+The Hebrews theory.+—The epistle to the Hebrews belongs to quite a different category from the writings of St. Paul. The dominant thought in this epistle is that of salvation by sacrifice, a perfectly true and spiritual idea, as we have already seen. The writer, like Paul, employs Old Testament symbolism, but in quite a different way. Probably this is due to the fact that he was an Alexandrian Jew whose thinking was shaped under the influence of Philo, whereas that of Paul was governed by the rabbinical schools of Palestinian Judaism. At this time Alexandria was the greatest intellectual centre in the world, a meeting place for Greek thought and Hebrew religion as represented by Philo. The influence of Alexandria is plainly to be seen in the epistle to the Hebrews, which, possibly, was written by the learned and courtly Apollos. Like Paul, the writer thinks of salvation as getting right with God and living a holy life, but he omits all reference to a judicial penalty, or the necessity for escaping annihilation by faith in the substitutionary work of a sinless Redeemer. In his view Christ is from first to last the priestly representative of the race, making a sacrifice to God after the Old Testament fashion, but in a more perfect way. He regards the Old Testament sacrificial offerings as being but the types and shadows of the one perfect and eternal offering which humanity through Christ is making to God. Most of my readers will at once admit that this is not fanciful, although the language in which it is expressed is so different from our own; it is quite faithful to the spiritual meaning of Old Testament sacrifice. When, therefore, this writer refers to the offering of the blood of Christ, he is thinking not only of Calvary, but of all that Calvary symbolises, the perfect spiritual offering of mankind to God, the sacramental realisation of our oneness with Him. This view is not worked out with the moral intensity which characterises St. Paul's, but it is unassailably true once we get the writer's point of view. As a theory it is quite different from Paul's, unless we are content to shed Paul's literalism, get rid of all thought of an angry God and a physical death penalty for sin, and betake ourselves instead to the inner spiritual region where self-sacrifice is realised to be the means of saving, not only the individual, but the whole race, by uniting it to the source of all being.
+The Johannine theory.+—There is a certain similarity between the view of Atonement set forth in the epistle to the Hebrews and that contained in the Johannine writings. It is easy to understand why this is so when we recognise that both are dominated by Alexandrian modes of thinking. These Johannine writings—the fourth gospel, the three epistles ascribed to St. John, and the book of Revelation—are all that have come down to us of what was at one time, no doubt, a considerable literature. How much the apostle John had to do with it cannot be determined with any certainty, but it is clear enough that these writings are not all from one hand, and that they are much later than the work of St. Paul. The all-important conception in the Johannine writings is that salvation is secured by the union of the individual soul with the eternal Christ, or Logos, or Divine Man of pre-Christian thought and experience. Here again we have a perfectly true and necessary idea, an idea implied in all spiritual experience worthy of the name; but as the root factor in a presentation of the doctrine of Atonement, it differs widely from Paul's way of putting things. When the Johannine writers speak of the blood of Christ, they mean the outpoured, forthgiven life of the eternal Son of God, the ideal humanity, perfectly and centrally expressed in Jesus of Nazareth. There is not from beginning to end a hint or a suggestion in these writings that a sinless being was tortured in order to appease the wrath of God against guilty ones, or that the penalty of sin in a world to come will be remitted to a penitent sinner in consideration of his faith in such an arrangement.
+Underlying unity.+—This is by no means an exhaustive examination of New Testament teaching on the subject of Atonement, but it should be sufficient to show two things: first, that the theories of the New Testament writers concerning the redeeming works of Christ are not, taken literally, mutually consistent; secondly, the truth implied in all the theories is precisely that truth of Atonement which we have already seen to be implied in all religion. The great thing which impressed the primitive Christian consciousness in regard to the life and death of Jesus was that this life and death were the most complete and consistent self-offering of the individual to the whole that had ever been made. In this self-offering was the one perfect manifestation of the eternal Christ, the humanity which reveals the innermost of God, the humanity which is love. To partake of the benefits of that Atonement we have to unite ourselves to it; that is, to employ the mystical language of St. Paul, we have to die to self with Christ and rise with Him into the experience of larger, fuller life, the life eternal.
It is just the same truth under every one of these different theories, but if we persist in regarding them literally we shall miss it, for by no kind of ingenuity can we square the theory of St. Paul with that of the other writers; the way of putting it is different. But once we see what the essential truth of Atonement is, we are no longer bound by the intellectual symbolism of Paul or Hebrews or any other authority; we can get beneath the symbol to the thing symbolised. The Pauline principle of dying with Christ, the Hebrews idea of the eternal sacrifice manifested in time, the Johannine thought about the outpoured life of the eternal Christ, are all one and the same. Jesus did nothing for us which we are not also called upon to do for ourselves and one another in our degree. Faith in His atoning work means death to self that we may live to God; as selfhood perishes on its Calvary, the Christ, the true man, the divine reality, in whom we are one with all men, rises in power in our hearts and unites us to the source of all goodness and joy. Institutional, forensic, external, the Atonement never has been and never will be. But vicarious suffering, willingly accepted, is the great redeeming force by which the world is gradually being won to its true life in God, for vicarious suffering is the expression of the law that in a finite world the service of the whole involves pain, although it is also the deepest joy that the human heart can know. The sacrifice of Jesus is the central and ideal expression of this principle on the field of time, but it only possesses meaning and value as it is repeated in our lives; the Christ has to be offered perpetually on the altar of human hearts. There is no justification except by becoming just, and no imputed righteousness which means availing ourselves of merits that are not ours. We are "justified by faith," indeed, but only in the sense that no man can become good without believing in goodness, and no man can really believe in the Christ revealed in Jesus without gradually becoming like Him. Here is Atonement, Justification, Sanctification, and all else that is needed to unite mankind to the life eternal which is to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.
+No Old Testament prophecy of Atonement of Jesus.+—It can hardly be necessary to point out that there is therefore no direct reference in the Old Testament to the atoning work of Jesus. All the beautiful passages with which we are so familiar, and which have become the language of devotion in reference to such sacred seasons as Christmas Day and Good Friday, can only be associated with Jesus in an ideal sense. The noble fifty-third of Isaiah, for example, and all similar passages about the prophetic conception of the suffering servant of God, have, literally understood, nothing whatever to do with Jesus. But the striking thing about such passages is that the men who wrote them were able to realise and express the very essence of the spiritual Atonement, the giving of the individual for the race. The pathetic and inspiring description, "He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our faces from him, he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed," is perhaps the grandest presentation of the atoning life, the Christ man, that exists in literature. The ideal fulfilment of it was Jesus, as primitive Christianity quickly saw; but had the original writer no specific example in mind belonging to his own day when he wrote? To be sure he had; the case of Jeremiah would furnish it if no other. This brave and faithful advocate of the moral ideal, after standing alone in his resistance to the materialising tendencies of his time, was scorned and hated by his fellow-countrymen, flung into prison, beaten, tortured, and probably murdered in the end. He shared the captivity of the Jews under Nebuchadnezzar, a captivity against which he had warned them in vain. "Despised and rejected of men," he died, but in later days his name came to be reverenced as perhaps none had ever been before. For centuries afterwards he was referred to by the returned exiles as the prophet, in contradistinction to all other prophets. He had lived the atoning life and died a sacrificial death. It was not wonderful that the author of the fifty-third of Isaiah should have such a noble example in mind when he penned his deathless words, but these words were meant to have an impersonal meaning too. They stand as a description of the ideal manhood, the true servant of God, the saviour of the race in any and every generation. This kind of manhood, just because it is the true manhood, the eternal or divine manhood, must inevitably suffer in a selfish world, but these sufferings are never in vain; they are the Calvary from which the eternal Christ rises in redeeming might over the power of sin and death. Let any man ask himself what it is that is saving the world to-day, and gradually but surely lifting it out of the mire of ignorance and wickedness, and he cannot find a better answer than the fifty-third of Isaiah. It tells of Jesus, but it tells also of all the sons of God who in the spirit of Jesus have ever given their lives in the service of love.
When we go to the Bible in this common-sense way, entering with understanding and sympathy into the thoughts and aspirations of the men who wrote it, it becomes a living book, and a real help in our endeavour to live our lives in union with Jesus Christ. But to regard it as a sort of official document written by the finger of God, of equal authority in every part, and containing a full and complete statement of the propositions we must accept in order to make sure of salvation, is hampering and belittling to the soul. God inspires men, not books; and He will go on inspiring men to the end of time, whether they write books or not. I do not know anything which is such a serious hindrance and stumbling-block to spiritual religion to-day as this supposed authority of the letter of scripture. If only the average Protestant could emancipate himself from this intellectual bondage, the gain to truth would be immeasurable. I do not suppose there is a single man who reads these words who would make light of the religious opinions of a pious mother, but would he allow them to fetter him in the exercise of his own mature judgment? But surely your own mother stands as near to you as men who wrote centuries before she was born. If God spoke to the hearts of men centuries ago, He can and does speak to them now. If He spoke to Isaiah, He can and does speak to you. If your mother's way of stating truth is not necessarily yours, no more is Paul's. The deeper unity of the spirit forbids this blind obedience to the letter. Therefore, knowing quite well what use hostile reviewers will make of this sentence, I close by solemnly adding: Never mind what the Bible says if you are in search for truth, but trust the voice of God within you. The Bible will help you in your quest, just as any good man might be able to help you; but you must judge, test, and weigh the various statements it contains, just as you would judge, test, and weigh the opinions of the best friend you ever had. Nothing can make up for this quiet and assured confidence in the Spirit of Truth within your own soul. If God is not there, you will not find Him in the Bible or anywhere else.
CHAPTER XII
SALVATION, JUDGMENT, AND THE LIFE TO COME
+The inwardness of Salvation and Judgment.+—We come now to the consideration of a group of subjects which are usually treated in quite separate categories. I mean the punishment of sin, the nature and scope of Salvation, Resurrection and Ascension, Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. The reason why I feel that these subjects ought not to be treated in separate categories is because they are all descriptions of states of the soul and imply each other; they are inward, not outward, experiences. This statement will, I trust, become clearer as we proceed.
So far we have examined pretty thoroughly the nature of sin and its effects in the world, but have said very little as to its penal consequences, and yet the consideration of these consequences has been the determining factor in most of the theories of Atonement, ancient or modern, which have occupied the field of human thought. It is true, as I have said, that the idea of Atonement is not necessarily associated with that of sin, and actually precedes it both historically and psychologically, but it cannot be gainsaid that in Christian thought the desirability of finding some means of escaping or minimising the punishment of sin has tended to overshadow everything else in popular presentations of the Atonement. But what is the punishment of sin, and who administers it? What is the Judgment and when does it take effect? How does Salvation stand related to punishment and judgment? What has Death to do with the matter? What are we to understand by Heaven and Hell, and what is the bearing of either upon Salvation and Judgment? Everyone knows how popular evangelical theology would answer these questions. Sin, we are told, will be punished in a future life by the committal of the impenitent soul to everlasting torment. Salvation is primarily a means of escaping this, and secondarily being conformed gradually to the moral likeness of the Saviour. Judgment is a grand assize, which will take place when the material world comes to an end; Jesus Christ will be the Judge, and will apportion everlasting weal or woe, according as the soul has or has not claimed the benefit of His redeeming work in time to profit by it. Death is the dividing line beyond which the destiny is fixed eternally whether we die old or young. Heaven is the place into which the redeemed enter—whether after death or after judgment has never been clearly settled—there to praise God eternally in perfect happiness; Hell is the place of never ending torment to which unbelievers are to be consigned.