RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Atonement
ism, and making it into what he calls the religion of " universal redemption by love," that is to say, anybody's love, not specifically Christ's jove — for every one who loves takes his position by Christ's side as, if not equally, yet as truly, a savior as he (The Doctrine of the Atonement in its Historical Evolution, Eng. transl., ut sup., pp. 131-134; so also Otto Pfleiderer, Das Christusbild des urchristlichen Glaubens in religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung, Berlin, 1903, Eng. transl., London, 1905, pp. 164-165; cf. Horace Bushnell, Vicarious Sacrifice, New York, 1865, p. 107: " Vicarious sacrifice was in no way peculiar"). In this same general category belongs also the theory which Albrecht Ritschl has given such wide influence. According to it, the work of Christ consists in the establishment of the Kingdom of God in the world, that is, in the revelation of God's love to men and his gracious purposes for men. Thus Jesus becomes the first object of this love and as such its mediator to others; his sufferings and death being, on the one side, a test of his steadfastness, and, on the other, the crowning proof of his obedience (Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, iii, §§ 41-61, 3d ed., Bonn, 1888, Eng. transl., Edinburgh, 1900). Similarly also, though with many modifications, which are in some instances not insignificant, such writers as W Herrmann (Der Verkehr des Christen mit Gott, Stuttgart, 1886, p. 93, Eng. transl., London, 1895), J. Kaftan (Dogmatik, Tubingen, 1901, pp. 446 sqq.), F. A. B. Nitzsch (Evangelische Dogmatik, Freiburg, 1892, pp. 504-513), T. Karing (in his Veber das Bleibende im Glauben an Christus, Stuttgart, 1880, where he sought to complete Ritschl's view by the addition of the idea that Christ offered to God a perfect sorrow for the world's sin, which supplements our imperfect repentance; in his later writings, Zu Ritschl's Versohnungslehre, Zurich, 1888, Zur Versohnungslehre, Gottingen, 1893, he assimilates to the Grotian theory), E. Kuhl (Die Heilsbedeutung des Todes Christi, Berlin, 1890), G. A. F. Ecklin (Die Heilswerth des Todes Jesu, Gutersloh, 1888; Christus Unser Burge, Basel, 1900; and especially Erlosung und Versohnung, 1903, which is an elaborate history of the doctrine from the point of view of what Ecklin calls in antagonism to the " substitutional-expiatory " conception, the " solidaric-reparatory " conception of the Atonement, — the conception, that is, that Christ comes to save men not primarily from the guilt, but from the power of sin, and that " the sole satisfaction God demands for his outraged honor is the restoration of obedience," p. 647). The most popular form of the " moral influence " theories has always been that in which the stress is laid on the manifestation made in the total mission and work of Christ of the ineffable and searching love of God wr sinners, which, being perceived, breaks down our opposition to God, melts our hearts, and brings us as prodigals home to the Father's arms. It is in this form that the theory was advocated (but with the suggestion that there is another side to it), for example, by S. T. Coleridge (Aids to Reflection), and that it was commended to English-speaking readers of the last generation with the highest
ability by John Young of Edinburgh (The Life and Light of Men, London, 1866), and with the greatest literary attractiveness by Horace Bushnell (Vicarious Sacrifice, New York, 1865; see below, § 7; see also article Bushnell, Horace); and has been more recently set forth in elaborate and vigorously polemic form by W N. Clarke (An Outline of Christian Theology, New York, 1898, pp. 341- 367), T. Vincent Tymms (The Christian Idea of Atonement, London, 1904), G. B. Stevens (The Christian Doctrine of Salvation, New York, 1905), and C. M. Mead (Irenic Theology, New York, 1905).
In a volume of essays published first in the Andover Review (iv, 1885, pp. 57 sqq.) and afterward gathered into a volume under the title of Progressive Orthodoxy (Boston, 1886), the professors in Andover Seminary made an attempt (the writer here being, as was understood, George Harris) to enrich the " moral influence " theory of the Atonement after a fashion quite common in Germany (cf., e.g., Haring, ut sup.) with elements derived from other well-known forms of teaching. In this construction, Christ's work is made to consist primarily in bringing to bear on man a revelation of God's hatred of sin, and love for souls, by which he makes man capable of repentance and leads him to repent revolutionarily; by this repentance, then, together with Christ's own sympathetic expression of repentance God is rendered propitious. Here Christ's work is supposed to have at least some (though a secondary) effect upon God; and a work of propitiation of God by Christ may be spoken of, although it is accomplished by a " sympathetic repentance." It has accordingly become usual with those who have adopted this mode of representation to say that there was in this atoning work, not indeed " a substitution of a sinless Christ for a sinful race," but a " substitution of humanity plus Christ for humanity minus Christ." By such curiously compacted theories the transition is made to the next class.
4. Theories which conceive the work of Christ as terminating on both man and God, but on man primarily and on God only secondarily. The outstanding instance of this class of theories is supplied by the so-called " rectoral or governmental theories." These suppose that (the work of Christ so affects; man by the spectacle of the sufferings borne by him as to deter men from sin; and by thus deter-: ring men from sin enables God to for-i 5. "Rector- give sin with safety to his moral goval or Gov- ernment of the world. In these ernmental theories the sufferings and death of Theories." Christ become, for the first time m this conspectus of theories, of cardinal importance, constituting indeed the very essence of the work of Christ. But the atoning fact here too, no less than in the " moral influence " theories, is man's own reformation, though this reformation is supposed in the rectoral view to be wrought not primarily by breaking down man's opposition to God by a moving manifestation of the love of God in Christ, but by inducing in man a horror of sin, through the spectacle of God's hatred of sin afforded by the sufferings of Christ— through which, no doubt, the contemplation of man is led on to
Atonement