymen who gave the money for this work that there should be twelve volumes of “T h e F undam entals ” issued: so there remains but one vol ume to be issued. Prayer is desired that wisdom may be given to the Committee in the selection of the material for the final volume. A wide; desire is manifested that “T h e F u n d am en tals ” be continued in some way after the issue of the twelve volumes. Probably essentially the same work will be continued in some form, but that form has not yet been decided upon. All editorial correspondence should be addressed to the Executive Secretary of The Fundamentals, 1945 La France Avenue, South Pasadena, California. There, is no desire, how ever, for the submission of manuscripts by anybody unless specific request for such manuscript is made. We can use but few more manuscripts, and some are already in hand. All business correspondence should be addressed to the Testimony Publishing Company, 808 North La Salle Street, Chicago, Illinois, U. S. A. (See Publishers’ Notice, Page 127.)
CONTENT S
C H A P T E R * .
T h e B ibl ical C oncept ion of S i n ................................ 7 By Rev. Thomas Whitelaw, M. A., D. D., Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, Scotland. II. A t -O n e -M e n t by P r o p it ia t io n ............................. 23 By Dyson Hague, Vicar of the Church of the Epiphany, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. By Rev. C. I. Scofield, D. D., Editor “Scofield Reference Bible.” K n . F ulf illed P rophecy a P otent A rgum en t for t h e B ib le 55 By Arno C. Gaebelein, Editor “Our Hope,” New York City. /III. T h e G race of G od .............................................. ................................................ 43
v . T h e C om in g of C h r is t .
........ ............................
87
By Prof. Charles R. Erdman, D. D., Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.
" v I. Is R om an ism C h r is t ia n it y ?.
............... ...........
100
By T. W. Medhurst, Glasgow, Scotland. VII. R ome , t h e A ntagon ist of t h e N at ion
. .
113
By Rev. J. M. Foster, Boston, Massachusetts.
THE FUNDAMENTALS VOLUME XI CHAPTER I THE BIBLICAL CONCEPTION OF SIN BY REV. THOMAS WHITELAW, M. A., D. D., KILMARNOCK, AYRSHIRE, SCOTLAND
Holy Scripture undertakes no demonstration of the reality of sin. In all its statements concerning sin, sin is presupposed as a fact which can neither be controverted nor denied, neither challenged nor obscured. It is true that some reasoners, through false philosophy and materialistic science, refuse to admit the existence of sin, but their endeavors to explain it away by their respective theories is sufficient proof that sin is no figment of the imagination but a solid reality. Others who are not thinkers may sink so far beneath the power of sin as to lose all sense of its actuality, their moral and spiritual natures becoming so hardened and fossilized as to be “past feeling,” in which case conviction of sin is no more possible, or at least so deteriorated and unimpressible that only a tre mendous upheaval within their souls, occasioned perhaps by severe affliction, but brought about by the inward operation of the Spirit of God, will break up the hard crust of moral numbness and religious torpor in which their spirits are en cased. A third class of persons, by simply declining to think about sin, may come in course of time to conclude that whether sin be a reality or not, it does not stand in any relation to them and does not concern them—in which case once more they are merely deceiving themselves. The truth is that it 7
8 The Fundamentals is extremely doubtful whether any intelligent person whose moral intuitions have not been completely destroyed and whose mental perceptions have not been largely blunted by indulg ence in wickedness, can successfully persuade himself, at least permanently, that sin is a myth, an illusion of the mind, a creature of the imagination, and not a grim reality. Most men know that sin is in themselves a fact of consciousness they cannot deny, and in others a fact of observation they cannot overlook. As Chesterton expresses it, the fact of sin any one may see in the street: the Bible assumes that any man will discover it who looks into his own heart. Accordingly the Bible devotes its efforts to imparting to mankind reliable knowledge about the nature and universality, the origin and culpability, but also and especially about the removableness of sin; and to set forth these in succession will be the object of the present paper. I. THE NATURE OF SIN I t scarcely requires stating that modern ideas about sin receive no countenance from Scripture, which never speaks about sin as “goo’d in the making,” as “the shadow cast by man’s immaturity,” as “a necessity determined by heredity and environment,” as “a stage in the upward development of a finite being,” as a “taint adhering to man’s corporeal frame,” as a “physical disease,” “a mental infirmity,” “a constitutional weakness,” and least of all “as a figment of the imperfectly enlightened, or theologically perverted, imagination,” but always as the free act of an intelligent, moral and responsible being asserting himself against the will of his Maker, the supreme Ruler of the universe. That will the Bible takes for granted every person may learn, either from the law written on his own heart (Rom. 1 :15 ) ; or from the revelation furnished by God to mankind, first to the Hebrew Church in the Old Testament Scriptures, and afterwards to the Christian Church and through it to the whole world in the New Testament
The Biblical Conception of Sin 9 Gospels and Epistles. Hence, sin is usually described in the Sacred Volume by terms that indicate with perfect clearness its relation to the Divine will or law, and leaves no uncertainty as to its essential character. In the Old Testament (Ex. 34:5, 6; Psa. 32:1, 2) three words are used to supply a full definition of sin. (1) “Trans gression” (pesha’h) or a falling away from God and therefore a violation of His commandments; with which exposition John agrees when he says that “sin is a transgression of the, law” (1 John 3 :4 ) , and Paul when he writes (Rom. 4 :15 ), “Where no law is, there is no transgression.” (2) “Sin” (chataah) or a missing of the mark, a coming short of one’s duty, a failure to do what one ought, for which reason the term is fittingly applied to sins of omission; with which again John agrees when he states (1 John 5:17) that “all unrighteousness [or defect in righteousness] is sin,” or Paul when he affirms (Rom. 3 :23 ), that “all have sinned and cone shoTt of the glory of God,” and Christ when He charges the Scribes and Pharisees with “leaving undone the things they ought to have done” (Matt. 23:23; Luke 11:42). (3) “Iniquity” (’avdn) or a turn ing aside from the straight path, curving like an arrow, hence perversity, depravity and inequality—a conception which finds an echo in the words of a later psalmist (78:5) who com plained that Israel had “turned aside from Jehovah like a deceitful bow,” and in those of the prophet Isaiah (53:6) who confessed that “all we like sheep have gone astray, and have turned every one unto his own way,” and in those of his countryman Hosea (7:16) who lamented that Israel “like a deceitful bow had returned, but not to the Most High.” The words employed in the New Testament to designate sin are not much, if at all, different in meaning— hanartia, a failure, fall, a false step, a blunder; and anomia, or lawlessness. Hence the Biblical conception of sin may be fairly summed up in the words of the Westminster Confession: “Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God;” or in
10 The Fundamentals those of Melancthon: “Pecatum recte definitur ’avo/xla, seu discrepantia a lege Dei, h. e. defectus naturae et actionum pug- nans cum lege Dei.” II. THE UNIVERSALITY OF SIN According to the Bible, sin is not a quality or condition of soul that has revealed itself only in exceptional individuals like notorious offenders—prodigals, profligates, criminals, and vicious persons generally; or in exceptional circumstances, as for instance in the early ages of man’s existence on the earth, or among half developed races, or in lands where the arts and sciences are unknown, or in civilized communities where the local environment is prejudicial to morality; but different from this sin is a quality or condition of soul which exists in every child of woman born, and not merely at isolated times but at all times, and at every stage of his career, though not always manifesting itself in the same forms of thought, feeling, word and action in every individual or even in the same individual. It has affected extensively the whole race of man in every age from the beginning of the world downward, in every land beneath the sun, in every race into which mankind has been divided, in every situation in which the individual has found himself placed; and intensively in every individual in every department and faculty of his nature, from the circumference to the center, or from the center to the circumference of his being. Scripture utters no uncertain sound on the world-embrac ing character of moral corruption, saying in the pre-diluvian age of the world that “all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth” (Gen. 6:12) ; in David’s generation, that all man kind had “gone aside and become filthy,” so that “there was none that did good, no, not one” (Psa. 14 :3 ) ; in Isaiah’s time, that “all we like sheep had gone astray and turned every one to his own way” (53:6) ; in the opening of the Christian era, that “all had sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom.
The Biblical Conception of Sin 11 3:23) ; and generally Solomon’s Verdict holds goods of every day, “There is no man that sinneth not” (1 Kings 8 :46 ), not even the best of men who have been born again by the Spirit and the incorruptible seed of the Word of God, renewed in their minds and created anew in Christ Jesus. Even of these one writer says: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive our selves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1 :8 ) ; while another counsels Christians to mortify the deeds of the body, and to put off the old man which is corrupt according to the deceit ful lusts of the flesh (Rom. 7 :13 ; Col. 3: 5-10) ; and a third asserts that “in many things we all offend” (James 3 :2 ) . How true this is may be learned from the fact that Scripture mentions only one person in whom there was no sin, viz., Jesus of Nazareth, who not only challenged His contempo raries (in particular His enemies) to convict Him of sin, but of whom those who knew Him most intimately (His disciples) testified that He “did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth” (1 Pet. 2 :22 ; 1 John 3 :5 ) . Of this exception of course the exnlanation was and is that He was “God manifest in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3 :16 ). But besides Him not a single person figures on the page of Holy Writ of whom it is said or indeed could have been said that he was sinless. Neither Enoch nor Noah in the ante-diluvian age; neither Abraham nor Isaac in patriarchal times; neither Moses nor Aaron in the years of the Israelitish wanderings; neither David nor Jonathan in the days of the undivided monarchy; neither Peter nor John, neither Barnabas nor Paul, in the Apostolic age, could have claimed such a distinction; and these were some of the best men that have ever appeared on this planet. Nor is it merely extensively that the reign of sin over the human family is universal, but intensively as well. It is not a malady which has affected only one part of man’s complex constitution: every part thereof has felt its baleful influence. It has darkened his understanding and made him unable, with out supernatural illumination, to apprehend and appreciate
12
The Fundamentals spiritual things. “The natural man receiveth not the th in g s of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Gor. 2 :1 4 ) ; and again, “The Gentiles walk in the vanity of their minds, having the under standing darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts” (Eph. 4:17, 18). It defiles the heart, so that if left to itself, it becomes deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jer. 17:9), so “full of evil” (Eccl. 9 :3 ) and “only evil continually” (Gen. 6 :5 ) , that out of it proceed “evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications and such like” (Matt. 15:19), thus proving it to be a veritable cage of un clean birds. I t paralyzes the will, if not wholly, at least par tially, in every case, so that even regenerated souls have often to complain like Paul that when-they would do good evil is present with them, that they are carnal sold under sin, that what they would they do not, and what they hate they do, that in their flesh, i. e., their sin-polluted natures, dwelleth no good thing, and that while to will is present with them, how to perform that which is good they know not (Rom. 7:14-25). I t dulls the conscience, that vicegerent of God in the soul, renders it less quick to detect the approach of evil, less prompt to sound a warning against it and sometimes so dead as to be past feeling about it (Eph. 4 :19 ). In short there is not a faculty of the soul that is not injured by it. “Sin when it is finished bringeth forth death”; (James 1 :5 ). III. THE ORIGIN OF SIN How a pure being, possessed of those intellectual capacities and moral intuitions which were needful to make him justly responsible to Divine law, could and did lapse from his primi tive innocence and fall into sin is one of those dark problems which philosophers and theologians have vainly endeavored to solve. No more reliable explanation of sin’s entrance into the universe in general and into this world in particular has
The Biblical Conception of Sin 13 ever been given than that which is furnished by Scripture. According to Scripture sin first made its appearance in the angelic race, though nothing more is recorded than the Simple fact that the angels sinned (2 Pet. 2 :4 ) and kept not their first estate (or principality) but left their own (or proper) habitation (Jude 6), their motive or reason for doing so being passed over in silence. The obvious deduction is that the sin of these fallen spirits was a free act on their part, dictated by dissatisfaction with the place which had been as signed to them in the hierarchy of heaven and by ambition to secure for themselves a loftier station than that in which they had been placed. Yet this does not answer the question how. such dissatisfaction and ambition could arise in beings that must be presumed to have been created sinless. And inas much as external influence in the shape of temptation from without, by intelligences other than themselves, is by the suppo sition excluded, it does not appear that other answer is possible fliqn that in the creation of a finite personality endowed with freedom of will, there is necessarily involved the possibility of making a wrong, in the sense of a sinful, choice. In the case of man, however, sin’s entrance into the world receives a somewhat different explanation from the sacred writers. With one accord they ascribe the sinful actions, words, feelings and thoughts of each individual to his own deliberate free choice, so that he is thereby with perfect justice held responsible for his deviation from the path of moral rectitude; but some of the inspired penmen make it clear that the entrance of sin into this world was effected through the disobedience of the first man who stood and acted as the representative and surety of his whole natural posterity (Rom. 5 :12), and that the first man’s fall was brought about by temptation from without, by the seductive influence of Satan, the lord of the fallen spirits already mentioned, the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience (Gen. 2:1-6; John 8 :44 ; 2 Cor.
14 The Fundamentals 11:3; Eph. 2 :2 ) . Whatever view may be taken of the origin and authorship, literary form and documentary source of the Genesis story of the fall (on these points this paper does not enter) its teaching unmistakably is, to this effect: That the first man’s lapse from a state of innocence entailed disastrous con sequences upon himself and his descendants. Upon himself it wrought immediate disturbance of his whole nature (as already explained), implanting in it the seeds of degeneration, bodily, mental, moral and spiritual, filling him with fear of his Maker, laying upon his conscience a burden of guilt, dark ening his perceptions of right and wrong, (as was seen in his unmanly attempt to excuse himself by blaming his wife,) and interrupting the hitherto peaceful relations which had sub sisted between himself and the Author of his being. Upon his descendants it opened the floodgates of corruption by which their natures even from birth fell beneath the power of evil, as was soon witnessed in the dark tragedy of fratricide with which the tale of human history began, and in the rapid spread of violence through the pre-diluvian world. This is what theologians call the doctrine of “Original Sin,” by which they mean that the results of Adam’s sin, both legal and moral, have been transmitted to Adam’s posterity, so that now each individual comes into the world, not like his first father, in a state of moral equilibrium—“born good,” as Lord Palmerston of England used to say, or in the words of Pelagius—“born without virtue’and without vice, but capable of both” (capaces utriusque rei, non pleni nascimur, et sine virtute ita et sine vitio procreamur), but as the inheritor of a nature that has been disempowered by sin. That this doctrine, though frequently opposed, has a basis in science and philosophy, as well as in Scripture, is becoming every day more apparent. The scientific law of heredity by which not only physical but mental and moral characteristics are transmitted from parent to child seems to justify the Scripture statement, that “by one man’s disobedience sin en-
The Biblical Conception of Sin 15 tered into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, because that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). The following words of the late Principal Fairbaim in his monu mental work, “The Philosophy of Religion” (p. 165), go to support the Scriptural position: “Man is to God a whole, a colossal individual, whose days are centuries, whose organs are races, whose being as corporate endures immortal amid the immortality (mortality?) of its constituent units. . Hence there must be a Divine judgment of the race as a race, as well as of the individual as an individual.” But in any case, whether confirmed or contradicted by modern thought, the doctrine of Scripture shines like a sunbeam, that man is “conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity” (Psa. 51:5), that children are “estranged from the womb and go astray” (Psa. 58: 3), that all are by nature “children of wrath” (Eph. 2 :3 ) , that “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen. 8 :21 ), and that everyone requires to have “a new heart” created in him (Psa. 51:10), since “that which is born of the flesh is flesh” (John 3 :6 ) , and “no man can bring a clean thing out of an unclean” (Job 15:14). If these passages do not show that the Bible teaches the doctrine of original, or transmitted and inherited, sin, it is difficult to see in what clearer or more emphatic language the doctrine could have been taught. The truth of the doctrine may be challenged by those who repudiate the authority of Scripture; that it is a doctrine of Scripture can hardly be denied. IV. THE CULPABILITY OF SIN By this is meant not merely the blameworthiness of sin as an act, inexcusable on the part of its perpetrator, who, being such a personality as he is, endowed with such faculties as are his, placed under a law so good and holy, just and spiritual, simple and easy as that prescribed by God, and having such motives and inducements to keep it as were offered’ to him—to the first man and also to his posterity,—ought never
16 The Fundamentals to have committed it; nor only the heinousness of it, as an act done against light and love bestowed upon the doer of it, and in flagrant opposition to the holiness and majesty of the Lawgiver so that He, the Lawgiver, cannot but regard it with abhorrence as an act abominable in His sight, and repel from His presence as well as extrude from His favor the individual who has become chargeable with i t ; but over and above these representations of sin which are all Scriptural, by the culpa bility of sin is intended its exposure to the penalty affixed by Divine justice to transgression. That a penalty was affixed by God in the first instance when man was created, the Eden narrative in Genesis declares: “The Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. 2 :16) ; and that this penalty still overhangs the impenitent is not only distinctly implied in our Saviour’s language, that apart from His redeeming work the world, i. e., every individual therein, was in danger of perishing and was indeed already condemned (John 3:16-18) ; but it is expressly declared by John who says, that “the wrath of God abideth” on the unbe liever (3 :16 ), and by Paul who asserts that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6 :23 ). Without entering on the vexed question as to how far Adam’s posterity are legally responsible for Adam’s sin, in the sense that apart from their own transgressions they would be adjudged to spiritual and eternal death, it is manifest that Scripture includes in the just punishment of sin more than the death of the body. That this does form part of sin’s penalty can hardly be disputed by a careful reader of the Bible; but equally that that penalty includes what theologians call spiritual and eternal death, Scripture unmistakably im plies. When it affirms that men are naturally “dead in trespasses and in sins,” it obviously purposes to convey the
The Biblical Conception of Sin 17 idea that until the soul is quickened by Divine grace it is incapable, not of thinking upon the subject of religion, or reading the Word of God, or of praying, or of exercising falth> bu* of doing anything spiritually good or religiously saving, of securing their legal justification before a Holy God, or of bringing about their spiritual regeneration. When Scrip ture, further asserts that the unbeliever shall not see life (John 3 :36 ), and that the wicked shall go away into everlasting punishment (Matt. 25 :46), it assuredly does not suggest that on entering the other world the unsaved on earth will have another opportunity of accepting salvation (Second Probation), or that extinction of being will be their lot (Annihilation), or ab mankind will eventually attain salvation (Universal- ism). (On these three modern substitutes for the doctrine of future punishment see next section.) Meanwhile it suffices to observe that the words just quoted seem to teach that the penalty of sin continues beyond the grave. Granting that the words of Christ about the worm that never dies and the fire that shall not be quenched are figurative, they unquestion ably signify that the figures stand for some terrible calamity,— °n ti1C° ne hand’ Ioss of baPPiness>separation from the source of life, exclusion from blessedness, and, on the other, access of misery, suffering, wretchedness, woe, which will be realized by the wicked as the due reward of their impenitent and dis obedient lives, and which no revolving years will relieve. The pendulum of the great clock of eternity, as it swings through tbe aSes>wil1 seem t0 be ever saying: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still, and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still; he that is righteous, let him be righteous still, and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” # 1 I I V
V. THE REMOVAL OF SIN
If
Heinous and culpable as sin is, it is not left in Scripture for the contemplation of readers in all the nakedness of its
18 The Fundamentals loathsome character in God’s sight, and in all the heaviness of its guilt before the law, without hope of remedy for either; but in a cheering and comforting light it is set forth as an offence that may he forgiven and a defilement that will or may be ultimately cleansed.
J
| I
As for the pardonableness of sin, that indeed constitutes the pith and marrow of the “Good News” for the publication of which the Bible was written. From the first page in Genesis to the last in Revelation an undertone, swelling out as the end approaches into clear and joyous accents of love and mercy, proclaiming that the God of heaven, while Himself holy and just, of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, and unable to clear the guilty, is nevertheless merciful and gracious, long-suffering and slow to wrath, abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, trans gression and sin (Ex. 34:6) ; announcing that He has made full provision for harmonizing the claims of mercy and justice in His own character by laying help upon One that is mighty, (Psa. 89:19), even His only begotten and well-beloved Son, upon whom He had laid the iniquity of us all (Isa. 53:6), that He might once for all, as the Lamb of God, take away the sins of the world (John 1:29), intimating that the whole work necessary for enabling sinful men to be forgiven has been accomplished by Christ’s death and resurrection, and that now God is in Him “reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses” (2 Cor. 5 :19), invit ing men everywhere to repent and be converted, that their sins may be blotted out (Acts 3 :1 9 ) ; telling men that nothing more is required of them in order to be freely and fully justified from all their transgressions than faith in the propitiation of the cross (Rom. 3 :2 5 ) ; and declaring that nothing will shut a sinner out from forgiveness except refusal to believe in the great redemption and accept the freely offered forgiveness— though that will, since it is written that he who believeth not on the Son of God “shall not see life” (John 3 :36). ^1 JL ± 1
The Biblical Conception of Sin 19 The ultimate removal of sin from the souls of the believing and pardoned is left by Scripture in no uncertainty. It was foretold in the name given to the Saviour at His birth: “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, because He shall save His people from [“out of,” not “in”] their sins.” It was implied in the object contemplated by His incarnation: “He was manifested to take away our sins.” It is declared to have been the purpose of His death upon the cross: “He gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.” I t is held up before the Christian as his final destiny “to be conformed to the image of His [God’s] Son,” to be presented “faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,” and to be a dweller in the heavenly city “into which there can enter nothing that defileth.” Whether sin will be ultimately extirpated if not from the universe, then from the family of man, is a different ques tion, upon which the pronouncement of Scripture is thought by some to be less explicit. Its complete and permanent re moval from the race is considered by certain interpreters to be taught in Scripture. That texts can be cited which seem to lend support to the theories of Annihilation, Second Pro bation, and Universal Salvation need not be denied; but a close examination of the passages in question will show that the support derived from them is exceedingly precarious. That those who depart this life in impenitence and unbelief will be annihilated either at death or after the resurrection is deemed a legitimate deduction from the use of the word death as the punishment of sin. But as “applied to man death does not necessarily mean extinction of being.” Bishop Butler long ago drew attention to the fact that various organs of the body might be removed without extinguishing the indwelling spirit, and argued that it was at least probable that the immaterial part of man would not be destroyed though the entire material frame were reduced to dust; and only recently Sir Oliver
20 The Fundamentals Lodge from the presidential chair told the British Association that the best science warranted belief in the continuity of existence after death. Solely on the assumption that mind is merely a function of matter can the dissolution of the body be regarded as the'extinction of being. Such an assumption is foreign to Scripture. In the Old Testament David ex pected to “dwell in the house of the Lord forever;” Asaph at the end of life hoped to he “received into glory;” and Solomon wrote: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.” In the New Testament Christ took for granted that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, though long dead were still living, and in His parable assumed that Dives and Lazarus still existed in the unseen world, although their bodies were in the grave. He also assured the dying robber that when the anguish of the cross was over they would pass together into Paradise, and counselled men generally to be afraid of him who could destroy both soul and body in hell.” Paul, too, had no hesita tion in writing that to be “absent from the body” meant to be present with the Lord,” nor had Stephen any doubt in praying as he closed his eyes in death: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” None of these citations suggest that the soul is simply a func tion of the body, or that it ceases to be when the body dies. But now, conceding that the souls of the impenitent are not annihilated at or after death, may it not be that another opportunity of accepting the Gospel will be afforded them, and that in this way sin may be removed even from them. This theory of a Second Probation, is commonly thought to derive countenance from two passages of Scripture of doubtful inter pretation—! Pet. 3 :19 ; 4: 6. Were the best scholars agreed as to the exact import of the two statements that Christ “by the Spirit went and preached to the spirits in prison” and that “the Gospel was preached also to them that are dead,” it might be possible to make these texts the basis of a theological doctrine. But scholars are not agreed; and well informed
The Biblical Conception of Sin 21 students of the Bible are aware that both statements can be explained in such a way as to render them useless as a basis for the doctrine of a second probation. In judging concern ing this, therefore, dependence must be placed on texts which admit of no dubiety as to their meaning. Such texts are Matt. 12:32: “Whosoever speaketh a word against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come”—no second chance in this case. Matt. 25:48: “These shall go away into everlasting p u n ishm ent, but the righteous into life eternal.” Not much hope here of the ultimate destruction of sin through a second probation. Every attempt to find room for the idea shatters itself on the unchallengeable fact that the words “everlasting” and “eternal” are the same in Greek ( aionion ) and indicate that the pun ishment of the wicked and the blessedness of the righteous are of equal duration. 2 Cor. 6 :2 : “Behold, now is the day of salvation”—not hereafter in a future state of existence, but here in this world. Nor is it merely that the doctrine of a second probation is devoid of support from Scripture, but, contrary to all experience, it takes for granted that every unsaved soul would accept the second offer of salvation, which is more than any one can certainly affirm; and, if all did not, sin would still remain. It may be argued that all would accept because of the fuller light they would then have as to the paramount importance of salvation, or because of the stronger influences that will then be brought to bear upon them; but on this hypothesis a reflection would almost seem to be cast on God for not having done all He might have done to save men while they lived, a reflection good men will be slow to make. The third theory for banishing sin from the human family if not from the universe is that of Universalism, by which is signified that through reformatory discipline hereafter the souls of all will be brought into subjection to Jesus Christ. That the universal headship of Christ is taught in Scripture is true: Paul declares that all things will yet be subdued unto Christ
The Fundamentals (1 Cor. 15:28) and that it was God’s purpose in the fulness of the times “to gather all things into one in Christ” (Eph. 1:10). But these statements do not necessarily demand the inference that all will surrender in willing subjection to Christ. Subject to Him must every power and authority be, human and angelic, hostile and. friendly, believing and unbelieving. “He must reign till all His enemies have been placed beneath His feet”—not taken to His heart, received into His love and employed in His service. This does not look like universal salvation and the complete extinction of moral evil or sin in the universe. Solemn and sad as the thought is that sin should remain, if not in many, yet in some of God’s creatures, it is the teaching of Scripture. In the resurrection at the last day, it is written, “All who are in their graves shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damna tion,” or “judgment” (R. V.) (John 5:29). A dark and insoluble mystery was the coming of sin into God’s universe at the first: as dark a mystery is its remaining in a race that was from eternity the object of God’s love and in time was redeemed by the blood of God’s Son, and graciously acted on by God’s Spirit. Happily we are not required to understand all mysteries: we can leave this one confidently in the Divine Father’s hand.
22
CHAPTER XI AT-ONE-MENT.BY PROPITIATION BY DYSON HAGUE, VICAR OF THE CHURCH OF THE EPIPHANY, TORONTO, CANADA; PROFESSOR OF LITURGICS, WYCLIFFE COLLEGE, TORONTO ; CANON OF ST. PAUL’S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, ONT., 1908-1912 The importance of the subject is obvious. The Atonement is Christianity in epitome. I t is the heart of Christianity as a system; it is the distinguishing mark of the Christian religion. For Christianity is more than a revelation; it is more than an ethic. Christianity is uniquely a religion of redemption. At the outset we take the ground that no one can clearly appre hend this great theme who is not prepared to take Scripture as it stands, and to treat it as the final and authoritative source of Christian knowledge, and the test of every theological theory. Any statement of the atonement, to satisfy completely the truly intelligent Christian, must not antagonize any of the Biblical viewpoints. And further; to approach fairly the subject, one must receive with a certain degree of reservation the somewhat exaggerated representations of what some modern writers conceive to be the views of orthodoxy. We cannot deduce Scriptural views of the atonement from non- Biblical conceptions of the Person of Christ; and the ideas that Christ died because God was insulted and must punish somebody, or that the atonement was the propitiation of an angry Monarch-God who let off the rogue while He tortured the innocent, and such like travesties of the truth, are simply the misrepresentations of that revamped Socinianism, which is so widely leavening the theology of many of the outstanding thought-leaders of today in German, British, and American theology.
24 The Fundamentals The subject will be dealt with from four viewpoints: the Scriptural, the Historical, the Evangelico-Ecclesiastical, the Practical. L THE ATONEMENT FROM THE SCRIPTURAL VIEWPOINT THE OLD TESTAMENT WITNESS As we study the Old Testament we are struck with the fact that in the Old Testament system, without an atoning sacrifice there could be no access for sinful men into the pres ence of the Holy God. The heart and center of the Divinely revealed religious system of God’s ancient people was that without a propitiatory sacrifice there could he no acceptable approach to God. There must be acceptance before there is worship; there must be atonement before there is acceptance. This atonement consisted in the shedding of blood. The blood-shedding was the effusion of life; for the life of the flesh is in the blood—a dictum which the modem science of physiology abundantly confirms (Lev. 17:11-14). The blood shed was the blood of a victim which was to be ceremonially blemishless (Ex. 12:5; 1 Pet. 1:19) ; and the victim that was slain was a vicarious or substitutionary representative of the worshipper (Lev. 1 :4; 3:2, 8, 13; 4:4, 15, 24, 29; 16:21, etc.). The death of the victim was an acknowledgment of the guilt of sin, and its exponent. In one word: the whole system was designed to teach the holiness and righteousness of God, the sinfulness of men, and the guilt of sin; and, above all, to show that it was God’s will that forgiveness should be secured, not on account of any works of the sinner or anything that he could do, any act of repentance or exhibition of penitence, or performance of ex piatory or restitutionary works, but solely on account of the undeserved grace of God through the death of a victim guilty of no offence against the Divine law, whose shed blood repre sented the substitution of an innocent for a guilty life. (See
At One Ment by Propitiation 25 “Lux Mundi,” p. 237. The idea, in p. 232, that sacrifice is essentially the expression of unfallen love, is suggestive, but it would perhaps be better to use the word “also” instead of “essentially.” See also, the extremely suggestive treatment in Gibson’s “Mosaic Era,” of the Ritual of the Altar, p. 146.) It is obvious that the whole system was transitory and imperfect, as the eighth chapter of Hebrews shows. Not because it was revolting as the modern mind objects, for God intended them thereby to learn how revolting sin was and how deserving of death; but because in its essence it was typical, and pro phetical, and intended to familiarize God’s people with the great idea of atonement, and at the same time to prepare for the sublime revelation of Him who was to come, the despised and rejected of men Who was to be smitten of God and afflicted, Who was to be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, Whose soul was to be made an offering for sin (Isa. 53:5, 8, 10, 12). THE NEW TESTAMENT WITNESS When we come to the New Testament we are struck with three things: First. The unique prominence given to the death of Christ in the four Gospels. This is unparalleled. It is with out analogy, not only in Scripture, but in history, the most curious thing about it being that there was no precedent for it in the Old Testament (Dale, “Atonement,” p. 51). No particular value or benefit is attached to the death of anybody in the Old Testament; nor is there the remotest trace of any body’s death having an expiatory or humanizing or regenera tive effect. There were plenty of martyrs and national heroes in Hebrew history, and many of them were stoned and sawn asunder, were tortured and slain with the sword, but no Jewish writer attributes any ethical or regenerative importance to their death, or to the shedding of their blood. - -
26 The Fundamentals Second. I t is evident to the impartial reader of the New Testament that the death of Christ was the object of His in carnation. His crucifixion was the main purport of His coming. While His glorious life was and is the inspiration of humanity, after all, His death was the reason of His life. His mission was mainly to die. Beyond thinking of death as the terminus or the inevitable climax of life, the average man rarely alludes to or thinks of death. In all biography it is accepted as the inevitable. But with Christ, His death was the purpose for which He came down from heaven: “For this cause came I to this hour” (John 12:27). From the outset of His career it was the overshadowing event. I t was distinctly foreseen. I t was voluntarily undergone, and, in Mark 10:45, He says: “The Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many.” We are not in the habit of paying ransoms, and the metaphor nowadays is unfamiliar. But, to the Jew, ransom was an everyday custom. I t was what was given in exchange for the life of the first-born. I t was the price which every man paid for his life. I t was the underlying thought of the Mosaic and prophetical writings (Lev. 25:25, 48; Num. 18:15; Psa. 49:7; Isa. 35:10; 51:11; 43:14; Ex. 13:13; 30:12, 16; 34:20; Hos. 13:14; etc., e tc .); and so, when Christ made the statement, it was a concept which would be immediately grasped. He came to give His life a ransom, that through the shedding of His blood we might receive redemption, or eman cipation, both from the guilt and from the power of son. (The modernists endeavor to evacuate this saying of Christ of all meaning. The text, unfortunately for them, is stubborn, but the German mind is never at a loss for a theory; so it is asserted that they are indications that Peter has been Paulin- ized, so reluctant is the rationalizer to take Scripture as it stands, and to accept Christ’s words in their obvious meaning, when they oppose his theological aversions.) Third. The object of the death of Christ was the forgive ness of sins. The final cause of His manifestation was re-
At One Ment by Propitiation 27 mission. I t would be impossible to summarize all the teach ing of the New Testament on this subject. (The student is referred to Crawford, who gives 160 pages to the texts in the New Testament, and Dale’s “Summary,” pp. 443-458.) It is clear, though, that, to our Saviour’s thought, His cross and passion was not the incidental consequence of His opposition to the degraded religious standards of His day, and that He did not die as a martyr because death was pref erable to apostasy. His death was the means whereby men should obtain forgiveness of sins and eternal life (John 3:14, 16; Matt. 26:28). The consentient testimony of the New Testament writers, both in the Acts and in the Epistles, is that Christ died no accidental death, but suffered according to the will of God, His own volition, and the predictions of the prophets, and that His death was substitutionary, sacrificial, atoning, reconciling and redeeming (John 10:18; Acts 2:23; Rom. 3:25; 5:6, 9; 1 Cor. 15:3; 2 Cor. 5:15, 19, 21; Heb. 9:14, 26, etc., etc.). In proof, it will be sufficient to take the inspired testimony of the three outstanding writers, St. Peter, St. John, and St. Paul. st . peter ’ s w it n e s s . To St. Peter’s mind, the death of Jesus was the central fact of revelation and the mystery, as well as the climax, of the In carnation. The shedding of His blood was sacrificial; it was covenanting; it was sin-covering; it was redeeming; it was ransoming; it was the blood of the Immaculate Lamb, which emancipates from sin (1 Pet. 1 :2, 11, 18, 19). In all his post- Pentecostal deliverances he magnifies the crucifixion as a reve lation of the enormity of human sin, never as a revelation of the infinitude of the Divine love (Dale, p. 115). His death was not merely an example; it was substitutionary. It was the death of the sin-bearer. “Christ also suffered for us,” “He bare our sins,” meaning that He took their penalty and their consequence (Lev. 5:17; 24;15; Num. 9:13; 14:32, 34; Ezek. - -
28 The Fundamentals 18:19, 20). His death was the substitutionary, the vicarious work of the innocent on behalf of, in the place of, and in stead of, the guilty (1 Pet. 3:18). ( I t is surely an evidence of the bias of modernism to interpret this as bearing them in sympathy merely.) st . J o h n ’ s w itn e s s According to St. John, the death of the Lord Jesus Christ was propitiatory, substitutionary, purificatory. It was the Hilasmos; the objective ground for the remission of our sins. The narrow and superficial treatment of modernism, which, if it does not deny the Johannine authorship of the fourth Gospel and the Revelation, at least insinuates that the death of Christ has no parallel place in the writings of St. John to that which it has in the writings of St. Peter and St. Paul, and the other New Testament authors, is entirely contra dicted by the plain statements of the Word itself. The glory of the world to come is the sacrificed Lamb. The glory of heaven is not the risen or ascended Lord, but the Lamb that was slaughtered (Rev. 5:6-12; 7:10; 21:23, etc.). The foremost figure in the Johannine Gospel is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, who lifts the sin-burden by expiating it as the Sin-Bearer. The center of the Johannine evangel is not the teaching Christ, but the uplifted Christ, whose death is to draw as a magnet the hearts of mankind, and whose life as the Good Shepherd is laid down for the sheep. (John 12:32; 10:11-15). No one who fairly faces the text could deny that the ob jective ground for the forgiveness of sins, in the mind of St. John, is the death of Christ, and that the most funda mental conception of sacrifice and expiation is found in the writings of him who wrote by the Spirit of God, “He is the propitiation of our sins, and not for ours only” (I John 2 :2 ) . “Hereby perceive we the love of God because He laid
At One Ment by Propitiation 29 down His life for us” (1 John 3: 16). “Herein is love,” etc. (1 John 4: 10). The propitiatory character of the blood, the substitutionary character of the atonement, and, above all, the expiating char acter of the work of Christ on Calvary, clearly are most in dubitably set forth in the threefoldness of the historic, didactic, and prophetic writings of St. John. st . P au l ’ s w itn e s s St. Paul became, in the province of God, the construc tive genius of Christianity. His place in history, through the Spirit, was that of the elucidator of the salient facts of Christianity, and especially of that one great subject which Christ left in a measure unexplained—His own death (Stalker’s “St. Paul,” p. 13). That great subject, its cause, its meaning, its result, became the very fundamentum of his Gos pel. I t was the commencement, center, and consummation of his theology. I t was the elemental truth of his creed. He began with it. I t pervaded his life. He gloried in it to the last. The sinner is dead, enslaved, guilty, and hopeless, without the atoning death of Jesus Christ. But Christ died for him, in his stead, became a curse for him, became sin for him, gave Himself for him, was an Offering and a Sacrifice to God for him, redeemed him, justified him, saved him from wrath, pur chased him by His blood, reconciled him by His death, etc. To talk of Paul using the language he did as an accommo dation to Jewish prejudices, or to humor the adherents of a current theology, is not only, as Dale says, an insult to the understanding of the founders of the Jewish faith, it is an insult to the understanding of any man with sense today. Christ’s death was a death for sin; Christ died for our sins; that is, on behalf of, instead of, our sins. There was some thing in sin that made His death a Divine necessity. His death was a propitiatory, substitutionary, sacrificial, vicarious death. Its object was to annul sin; to propitiate Divine jus- - -
30
The Fundamentals tice, to procure for us God’s righteousness; to ransom us, and to reconcile us. Christ’s death was conciliating, in that by it men are reconciled to God, and sin’s curse and the sinner’s slavery and liability to death, and incapability of returning to God, are overcome by the death of the Lamb who was slaugh tered as a victim and immolated as a sacrifice (1 Cor. 5 :7 ) . To Paul the life of the Christian emerged from the death of Christ. All love, all regeneration, all sanctification, 'all liberty, all joy, all power, circles around the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, and did for us objectively something that man could never do, and who wrought that incredible, that impossible thing, salvation by the substitution of His life in the place of the guilty. THE BIBLE SUMMARY To epitomize, then, the presentment of the Bible: The root of the idea of At-one-ment is estrangement. Sin, as iniquity and transgression, had the added element of egoistic rebellion and positive defiance of God (1 John 3 : 4 ; Rom. 5: 15, 19). The horror of sin is that it wrenched the race from God. It dashed God from His throne and placed self thereupon. It reversed the relationship of man and God. Its blight and its passion have alienated mankind, enslaved it, condemned it, doomed it to death, exposed it to wrath. The sacrifice of the cross is the explanation of the enormity of sin, and the measure of the love of the redeeming Trinity. Surely it is ignorance that says God loves because Christ died. Christ died because God loves. Propitiation does not awaken love; it is love that provides expiation. To cancel the curse, to lift the ban, to inoculate the antitoxin of grace, to restore life, to purchase pardon, to ransom the enslaved, to defeat Satan’s work; in one word, to reconcile and restore a lost race; for this, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and Son of Man, came into this world and offered up His Divine-human Person, body and soul.
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88 Page 89 Page 90 Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96 Page 97 Page 98 Page 99 Page 100 Page 101 Page 102 Page 103 Page 104 Page 105 Page 106 Page 107 Page 108 Page 109 Page 110 Page 111 Page 112 Page 113 Page 114 Page 115 Page 116 Page 117 Page 118 Page 119 Page 120 Page 121 Page 122 Page 123 Page 124 Page 125 Page 126 Page 127Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker