THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
God's love to sinners as exhibited in his willingness to inflict all these sufferings on his own son, that he might be enabled, with justice to his moral government, to forgive sins.
This theory was worked out by the great Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius (Defensio fidei Christiana de satis fact ione Christi, etc., Leyden, 1617 ; modern ed., Oxford, 1856; Eng. transl., with notes and introduction by F. H. Foster, Andover, 1889) as an attempt to save what was salvable of the established doctrine of satisfaction from disintegration under the attacks of the Socinian advocates of the " moral influence " theories (see Grotius, Hugo).
It was at once adopted by those Ar-
6. Advocates minians who had been most affected
of These by the Socinian reasoning; and in the
Theories, next age became the especial property
of the better class of the so-called supranaturalists (Michaelis, Storr, Morus, Knapp, Steudel, Reinhard, Muntinge, Vinke, Egeling). It has remained on the continent of Europe to this day, the refuge of most of those, who, influenced by the modern spirit, yet wish to preserve some form of " objective," that is, of Godward atonement. A great variety of representations have grown up under this influence, combining elements of the satisfaction and rectoral views. To name but a single typical instance, the commentator F. Godet, both in his commentaries (especially that on Romans) and in a more recent essay (published in The Atonement in Modern Thought by various writers, London, 1900, pp. 331 sqq.), teaches (certainly in a very high form) the rectoral theory distinctly (and is corrected therefor by his colleague at Neuchatel, Prof. Gretillat, who wishes an " ontological " rather than a merely " demonstrative " necessity for atonement to be recognized). Its history has run on similar lines in English-speaking countries. In Great Britain and America alike it has become practically the orthodoxy of the Independents. It has, for example, been taught as such in the former country by Joseph Gilbert (The Christian Atonement, London, 1836), and in especially well worked-out forms by R. W. Dale (The Atonement, London, 1S76) and Alfred Cave (The Scriptu: il Doctrine of Sacrifice, Edinburgh, 1877; new ed. with title, The Scriptural Doctrine of Atonement and Sacrifice, 1890; and in The Atonement in Modern Thought, ut sup., pp. 250 sqq.). When the Calvinism of the New England Puritans began to break down, one of the symptoms of its decay was the gradual substitution of the rectoral for the satisfaction view of the Atonement. The process may be traced in the writings of Joseph Bellamy (1719— 90), Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803), John Smalley (1736-1820), Stephen West (1735-1819), Jonathan Edwards, Jr. (1745-1801), Nathanael Emmons (1745-1X00); and Edwards A. Park was able, accordingly, in the middle of the nineteenth century to set the rectoral theory forth as the " traditional orthodox doctrine " of the American Congregationalists (The Atonement: Discourses and Treatises by Edwards, Smalley, Maxcy, Emmons, Griffin, Burge, and Weeks, with an Introductory Essay by Edwards A. Park, Boston, 1859; cf. Daniel T. Fiske, in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Apr., 1861, and further N. S. S.
Beman, Sermons on the Atonement, New York, 1825 2d ed., 1846; N. W Taylor, Lectures on the Moral Government of God, New York, 1859; Albert Barnes, The Atonement in its Relation to Law and Moral Government, Philadelphia, 1859; Frank H. Foster Christian Life and Theology, New York, 1900; Lewis F. Stearns, Present Day Theology, New York, 1893). The early Wesleyans also gravitated toward the rectoral theory, though not without some hesitation, a hesitation which has sustained itself among British Wesleyans until to-day (cf., e.g., W B. Pope, Compendium of Christian Theology, London, 1875; Marshall Randies, Substitution, a Treatise on the Atonement, London, 1877; T. O. Summers, Systematic Theology, 2 vols., Nashville, Tenn., 1888; J. J. Tigert, in the Methodist Quarterly Review, Apr., 1884), although many among them have taught the rectoral theory with great distinctness and decision (e.g., Joseph Agar Beet, in the Expositor, Nov., 1892, pp. 343-355; Through Christ to God, London, 1893). On the other hand, the rectoral theory has been the regnant one among American Methodists and has received some of its best statements from their hands (cf. especially John Miley, The Atonement of Christ, New York, 1879; Systematic Theology, ii, New York, 1894, pp. 65-240); although there are voices raised of late in denial of its claim to be considered distinctively the doctrine of the Methodist Church (J. J. Tigert, ut sup.; H. C. Sheldon, in AJT, viii, 1904, pp. 41-42).
The final form which Horace Bushnell gave his version of the " moral influence " theory, in his Forgiveness and Law (New York, 1874; made the second volume to his revised Vicarious Sacrifice, 1877) stands in no relation to the rectoral theories; but it requires to be mentioned here by their side, because it supposes like them that 7. Horace the work of Christ has a secondary ef- Bushnell. feet on God, although its primary effect is on man. In this presentation, Bushnell represents Christ's work as consisting in a profound identification of himself with man, the effect of which is, on the one side, to manifest God's love to man and so to conquer man to him, and, on the other, as he expresses it, " to make cost " on God's part for man, and so, by breaking down God's resentment to man, to prepare God's heart to receive man back when he comes. The underlying idea is that whenever we do anything for those who have injured us, and in proportion as it costs us something to do it, our natural resentment of the injury we have suffered is undermined, and we are prepared to forgive the injury when forgiveness is sought. By this theory -the transition is naturally made to the next class.
5 . Theories which conceive the work of Christ
as terminating primarily on God and secondarily
on man. The lowest form in wliich
8. " Theo- this ultimate position, can- be said to
ries of be fairly taken, is doubtless that set Reconcilia- forth in his remarkably attractive tion." way by John McLeo^l .Campbell (The Nature of the Ataneme?ii~andT~tls' Relation to Remission of Sins and Eternal Life,, London, 1856; 4th ed., 1875), and lately argued out afresh with even more than Campbell's winningness