THE GOVERNMENTAL THEORY.
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"The vicarious sufferings and death of Christ are an atonement for sin as a conditional substitute for punishment, fulfilling, on the forgiveness of sin, the obligation of justice in moral government."
The advantages of this theory are:
1. It can be preached without mental reservations.
2. It does not conflict with intuitive, self-evident truth, and it avoids the irrational idea that Christ was literally made sin and became a curse.
3. It is founded upon just and consistent views of the divine character. It makes no dualism or collision between the divine Persons, the Father punishing the Son.
4. It satisfies the Protector of the divine law in forbearing to inflict the penalty which was threatened. Men in expressing this truth in popular figurative language do not utter exact truth when they say that the law was satisfied. The figure is that of hypostatizing or personifying law. Only persons can be satisfied.
5. This theory is Biblical, harmonizing with all the statements and including all the facts or Scripture, ascribing a peculiar moral efficacy to the work of Christ, investing the cross with a peculiar moral influence over men, while its necessity lies in the Godward direction. This view teaches that the atonement was vicarious, originating in the bosom of the Father, who showed His love by the sufferings which wrung His heart in the gift of His only begotten Son. Fairbairn, in his recent work, thinks it one of the greatest errors of Christian theology to teach that God is impassible, incapable of suffering. He suggests that "The Son, cheered by the prospect of a reward, did not suffer as much in the redemption of the world as did the Father with no hope of reward in the surrender of the Son," with whom He had been in delightful communion face to face from eternity. The sufferings of the parents in sending their sons to fight and die for the Union were different in kind but probably greater than theirs. This view of the atonement presents — instead of an antagonism between the Father, as the impersonation of justice, and the Son, the embodiment of love — the three Persons of the Trinity co-operating to the utmost in self-sacrifice for the salvation of men, so that at the funeral of every lost soul the Father, Son and Holy Spirit will head the procession as the chief mourners.
6. It affords a basis for the salvation of such pious pagans as live up to their best light. "They are saved through Christ though they know Him not." (J. Wesley.) How about the condition of faith in Him? They have the spirit of faith and the purpose of righteousness; that is, the disposition to trust in the object of faith, the historical Christ, were He revealed to them in the Gospel, and a willingness to walk by the revealed law of God were it made known to them. What is your Scriptural authority? Jesus Christ intimates that the judgment day will proceed by the use of a sliding scale. Where much is given much will be required; where little is given little will be required. St. Paul declares: "There is no respect of persons with God. For as many as have sinned without the written law will be judged by the law written on their hearts." Peter looking upon a group of God-fearing heathen at the headquarters of Brigadier General Cornelius, declared: "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him." "Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." Mr. Joseph Cook, who defends the rectoral theory, advocates the doctrine of salvation by possessing the essential Christ where the historical Christ is unknown. The essential Christ is an obedient attitude of the will toward "the eternal Ideal required by self-evident truths, which has in Christ, and in Him only, become the historically Real." In the last day the Judge will say, "Come, ye blessed," not only to those who have enthroned the historical Christ in their hearts, but also to those who have exhibited towards His brethren, any forlorn man, the spirit of love, the essential element in the character of Christ — "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, My brethren, ye did it unto Me." The standard is so low as to be applicable to all who know the distinction between right and wrong. The rectoral theory of the atonement needs no probation after death. What effect does this have on the missionary motive? None. That word stands in full force — Go ye and teach all nations." While the pagan can be saved without a knowledge of Christ, the Christian cannot be saved while selfishly withholding that knowledge. I believe it is easier for God to save a pagan without the Bible in Bombay than it is to save a professed Christian in Boston without a disposition to send him a Bible; in other words, without a missionary spirit. I repudiate the doctrine of geographical election and reprobation expressed in the saying, "To exchange cradles would be to exchange destinies."
7. It can be preached as objectively universal in extent as a provision, but subjectively limited as a realization by a failure of free agents to fulfil its conditions. Hence it lays no foundations for Universalism. Dr. Edward Dorr Griffin was settled over the Park Street Church in 1811, when orthodoxy was a byword and a reproach and hardly dared to show its head in any pulpit in Boston. The crisis required just such a master spirit, and this city felt the power of God working through this pulpit dynamo. From the day of his coming orthodoxy began to revive. He preached fundamental truths so plainly that the irreverent called this church "brimstone comer." But the great work which he did was to restate New England theology, especially to rescue the fundamental doctrine of a substitutional atonement from the just reproach of Dr. Channing that it conflicted with the moral intuitions. This he grandly did in developing and popularizing the governmental theory. Let me rehearse some of the themes on which he lectured on Sunday evenings during his four years' pastorate there before he went to Williams College to save it from dying by promoting sweeping revivals of religion. These are his propositions: "Christ did not suffer the literal penalty of the law for us; He did not satisfy the law of God for us;" "Christ did not satisfy the distributive justice of God for us;" "The law and distributive justice eternally demand the punishment of every one who has sinned;" "The atonement consisted not in the obedience, but in the sufferings, of Christ, such sufferings as fulfilled the design of punishment and render the sins of believers pardonable;" "The atonement was designed equally and indiscriminately for all men viewed as moral agents. It implies that all men as moral agents have natural power to comply with the conditions of life, and to repent without the special influences of the Spirit;" "The general atonement implies that all probationers have a fair chance to obtain eternal life." It was the elaboration of such propositions that arrested orthodoxy from further decline and sent it forth on a career of enlargement and reconquest of its lost ground in New England. Substituting "gracious ability" for "natural power," and adding that the Holy Spirit so reproves the world as to enable every man to repent, I can personally, and as a representative of Arminian theology, say Amen to that philosophy of the atonement first suggested by the great Grotius.
1. It can be preached without mental reservations.
2. It does not conflict with intuitive, self-evident truth, and it avoids the irrational idea that Christ was literally made sin and became a curse.
3. It is founded upon just and consistent views of the divine character. It makes no dualism or collision between the divine Persons, the Father punishing the Son.
4. It satisfies the Protector of the divine law in forbearing to inflict the penalty which was threatened. Men in expressing this truth in popular figurative language do not utter exact truth when they say that the law was satisfied. The figure is that of hypostatizing or personifying law. Only persons can be satisfied.
5. This theory is Biblical, harmonizing with all the statements and including all the facts or Scripture, ascribing a peculiar moral efficacy to the work of Christ, investing the cross with a peculiar moral influence over men, while its necessity lies in the Godward direction. This view teaches that the atonement was vicarious, originating in the bosom of the Father, who showed His love by the sufferings which wrung His heart in the gift of His only begotten Son. Fairbairn, in his recent work, thinks it one of the greatest errors of Christian theology to teach that God is impassible, incapable of suffering. He suggests that "The Son, cheered by the prospect of a reward, did not suffer as much in the redemption of the world as did the Father with no hope of reward in the surrender of the Son," with whom He had been in delightful communion face to face from eternity. The sufferings of the parents in sending their sons to fight and die for the Union were different in kind but probably greater than theirs. This view of the atonement presents — instead of an antagonism between the Father, as the impersonation of justice, and the Son, the embodiment of love — the three Persons of the Trinity co-operating to the utmost in self-sacrifice for the salvation of men, so that at the funeral of every lost soul the Father, Son and Holy Spirit will head the procession as the chief mourners.
7. It can be preached as objectively universal in extent as a provision, but subjectively limited as a realization by a failure of free agents to fulfil its conditions. Hence it lays no foundations for Universalism. Dr. Edward Dorr Griffin was settled over the Park Street Church in 1811, when orthodoxy was a byword and a reproach and hardly dared to show its head in any pulpit in Boston. The crisis required just such a master spirit, and this city felt the power of God working through this pulpit dynamo. From the day of his coming orthodoxy began to revive. He preached fundamental truths so plainly that the irreverent called this church "brimstone comer." But the great work which he did was to restate New England theology, especially to rescue the fundamental doctrine of a substitutional atonement from the just reproach of Dr. Channing that it conflicted with the moral intuitions. This he grandly did in developing and popularizing the governmental theory. Let me rehearse some of the themes on which he lectured on Sunday evenings during his four years' pastorate there before he went to Williams College to save it from dying by promoting sweeping revivals of religion. These are his propositions: "Christ did not suffer the literal penalty of the law for us; He did not satisfy the law of God for us;" "Christ did not satisfy the distributive justice of God for us;" "The law and distributive justice eternally demand the punishment of every one who has sinned;" "The atonement consisted not in the obedience, but in the sufferings, of Christ, such sufferings as fulfilled the design of punishment and render the sins of believers pardonable;" "The atonement was designed equally and indiscriminately for all men viewed as moral agents. It implies that all men as moral agents have natural power to comply with the conditions of life, and to repent without the special influences of the Spirit;" "The general atonement implies that all probationers have a fair chance to obtain eternal life." It was the elaboration of such propositions that arrested orthodoxy from further decline and sent it forth on a career of enlargement and reconquest of its lost ground in New England. Substituting "gracious ability" for "natural power," and adding that the Holy Spirit so reproves the world as to enable every man to repent, I can personally, and as a representative of Arminian theology, say Amen to that philosophy of the atonement first suggested by the great Grotius.
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