Systematic Theology (Volume 2 of 3)

by Augustus Hopkins Strong

2. That of R. W. Dale (Atonement, 265-440). This holds that Christ is responsible for human sin because, as the Upholder and Life of all, he is naturally one with all men, and is spiritually one with all believers (Acts 17:28—“in him we live, and move, and have our being”; Col. 1:17—“in him all things consist”; John 14:20—“I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you”). If Christ's bearing our sins, however, is to be explained by the union of the believer with Christ, the effect is made to explain the cause, and Christ could have died only for the elect (see a review of Dale, in Brit. Quar. Rev., Apr., 1876:221-225). The union of Christ with the race by creation—a union which recognizes Christ's purity and man's sin—still remains as a most valuable element of truth in the theory of Dr. Dale.

3. That of Edward Irving. Christ has a corrupted nature, an inborn infirmity and depravity, which he gradually overcomes. But the Scriptures, on the contrary, assert his holiness and separateness from sinners. (See references, on pages [744-747].)

4. That of John Miller, Theology, 114-128; also in his chapter: Was Christ in Adam? in Questions Awakened by the Bible. Christ, as to his human nature, although created pure, was yet, as one of Adam's posterity, conceived of as a sinner in Adam. To him attached “the guilt of the act in which all men stood together in a federal relation.... He was decreed to be guilty for the sins of all mankind.” Although there is a truth contained in this statement, it is vitiated by Miller's federalism and creatianism. Arbitrary imputation and legal fiction do not help us here. We need such an actual union of Christ with humanity, and such a derivation of the substance of his being, by natural generation from Adam, as will make him not simply the constructive heir, but the natural heir, of the guilt of the race. We come, therefore, to what we regard as the true view, namely:

5. That the humanity of Christ was not a new creation, but was derived from Adam, through Mary his mother; so that Christ, so far as his humanity was concerned, was in Adam just as we were, and had the same race-responsibility with ourselves. As Adam's descendant, he was responsible for Adam's sin, like every other member of the race; the chief difference being, that while we inherit from Adam both guilt and depravity, he whom the Holy Spirit purified, inherited not the depravity, but only the guilt. Christ took to himself, not sin (depravity), but the consequences of sin. In him there was abolition of sin, without abolition of obligation to suffer for sin; while in the believer, there is abolition of obligation to suffer, without abolition of sin itself.

The justice of Christ's sufferings has been imperfectly illustrated by the obligation of the silent partner of a business firm to pay debts of the firm which he did not personally contract; or by the obligation of the husband to pay the debts of his wife; or by the obligation of a purchasing country to assume the debts of the province which it purchases (Wm. Ashmore). There have been men who have spent the strength of a lifetime in clearing off the indebtedness of an insolvent father, long since deceased. They recognized an organic unity of the family, which morally, if not legally, made their father's liabilities their own. So, it is said, Christ recognized the organic unity of the race, and saw that, having become one of that sinning race, he had involved himself in all its liabilities, even to the suffering of death, the great penalty of sin.

The fault of all the analogies just mentioned is that they are purely commercial. A transference of pecuniary obligation is easier to understand than a transference of criminal liability. I cannot justly bear another's penalty, unless I can in some way share his guilt. The theory we advocate shows how such a sharing of our guilt on the part of Christ was possible. All believers in substitution hold that Christ bore our guilt: “My soul looks back to see The burdens thou didst bear When hanging on the accursed tree, And hopes her guilt was there.” But we claim that, by virtue of Christ's union with humanity, that guilt was not only an imputed, but also an imparted, guilt.

With Christ's obligation to suffer, there were connected two other, though minor, results of his assumption of humanity: first, the longing to suffer; and secondly, the inevitableness of his suffering. He felt the longing to suffer which perfect love to God must feel, in view of the demands upon the race, of that holiness of God which he loved more than he loved the race itself; which perfect love to man must feel, in view of the fact that bearing the penalty of man's sin was the only way to save him. Hence we see Christ pressing forward to the cross with such majestic determination that the [pg 760]disciples were amazed and afraid (Mark 10:32). Hence we hear him saying: “With desire have I desired to eat this passover” (Luke 23:15); “I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50).

Here is the truth in Campbell's theory of the atonement. Christ is the great Penitent before God, making confession of the sin of the race, which others of that race could neither see nor feel. But the view we present is a larger and completer one than that of Campbell, in that it makes this confession and reparation obligatory upon Christ, as Campbell's view does not, and recognizes the penal nature of Christ's sufferings, which Campbell's view denies. Lias, Atonement, 79—“The head of a clan, himself intensely loyal to his king, finds that his clan have been involved in rebellion. The more intense and perfect his loyalty, the more thorough his nobleness of heart and affection for his people, the more inexcusable and flagrant the rebellion of those for whom he pleads,—the more acute would be his agony, as their representative and head. Nothing would be more true to human nature, in the best sense of those words, than that the conflict between loyalty to his king and affection for his vassals should induce him to offer his life for theirs, to ask that the punishment they deserved should be inflicted on him.”

The second minor consequence of Christ's assumption of humanity was, that, being such as he was, he could not help suffering; in other words, the obligatory and the desired were also the inevitable. Since he was a being of perfect purity, contact with the sin of the race, of which he was a member, necessarily involved an actual suffering, of an intenser kind than we can conceive. Sin is self-isolating, but love and righteousness have in them the instinct of human unity. In Christ all the nerves and sensibilities of humanity met. He was the only healthy member of the race. When life returns to a frozen limb, there is pain. So Christ, as the only sensitive member of a benumbed and stupefied humanity, felt all the pangs of shame and suffering which rightfully belonged to sinners; but which they could not feel, simply because of the depth of their depravity. Because Christ was pure, yet had united himself to a sinful and guilty race, therefore “it must needs be that Christ should suffer” (A. V.) or, “it behooved the Christ to suffer” (Rev. Vers., Acts 17:3); see also John 3:14—“so must the Son of man be lifted up”—“The Incarnation, under the actual circumstances of humanity, carried with it the necessity of the Passion” (Westcott, in Bib. Com., in loco).

Compare John Woolman's Journal, 4, 5—“O Lord, my God, the amazing horrors of darkness were gathered about me, and covered me all over, and I saw no way to go forth; I felt the depth and extent of the misery of my fellow creatures, separated from the divine harmony, and it was greater than I could bear, and I was crushed down under it; I lifted up my head, I stretched out my arm, but there was none to help me; I looked round about, and was amazed. In the depths of misery, I remembered that thou art omnipotent and that I had called thee Father.” He had vision of a “dull, gloomy mass,” darkening half the heavens, and he was told that it was “human beings, in as great misery as they could be and live; and he was mixed with them, and henceforth he might not consider himself a distinct and separate being.”