its principles, from an a priori theory of God's attributes | and moral government, and (2) that the quasi-penal views, such as we have had occasion to notice (see p. 190 sq.), attempt the difficult task of sustaining, by main strength, a conclusion whose major premiss has either fallen away or become seriously weakened. It is not strange, therefore, that, at this crucial point in their expositions, the advocates of these theories lapse into the vaguest and most thought-defying generalities, such as that Christ died our death, assumed the responsibility of our sins, suffered as if accursed of God, or endured penal effects; that his death was an act of homage to the eternal law of righteousness and possessed Godward or objective significance, and the like.

But what if God is really dealing with sinful men, and not with the abstractions, sin and guilt and law? And what if the deserved consequences of sin have some part in the plan of eternal love? What if the purpose of Christ's coming and work were to rescue men to sonship to God and to help them to realize their true life in his Kingdom? Then it would appear that Christ poured out his life for men, not to meet the ends of punitive justice, but to save them from the sin which makes justice punitive, delivering them from the terror and despair with which sinners must ever contemplate the righteous Judge, convincing them that forgiving love is mightier than the justice before which they tremble. In this view Christ did not exhaust the consequences of sin in himself in order that there might be none left over for us, but came to break the power of evil and to establish the power of goodness in human life, so that the flow of penal consequences might, in the nature of the case, be arrested.

CHAPTER V

THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS

THE subject which is covered by this title has been prevailingly treated in theology under the Pauline category of justification. This fact is due, in general, to the predominant influence of Paul upon theological conceptions and terminology, and, more especially, to the circumstance that justification, being a forensic term, accords well with the legal analogies under which the whole doctrine of salvation has been construed in traditional dogmatics. We shall, in due time, seek to determine the content and legitimate use of the Pauline idea of justification; meantime, let us consider the corresponding term which is characteristic of the teaching of Jesus and of the earliest apostolic preaching, the forgiveness of sins.

We may begin by recalling the form which the doctrine of remission received in the older Protestant theology. In outline it was as follows: For every sin God has ordained a definite quantum of penal suffering. This suffering his retributive righteousness obliges him to inflict. Being disposed, however, by his grace to make possible the exemption of (some) men from these penalties, he imputes the sins of those whom he would save to his Son, who vicariously endures the punishment which they deserve. By this voluntary endurance of penal sufferings in deference to retributive justice, the Saviour has acquired a treasury of merits which are, in turn, upon their acceptance of the same, imputed to those in whose place he died. Thus the prescribed penalties of sin are remitted, de jure through their being inflicted upon another, and de facto through the consent and confidence of sinful men in this twofold imputation. Forgiveness is thus an acquittal, an

amnesty, a suspension of penalty; it is a verdict of "not guilty" before the law, a letting-go, a declaration that the believer is "righteous," that is, to be now regarded and treated as righteous; this is justification.

For this interpretation of our subject appeal is confidently made to the biblical use of the terms in question. "Justification" is certainly in Paul an actus forensis, a decree of exemption from penalty and of acceptance into God's favor. As for "forgiveness," it is in the Old Testament a "covering over" of sin, a hiding of it from God's face, while in the New it is a remission, a releasing, or letting-go (apeσis). How perfectly do these terms accord with the analogy of the law court! How aptly do they describe the formality of a verdict which dismisses the accusation and proclaims the accused blameless before the law! Moreover, how harmoniously does this conception blend with those of penal substitution and imputation ideas whose biblical warrant and authoritative character are established, for the theology under consideration, beyond the remotest possibility of doubt.

If, now, we inquire, what is the relation of this verdict of exemption to real salvation, how does it stand connected with the life of Godlike love which, according to Christ, is salvation, it will be apparent that it can hardly be more than a preliminary, or condition precedent. This is admitted and even maintained as the chief commendation of the doctrine in question by the older theology. Justification is one thing; sanctification is quite another. One has to do with putative righteousness; the other has to do with real righteousness. Considered simply as such, the justified sinner is no more righteous after than before justification. He is declared righteous, that is, he is technically and legally so, — righteous so far as any verdict of condemnation is concerned, -exempt from accusation and penalty. Now the way is clear for him to begin the Christian life. Having received the divine pardon, the sinner may then begin to recover the divine image. "That the remission of sins, if it stood alone," says Dr. Dale, "would leave us unsaved, is one of the common

places of Christian theology.” 1 In the type of theology of which Dr. Dale is speaking, and of which he approves, forgiveness is a preliminary of salvation rather than a part of it.

The estimate which I would form of this course of thought may be inferred, in general, from previous references to the scheme of which it is a part. Certainly no judicious theologian would deny that it covers important truths and has served a useful purpose. I should make no objection to it, if it were always regarded as an analogical or figurative representation, — an anthropomorphic picture of moral and spiritual realities and processes, true suggestively and illustratively, but, when taken as a scientific formula, inadequate and misleading. One may say of this Jewish legalist scheme (for such it is) what the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says of Judaism in general, that it furnishes useful types and pictures of the heavenly realities which must not, however, be confounded with these realities themselves. We probably have just here the best illustration of Professor Jowett's remark that theology is more largely under the influence of figures of speech than any other branch of thought or knowledge. There are really two figures which have dominated the orthodox doctrine of forgiveness, that of the discharge of a debt by vicarious payment and that of the acquittal of a culprit. The one is a commercial, the other a legal figure. The former is germane to the Anselmic doctrine of atonement, the latter, to the postReformation doctrine. One can appeal to the commercial word "ransom " in the teaching of Jesus; the other, even more plausibly, to the judicial word "justify" in Paul. These figures are commonly used interchangeably, and properly so, as long as their use is merely illustrative; but, as we have seen, when taken as prescribing the form of a theory, they are quite different and carry very different implications. Any person who has the means and the disposition can pay another's debt and so procure his discharge from obligation to pay it; but it is a very different

1 The Atonement, p. 336.

thing, and one by no means so obviously true, to say that one person may experience another's punishment. It is further clear that if our debts have been paid once by another it would be unjust to require that they be paid a second time; since that prepayment, then, we cannot have been obligated by them. It is evident as soon as one begins thus to press this commercial analogy, that it is entirely inadequate to serve as a scientific thoughtform for the moral and spiritual realities involved in forgiveness. The same holds true of the legal analogy. The judge who "justifies" the accused, that is, dismisses his case as not proved, has no concern with his character, stands in no special relation to him outside the terms of the particular charge made, and passes no verdict on his real moral condition. How evident it is that the analogies which are drawn from such commercial and legal relations and processes as these are too remote from morality and too artificial and anthropomorphic to serve as precise or adequate descriptions of the method of the fatherly love of God in dealing with sinful men.

Our first constructive task is to see if we can determine the Christian idea of forgiveness. To this end a mere inspection of the words rendered "forgive" would not greatly aid us; they are themselves figurative terms, and their import must be derived from the general teaching in which they are imbedded. Our Lord seems to have spoken of God's forgiveness of men rather incidentally and by allusion. He uses a certain idea of the divine forgiveness as a test and measure of human forgiveness. To forgive as God forgives is one of the conditions of sonship to God, that is, of participation in the Kingdom of the Godlike. Hence Jesus teaches that men must love their enemies and be ready to forgive and bless them. This readiness to forgive, this granting of forgiveness, as it were in advance, is one of the conditions of obtaining the divine remission of sins. "Forgive us our debts," we are taught to pray, "as we also have forgiven (åþýkaμev) our debtors" (Mt. vi. 12). "For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.