(f) The actual power of the atonement over the human conscience and heart is due, not to its exhibiting God's regard for law, but to its exhibiting an actual execution of law, and an actual satisfaction of violated holiness made by Christ in the sinner's stead.
Whiton, Gloria Patri, 143, 144, claims that Christ is the propitiation for our sins only by bringing peace to the conscience and satisfying the divine demand that is felt therein. Whiton regards the atonement not as a governmental work outside of us, but as an educational work within. Aside from the objection that this view merges God's transcendence in his immanence, we urge the words of Matthew Henry: “Nothing can satisfy an offended conscience but that which satisfied an offended God.” C. J. Baldwin: “The lake spread out has no moving power; it turns the mill-wheel only when contracted into the narrow stream and pouring over the fall. So the wide love of God moves men, only when it is concentrated into the sacrifice of the cross.”
(g) The theory contradicts all those passages of Scripture which represent the atonement as necessary; as propitiating God himself; as being a revelation of God's righteousness; as being an execution of the penalty of the law; as making salvation a matter of debt to the believer, on the ground of what Christ has done; as actually purging our sins, instead of making that purging possible; as not simply assuring the sinner that God may now pardon him on account of what Christ has done, but that Christ has actually wrought out a complete salvation, and will bestow it upon all who come to him.
John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, chapter vi—“Upon that place stood a Cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a Sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the Sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death. Then he stood still awhile to look and wonder; for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the Cross should thus ease him of his burden.”
John Bunyan's story is truer to Christian experience than is the Governmental [pg 744]theory. The sinner finds peace, not by coming to God with a distant respect to Christ, but by coming directly to the “Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Christ's words to every conscious sinner are simply: “Come unto me” (Mat. 11:28). Upon the ground of what Christ has done, salvation is a matter of debt to the believer. 1 John 1:9—“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins”—faithful to his promise, and righteous to Christ. The Governmental theory, on the other hand, tends to discourage the sinner's direct access to Christ, and to render the way to conscious acceptance with God more circuitous and less certain.
When The Outlook says: “Not even to the Son of God must we come instead of coming to God,” we can see only plain denial of the validity of Christ's demands and promises, for he demands immediate submission when he bids the sinner follow him, and he promises immediate salvation when he assures all who come to him that he will not cast them out. The theory of Grotius is legal and speculative, but it is not Scriptural, nor does it answer the needs of human nature. For criticism of Albert Barnes's doctrine, see Watts, New Apologetic, 210-300. For criticism of the Grotian theory in general, see Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:347-369; Crawford, Atonement, 367; Cunningham, Hist. Theology, 2:355; Princeton Essays, 1:259-292; Essay on Atonement, by Abp. Thomson, in Aids to Faith; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 194-196; S. H. Tyng, Christian Pastor; Charles Hodge, Essays, 129-184; Lidgett, Spir. Prin. of Atonement, 151-154.
4th. The Irvingian Theory, or Theory of Gradually Extirpated Depravity.
This holds that, in his incarnation, Christ took human nature as it was in Adam, not before the Fall, but after the Fall,—human nature, therefore, with its inborn corruption and predisposition to moral evil; that, notwithstanding the possession of this tainted and depraved nature, Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit, or of his divine nature, not only kept his human nature from manifesting itself in any actual or personal sin, but gradually purified it, through struggle and suffering, until in his death he completely extirpated its original depravity, and reunited it to God. This subjective purification of human nature in the person of Jesus Christ constitutes his atonement, and men are saved, not by any objective propitiation, but only by becoming through faith partakers of Christ's new humanity. This theory was elaborated by Edward Irving, of London (1792-1834), and it has been held, in substance, by Menken and Dippel in Germany.
Irving was in this preceded by Felix of Urgella, in Spain († 818), whom Alcuin opposed. Felix said that the Logos united with human nature, without sanctifying it beforehand. Edward Irving, in his early life colleague of Dr. Chalmers, at Glasgow, was in his later years a preacher, in London, of the National Church of Scotland. For his own statement of his view of the Atonement, see his Collected Works, 5:9-398. See also Life of Irving, by Mrs. Oliphant; Menken, Schriften, 3:279-404; 6:351 sq.; Guericke, in Studien und Kritiken, 1843: Heft 2; David Brown, in Expositor, Oct. 1887:264 sq., and letter of Irving to Marcus Dods, in British Weekly, Mch. 25, 1887. For other references, see Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:496-498.