Where Science and Religion Meet

by William Scott Palmer

Moreover, we must bear in mind, nothing about God who 'is spirit' is either an artifice or a machine. So his punishments, his expressed condemnations, are never artificial, never mechanical. They arise 'naturally,' as we say; and in large part we provide them, we men, ourselves. There are certain 'natural' consequences, miscalled punishments, which are entailed upon the body as, for instance, when a child puts his hand into the fire or a man disregards what we call the 'laws' of health. The due and true moral punishment of persons by persons is just as natural. The nature of persons is spiritual in the order of their uplifted life, and is one with that life. Their nature is, in fact, no other than that life and those persons. We cannot separate, though we may sometimes in word distinguish, between the man and his nature. Consequently all due and right punishment by persons (punishment by love, which is the same as forgiveness by love) is wholly natural. It is a natural consequence of sin, the reaction against sin with which good persons or a good society must encounter it. There is no arbitrary infliction of punishment, and no arbitrary forgiveness, by the good man, the good society, or the good God. Nor should there be in regard to his own sins or sinfulness by the man who newly rejects them, the newly penitent man. He, the new man, reacts according to his new nature, and in one and the same activity should condemn and forgive himself. He must be penitent but he should not be remorseful. If he does not forgive himself as well as condemn himself, it may be because he is not humble enough and penitent enough to bear with the fact that he has deserved his condemnation.

We must remind ourselves, however, that it is of spiritual nature in ourselves to choose. The activity of love is chosen and determined by the good man, with its forgiveness and its punishment. And although the perfection of God must preclude choice between alternatives, although for perfect wisdom there can never be more than one course open, yet there is no automatism, there cannot be automatism of the mechanical kind, in God who, as the Christian maintains, is love. His love is willed though not chosen. It is of the vital, intelligent, voluntary activity of a spiritual being. And so both punishment and forgiveness are willed, in God or in man; and as the man approaches full union with God so does his choice approach that inevitable wisdom for which there is no longer consciousness of choice. This is the manner of spirit and life; that which is personally real in any man, all that is in God, is not merely consented to or assented to but is always actively willed, never compulsorily or mechanically apportioned. So it is right and reasonable to say that God or the man of God punishes and forgives. It is not right to say that the punishment and forgiveness of either, though it is wholly natural, is in any kind of way automatic with the automatism of a machine, or even with that relative automatism of material things which we speak of as natural law. Without the activity of love there can be no true punishment and no true forgiveness; there is only vindictiveness or condonation.

The treatment we have given our wrong-doers in the past is not fitted to throw clear light on Christian atonement and the ways of God with man. On the contrary, it has obscured both. But we are learning. Truth, experience, and the Gesta Christi work for our learning. Or, as the Christian says, the divine spirit works for it and 'strives' with us, that is, works with us that we may work out our own salvation.

We have begun to say to the children we are training—'Come now, this is wrong; let's see how we' [we, mark you] 'can set it right.' We have discovered that unless the child works with us our punishment fails, and our forgiveness fails, of any real effect for goodness. But Christians knew this from their beginning, though many of them forget they did. In the last resort it is why Christ died.

When, carrying with us our new method, we have passed from the child to the criminal, and extend to him that 'wise and patient care' for his welfare, which is forgiveness and punishment in one, we shall be in a better position for seeing what Christian atonement really means and is—how real it is and how it depends on co-operation between the Saviour and the offender; how, always, the Saviour must win the offender first if he is to save him. Then we shall read the Gospels of the Christian with new eyes and a new understanding.

If you want to see punishment and forgiveness both in one, turn to the parable of the prodigal son. Could any punishment be more salutary or more piercing to the man whose penitence had shown him his utter unworthiness? Could forgiveness be more complete, more gracious, than that which he received? Consider how his penitence must have been deepened, and his sense of unworthiness increased, when he found himself in his father's arms, and his father's house, honoured, rejoiced over, feasted? In proportion to the depth and fulness of penitence do these two, punishment and forgiveness, given in love, become distinguishable only by the reaction to them of the penitent. He alone knows how love hurts and heals in one and the same act and moment.

Then, if you want to learn the many forms punishment may take, seek further. Look at the story of the woman taken in adultery. 'Hath no man condemned thee?' ... 'Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.' Punishment and forgiveness imparted in one profound paradox of love's judgement. What do you think was its effect on the woman who had looked into the prophet's eyes as he lifted them from the dust? 'Hath no man condemned thee?' 'No man, Lord,' she said; and they were the words humility and shame would choose.

A degree further—consider the picture of a final judgement, with the 'Son of man in his glory' and the nations gathered before him to be shown their union with him, or their disunion, in a clearness none could mistake. 'Come, ye blessed,' he says, 'inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world'—the kingdom in which all men are one with the Holiest, with the living Truth himself and Beauty 'in his glory'—come with me. For I was an hungred, thirsty, a stranger.... Naked and ye clothed me, sick, in prison, and ye came unto me.... And yet these blessed had never known what they did. It was not he, so far as they knew, that they had succoured. Not for his sake but for love's they had done it; not even, indeed, at the heart of it, for love's sake, but because they loved, because in them the well-spring of love streamed forth and they gave their very selves to those others who had only need of them. They were of love and were love's own. Love as shown to these who needed it was not distinguishable, even by their reaction to it, into punishment and forgiveness. It was but love.

Then those others—'Depart from me,' he says—and there was a vision painted of the unutterable horrors of a state of separation and loneliness and self-embittered remorse—'I was an hungred and ye gave me no meat.' They also, had not known—'Lord, when saw we thee an hungred?' If they had known they would assuredly have hastened to him with their meat, asked him to their feasts, lavished all upon him. But for what sake? For no other than their own. Love had no place in their hearts, nor had the Lord. Only self-seeking. They were their own Lords and Gods. And thenceforth they had to know it. In their impenitent, disappointed, cheated (they would say) and remorseful hearts there was no room for anything but the sense of punishment. Their inevitable reaction to the voice of love, as it reproached their lack of love, shut out both forgiveness and all possibility of the sense of it.

So we come to the extreme of distinction between the ways of the showing of love. Here is all punishment, it seems, to the sinner. But it is he who makes love so. It is very love that punishes, a consistent, unwavering love which, in the sinner's last extremity, shows itself to the utmost he can receive and in the only way he can receive. What, I ask you, would a man like this make of a love that should express itself (if in the nature of love it could thus express itself) as condoning the want of love and professing oneness in so complete an alienation? Not only does the nature of love forbid such an expression, but the nature of the self-worshipper, who cannot receive it.