(b) It rests upon false philosophical principles,—as, that righteousness is identical with benevolence, instead of conditioning it; that God is subject to an eternal law of love, instead of being himself the source of all law; that the aim of penalty is the reformation of the offender.
Hovey, God with Us, 181-271, has given one of the best replies to Bushnell. He shows that if God is subject to an eternal law of love, then God is necessarily a Savior; that he must have created man as soon as he could; that he makes men holy as fast as possible; that he does all the good he can; that he is no better than he should be. But this is to deny the transcendence of God, and reduce omnipotence to a mere nature-power. The conception of God as subject to law imperils God's self-sufficiency and freedom. For Bushnell's statements with regard to the identity of righteousness and love, and for criticisms upon them, see our treatment of the attribute of Holiness, vol. I, pages 268-275.
Watts, New Apologetic, 277-280, points out that, upon Bushnell's principles, there must be an atonement for fallen angels. God was bound to assume the angelic nature and to do for angels all that he has done for us. There is also no reason for restricting either the atonement or the offer of salvation to the present life. B. B. Warfield, in Princeton Review, 1903:81-92, shows well that all the forms of the Moral Influence theory rest upon the assumption that, God is only love, and that all that is required as ground of the sinner's forgiveness is penitence, either Christ's, or his own, or both together.
Ignoring the divine holiness and minimizing the guilt of sin, many modern writers make atonement to be a mere incident of Christ's incarnation. Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:350, 351—“Atonement by suffering is the result of the Incarnation; atonement being the necessary, and suffering the incidental element of that result. But sacrifice is an essential element, for sacrifice truly signifies here the consecration of human nature to its highest use and utterance, and does not necessarily involve the thought of [pg 736]pain. It is not the destruction but the fulfilment of human life. Inasmuch as the human life thus consecrated and fulfilled is the same in us as in Jesus, and inasmuch as his consecration and fulfilment makes morally possible for us the same consecration and fulfilment of it which he achieved, therefore his atonement and his sacrifice, and incidentally his suffering, become vicarious. It is not that they make unnecessary, but that they make possible and successful in us, the same processes which were perfect in him.”
(c) The theory furnishes no proper reason for Christ's suffering. While it shows that the Savior necessarily suffers from his contact with human sin and sorrow, it gives no explanation of that constitution of the universe which makes suffering the consequence of sin, not only to the sinner, but also to the innocent being who comes into connection with sin. The holiness of God, which is manifested in this constitution of things and which requires this atonement, is entirely ignored.
B. W. Lockhart, in a recent statement of the doctrine of the atonement, shows this defect of apprehension: “God in Christ reconciled the world to himself; Christ did not reconcile God to man, but man to God. Christ did not enable God to save men; God enabled Christ to save men. The sufferings of Christ were vicarious as the highest illustration of that spiritual law by which the good soul is impelled to suffer that others may not suffer, to die that others may not die. The vicarious sufferings of Jesus were also the great revelation to man of the vicarious nature of God; a revelation of the cross as eternal in his nature; that it is in the heart of God to bear the sin and sorrow of his creatures in his eternal love and pity; a revelation moreover that the law which saves the lost through the vicarious labors of godlike souls prevails wherever the godlike and the lost soul can influence each other.”
While there is much in the above statement with which we agree, we charge it with misapprehending the reason for Christ's suffering. That reason is to be found only in that holiness of God which expresses itself in the very constitution of the universe. Not love but holiness has made suffering invariably to follow sin, so that penalty falls not only upon the transgressor but upon him who is the life and sponsor of the transgressor. God's holiness brings suffering to God, and to Christ who manifests God. Love bears the suffering, but it is holiness that necessitates it. The statement of Lockhart above gives account of the effect—reconciliation; but it fails to recognize the cause—propitiation. The words of E. G. Robinson furnish the needed complement: “The work of Christ has two sides, propitiatory and reconciling. Christ felt the pang of association with a guilty race. The divine displeasure rested on him as possessing the guilty nature. In his own person he redeems this nature by bearing its penalty. Propitiation must precede reconciliation. The Moral Influence theory recognizes the necessity of a subjective change in man, but makes no provision of an objective agency to secure it.”
(d) It contradicts the plain teachings of Scripture, that the atonement is necessary, not simply to reveal God's love, but to satisfy his justice; that Christ's sufferings are propitiatory and penal; and that the human conscience needs to be propitiated by Christ's sacrifice, before it can feel the moral influence of his sufferings.
That the atonement is primarily an offering to God, and not to the sinner, appears from Eph. 5:2—“gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God”; Heb. 9:14,—“offered himself without blemish unto God.” Conscience, the reflection of God's holiness, can be propitiated only by propitiating holiness itself. Mere love and sympathy are maudlin, and powerless to move, unless there is a background of righteousness. Spear: “An appeal to man, without anything back of it to emphasize and enforce the appeal, will never touch the heart. The mere appearance of an atonement has no moral influence.” Crawford, Atonement, 358-367—“Instead of delivering us from penalty, in order to deliver us from sin, this theory made Christ to deliver us from sin, in order that he may deliver us from penalty. But this reverses the order of Scripture. And Dr. Bushnell concedes, in the end, that the moral view of the atonement is morally powerless; and that the Objective view he condemns is, after all, indispensable to the salvation of sinners.”
Some men are quite ready to forgive those whom they have offended. The Ritschlian school sees no guilt to be atoned for, and no propitiation to be necessary. Only man needs to be reconciled. Ritschlians are quite ready to forgive God. The only atonement is an atonement, made by repentance, to the human conscience. Shedd says well: “All that is requisite in order to satisfaction and peace of conscience in the sinful soul is also requisite in order to the satisfaction of God himself.” Walter Besant: “It is not enough to be forgiven,—one has also to forgive one's self.” The converse proposition is yet more true: It is not enough to forgive one's self,—one has also to be forgiven; indeed, one cannot rightly forgive one's self, unless one has been first forgiven; 1 John 3:20—“if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 201—“As the high priest carried the blood into the Holy of Holies under the old dispensation, so does the Spirit take the blood of Christ into the inner sanctuary of our spirit in the new dispensation, in order that he may ‘cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God’ (Heb. 9:14).”