Dr. A. C. McGiffert says of Christ, that He is no more divine than we are, or than nature is.
A magazine article on “The Cosmic Coming of the Christ” says: First the little scum on the warm, stagnant water, then the little colonies of cells, the organisms, the green moss and lichen, the beauty of vegetation, the movement of shell fish, sponges, jelly fish, worms, crabs, trilobites, centipedes, insects, fish, frogs, lizards, dinosaurs, reptile birds, birds, kangaroos, mastodons, deer, apes, primitive man, cave man, man of the stone age, of earliest history, Abraham's migration, the Exodus, the development of the Jewish religious life and the climax in that purest of maidens, Mary of Nazareth. The hour had come for the dawn of a new day, and the light of that new day was the birth of Jesus. The eternal purpose of the ages was now to be made clear, and the long, long aeons of creation explained.
It is no wonder that after quoting these words the “Sunday School Times” exclaims: In other words, without moss we could not have had Mary; without an ape we could not have had Abraham; and—shocking blasphemy—without a centipede we could not have had Christ! Praise God, we may turn from this to the words of God; "For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will bring to naught."
[p 34] And so here once more the consistent evolutionist is compelled to reject the Bible by denying the doctrines of the Deity and the virgin birth of Christ.
5. The logic of evolution destroys the doctrine of atonement by substitution.
The Bible says: Without the shedding of blood there is no remission [of sin]. Him who knew no sin He hath made to be sin for us. The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree. We "were redeemed ... with the precious blood of Christ." We are "justified by His blood." The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
These and many other statements make Christ’s death one of atonement by substitution for our sins.
But evolution cannot tolerate such a doctrine. To the evolutionist this is a “doctrine of the shambles,” a “slaughter house religion,” a “gospel of gore.” Christ’s death is rather a revelation of the evolutionist’s conception of divine love, and an example of sacrificial service set before struggling man to help him climb. Let those who believe in the evolutionist’s “historical“ method of interpreting Scripture speak for themselves.
Dr. Gerald Birney Smith, of the University of Chicago, says: To insist dogmatically, as an à priori principle, that "without the shedding of blood there is no [p 35] remission of sin," is both foolish and futile in an age that has abandoned the conception of bloody sacrifice and which is loudly demanding the abolition of capital punishment.
Dr. Walter Rauschenbusch said: What the death of Jesus now does for us, the death of the prophets did for him.