Our Unitarian Gospel

by Minot J. Savage

Now it is supposed that God must invent some scheme by which to make it possible for him to save these lost and fallen men. If you read the parable of the Prodigal Son as Jesus has so tenderly, touchingly, beautifully outlined it for us, you will see that there is no thought or plan or necessity for either in that. The son left his home, followed the impulses and passions of youth, had gone among those that were degraded, had soiled his character, done despite to his father's love, injured his own nature, degraded himself by his associations and actions. But when at last he awakes, becomes conscious of his father's love and righteousness and truth, and says, "I will arise, and go to my father," there is no talk of God's not being ready to receive him, or not being able to receive him, or needing to have something done before he can receive him, no thought of anybody's suffering any more in order that he may be forgiven. You see all these elements that are associated with the popular doctrines of atonement are not once thought of, never even alluded to. He simply arises, and goes to his father; and his father is so anxious to help him that he goes to meet him before he reaches the father's house, and gladly falls on his neck and kisses him and folds him in his arms. It only needs that the son should recognize the righteousness and goodness of his father, and should wish to go back. That is the doctrine of Jesus as taught in this wonderfully sweet and beautiful parable.

Now what are the theories of atonement as outlined in the popular theology? For the first thousand years of Christian history one of the strangest conceptions possessed the ecclesiastical mind that has ever been dreamed of. It was held literally that through the sin of Adam the human race had become the rightful subjects of Satan, that they belonged to him. He was their king, their emperor, their ruler, and had a right to them in this world and the next. And so some diplomatic negotiations must be entered into with the Devil, in order to deliver a certain part of these his subjects, and open the way for them to be saved. So the Church Fathers taught that Satan recognized in Christ his old adversary in heaven, and he entered into a bargain with God that, if he could have Christ delivered over to him, in exchange for that he would give up his right to so many of the souls of men as were to be saved as the result of this compact. So the work of the atonement used to be preached as being this sort of bargain entered into with Satan.

But note what quaint, naive ideas possessed the minds of people at that time. Satan did not know that Jesus possessed a divine nature, and that, consequently, he could not beholden of death; and so, when he entered into this bargain, he was cheated, he found out to his dismay that he had lost not only humanity, but Christ also, had been defrauded of them both. This was the doctrine of the atonement that was preached during the early centuries of the Christian Church, at least in certain parts of Europe.

But later there came another doctrine, the belief that the sufferings of the Christ were a substitute offered to God for what would have been the sufferings of the lost. He was made sin for us, he who had known no sin, as the New Testament phraseology has it. So that he, being infinite, in a brief space of time during his little earthly career, during his suspension on the cross and his descent into hell, was able to suffer as much pain as all the lost would have suffered throughout eternity. And this suffering of the Christ was supposed to be accepted on the part of God as the substitute for that which he would have exacted on the part of the souls of those that for his sake were to be saved.

There is still another theory that I must mention briefly, that which is called the governmental theory, that which I was taught during my course of theological instruction. The idea was that God had a moral government to maintain, not only on this earth, but throughout the range of the universe among all his intelligent creatures, and, if he permitted his laws to be broken without exacting an adequate penalty, then all governmental authority would be overthrown. In other words, men took their poor human legal devices, their political ideals, and lifted them into the heavens, made them the models after which it was supposed God was to govern his great, intelligent universe.

So they said that God would be willing to forgive, he would like to forgive, he was loving and tender and kind, but it was not safe, safe for the interests of his universal government, for him to forgive any one until an adequate penalty had been paid in expiation of human sin.

You see, according to this theory, it does not apparently make much difference who it is that suffers, whether it is the person who has committed the sin or not; but somebody must pay an adequate penalty, and Jesus volunteered to do this, to be the victim, and so to deliver man from the righteous deserts which he had incurred as a transgressor of the law of God.

Gradually, however, as the world became civilized, as wider and broader thoughts manifested themselves in the human mind, as tenderer and truer feelings took possession of the human heart, these theories receded into the background; and there came to the front I remember the bitter controversies over it in my younger days what was called the Moral Theory of the Atonement. The originator and sponsor for this theory was the famous Dr. Horace Bushnell, of Hartford. He taught that God did not need the punishment of anybody to uphold the integrity of his moral government. He taught that God was not angry with the race, and did not care to exact a penalty before he was ready to forgive human sin. He taught that the inner nature of God was love, and that in the Second Person of the Trinity he came to earth, was born, grew up, taught, suffered, died, as a manifestation to the world of his love, of his goodness, of his readiness to forgive and help, and that the efficacy of the atonement as thus wrought on the part of the Christ was in its revelation to men of the love and saving power of righteousness.

This was the moral theory of the atonement. It was not supposed to work any result in the nature of God or his disposition towards men. Its effect was to work along the lines of human thought and human action: it was to affect men, and make them willing to be saved instead of making God willing to save them. This was the moral theory of the atonement; and you will see how it gradually approaches that which intelligent and free men, it seems to me, must hold to-day in the light of their careful study of human history and human nature. It is almost the theory which is being held by the freest and noblest men of to-day. The difference between it and that which I shall in a moment try to set forth is chiefly that Dr. Bushnell confines this work of the atonement to the person and history and character of one man instead of letting all men share in this divine and atoning work which is being wrought out through all the ages.

Let me now come to set forth what I believe to be the simple and demonstrated truth. My objections against this old theory are threefold. I will mention them, and have done with them in a word.