Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

The Ethical theory holds that the necessity of the atonement is grounded in the holiness of God, of which conscience in man is a finite reflection. There is an ethical principle in the divine nature, which demands that sin shall be punished. Aside from its results, sin is essentially ill-deserving. As we who are made in God's image mark our growth in purity by the increasing quickness with which we detect impurity, and the increasing hatred which we feel toward it, so infinite purity is a consuming fire to all iniquity. As there is an ethical demand in our natures that not only others' wickedness, but our own wickedness, be visited with punishment, and a keen conscience cannot rest till it has made satisfaction to justice for its misdeeds, so there is an ethical demand of God's nature that penalty follow sin.

The holiness of God has conscience and penalty for its correlates and consequences. Gordon, Christ of To-day, 216—“In old Athens, the rock on whose top sat the Court of the Areopagus, representing the highest reason and the best character of the Athenian state, had underneath it the Cave of the Furies.” Shakespeare knew human nature and he bears witness to its need of atonement. In his last Will and Testament he writes: “First, I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of life everlasting.” Richard III, 1:4—“I charge you, as you hope to have redemption By Christ's dear blood shed for our grievous sins, That you depart and lay no hands on me.” Richard II, 4:1—“The world's Ransom, blessed Mary's Son.”Henry VI, 2d part, 3:2—“That dread King took our state upon him, To free us from [pg 752]his Father's wrathful curse.” Henry IV, 1st part, 1:1—“Those holy fields, Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed For our advantage on the bitter Cross.” Measure for Measure, 2:2—“Why, all the souls that are were forfeit once; And he that might the vantage best have took Found out the remedy.” Henry VI, 2d part, 1:1—“Now, by the death of him that died for all!”All's Well that Ends Well, 3:4—“What angel shall Bless this unworthy husband? He cannot thrive Unless her prayers, whom heaven delights to hear And loves to grant, reprieve him from the wrath Of greatest justice.” See a good statement of the Ethical theory of the Atonement in its relation to God's holiness, in Denney, Studies in Theology, 100-124.

Punishment is the constitutional reaction of God's being against moral evil—the self-assertion of infinite holiness against its antagonist and would-be destroyer. In God this demand is devoid of all passion, and is consistent with infinite benevolence. It is a demand that cannot be evaded, since the holiness from which it springs is unchanging. The atonement is therefore a satisfaction of the ethical demand of the divine nature, by the substitution of Christ's penal sufferings for the punishment of the guilty.

John Wessel, a Reformer before the Reformation (1419-1489): “Ipse deus, ipse sacerdos, ipse hostia, pro se, de se, sibi satisfecit”—“Himself being at the same time God, priest, and sacrificial victim, he made satisfaction to himself, for himself [i. e., for the sins of men to whom he had united himself], and by himself [by his own sinless sufferings].” Quarles's Emblems: “O groundless deeps! O love beyond degree! The Offended dies, to set the offender free!”

Spurgeon, Autobiography, 1:98—“When I was in the hand of the Holy Spirit, under conviction of sin, I had a clear and sharp sense of the justice of God. Sin, whatever it might be to other people, became to me an intolerable burden. It was not so much that I feared hell, as that I feared sin; and all the while I had upon my mind a deep concern for the honor of God's name and the integrity of his moral government. I felt that it would not satisfy my conscience if I could be forgiven unjustly. But then there came the question: ‘How could God be just, and yet justify me who had been so guilty?’... The doctrine of the atonement is to my mind one of the surest proofs of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. Who would or could have thought of the just Ruler dying for the unjust rebel?”

This substitution is unknown to mere law, and above and beyond the powers of law. It is an operation of grace. Grace, however, does not violate or suspend law, but takes it up into itself and fulfils it. The righteousness of law is maintained, in that the source of all law, the judge and punisher, himself voluntarily submits to bear the penalty, and bears it in the human nature that has sinned.

Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 221—“In conscience, man condemns and is condemned. Christ was God in the flesh, both priest and sacrificial victim (Heb. 9:12). He is ‘full of grace’—forgiving grace—but he is ‘full of truth’ also, and so ‘the only-begotten from the Father’ (John 1:14). Not forgiveness that ignores sin, not justice that has no mercy. He forgave the sinner, because he bore the sin.” Kaftan, referring to some modern theologians who have returned to the old doctrine but who have said that the basis of the atonement is, not the juridical idea of punishment, but the ethical idea of propitiation, affirms as follows: “On the contrary the highest ethical idea of propitiation is just that of punishment. Take this away, and propitiation becomes nothing but the inferior and unworthy idea of appeasing the wrath of an incensed deity. Precisely the idea of the vicarious suffering of punishment is the idea which must in some way be brought to a full expression for the sake of the ethical consciousness.

“The conscience awakened by God can accept no forgiveness which is not experienced as at the same time a condemnation of sin.... Jesus, though he was without sin and deserved no punishment, took upon himself all the evils which have come into the world as the consequence and punishment of sin, even to the shameful death on the Cross at the hand of sinners.... Consequently for the good of man he bore all that [pg 753]which man had deserved, and thereby has man escaped the final eternal punishment and has become a child of God.... This is not merely a subjective conclusion upon the related facts, but it is as objective and real as anything which faith recognizes and knows.”

Thus the atonement answers the ethical demand of the divine nature that sin be punished if the offender is to go free. The interests of the divine government are secured as a first subordinate result of this satisfaction to God himself, of whose nature the government is an expression; while, as a second subordinate result, provision is made for the needs of human nature,—on the one hand the need of an objective satisfaction to its ethical demand of punishment for sin, and on the other the need of a manifestation of divine love and mercy that will affect the heart and move it to repentance.

The great classical passage with reference to the atonement is 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; for the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season: that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith is Jesus.” Or, somewhat more freely translated, the passage would read:—“whom God hath set forth in his blood as a propitiatory sacrifice, through faith, to show forth his righteousness on account of the pretermission of past offenses in the forbearance of God; to declare his righteousness in the time now present, so that he may be just and yet may justify him who believeth in Jesus.”