(8) Here emerges the truth of "eternal atonement." In the work of Christ we behold a transcript of the eternal passion of the heart of God on account of sin. Over against the sin which pierces the Saviour's heart we see the holy love which will not abandon us and let us be lost to itself. At the cross we see the justice which justifies and saves, but which saves only by condemning sin and by rescuing us from sin to holiness. Salvation is no mere acquittal, a letting-go or remission; it is a recovery to Godlikeness, to holiness, and all that Christ does to save us is an assertion and maintenance of the standard of holiness. Apart from the divine ideal of holiness salvation can have no proper meaning. (9) The work of Christ is not a mere provision for man's salvation, or a condition precedent, but an actual work of salvation, a real moral recovery of men from sin to goodness. The primary fact is that Christ saves us from alienation from God into fellowship with him. He lived, labored, suffered, and died, that we might not live the isolated and selfish life—that he might deliver us from the present evil world, purge our consciences from dead works, and redeem us from every vain manner of life. Christ saves us by taking us into the fellowship of his own life of perfect love and sacrifice and by introducing us into a sonship to God like his own. (10) Christ perfectly fulfilled the life of sonship to God; and the progressive realization of the same sonship and of human brotherhood by humanity, in the Spirit of Christ, is the atonement- the reconciliation of man with God. The object of all that Christ did and experienced was to make men one with God. His work proceeded upon the assumption that God and man were not essentially alien, but kindred, natures, despite the moral separation caused by sin, — and this kinship makes the atonement possible. Reconciliation is the fulfilment of the divine idea of man. Man can come to himself only as he comes to God in free obedience and love. This recovery of man alone can satisfy God. It is God's nature to seek and to save; for him to do that is not to be doing something extraordinary, peculiar, and special; it is not an exceptional, but a natural, procedure. Hence atonement is a perpetual, eternal work of God. The atoning work of Christ is the production of the consciousness and experience of sonship in mankind. In the cross we see consummately revealed what we see in Christ always and everywhere the perfection of his divine obedience and charity, his submissive endurance of hatred and suffering that he might complete the work of love and bring the sinful world to the feet of God. The atonement is a continuous and progressive work. Men are dying with Christ and rising with him still, filling up that which is behind of his sufferings, entering into the Spirit of his work, and repeating in themselves his life of sacrifice. To do this is salvation. As I lay down my task, I should like to appropriate the words with which Auguste Sabatier closed the book with which he ended his life-work: "He who writes these lines knows better than any other that his long and difficult enterprise is only a preliminary essay. If he does all that in him lies to bind up his sheaf, it is that he may give to others an idea of the fertility of the field in which he has labored, and thus attract to it new laborers stronger and more able than himself. Never for a moment does he shut his eyes to the fact that his sheaf, so painfully and perhaps prematurely bound, must be unbound again to receive, perhaps ears grown at an earlier day and which he ought not to have overlooked, and surely ears of a new harvest not yet come to maturity."1 1 Religions of Authority and the Religion of the Spirit, p. 378. Abbott, T. K., 314. GENERAL INDEX Abelard, on atonement, 140. Adamson, A., 124. Anselm, on atonement, 136 sq., 164, Antioch, School of, 525. Arminian views of atonement, 171 sq. Campbell, J. McLeod, 153, 191, 197, 201, 207, 211-214, 237. Catholic theory of justification, 452 sq. Chastisement, in contrast to punish- Chauncy, Charles, 172. Atonement, Day of, 83, 85; eternal, Christ's relation to mankind, 357 sq.; Benevolence, the divine, according to Cone, Orello, 68. Grotius, 169. Berkeley, Bishop, 172. Bernard of Clairvaux, 140. Beyschlag, W., 70, 110, 274. Bible and Church, 498 sq. Bleek, F., 130. Blood of Christ, 107 sq., 406. Bouvier, A., 227-229. Bowne, B. P., 238, 260, 392, 393. Bruce, A. B., 23, 69, 70, 127, 285. Caird, John, 231, 232. Conversion, 483 sq. Cosmic Christ, in Paul, 438. Covenant-sacrifice, 50. Covenant, the New, 84 sq. Crawford, T. J., 187-189, 253, 352, 415. Cur Deus Homo, 141 sq. Curse, the, of the law, 63 sq. Dale, R. W., 51, 116, 124, 152, 156, 190, Dalman, G., 59. Davidson, A. B., 14, 17, 18, 22, 248, 249. Calvin, John, 140, 154, 198, 252, 428, 429. Deissmann, G. A., 61, 109. Denney, James, 51, 68, 70, 77, 88, 104, | Granger, Frank, 453, 486. 191-197, 240, 241, 357, 358, 399, 411. Destiny, problems concerning, 509 sq. Divinity of Christ, 297 sq. Dorner, I. A., 153, 282. Ecclesia, 504, 505. Edwards, Jonathan, Jr., 172, 202, 203. Election, Israel's, 23. Fairbairn, A. M., 6, 218, 219, 435, 436. Fall, the, 308 sq. Fatherhood of God, 264 sq. Fathers, the Church, on atonement, Feine, P., 45. Fisher, G. P., 136, 222, 525. Gregory of Nyssa, 138. Grotius on Satisfaction for Sin, 157 Häring, T., 197. Harris, George, 207-209, 353, Haupt, Erich, 50. Hebrews, the Epistle to the, doctrine Hengstenberg, E. W., 186. Hollmann, G., 42, 45, 46. Holtzmann, H. J., 7, 14, 45, 50, 55, 68, Hopkins, Samuel, 172, 202, 204. Hugo of St. Victor, 123. Hume, R. A., 487. Hutcheson, J. T., 217. Forgiveness of sins, 49, 52, 340 sq.; the Ignatius, 137. Government, the divine, in the theory Jerome, 525. Governmental theory of atonement, 157 sq.; ethicized forms of, 198 sq. Jesus, his teaching concerning salva- Jevons, F. B., 5. Jewish theories of sin, 309 sq., 399. tion, 93 sq. Jones-Griffith, E., 217. Jowett, Benjamin, 232, 233, 342. Justice, rectoral, 164; distributive, 175. Kaftan, J., 186, 282. Kähler, M., 197. Kapporeth, 61-63. Lamb of God, 94 sq. Law, the divine, according to Grotius, Laying on of hands, significance of, Pascal, Blaise, 301. Lidgett, J. S., 136, 152, 190, 210, 211, Life, the giving of, in John, 100 sq. Lipsius, R. A., 70, 282, 283, 409. Love, place of in penal satisfactionism, Lyttelton, Arthur, 209, 210, 422, 423. Mackintosh, Robert, 267, 268, 355. Mankind, Christ's relation to, 357 sq. Maurice, F. D., 5, 230, 231, 330, 411. Melchizedek, 81, 82. Ménégoz, E., 68, 70, 76, 77, 141, 186. Meyer, H. A. W., 95, 274, 314. Milligan, George, 87. Passover, relation of Lord's Supper Paterson, W. P., 16. Patristic view of atonement, 137 sq. Penal theory of atonement, 174 sq.; Peter Lombard, 138, 140. Pfleiderer, Otto, 62, 68, 70, 270, 318. Philo, 77, 81, 125. Porter, F. C., 221, 310. Post-Reformation doctrine of penal satisfaction, 154-156, 251. Priesthood of Christ, in Hebrews, Moberly, R. C., 136, 190, 214-216, 233, Primitive Christian view of salvation, 240, 241, 242, 257, 337, 351. Moore, G. F., 4, 13. 54-58. Probation, future, 513, 514, 516, 519 sq. Moral theory of atonement, 221 sq., Prodigal Son, Parable of, 344. |