force the law and maintain its authority, and so wlti- mately help to promote the great benevolent ends of moral government.” This theory “ harmonizes with a just con- ception of the origin and end of law (including precept and penalty), as emanating from a divine purpose to promote, by means of it, the highest good of the } uni-
a
SS ay Ce ae
verse.’+ This is very astonishing. It seems that the |
ultimate, that is, real end of commanding at all is cer- tain consequences to be secured by the commands, and yet that virtue is commanded because it is intrinsically good, and it is intrinsically good because certain of its
* Lectures on the Moral Government of God, by Nathaniel W. Taylor, D.D., vol. i., pp. 81-85. { Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. xviil., pp. 295-018,
GOVERNMENTAL THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT. 315
consequences are good. The real end of forbidding is to attain certain consequences, and yet vice is forbidden be- cause it is intrinsically wrong, and it is intrinsically wrong because some of its consequences are injurious. Vice is punished because it is intrinsically ill-deserving, and yet the ultimate end of all punishment is to be found in certain consequences it is designed to effect.
The ultimate end of law, precept, and penalty, is the good of the moral universe. The sole function of punishment is, as a sanction to law, to promote the benevolent ends of moral government. All virtue is benevolence; that is, a desire that all others shall be happy and virtuous—that is, be happy and wish all others happy. Punishment, therefore, is a violent mo- tive addressed to the self-love of the subjects of law to induce them to wish all others to be happy. Atonement is a substitute for the penalty, to take its place and to produce precisely the same effect. Therefore it follows, according to this boasted Governmental Theory, the highest lesson of the crucifixion of the eternal Son of God is—that ‘ honesty is the best policy !!!”
4, This theory is utterly intolerable, because it repre- sents the sacred tragedy of Gethsemane and Calvary as an illusive example of punishment where there was no real punishment—an ‘“‘expression” of divine attributes which were not really exercised in the case. The ortho- dox doctrine is, that Christ really satisfied the justice of God by really suffering the penalty of sin in our stead. The Governmental Theory is, that the sufferings of ' Christ were not the punishment of sin, not the exercise of divine justice upon Christ, but an exanvple of punish- ment and an expression of God’s just wrath. ‘‘ Grotius, as well as Socinus, attached principal importance to the moral impression which the death of Christ is calculated to produce, with this difference only, that Grotius takes
CHAPTER XXI.
It repre- sents the work of Christ as an exhibi- tion of principles not truly in exer- cise.
CHAPTER XXT.
314 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
this principle negatively, Socinus positively : for in the opinion of Grotius, the moral effect of Christ’s death consists in the exhibition of the punishment due to sin ; according to Socinus, in the moral courage which Christ manifested in his death.” It is very grievous that the sacred death of our Lord should be thus characterized as an attempt upon God’s part, unveiled and rendered for ever impossible by these very theorists, to impose upon the moral universe an “expression” of attributes not actually in exercise, an “exhibition of punishment” where there is no punishment, and to make an example in which sin is dealt with without punishment an em- phatic demonstration of his purpose always to punish it. Jowett says truly: “This doctrine [Governmental] is the surface or shadow of the preceding, with the substance or foundation cut away.” “If this scheme avoids the difficulty of offering an unworthy satisfaction to God, and so doing violence to his attributes, we can scarcely free it from the equal difficulty of interposing a painful fiction between God and man. Was the spectacle real which was presented before God and the angels on Mount Cavalry? This theory avoids the physical illu- sion of the old heretics, and introduces a moral illusion of a worse kind.” *
“There is certainly no manifestation of the excellence and perfection of the divine law, or of the necessity of maintaining and honouring it, if, in the provision made for pardoning sinners, it was relaxed and set aside—if its penalty was not inflicted, if there was no fulfilment of its exactions, no compliance with its demands.’+ The law was either literally fulfilled or relaxed. Sin was either really punished or the punishment was remitted. God either poured out his wrath really and truly upon
* St. Paul’s Epistles, vol. ii., pp. 272-275. + Cunningham’s History of Theology, vol. il., pp, 855, 356.
GOVERNMENTAL THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT. 315