Pfleiderer, in New World, Sept. 1899, doubts whether Jesus ever really uttered the words “give his life a ransom for many” (Mat. 20:28). He regards them as essentially Pauline, and the result of later dogmatic reflection on the death of Jesus as a means of redemption. So Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 377-381. But these words occur not in Luke, the Pauline gospel, but in Matthew, which is much earlier. They represent at any rate the apostolic conception of Jesus' teaching, a conception which Jesus himself promised should be formed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who should bring all things to the remembrance of his apostles and should guide them into all the truth (John 14:26; 16:13). As will be seen below, Pfleiderer declares the Pauline doctrine to be that of substitutionary suffering.
(c) Legal.—The atonement is described as
An act of obedience to the law which sinners had violated; a penalty, borne in order to rescue the guilty; and an exhibition of God's righteousness, necessary to the vindication of his procedure in the pardon and restoration of sinners.—In these passages the death of Christ is represented as demanded by God's law and government.
Obedience: Gal. 4:4, 5—“born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law”; Mat. 3:15—“thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness”—Christ's baptism prefigured [pg 718]his death, and was a consecration to death; cf. Mark 10:38—“Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” Luke 12:50—“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” Mat. 26:39—“My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt”; 5:17—“Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil”; Phil. 2:8—“becoming obedient even unto death”; Rom. 5:19—“through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous”; 10:4—“Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to every one that believeth.”—Penalty: Rom. 4:25—“who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification”; 8:3—“God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh”; 2 Cor. 5:21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf”—here “sin”—a sinner, an accursed one (Meyer); Gal. 1:4—“gave himself for our sins”; 3:13—“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree”; cf. Deut 21:23—“he that is hanged is accursed of God.” Heb. 9:28—“Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many”; cf. Lev. 5:17—“if any one sin ... yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity”; Num. 14:34—“for every day a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years”; Lam. 5:7—“Our fathers sinned and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.”—Exhibition: Rom. 3:25, 26—“whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God”; cf. Heb. 9:15—“a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant.”
On these passages, see an excellent section in Pfleiderer, Die Ritschl'sche Theologie, 38-53. Pfleiderer severely criticizes Ritschl's evasion of their natural force and declares Paul's teaching to be that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by suffering as a substitute the death threatened by the law against sinners. So Orelli Cone, Paul, 261. On the other hand, L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 288-307, chapter on the New Christian Atonement, holds that Christ taught only reconciliation on condition of repentance. Paul added the idea of mediation drawn from the Platonic dualism of Philo. The Epistle to the Hebrews made Christ a sacrificial victim to propitiate God, so that the reconciliation became Godward instead of manward. But Professor Paine's view that Paul taught an Arian Mediatorship is incorrect. “God was in Christ” (2 Cor. 5:19) and God “manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16) are the keynote of Paul's teaching, and this is identical with John's doctrine of the Logos: “the Word was God,” and “the Word became flesh” (John 1:1, 14)
The Outlook, December 15, 1900, in criticizing Prof. Paine, states three postulates of the New Trinitarianism as: 1. The essential kinship of God and man,—in man there is an essential divineness, in God there is an essential humanness. 2. The divine immanence,—this universal presence gives nature its physical unity, and humanity its moral unity. This is not pantheism, any more than the presence of man's spirit in all he thinks and does proves that man's spirit is only the sum of his experiences. 3. God transcends all phenomena,—though in all, he is greater than all. He entered perfectly into one man, and through this indwelling in one man he is gradually entering into all men and filling all men with his fulness, so that Christ will be the first-born among many brethren. The defects of this view, which contains many elements of truth, are: 1. That it regards Christ as the product instead of the Producer, the divinely formed man instead of the humanly acting God, the head man among men instead of the Creator and Life of humanity; 2. That it therefore renders impossible any divine bearing of the sins of all men by Jesus Christ, and substitutes for it such a histrionic exhibition of God's feeling and such a beauty of example as are possible within the limits of human nature,—in other words, there is no real Deity of Christ and no objective atonement.
(d) Sacrificial.—The atonement is described as
A work of priestly mediation, which reconciles God to men,—notice here that the term “reconciliation” has its usual sense of removing enmity, not from the offending, but from the offended party;—a sin-offering, presented on behalf of transgressors;—a propitiation, which satisfies the demands of violated holiness;—and a substitution, of Christ's obedience and sufferings for ours.—These passages, taken together, show that Christ's death is demanded by God's attribute of justice, or holiness, if sinners are to be saved.
Priestly mediation: Heb. 9:11, 12—“Christ having come a high priest, ... nor yet through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption”; [pg 719] Rom. 5:10—“while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son”; 2 Cor. 5:18, 19—“all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ.... God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckoning unto them their trespasses”; Eph. 2:16—“might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby”; cf. 12, 13, 19—“strangers from the covenants of the promise.... far off.... no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God”; Col. 1:20—“through him to reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.”
On all these passages, see Meyer, who shows the meaning of the apostle to be, that “we were ‘enemies,’ not actively, as hostile to God, but passively, as those with whom God was angry.” The epistle to the Romans begins with the revelation of wrath against Gentile and Jew alike (Rom. 1:18). “While we were enemies” (Rom. 5:10)—“when God was hostile to us.” “Reconciliation” is therefore the removal of God's wrath toward man. Meyer, on this last passage, says that Christ's death does not remove man's wrath toward God [this is not the work of Christ, but of the Holy Spirit]. The offender reconciles the person offended, not himself. See Denney, Com. on Rom. 5:9-11, in Expositor's Gk. Test.