Part 1 (1/2)

Gloria Crucis.

by J. H. Beibitz.

INTRODUCTION

These addresses, delivered in Lichfield Cathedral {0} in Holy Week, 1907, are published at the request of some who heard them. It has only been possible to endeavour to reproduce them in substance.

The writer desires to express his obligations to various works from which he has derived much a.s.sistance, such as, above all, Du Bose's _Gospel in the Gospels_, Askwith's _Conception of Christian Holiness_, Tennant's _Origin of Sin_, and Jevons' _Introduction to the History of Religion_.

To the first and the last of these he is especially indebted in regard to the view here taken of the Atonement.

It seems to him that no view of that great and central truth can possibly be true, which (i) represents it as the result of a transaction between the Father and the Son, which is ditheism pure and simple; or which (ii) regards it as intended to relieve us of the penalty of our sins, instead of having as its one motive, meaning, and purpose the ”cure of sinning.”

So far as we can see, the results of sin, seen and unseen, in this world and beyond it, must follow naturally and necessarily from that const.i.tution of the universe (including human nature) which is the expression of the Divine Mind. If this is true, and if that Mind is the Mind of Him Who is Love, then all punishment must be remedial, must have, for its object and intention at least, the conversion of the sinner. And, therefore, the desire to escape from punishment, if natural and instinctive, is also non-moral, for it is the desire to s.h.i.+rk G.o.d's remedy for sin, and doomed never to realise its hope, for it is the desire to reverse the laws of that Infinite Holiness and Love which governs the world.

Yet this must be understood with one all-important reservation. For the worst punishment of sin, is sin itself, the alienation of the soul from G.o.d, with its consequent weakening of the will, dulling of the reason, and corrupting of the affections. And it was from this punishment, from this ”hardest h.e.l.l,” which is sin, or the character spoiled and ruined by sin, that Christ died to deliver us.

It follows that it is high time to dismiss all those theories of the Atonement which ultimately trace their origin to the enduring influence of Roman law. There is no remission of penalty offered to us in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The offer which is there held out to us, is that which answers to our deepest need, to the inmost longings of the human soul, ”the remission of our _sins_.”

The idea of a penalty owing to the ”justice” of G.o.d is a thoroughly legalistic one, the offspring of an age which thought in terms of law. It deals throughout with abstractions. The very word ”justice” is a general notion, a concept, the work of the mind abstracting from particulars.

Justice and mercy are used like counters in some theological game at which we are invited to play. ”Penalty,” again, is a term which serves to obscure the one important fact that G.o.d, as a Moral Person or, rather, as the One Self-Existent Being, of Whose nature and essence morality is the expression, can only have one motive in dealing with sinners, and that is, to reconcile them to Himself, to restore them to that true ideal of their nature, which is the Image of Himself in the heart of every man.

Who can measure the pain and anguish which that restoration must cost, to the sinner himself, and (such is the wonderful teaching of the Cross) to G.o.d, the All-Holy One, Who comes into a world of sin in order to restore him?

There is no room here, at all events, for light and trivial thoughts of sin. That charge might be levelled, with more excuse, at the view that sin only incurs an external penalty, from which we can be cheaply delivered by the sufferings of another.

And theories of the Atonement which centre in the conception of penalty are often only modifications of the crude and glaring injustice of the Calvinistic view. The doctrine of a kind of bargain between the Father and the Son, while it revolts our moral instincts, at the same time logically leads to the purely heathen notion of two G.o.ds.

There are two main principles which are essential to a right understanding of the Atonement: (1) The oneness of Christ both with G.o.d and with humanity. In regard to neither is He, nor can He be, ”Another”; (2) the death of Christ was the representation in s.p.a.ce and time of a moral fact. It happened as an ”event” in history, in order that that moral fact, of which it was the embodiment and symbol, might become a fact in the spiritual experience of mankind. That death was more than a symbol, because it was the actual means by which that which it represented might be, and has been, in the lives of all Christians accomplished. These two principles the writer has, with whatever degree of failure or inadequacy, endeavoured to embody in the following addresses.

And yet the Atonement, which is, in the broadest aspect of it, Christianity itself, is a fact infinitely greater and higher than any mere theories of it. For it is nothing less than this, the personal action of the living Christ on the living souls of men. That his readers and himself may experience this action in ever-increasing measure is the prayer of him who, as he fears, too greatly daring, has endeavoured to set forth, yet once more, ”The Glory of the Cross.”

GLORIA CRUCIS

I

THE GLORY OF THE CROSS

”G.o.d forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”--GAL. VI. 14.

There are at least two reasons, unconnected with Holy Week, why the subject of the Cross of Christ should occupy our attention.

1. The first reason is, that the Cross is commonly recognised as the weak point in our Christianity. It is the object of constant attack on the part of its a.s.sailants: and believers are content too often to accept it ”on faith,” which means that they despair of giving a rational explanation of it. Too often, indeed, Christians have proclaimed and have gloried in its supposed irrationality. To this latter point we shall return. But in the meanwhile it is necessary to say this: all language of harshness towards those who attack the doctrine of the Atonement is completely out of place. For the justification of their attacks has very often come from the Christian side. In former times, far more commonly than now, the sacrifice of Christ has been represented as a subst.i.tutory offering, necessary to appease the wrath of an offended G.o.d. It used to be said, and in some quarters it is said to-day, that the sins of the human race had so provoked the Divine anger that it could be appeased by nothing short of the destruction of mankind. In these dire straits of mankind, the Sinless Son of G.o.d presented Himself as the object on which the full vials of the Father's wrath should be outpoured.

G.o.d having been thus placated, and His wrath satisfied, such as believe in this transaction, and rest themselves in confidence upon it, are enabled in such wise to reap its benefits that they escape the penalty due to their transgression, and are restored to the Divine favour.

Now this is the crudest representation of a certain popular theology of the Atonement. With some of its features softened down, it is by no means without its adherents and exponents at the present day. But when its drift is clearly understood, it is seen to be a doctrine which no educated man of our time can accept. We may consider four fatal objections to it.

(_a_) It is true that there is such a thing as ”the wrath of G.o.d.” It is not only a fact, but one of the most tremendous facts in the universe. It is a fact as high as the Divine purity, as deep as the malignity and foulness of sin, as broad as all human experience. It is impossible to construct a theistic theory of the world which shall leave it out. The nature of the fact we shall investigate at a later point. But we can say this at once. It cannot be such a fact as is represented by the theory under review. For that represents the wrath of G.o.d as a mere thirst for vengeance, a burning desire to inflict punishment, a rage that can only be satisfied by pain, and blood, and death. In other words, we are driven to a conception of G.o.d which is profoundly immoral, and revoltingly pagan. If we are rightly interested in missions to the heathen, are there to be no attempts to convert our fellow-Christians whose conception of G.o.d scarcely rises above the heathen one of a cruel and sanguinary deity? Not such, at least, is the New Testament doctrine of Him Who is G.o.d and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.