John McLeod Campbell · 4 of 23

CHAPTER IV. · Part 1

CALVINISM, AS RECENTLY MODIFIED.

CALVINISM, as recently modified, differs from the earlier Calvinism in these points:--First, as to the reference of the atonement, which is held to have been for all men, and not for the elect only. Secondly, as to the need be for an atonement, which is not regarded as arising out of the demands of distributive and individual justice, requiring that each man should receive his due desert, according to an eternal necessity in the divine nature, as maintained by Owen and Edwards; but is held to arise out of the demands of rectoral and public justice, which necessitate God, as the moral governor of the universe, if He extend mercy to sinners, to do so only in a way that will preserve inviolate the interests of His moral government. Thirdly, as to the nature of the atonement,--Christ's sufferings for our sins not being held to be the endurance, on the part of the Saviour, of the same punishment, or of punishment equivalent in amount of suffering, with that to which those for whom He suffered were exposed, but to be the substitution of other sufferings for the threatened punishment, which substituted sufferings were equivalent in reference to the result in relation to God's moral government;--and Christ's meritorious obedience not being held to be the fulfilling of the law in our room and stead, so as to provide us with a righteousness to be imputed to us, investing us with a right to the reward of righteousness,--but a moral excellence giving a moral virtue to the atonement whereby it is made a fit ground on which may be rested all acts of grace and clemency towards sinners, and all bestowal of favours upon them.

Fourthly, as to the results of the atonement, that it does not of itself, and by its own nature, secure salvation to any, but only is an adequate provision for the salvation of all, free to all, effectual to salvation in the case of those who are disposed by the sovereign grace of God to avail themselves of it.

These points of difference involve others as implied in them. Thus the idea of imputation of guilt and righteousness, viz. of our guilt to Christ, and of Christ's righteousness to us, as this imputation was held by Owen and Edwards, is rejected as untenable;--"Guilt and merit not being transferable,--but only their consequences." (Payne, 254.) The idea of a legal claim to salvation, which we have just seen commended as the full meeting of the instinctive legalism of the human heart, is rejected as destroying the gracious character of the gospel dispensation;--and, most important of all--the relation of the atonement to the divinity of Christ, is altogether differently conceived of; for whereas, in the earlier Calvinism the divinity of the Saviour is contemplated as making possible infinitely great sufferings endured in time,--the needed substitute for sufferings that would have been infinite in that they would have been eternal,--on this system the divinity of Christ is regarded as giving infinite value to any suffering of His; so that the value of the sufferings would be infinitely great though its amount were infinitely small.

The assumed advantages of this system as a modification of the earlier Calvinism are chiefly these,--First, as to the extent of the atonement. To teach that Christ died for all is consonant with the most obvious meaning of the language of the inspired writers,--which cannot be brought to utter a limited atonement without much forcing. While, besides, an universal atonement is an adequate, and the only adequate foundation for the preaching of the Gospel as good news of salvation to all:--and they dwell with much force on the kind of mental reservation which the older system ascribes to God in inviting all to partake in what is only prepared for some, because the some only will accept the invitation. Secondly, as to the need be for atonement. A necessity for an atonement arising out of rectoral or public justice, is felt less repulsive than one that implies a demand in the divine nature for a certain amount of suffering as the punishment of a certain amount of sin. Thirdly, as to the nature of the atonement. All that men have revolted from in the idea of the Son of God being actually in His Father's eyes as a criminal through imputation of man's sin, and being punished accordingly, is thought to be avoided; as well as all that is of the nature of legal fiction in imputation of guilt to an innocent being, or of righteousness to a guilty being. Fourthly, as to the results of the atonement. They dwell largely on the manifestation of the divine character, and on the vindication of the divine judgment on sin, as well as of the divine sovereignty in the salvation of those who are saved,--seeing that those who perish, perish, not because a salvation was not provided for them, but because they would not accept of it. Owen had said in a passage already quoted, that "to affirm Christ to die for all men, is the readiest way to prove that He died for no man in the sense Christians have hitherto believed, and to hurry poor souls into the bottom of Socinian blasphemies." Here, that Christ died for all men is maintained; but, at the same time, "the objections of the Socinian" to "redemption through the merits of Christ," are held to be "all silenced."--"If he is not allowed for his weapons the wrath of a God of love,--the transfer of moral character,--the infliction of legal punishment on the innocent, his gauntlet can grasp no other. The doctrine of a substitutionary atonement not only blunts but breaks and shivers these favourite and long used lances of Socinianism." (Jenkyns, 317.) But, doubtless, Owen would regard this as a victory obtained only by concessions;--for Owen would say, that the doctrine that Christ died for all men is combined with the distinct concession, "that He died for no man in the sense Christians have hitherto believed;"--and he would be entitled so to reply, at least in reference to the sense attached to the word atonement in the discussions between himself and Arminians.

With much in what seems to be the mental history of this modified Calvinism I have full sympathy. The constraint felt in preaching Christ to all, while believing that He only died for some, is easily understood; while, doubtless, Owen's arguments for a limited atonement, if the atonement had been what, in the controversies between him and Arminians it was on both sides assumed to be, were unanswerable as arguments whatever scriptural difficulties they might involve. Again, in the concession which seems made to Socinians, on the subject of the untransferable nature of guilt and merit, and the difficulty of assuming that by a legal fiction God sees things other than as they really are, I concur with them, although I feel that there are important principles in Edwards' argument on the substitution of Christ for us, to which they do not seem to me to give due weight; and, although the even stronger language of Luther as to Christ's identification of Himself with us, instead of repelling me, as it does them, is to my mind a very near approach to truth; and I am disposed to think was spiritually, though not intellectually, truth in him. But I have much more sympathy in their difficulties than satisfaction in the way in which they have dealt with them.

Believing that Christ died for all, and perceiving that the conceptions of the nature of the atonement from which the earlier Calvinists reasoned, did indeed imply, if logically followed out, that He only died for some, the teachers of this modified Calvinism have seemed to themselves to have found a solution of the difficulty, in their conception of rectoral or public justice as what called for an atonement for sin. But, surely, rectoral or public justice, if it is to have any moral basis--any basis other than expediency--must rest upon, and refer to, distributive or absolute justice. In other words, unless there be a rightness in connecting sin with misery, and righteousness with blessedness, looking at individual cases simply in themselves, I cannot see that there is a rightness in connecting them as a rule of moral government. "An English judge once said to a criminal before him, 'You are condemned to be transported, not because you have stolen these goods, but that goods may not be stolen.' " (Jenkyns, 175, 176.) This is quoted in illustration of the position, that "the death of Christ is an honourable ground for remitting punishment," because "His sufferings answer the same ends as the punishment of the sinner." I do not recognise any harmony between this sentiment of the English judge and the voice of an awakened conscience on the subject of sin. It is just because he has sinned and deserves punishment, and not because he says to himself, that God is a moral governor, and must punish him to deter others, that the wrath of God against sin seems so terrible--and as just as terrible. As little is this sentiment in harmony with what the words teach, "The wages of sin is death."

Owen and Edwards do not err in believing, that the righteousness of God connects sin with misery, as by a righteous reward, irrespective of state reasons. Their error is, I believe, twofold,--concluding as to that award beyond what they had light for their guidance,--and--and this chiefly--not seeing any hope for the sinner in the very righteousness of God,--as if the righteousness of God would have full satisfaction in reference to the unrighteous, in their being miserable. "Good and righteous is the Lord, therefore will he teach sinners the way which they should choose."

Rectoral justice so presupposes absolute justice, and so throws the mind back on that absolute justice, that the idea of an atonement that will satisfy the one, though it might not the other, must be a delusion.

The recommendation of the distinction sought to be drawn has been, that it seemed to harmonise an atonement for all, with the ultimate punishment of those who do not accept of that atonement;--that is to say, as Calvinists pressed the point on Arminians,--the punishment of many whose punishment Christ had previously endured: this stronghold of Calvinism it seemed to overturn. But as long as Christ's sufferings are held to be penal, which, even when the old form of words is most departed from, is the expression still used, I cannot see what difference it makes, whether they be held as by Owen, to have been the same that those for whom he suffered were obnoxious to;--or as Baxter, with Grotius, held,--equivalent;--or as Dr. Jenkyns holds, "different in nature and kind,--in quantity and degree." If they were penal, then, that those for whom He suffered should be punished themselves, must still suggest the idea sought to be avoided, of sin twice punished.

Nor is the difficulty less because, not regarding our sins as imputed to Christ in the sense of the elder Calvinists, objection is made to speaking of Christ as punished for our sins; the expression being substituted, that what He suffered was the punishment of our sins. This distinction, introduced by Andrew Fuller, is adopted by Dr. Payne, who would press it further than Fuller; and I suppose that it is contemplated by Dr. Jenkyns when he says, "Christ's sufferings were not a punishment." (p. 292.) But Dr. Payne recognises our sins as imputed to Christ in the sense of "inflicting upon Him the punishment due to them" (p. 260) ; and Dr. Jenkyns, while at as much pains to bring out the difference between what Christ suffered and what those for whom He suffered were exposed to suffer, as Dr. Owen is to bring out, if he could, an identity, (being indeed quite successful in this, while Owen is altogether unsuccessful), yet regards "made a sin offering for us" (in 2 Cor. 5 and 21) as equivalent to "made liable to punishment for us" (p. 287),--and enlarges on Christ's "suffering as if He had been a sinner." (p. 284.) If Christ was "made liable to punishment," if He was "treated as if He were a sinner," that is, if God so treated Him--for the misapprehensions of men are nothing--then, to say that He was not punished though the punishment of our sins was endured by Him, however it is a softening of expressions, is not to any real effect so to modify the idea of atonement as to do away with the difficulty of a double punishment for sin.

This distinction between being punished, and enduring sufferings which are a punishment, is adopted in connexion with the denial of the imputation of our guilt to Christ, and in this view is held to remove the difficulties of one class of objectors,--although to call sufferings a punishment while the sufferer is not regarded as punished, involves new difficulties. But, the change on which most weight is laid, is in the view taken of the relation in which the sufferings endured are represented as standing to the divinity of the sufferer. That the personal dignity of the Saviour is the important aspect of the incarnation in relation to the atonement, is much insisted on. Divinity as a capacity for enduring infinite penal infliction, is an idea which is recognised as rightly offending. Divinity as giving infinite value to any measure of humiliation or suffering condescended to, is urged as what should recommend itself as a far more worthy conception. How far removed from either conception the truth of the case has been,--how far different from a capacity of enduring infinite penal infliction, or a giving infinite value to penal suffering, however small its amount, has been the relation of the divinity of Christ to His sufferings in making propitiation for our sins will, I trust, be made clear in the sequel.

But there are two points in relation to the sufferings of Christ, as spoken of in these two forms of Calvinism severally, which appear to me deserving of our special attention, viz. that the language employed in speaking of the part of the Father in relation to these sufferings, is much the same;--and that, the details specified, when details of the elements of suffering are ventured, are much the same, or at least are of the same nature.

1. The language of the later Calvinists in speaking of the part of the Father in relation to the sufferings of Christ, is not essentially different from that of those whose system they feel it necessary to modify.

President Edwards is quoted by Dr. Stroud (who dedicates his book to Dr. Pye Smith) as representing Christ as "suffering a positive infliction of divine wrath," which to teach, he esteems chargeable with error,--"not to say absurdity." (p. 209.) These are some of the sentences which he quotes. "Revenging justice then spent all its force upon Him on account of our guilt, . . . and this was the way and means by which Christ stood up for the honour of God's justice, viz. by thus suffering its terrible executions: for when He had undertaken for sinners, and had substituted Himself in their room, divine justice could have its due honour no other way than by His suffering its revenges." Yet Dr. Stroud himself says, "A transition more sudden or violent than that which took place from the seraphic discourses and devotions of Christ after the paschal supper, to the horrors of Gethsemane, can scarcely be conceived. That He was about to suffer from the immediate hand of God is implied by His prediction to the apostles on the way. In the absence of all external infliction, the cup of trembling which was then presented to Him by the Father, and which He so earnestly petitioned might if possible be withdrawn, could have been no other than the cup of the wrath of God, "the poison, whereof drinketh up the spirit' " (p. 215): and he quotes with approbation from Rambach, a passage in which he speaks of our Lord as having "to suffer all the floods of the divine wrath to pass over Him, which would have overwhelmed our Saviour's human nature, had not the divinity within Him supported it in this terrible trial." Dr. Pye Smith says, ''Jesus Christ voluntarily sustained that which was the marked punishment of sin." (p. 35.). "The tremendous manifestations of God's displeasure against sin, He endured, though in Him. was no sin: and He endured them in a manner of which those unhappy spirits who shall drink the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God will never be able to form an adequate idea." (p. 42.) Dr. Jenkyns says, "The most amazing circumstance connected with His death was, that He suffered as one disowned, and reprobated, and forsaken of

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God, &c. (p. 284.) "The just is treated as if He had been unjust, the Son of God suffered as if He had been a transgressor." (p. 285.) Dr. Payne ("On the reality of the atonement") concludes, that the sufferings of our Lord were "dreadful beyond conception," and resulted from intense mental suffering, from the burden of our guilt which rested upon Him, from that light of His Father's countenance which then suffered a total eclipse," in relation to which he quotes Psalm lxxxviii. 4-7, concluding with the words, "Thy wrath lieth hard upon me, and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves."

2. But the other point to which I would direct attention, is more striking still; viz. the oneness of character in the elements of suffering which they specify.

What are the "revenges of divine justice," and "its terrible executions," which were in Edwards' contemplations when he employed those general expressions which have exposed him to the charge of error, nay, absurdity? The only direct dealing of God with Christ which he specifies, is purely negative;--"God forsook Christ and hid Himself from Him, and withheld comfortable influences, or the clear ideas of pleasant objects." This negative wrath, if the expression is not a contradiction, is indeed represented as being in order that the positive elements of suffering present should act with unmitigated power; and what were these? First, God hid Himself from Christ "that He might feel the full burden of our sins that was laid upon Him. But how laid upon Him? "His having so clear an actual view of sin and its hatefulness, was an idea infinitely disagreeable to the holy nature of Christ; and therefore, unless balanced with an equal sight of good that comes by that evil, must have been an immensely disagreeable sensation in Christ's soul, or, which is the same thing, immense suffering . . . Thus Christ bore our sins; God laid on Him the iniquities of us all, and He bare the burden of them." Secondly, God thus dealt with Christ, that "He might suffer God's wrath." But again, how?--"His suffering wrath consisted more in the sense He had of the other thing; viz: the dreadfulness of the punishment of sin, or the dreadfulness of God's wrath inflicted for it;" viz. on those on whom it is inflicted. "Thus Christ was tormented, not only in the fire of God's wrath, but in the fire of our sins; and our sins were His tormentors; the evil and malignant nature of sin was what Christ endured immediately," i. e. in being realised by Him as an object of mental contemplation,--as well as more remotely, in bearing the consequences of it," i. e. the sense of these consequences as endured by others. "Thus Christ suffered what the damned in hell do not suffer. For they do not see the hateful nature of sin; . . . and as the clear view of sin in its hatefulness necessarily brought great suffering on the holy soul of Christ, so also did the view of its punishment. For both the evil of sin and the evil of punishment are infinite evils, and both infinitely disagreeable to Christ's nature: the former to His holy nature, or His nature as God;--the latter to His human nature, or His nature as man . . . Christ's love brought His elect infinitely near to Him in that great act and suffering wherein He specially stood for them, and was substituted in their stead; and His love and pity fixed the idea of them in His mind, as if He had really been they; and fixed their calamity in His mind, as though it really was His. A very strong and lively pity towards the miserable, tends to make their case ours; as in other respects, so in this in particular, as it doth in our idea place us in their stead, under their misery, . . . as it were feeling it for them, actually suffering it in their stead by strong sympathy." On Satisfaction for Sin, § 9, 1.

I am quite sensible of the injustice done to the remarkable passage from which I quote, by thus curtailing it. But I have given enough of it for my purpose in quoting it; viz. to shew that, however strong or startling Edwards' general expressions as to Christ being, in consequence of the imputation of our guilt, subjected to "the revenges of divine justice," there is, when he explains himself, nothing of the nature of legal fiction in his conception of the way in which Christ bore the burden of our sins; as neither is there anything of the nature of the actual going forth of divine wrath against the holy one, because of His standing in the room of sinners, in what is called "His endurance of wrath;" but that the whole suffering conceived of, is resolved into a vivid perception and realisation of the hatefulness of sin, and of the greatness of the wrath to which it has exposed sinners; these two ideas affecting our Lord in the measure of His infinite holiness and love. So strictly has Edwards, in endeavouring to imagine ingredients to fill a full cup of suffering, adhered to the limits which he recognises in saying that ''Christ suffered the wrath of God for men's sins in such a way as He was capable of, being an infinitely holy person, who knew that God was not angry with Him personally, knew that God did not hate Him, but infinitely loved Him." It is, indeed, a great relief, to see this great and good man, while dealing so much in the language of what seems legal fiction in that high region in which fiction can have no place, when he comes to explain the facts of Christ's actual experience, as they were conceived of by him, saying nothing that implied, either that God looked on Christ in wrath, or that Christ felt as if He did. And, when I use the word "explain," I am very far indeed from intending to suggest any attempt to soften, or explain away. Edwards is in no way attempting to make his doctrine less obnoxious: on the contrary, as in the choice of general expressions he selects the most extreme, so in setting forth the elements of the Saviour's sufferings, he is making out the strongest case that he can, within the limit which he has recognised.

The teaching that substitutes, "enduring the punishment of our sins," for, "being punished for our sins," has still, to seek for elements of penal suffering;--and the same relief which is felt in interpreting the general expressions of Edwards in reference to the divine wrath which Christ suffered, by the details of Christ's actual sufferings which he specifies, is again experienced in passing from the general expressions of the modified Calvinism to the illustrations of these which are offered. The "wrath" or "malediction," as he more frequently expresses it, which Dr. Stroud contemplates, is "the loss for a time of all sense of God's friendship, all enjoyment of His communion" (p. 192),--which, the consciousness of sinlessness remaining, and there being no misconception assumed as to the Father's true estimate of Him as the holy one of God, however it would be suffering, could with no propriety be called malediction and wrath. Dr. Pye Smith's specification of the elements of suffering, is strikingly like that of President Edwards, both in the limit recognised. "He suffered in such a manner as a being perfectly holy could suffer" (p. 41), and in the moral nature assigned to the suffering, as arising from holiness and love realising the evil of sin, and intensely interested in those who were its victims, (p. 42.) The elements which Dr. Payne finds in our Lord's sufferings, are also intense views of the evil of sin, combined with the withholding of counterbalancing support (p. 181);--and, though he speaks of the "penal elements" in our Lord's cup of suffering, and recognises the withholding of those manifestations of supreme complacency in His character and conduct which He had previously enjoyed, as in itself a most distressing testimony of the divine anger against sin, and probably implied in the language of the prophet, "It pleased the Father to bruise Him," which thought he adopts from Dr. Dwight, he proceeds to object to Dr. Dwight's representing the hidings of God's face as implying "the suffering of His hatred and contempt," saying, "No sober minded man can admit this. The fact of the case most unquestionably is, that the Father did not despise Him,--was not angry with Him when He hung on the cross. Never, indeed, did He regard Him with such ineffable complacency. How then could He manifest that displeasure which did not exist?" (p. 182.) Dr. Jenkyns says, as what he regards as a mitigation of Christ's sufferings, (as to which, he rather says what they were not, than what they were),--"His sufferings were not a punishment. His consciousness of personal rectitude, and His confidence in His Father, never forsook Him. In the darkest hour of His anguish, His assurance of God's approbation and acceptance was in the highest exercise,--'Father,' He said, "into thy hands I commend my spirit.' " (p. 292.)

My quotations are necessarily brief, but the references will guide those who may be disposed to verify the correctness of the impressions which these quotations convey. What remains with me, after fully weighing all that either school of Calvinists have felt warranted to present to our faith in picturing the actual elements of the sufferings of Christ, is the conviction, that they have not ventured to assume anything as to the actual consciousness of Christ in suffering, or as to the actual mind of the Father towards Him, while it pleased the Father so to bruise Him, or as to His own apprehension of the light in which His Father saw Him, in His dealing with the Father, and the Father's dealing with Him in reference to our sins, which at all accords, either with the older idea of guilt being imputed to Him, and therefore wrath going forth upon Him--the wrath due to guilt--or, the new idea of His being treated as if He were guilty, as if He were a transgressor. Elements of great sufferings are specified,--by some with more definiteness than by others; the former writers also giving more prominence to the Saviour's sense of the eternal misery to which sin had subjected sinners;--the latter, more to His sense of the sin itself;--elements of suffering are specified, all of them at least conceivable,--of suffering, some call infinitely, others, indefinitely great. But however these accord, and they do, so far as they go, accord with the idea of sacrificial atoning suffering, they do not accord with the penal character ascribed to them. Yet this penal character ascribed to these sufferings, without necessity as respects their own nature,--I believe in contradiction to their own nature,--is that very thing which had originated the difficulty as to the universality of the atonement; and, as appears to me, leaves it a difficulty on the system of the modern, as much as of the elder Calvinists.

But, my objection to the conception of rectoral or public justice, as that in which the necessity for the atonement has originated, is much more serious than its inadequacy to remove difficulties as to the universality of the atonement. My great objection is that, equally with the view for which it is offered as a substitute, it takes a limited, and,--in respect of the important elements which it leaves out of account,--an erroneous view of what the atonement was intended to accomplish.

If my readers have entered into my objections to the mere legal character of the atonement, as we see it in the system of the elder Calvinists, they will see that, in respect of these objections, the modified Calvinism has no advantage. An atonement which has conferred on those with reference to whom it was made a legal standing of innocence, as having had their guilt already punished, and of righteousness as having a righteousness already wrought out for them; and an atonement whose result is merely to lay a foundation on which God may proceed to pardon sin, and to treat as righteous, are alike purely legal atonements, that is, atonements, the whole character of which is determined by man's relation to the divine law.

Dr. Wardlaw asks,--man having sinned, "what is to be done? The unconditional absolution of the transgressor would be a flagrant outrage on the claims of retributive justice;--his annihilation would be a tacit evasion of these claims,--while, if the law has its course, and the demands of justice are satisfied by the infliction of its penalty, he is lost for ever,--eternal life forfeited, and eternal death endured. Here, then, is the place for atonement,--what is it?" (p. 10.) He then, quoting from Dr. Alexander, says,--"In its simplest form the problem of a religion may be expressed thus: Given a Supreme Deity, the Creator and Governor of all things, and an intelligent creature in a state of alienation and estrangement from his Creator;--to determine the means whereby a reconciliation may be effected, and the creature restored to the favour and service of God." This statement of the question he adopts--adding, "The problem to be solved is this. How may this be accomplished honourably to the character and government of the Supreme Ruler?" He then quotes several definitions of atonement, among these, this from Dr. Jenkyns, "Atonement is an expedient substituted in the place of the literal infliction of the penalty, so as to supply the government just and good grounds for dispensing favours to an offender;"--and this from Andrew Puller, "That a way was opened by the mediation of Christ, for the free and consistent exercise of mercy in all the ways which sovereign wisdom saw fit to adopt." The definitions are all to the same effect, and all accord with what I have said of the legal character ascribed to the atonement,--so that, retrospectively, it but meets a demand that pertains to the character of God as a Lawgiver, and prospectively, is related to the mercy He may manifest, only in the way of making such manifestation of mercy consistent with the interests of His moral government, and promotive of them.