Irving's followers differ in their representation of his views. Says Miller, Hist. and Doct. of Irvingism, 1:85—“If indeed we made Christ a sinner, then indeed all creeds are at an end and we are worthy to die the death of blasphemers.... The miraculous conception depriveth him of human personality, and it also depriveth him of original sin and guilt needing to be atoned for by another, but it doth not deprive him of the substance of sinful flesh and blood,—that is, flesh and blood the same with the flesh and blood of his brethren.” 2:14—Freer says: “So that, despite it was fallen flesh he had assumed, he was, through the Eternal Spirit, born into the world ‘the Holy Thing’.”11-15, 282-305—“Unfallen humanity needed not redemption, therefore, Jesus did not take it. He took fallen humanity, but purged it in the act of taking it. The nature of which he took part was sinful in the lump, but in his person most holy.”
So, says an Irvingian tract, “Being part of the very nature that had incurred the penalty of sin, though in his person never having committed or even thought it, part [pg 745]of the common humanity could suffer that penalty, and did so suffer, to make atonement for that nature, though he who took it knew no sin.” Dr. Curry, quoted in McClintock and Strong, Encyclopædia, 4:663, 664—“The Godhead came into vital union with humanity fallen and under the law. The last thought carried, to Irving's realistic mode of thinking, the notion of Christ's participation in the fallen character of humanity, which he designated by terms that implied a real sinfulness in Christ. He attempted to get rid of the odiousness of that idea, by saying that this was overborne, and at length wholly expelled, by the indwelling Godhead.”
We must regard the later expounders of Irvingian doctrine as having softened down, if they have not wholly expunged, its most characteristic feature, as the following notation from Irving's own words will show: Works, 5:115—“That Christ took our fallen nature, is most manifest, because there was no other in existence to take.” 123—“The human nature is thoroughly fallen; the mere apprehension of it by the Son doth not make it holy.” 128—“His soul did mourn and grieve and pray to God continually, that it might be delivered from the mortality, corruption, and temptation which it felt in its fleshly tabernacle.” 152—“These sufferings came not by imputation merely, but by actual participation of the sinful and cursed thing.” Irving frequently quoted Heb. 2:10—“make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”
Irving's followers deny Christ's sinfulness, only by assuming that inborn infirmity and congenital tendencies to evil are not sin,—in other words, that not native depravity, but only actual transgression, is to be denominated sin. Irving, in our judgment, was rightly charged with asserting the sinfulness of Christ's human nature, and it was upon this charge that he was deposed from the ministry by the Presbytery in Scotland.
Irving was of commanding stature, powerful voice, natural and graceful oratory. He loved the antique and the grand. For a time in London he was the great popular sensation. But shortly after the opening of his new church in Regent's Square in 1827, he found that fashion had taken its departure and that his church was no longer crowded. He concluded that the world was under the reign of Satan; he became a fanatical millennarian; he gave himself wholly to the study of prophecy. In 1830 he thought the apostolic gifts were revived, and he held to the hope of a restoration of the primitive church, although he himself was relegated to a comparatively subordinate position. He exhausted his energies, and died at the age of forty-two. “If I had married Irving,” said Mrs. Thomas Carlyle, “there would have been no tongues.”
To this theory we offer the following objections:
(a) While it embraces an important element of truth, namely, the fact of a new humanity in Christ of which all believers become partakers, it is chargeable with serious error in denying the objective atonement which makes the subjective application possible.
Bruce, in his Humiliation of Christ, calls this a theory of “redemption by sample.”It is a purely subjective atonement which Irving has in mind. Deliverance from sin, in order to deliverance from penalty, is an exact reversal of the Scripture order. Yet this deliverance from sin, to Irving's view, was to be secured in an external and mechanical way. He held that it was the Old Testament economy which should abide, while the New Testament economy should pass away. This is Sacramentarianism, or dependence upon the external rite, rather than upon the internal grace, as essential to salvation. The followers of Irving are Sacramentarians. The crucifix and candles, incense and gorgeous vestments, a highly complicated and symbolic ritual, they regard as a necessary accompaniment of religion. They feel the need of external authority, visible and permanent, but one that rests upon inspiration and continual supernatural help. They do not find this authority, as the Romanists do, in the Pope,—they find it in their new Apostles and Prophets. The church can never be renewed, as they think, except by the restoration of all the ministering orders mentioned in Eph. 4:11—“apostles ... prophets ... evangelists ... pastors ... teachers.” But the N. T. mark of an apostle is that Christ has appeared to him. Irving's apostles cannot stand this test. See Luthardt, Erinnerungen aus vergangenen Tagen, 237.
(b) It rests upon false fundamental principles,—as, that law is identical with the natural order of the universe, and as such, is an exhaustive expression of the will and nature of God; that sin is merely a power of moral evil within the soul, instead of also involving an objective guilt and desert of [pg 746] punishment; that penalty is the mere reaction of law against the transgressor, instead of being also the revelation of a personal wrath against sin; that the evil taint of human nature can be extirpated by suffering its natural consequences,—penalty in this way reforming the transgressor.
Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:463 (Syst. Doct., 3:361, 362)—“On Irving's theory, evil inclinations are not sinful. Sinfulness belongs only to evil acts. The loose connection between the Logos and humanity savors of Nestorianism. It is the work of the personto rid itself of something in the humanity which does not render it really sinful. If Jesus' sinfulness of nature did not render his person sinful, this must be true of us,—which is a Pelagian element, revealed also in the denial that for our redemption we need Christ as an atoning sacrifice. It is not necessary to a complete incarnation for Christ to take a sinful nature, unless sin is essential to human nature. In Irving's view, the death of Christ's body works the regeneration of his sinful nature. But this is to make sin a merely physical thing, and the body the only part of man needing redemption.”Penalty would thus become a reformer, and death a Savior.