AND NON-VICARIOUS ATONEMENT.
II.
We now pass on to consider Dr. Waldenstrom's larger work – " The Reconciliation." " The term, reconciliation,' " he tells us at the beginning, "sets forth the real essence of salvation, for salvation consists just in the reconciliation of man to God." He confounds this with propitiation ; or rather, expunges the latter thought from Scripture to make way for the former, as we shall see :Mr. Princell, his translator and editor, assuring us in a preliminary note to explain the author's view, that " hilaskomai" (to propitiate) means, "in the two New-Testament passages in which it occurs, plainly this and nothing more :I show grace, mercy, or kindness with respect to, – that is, I pardon; Luke 18:13, rendered 'be merciful,' and Heb. 2:17, the A. V. rendering, 'to make reconciliation] the R. V. rendering, 'to make propitiation,' plainly meaning, to show mercy with respect to, – that is, to pardon." As we are to have the passages before us, I will not anticipate what will come before us then; but it is strange if it be really so, that the " aim " of the heathen "to appease God, "of which Dr. Waldenstrom speaks a few pages further on, should have found expression in this very word ! Any Greek dictionary will satisfy us that it did so.
" All their worship of God proceeds," says the author, " from the principle that God is angry with them," and this is so deep-rooted in human nature, somehow, "that men often consider Christ, whom God has sent in His grace to reconcile us to Himself, as One on whom God has poured out His wrath, in order that He might be gracious to us." "Contrary to all such perverse imaginations," he goes on, "the Scriptures teach that no change took place in God's disposition toward man in consequence of his sin; that therefore it was not God who needed to be reconciled to man, but that it was man who needed to be reconciled to God; and that consequently reconciliation is a work which proceeds from God, and is directed toward man, and aims, not to appease God, but to cleanse man from sin, and to restore him to a right relation with God."
Now that " God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son," is the text of many a sermon and the joy of many a heart, thank God, among those who yet believe that Christ's voice it is which in the hundred and second psalm speaks of having endured God's indignation and wrath (5:10; comp. 5:25 with Heb. 1:10-12); and it only deepens inexpressibly in their hearts the wonder of God's love. God's wrath upon sinners, Dr. Waldenstrom will presently himself assure us, is not enmity against them; and it is true that He does not need to be reconciled-His heart toward them needs not to be changed. There is no need for confuting what in fact is not held. Even those who do use the language rightly reprobated, as to reconciling God, do not mean by it in the least that Christ's work is the procuring cause of God's love to us, but rather the expression of that love, and that which enables it righteously to manifest itself toward us. But righteous wrath against sin there was and is, which when the soul is turned to God, needs to find holy expression also, in order that the sinner may be received. And thus Christ, "made sin for us, who knew no sin," proclaimed the righteousness of the penalty upon it, when bearing our sins in His own body on the tree (i Pet. 2:24), He was " made a curse for us." (Gal. 3:13.)
"There is not to be found" says Dr. Waldenstrom, "a single passage in the Bible setting forth the atonement as having its cause in this, that the justice of God needed satisfaction.'' Boldly, as always, he emphasizes this. Has he forgotten that Christ " was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him"? God's righteousness is expressed in giving us our place of acceptance as the result of His taking the place of sin. Substitution is here the very thing that proclaims God's righteousness :was it yet unrequired by it ? or when it said that " God hath set forth [Christ] to be a propitiation [or mercy-seat] through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins," (Rom. 3:25) was it still not righteousness that required this blood-shedding? If the passage required is not to be found, it is by blind men that it is not to be found. The whole warp and woof of Scripture declares the same.
"But," he says, again, "love and justice are never, in the Bible, set forth as being in conflict with each other, so that one can bind the other. On the contrary, it is right and just, both for God and men, to love-to have compassion on and to save sinners. It was right and just that God so loved the world as to give His only begotten Son for its salvation." Of course, but why give His Son ?-what need of that? Again and ever this utter blindness as to the meaning of the cross! Righteous to give His Son to "suffer, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God"! Righteous to "lay on Him the iniquity of us all"! (i Pet. 3:18; Isa. 53:6.) Was it all meaningless, this? Nay:it was " the chastisement of our peace," and by His stripes we are healed, (5:5.)
Yet Dr. Waldenstrom can quietly reply to the suggestion that God's punitive righteousness demanded satisfaction,-" It is nowhere thus written; and, as something outside of the Word of God, it is not well to assert any such thing "! And he can actually assert, " To punish in order to inflict evil on the one punished is unjust and unrighteous, and only he that is evil can do evil; but God is not evil, for He is love :but to punish in order to produce repentance is righteous, just, and good" !! What, then, was the chastisement [or "punishment"] of our peace which Christ endured ? And how can God punish the finally impenitent? Alas! Dr. Waldenstrom knows not the glory of the cross.
I may pass briefly over the whole of the next chapter, inasmuch as there is no question either of changing God's hatred of sin, or of changing God at all, or of averting His wrath from those that go on in sin. Many of the arguments here are very much like beating the air. Late in the chapter, however, is one that cannot but create astonishment. "For the unrighteous man (as such) there is no salvation, however gracious and merciful God may be; and for the righteous man (as such) there is no condemnation, however righteous God may be." And then, after his manner, he emphasizes the words, " Yea, it is the very righteousness of God which makes it impossible for the righteous to be condemned." No doubt; but who can claim for his own righteousness such recognition by the righteousness of God ? The apostle says of some who imagined the possibility, that "they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God." And the "righteousness of faith," which he goes on to contrast with "our own," is Christ as "the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." (Rom. 10:3, 4.)
It will be said that Dr. Waldenstrom believes in justification by faith. Nominally, he does; in reality, rather by the change which faith produces. And this leaves Job's question (who was certainly a believer,) still unanswered:" But how shall man be just with God ? "Our author would make it a very easy matter.
In the third chapter, he turns to the consideration of the Old-Testament sacrifices; and here we must follow him more closely.
In the first place, he catches at the words of the apostle in Heb, 9:22, that "almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission," to point attention to the " almost," upon which he argues, "the apostle has laid special emphasis."But it is hard to realize this, as the apostle never refers to it again, and as his object is to insist on the rule and not the exception! Moreover, the position of the word at the beginning of the sentence merely extends the application of it, as he rightly says, to the whole verse. It is true that there were exceptions under the law to the general rule that all things were purged by blood, and without shedding of blood was no remission; but the apostle immediately goes on in a way entirely contrary to what might be gathered from the "almost,"-"It was necessary, therefore, that the patterns of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these."What becomes, then, of the great importance of the "almost" to the apostle's argument?
To his own also it is as difficult to see it. According to Dr. Waldenstrom himself, apart from the communication of the life which is in the blood, forgiveness there cannot be ! Why, then, insist on the "almost "? It looks as if he had begun to realize that the "shedding of blood" must mean death, and not life, and would as much as possible diminish the importance of a witness which is against him. Our wills often act in a way of which we are little conscious. But how much is gained by it ? The law puts forward a broad principle with a few exceptions:if the law be not the very image of the things (chap. 10:i), where is the wonder?
He goes on to the question of the vicarious character of the sacrifices. First, he asserts, in his usual manner, that God never puts forth such a principle anywhere in Scripture as that God's righteousness demanded That the "punishment must be endured by some one if sin should be forgiven." Now, if he mean's in the way of" abstract statement, it is very little in the manner of Scripture to put things in that way. God speaks of how He acted or will act, and that is enough; although really the passage in Hebrews comes very near to such a proposition. If the shedding of blood be necessary for remission of sins, then it is certainly the blood of another, not of the sinner, that is shed, and what is that but the principle of substitution? And what are we to learn from "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all " ?
He then, as in his smaller treatise, denies the Lord's work to be the payment of debt. I do not contend for it, and need not repeat what has been already said.
He goes on to what is more at the root of the matter, that "the Scriptures never represent, in any way, that it is just or righteous to punish the innocent instead of the guilty." He is here on common ground with Unitarians and others every where; but an essential element of this case he has omitted. It is the One who has imposed the penalty who stoops to suffer it:it is His own as well as the Father's glory that is to be shown forth; the Father and He are one. Who shall forbid Him, not to execute the law upon other sinless ones, but to bear its penalty Himself? Who shall bind the hands of the Holy One, that He should not be able to sacrifice Himself? and who shall be bold enough to stigmatize it as unrighteous?
Yet Dr. Waldenstrom affirms, " Neither is it ever said in the Bible that God has inflicted punishment upon Christ instead upon us. Yea, the prophet Isaiah represents it as a delusion that the Jews believed that Christ was punished by God. The prophet says, " We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted; but He was pierced through by our sins, He was crushed for our misdeeds.'
On the other hand, Delitzsch, than whom there is no better Hebraist, and with whom few critics can compare on such a question, says of the text quoted, " Here again it is Israel, which, having been at length better instructed, and now bearing witness against itself, laments its former blindness to the mediatorially vicarious character of the deep agonies, both of soul and body, that were endured by the great Sufferer. They looked upon them as the punishment of His own sins, and indeed-inasmuch as, like the friends of Job, they measured the sin of the Sufferer by the sufferings that He endured-of peculiarly great sins. They saw in Him nagua, 'one stricken,'-1:e., afflicted with a hateful, shocking disease (Gen. 12:17; i Sam. 6:9),-such, for example, as leprosy, which was called nega especially; also mukkeh Elohim, 'one smitten of God' . . . The construction "mukkeh Elohim" signifies one who has been defeated in conflict by God his Lord."
He adds, "In ver. 5, 'but He,' as contrasted with, 'but we,' continues the true state of the case as contrasted with their false judgment-'Whereas He was pierced for our sins, bruised for our iniquities:the punishment was laid upon Him for our peace ; and through His stripes we were healed. … As min with the passive does not answer to the Greek ύπό, but to άπό, the meaning is, not that our sins and iniquities had pierced Him through like swords, and crushed Him like heavy burdens, but that He was pierced and crushed on account of our sins and iniquities."
Further, he says, " We have rendered the word musar punishment,'and there was no other word in the language for this idea."
Dr. Waldenstrom now comes to the Old-Testament sacrifices themselves, which, he contends, "could not express a penal suffering instead of the sinner." Here, first from the peace- or thank-offerings, he finds "something which is of the greatest importance as to the question of the meaning of the sacrifices:to wit, that we must never draw the conclusion that a sacrifice expressed penal suffering just because it was bloody. When, therefore, it is concluded as to the sin- and trespass-offerings, that because they were bloody they expressed penal suffering, then is drawn an entirely too hasty conclusion."
The "hasty conclusion" is Dr. Waldenstrom's alone. He should have proved that the peace-offerings could not express penal suffering. In fact, it is Christ's work which, as bringing to God, is the foundation of peace, as our apprehension of it. is communion with God. Why could not a thank-offering, because such, speak of that blessed work, which is the ground of all our good,-for which the heart that knows it praises and blesses God forever ?
The author thinks, however, there is no need to tarry upon this, and goes on to the expressly atoning offerings. And here, his first objection is, that "sacrifices were never allowed to be made for other sins than such as were not to be visited with death or capital punishment. . . . how, then, could any one think that the animal which was offered suffered the punishment of death instead of the offender ? Why, his sin was not at all liable to be visited with the death penalty."
This is singularly inconclusive, however, and only reveals the objector's low thought of sin and its desert with God. Rome may distinguish between her venial and her mortal sins, but the Word of God proclaims, " The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Reason enough there was for not allowing a great offender to escape with the easy offering of a sacrifice ; but God would have all men know that death has entered upon the heels of sin, and that it has passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Dr. Waldenstrom's argument is worse than poor :it is a revelation of the one who makes it.
The second argument is derived from the provision of an offering of fine flour as a sin-offering in a case of poverty. It was one of the few exceptions to the general rule, for it was emphatically proclaimed that it was the blood that made atonement for the soul. In case of deep poverty, God's mercy abated the demand; and so where a soul might be spiritually so poor as not to know what work was needed for his sins, yet clung to Christ as meeting them, such an one could be accepted of God ; not because sin needed not a true atonement, but because Christ's work has met the full need as God knows it.
The third argument is again weakness itself. Where a man-slayer was not discovered, the law decreed "that the people-mark, the people-should be forgiven [literally, atoned for or reconciled, 5:8] by the sacrifice of a young heifer." This could not mean, he urges, that it died instead of the people, for the people were not guilty of the sin, and had not deserved to die ; nor for the man-slayer, for it was forbidden to take ransom (or atonement) for him !
Did atonement mean nothing, then ? Suppose we were to argue that if atoning means reconciling or being gracious to the people or the man-slayer, should we not still have to say, the people did not need it, and the man-slayer could not have it? It is evident that if sin were not in some way imputed, it could not be atoned for, whatever the meaning of atonement; and that if it were imputed, God's one way of atonement was by blood ?
His fourth argument is, that the laying on of hands on the victim did not signify that the penalty was transferred to the animal; first, because this took place in the case of the peace-offering, where there was no question of penalty.-This has been already shown to be a mistake. Secondly, because in Lev. 16:21 it is "clearly represented to be an expression of the confession of sin " ! As if the confession of sin were not the suited accompaniment of the action which transferred it to a victim ! Thirdly, that "on the day of atonement, the hands were not laid on the animal which was killed, but on the one that was kept alive:-another of the exceptions to the ordinary mode; and for a plain reason, that God would show to the people the complete removal of sin, which could only be clone by the living animal. Yet it was identified with the other goat that had died as one sin-offering. (See 5:5.)
These are all the reasons given against the true expiatory character of the Old-Testament sacrifices ; but before we are entitled to come to the conclusion, we have yet to see what Dr. Waldenstrom believes to be their actual meaning.
(To be continued.)