Grotius used the word acceptilatio, by which he meant God's sovereign provision of a suffering which was not itself penalty, but which he had determined to accept as a substitute for penalty. Here we have a virtual denial that there is anything in God's nature that requires Christ to suffer; for if penalty may be remitted in part, it may be remitted in whole, and the reason why Christ suffers at all is to be found, not in any demand of God's holiness, but solely in the beneficial influence of these sufferings upon [pg 741]man; so that in principle this theory is allied to the Example theory and the Moral Influence theory, already mentioned.
Notice the difference between holding to a substitute for penalty, as Grotius did, and holding to an equivalent substituted penalty, as the Scriptures do. Grotius's own statement of his view may be found in his Defensio Fidei Catholicæ de Satisfactione (Works, 4:297-338). More modern statements of it are those of Wardlaw, in his Systematic Theology, 2:358-395, and of Albert Barnes, on the Atonement. The history of New England thought upon the subject is given in Discourses and Treatises on the Atonement, edited by Prof. Park, of Andover. President Woolsey: “Christ's suffering was due to a deep and awful sense of responsibility, a conception of the supreme importance to man of his standing firm at this crisis. He bore, not the wrath of God, but suffering, as the only way of redemption so far as men's own feeling of sin was concerned, and so far as the government of God was concerned.” This unites the Governmental and the Moral Influence theories.
Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 226, 227—“Grotius emphasized the idea of law rather than that of justice, and made the sufferings of Christ a legal example and the occasion of the relaxation of the law, and not the strict penalty demanded by justice. But this view, however it may have been considered and have served in the clarification of the thinking of the times, met with no general reception, and left little trace of itself among those theologians who maintained the line of evangelical theological descent.”
To this theory we urge the following objections:
(a) While it contains a valuable element of truth, namely, that the sufferings and death of Christ secure the interests of God's government, it is false by defect, in substituting for the chief aim of the atonement one which is only subordinate and incidental.
In our discussion of Penalty (pages [655], [656]), we have seen that the object of punishment is not primarily the security of government. It is not right to punish a man for the beneficial effect on society. Ill-desert must go before punishment, or the punishment can have no beneficial effect on society. No punishment can work good to society, that is not just and right in itself.
(b) It rests upon false philosophical principles,—as, that utility is the ground of moral obligation; that law is an expression of the will, rather than of the nature, of God; that the aim of penalty is to deter from the commission of offences; and that righteousness is resolvable into benevolence.
Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:573-581; 3:188, 189—“For God to take that as satisfaction which is not really such, is to say that there is no truth in anything. God may take a part for the whole, error for truth, wrong for right. The theory really denies the necessity for the work of Christ. If every created thing offered to God is worth just so much as God accepts it for, then the blood of bulls and goats might take away sins, and Christ is dead in vain.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:570, 571 (Syst. Doct., 4:38-40)—“Acceptilatioimplies that nothing is good and right in itself. God is indifferent to good or evil. Man is bound by authority and force alone. There is no necessity of punishment or atonement. The doctrine of indulgences and of supererogation logically follows.”
(c) It ignores and virtually denies that immanent holiness of God of which the law with its threatened penalties, and the human conscience with its demand for punishment, are only finite reflections. There is something back of government; if the atonement satisfies government, it must be by satisfying that justice of God of which government is an expression.
No deeply convicted sinner feels that his controversy is with government. Undone and polluted, he feels himself in antagonism to the purity of a personal God. Government is not greater than God, but less. What satisfies God must satisfy government. Hence the sinner prays: “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned” (Ps. 51:4); “God be propitiated toward me the sinner” (literal translation of Luke 18:13),—propitiated through God's own appointed sacrifice whose smoke is ascending in his behalf even while he prays.